*
I am under no illusion but that Mormonism is Incredible in the sense that it severely strains credibility, and simply seems ridiculous, absurd, disgusting to the standards of normal public discourse.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/mormonism-poised-between-incredibilities.html
However, mainstream Christianity is incredible also, and in exactly the same way and by the same type of criteria (Incredible that is, to the external observer, who is neither mainstream nor Mormon) - which is to say: to accept any kind of Christianity is to accept the Incredible, and to reject Christianity is also to accept the Incredible.
Christianity is Incredible, Mormon Christianity is Incredible-squared.
*
Therefore neither mainstream Christianity nor Mormon Christianity should be presented as anything other than Incredible - because to do so is to misrepresent.
And because to do so is to diminish: positive transforming power is a consequence of Incredibility; so if our faith is in something less than the Incredible, then it is partial and enfeebled.
If Incredible things are to be rejected, then both Christianity and Mormon Christianity should be rejected.
*
But of course, the truth of Mormon Christianity is NOT entailed by the truth of mainstream Christianity - one can (the vast majority of Christians have and do) rationally embrace the Incredibility of mC while rejecting the incredibility of MC.
(The opposite is not possible - if someone believes that Mormonism is true then that does entail accepting the essential truth of mainstream Christianity.)
*
So it is reasonable, and indeed usual, for mainstream Christians to reject Mormon Christianity as Incredible-hence-untrue; however, they should be aware that precisely the same qualitative point can equally-reasonably be made against mainstream Christianity - if that Christianity is to be positive and transforming.
Only the Incredible can save us: only the Incredible would offer us everlasting life as Sons of God.
Our choice, here and now, is between Incredibilities - or despair.
*
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query incredible. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query incredible. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday 21 October 2014
Saturday 18 April 2015
We cannot escape from incredible beliefs, twist and turn as we may
*
As I have written (see references below): Christianity is incredible, and Mormonism is incredible-squared. In that sense it is perfectly reasonable to reject either or both - because there is no requirement for us to assent to the incredible.
However, rejecting Christianity and Mormonism simply because they are incredible makes no sense either - because that rejection itself leads to incredible conclusions.
*
To focus on Mormonism - it really is incredible that Joseph Smith (of all people!) should be a prophet of God and that the provenance of the Book of Mormon was as described (gold plates, angels, translating devices etc), and that Joseph's BoM translation really derives from a lost ancient manuscript.
So it might, superficially, seem straightforward to disbelieve these things. Let's call this the skeptical alternative. But what then?
Of course, most people who reject Mormonism as incredible have a rooted negative prejudice against it, do not know the whole story, and/ or they have wildly false or distorted ideas about Mormonism.
But if you approach the subject of Mormonism with a benign and sympathetic attitude, are honest and informed; then we can see that the skeptical alternative is also clearly incredible; because it requires on the one hand that Joseph Smith was both a genius and also a calculated fraud, who led a water-tight conspiracy; and furthermore that the CJCLDS grew from a foundation of fraud and conspiracy to become the (overall) highly positive and wholesome influence it is today.
*
But yet again, the skeptical alternative - while incredible and unprecedented - is not impossible.
It is possible to imagine or suppose that a fraudulent genius and a watertight conspiracy did indeed, by chance and against the original intent, lead to great good - why, not?
This belief goes against common sense and reasonable expectation, but it could be true.
*
But then, if we are honest and rigorous enough to apply this kind of negative, skeptical alternative reasoning to other domains of life - such as other religions, the history of politics, science etc.; then we will find that they also crumble away into what could be fiendish conspiracies.
In particular, we will be compelled to notice that Mormonism grew under the microscope of the mass media, and is vastly documented compared with other world religions and major Christian denominations.
We may reflect that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence when it comes to these other religions, and that much of the 'evidence' about early Mormonism is both ignorant and dishonest - as well as rootedly hostile...
In the end, no matter where we turn, or how we twist and twist about - we cannot escape incredibilities: we really can't. Not if we are honest and rigorous.
*
The above is not by any means a proof of the validity of Mormonism - it is not intended as such, and I do not believe that there can be any such proof even in principle.
And what applies to Mormonism in small, applies to Christianity in large - the Christian story is packed with incredibilities and inconsistencies; yet to reject Christianity as incredible entails believing in some combination of delusion and conspiracy of a kind that is itself incredible, because grossly contradictory to actual behaviour and historical consequences.
It is that same skeptic's dilemma - Christianity could be based on delusion and fraud- that is not-impossible - it is just highly incredible. That path offers no escape from incredibility.
*
My point is that the impulse to avoid believing incredible things is mistaken, a basic error; because it is impossible. The notion of an incredibility-free belief system is an illusion and a snare.
Indeed, the urge to avoid incredibilities leads to the deep-rooted dishonesty and wilful self-blindness typical of the person who prides and advertises himself on being A Skeptic that relies only on Evidence.
(I mean the kind of man [we all know them - you may be one of them!] who applies skepticism only where and when it suits him, and blandly denies the incredibility of his own favoured incredibilities.)
But neither the skeptic not the credulous ever can or will avoid believing not just one but many incredibilities.
Incredible beliefs are simply a fact of life.
*
This can be taken in two ways - either as meaning that we cannot believe anything because we could believe anything; OR that this is the way things are meant to be - and that it is a necessary and desirable part of the human condition that foundational belief require an act of choice from each of us as individuals.
To believe that fundamental beliefs cannot and should not be wholly-dictated by objective public 'evidence' and 'reason' but necessarily require an act of personal choice is, of course standard mainstream Christianity - it is what is meant by Faith.
Skeptics assume that the only alternatives are either being convinced by conclusive and credible evidence to reach credible conclusions on rational grounds; or else just believing whatever incredibility you want and calling it 'faith'...
But Christians deny that these alternatives exhaust all possibilities, and also deny that the skeptical possibility is coherent (for the reasons given above).
*
So what should we do, each, as individuals? Does everyone have to believe in Mormonism because it is incredible, or because everything else is at least equally incredible? Obviously not!
The Mormon answer is that each interested person as an individual has the possibility of investigating the evidence - and each must (and inevitably will) then make a choice. But people should not believe in Mormonism unless that choice is validated-by, or indeed comes-from, divine revelation.
Evidence is relevant, but never conclusive. Each person who professes Mormonism needs to, and must have, faith.
And exactly the same ought to apply to any Christian denomination. To be any kind of Christian (rather than just doing things that Christians do) requires faith; and that faith is based on individual choice; and that choice - to be valid - is not arbitrary but divinely inspired.
*
Is this a process without any possibility of error? No.
Can we be sure and confident that divine validation has happened? Yes.
But might we then change our mind about things we used to be certain about, or doubt our own certainty? Yes.
Does this then mean that truth is relative and arbitrary and we can believe anything or nothing? No.
*
Truth is real, humans are fallible, certainty is possible, faith is necessary.
These just are the facts, and we must work with them - we have no alternative: we must choose, and we will choose and indeed we have already chosen (although not irrevocably).
* *
References
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/mormonism-poised-between-incredibilities.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/mainstream-christianity-is-incredible.html
As I have written (see references below): Christianity is incredible, and Mormonism is incredible-squared. In that sense it is perfectly reasonable to reject either or both - because there is no requirement for us to assent to the incredible.
However, rejecting Christianity and Mormonism simply because they are incredible makes no sense either - because that rejection itself leads to incredible conclusions.
*
To focus on Mormonism - it really is incredible that Joseph Smith (of all people!) should be a prophet of God and that the provenance of the Book of Mormon was as described (gold plates, angels, translating devices etc), and that Joseph's BoM translation really derives from a lost ancient manuscript.
So it might, superficially, seem straightforward to disbelieve these things. Let's call this the skeptical alternative. But what then?
Of course, most people who reject Mormonism as incredible have a rooted negative prejudice against it, do not know the whole story, and/ or they have wildly false or distorted ideas about Mormonism.
But if you approach the subject of Mormonism with a benign and sympathetic attitude, are honest and informed; then we can see that the skeptical alternative is also clearly incredible; because it requires on the one hand that Joseph Smith was both a genius and also a calculated fraud, who led a water-tight conspiracy; and furthermore that the CJCLDS grew from a foundation of fraud and conspiracy to become the (overall) highly positive and wholesome influence it is today.
*
But yet again, the skeptical alternative - while incredible and unprecedented - is not impossible.
It is possible to imagine or suppose that a fraudulent genius and a watertight conspiracy did indeed, by chance and against the original intent, lead to great good - why, not?
This belief goes against common sense and reasonable expectation, but it could be true.
*
But then, if we are honest and rigorous enough to apply this kind of negative, skeptical alternative reasoning to other domains of life - such as other religions, the history of politics, science etc.; then we will find that they also crumble away into what could be fiendish conspiracies.
In particular, we will be compelled to notice that Mormonism grew under the microscope of the mass media, and is vastly documented compared with other world religions and major Christian denominations.
We may reflect that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence when it comes to these other religions, and that much of the 'evidence' about early Mormonism is both ignorant and dishonest - as well as rootedly hostile...
In the end, no matter where we turn, or how we twist and twist about - we cannot escape incredibilities: we really can't. Not if we are honest and rigorous.
*
The above is not by any means a proof of the validity of Mormonism - it is not intended as such, and I do not believe that there can be any such proof even in principle.
And what applies to Mormonism in small, applies to Christianity in large - the Christian story is packed with incredibilities and inconsistencies; yet to reject Christianity as incredible entails believing in some combination of delusion and conspiracy of a kind that is itself incredible, because grossly contradictory to actual behaviour and historical consequences.
It is that same skeptic's dilemma - Christianity could be based on delusion and fraud- that is not-impossible - it is just highly incredible. That path offers no escape from incredibility.
*
My point is that the impulse to avoid believing incredible things is mistaken, a basic error; because it is impossible. The notion of an incredibility-free belief system is an illusion and a snare.
Indeed, the urge to avoid incredibilities leads to the deep-rooted dishonesty and wilful self-blindness typical of the person who prides and advertises himself on being A Skeptic that relies only on Evidence.
(I mean the kind of man [we all know them - you may be one of them!] who applies skepticism only where and when it suits him, and blandly denies the incredibility of his own favoured incredibilities.)
But neither the skeptic not the credulous ever can or will avoid believing not just one but many incredibilities.
Incredible beliefs are simply a fact of life.
*
This can be taken in two ways - either as meaning that we cannot believe anything because we could believe anything; OR that this is the way things are meant to be - and that it is a necessary and desirable part of the human condition that foundational belief require an act of choice from each of us as individuals.
To believe that fundamental beliefs cannot and should not be wholly-dictated by objective public 'evidence' and 'reason' but necessarily require an act of personal choice is, of course standard mainstream Christianity - it is what is meant by Faith.
Skeptics assume that the only alternatives are either being convinced by conclusive and credible evidence to reach credible conclusions on rational grounds; or else just believing whatever incredibility you want and calling it 'faith'...
But Christians deny that these alternatives exhaust all possibilities, and also deny that the skeptical possibility is coherent (for the reasons given above).
*
So what should we do, each, as individuals? Does everyone have to believe in Mormonism because it is incredible, or because everything else is at least equally incredible? Obviously not!
The Mormon answer is that each interested person as an individual has the possibility of investigating the evidence - and each must (and inevitably will) then make a choice. But people should not believe in Mormonism unless that choice is validated-by, or indeed comes-from, divine revelation.
Evidence is relevant, but never conclusive. Each person who professes Mormonism needs to, and must have, faith.
And exactly the same ought to apply to any Christian denomination. To be any kind of Christian (rather than just doing things that Christians do) requires faith; and that faith is based on individual choice; and that choice - to be valid - is not arbitrary but divinely inspired.
*
Is this a process without any possibility of error? No.
Can we be sure and confident that divine validation has happened? Yes.
But might we then change our mind about things we used to be certain about, or doubt our own certainty? Yes.
Does this then mean that truth is relative and arbitrary and we can believe anything or nothing? No.
*
Truth is real, humans are fallible, certainty is possible, faith is necessary.
These just are the facts, and we must work with them - we have no alternative: we must choose, and we will choose and indeed we have already chosen (although not irrevocably).
* *
References
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/mormonism-poised-between-incredibilities.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/mainstream-christianity-is-incredible.html
Thursday 23 October 2014
We need the Incredible - what can intelligence do?
*
What we most need is what we find hardest to believe.
What we passively receive via the mass media is evil, false, ugly; aimed to subvert and invert our aims, to trap us in a bubble of distraction, to induce despair and wish for death.
Yet hard-nosed, common sense, data-based, rational analysis and policy making is an Iron Cage - it cannot motivate us, it reduces life to something that cannot engage us. It bludgeons, it coerces but never inspires.
Only the Incredible, that which we have been trained to regard as ridiculous, absurd, disgusting - can save us.
*
But not not, of course, anything Incredible: incredibility per se is useless; but among incredibilities is where the real, true and saving answer lies.
To find it is a risky business, there is no longer any psychologically-safe path. There is danger of embracing the wrong Incredible: real danger.
*
What use is intelligence?
Intelligence is power, intelligence is a weapon. Intelligence is indomitable - but only, at best, defensive of good - intelligence does not originate good.
Our own intelligence is outnumbered, conquest is impossible. But the intelligence of a single Man can (if they let it) defend himself and his allies against any number of foes - if they let it.
*
Intelligence is like a good shaman - who can place an impenetrable magic circle around his village, disable the weapons of the tribes' enemies, deflect the mind-probes of the aggressors to conceal his people; he has a million tricks to hold fast in a spiritual assault, and draws strength from a million hidden sources.
He cannot be defeated: so long as he fights to defend sacred ground.
Only if he allows himself to be lured into stepping-out from the gods-protected zone of rightful occupation does he become vulnerable; and then the whole tribe may be threatened with invasion, subversion; death and absorption.
*
Incredible? Yes.
The good-Incredible does not originate with intelligence, nor is intelligence able to recognise it; only to defend it once recognised
The good-Incredible originates outwith, and is recognised only by an open heart - which is also vulnerable to hurt.
*
An open heart cannot be defended, but when it is hurt (as it will be) it can be healed - however, only the Incredible can heal the hurt open heart.
*
So we absolutely need the Incredible, or else we cannot be open-hearted, and cannot discern the good Incredible from the evil; and then we will sooner-or-later be overcome; by one means or another.
But with the Incredible, we cannot, and will not, be overcome; ever.
*
What we most need is what we find hardest to believe.
What we passively receive via the mass media is evil, false, ugly; aimed to subvert and invert our aims, to trap us in a bubble of distraction, to induce despair and wish for death.
Yet hard-nosed, common sense, data-based, rational analysis and policy making is an Iron Cage - it cannot motivate us, it reduces life to something that cannot engage us. It bludgeons, it coerces but never inspires.
Only the Incredible, that which we have been trained to regard as ridiculous, absurd, disgusting - can save us.
*
But not not, of course, anything Incredible: incredibility per se is useless; but among incredibilities is where the real, true and saving answer lies.
To find it is a risky business, there is no longer any psychologically-safe path. There is danger of embracing the wrong Incredible: real danger.
*
What use is intelligence?
Intelligence is power, intelligence is a weapon. Intelligence is indomitable - but only, at best, defensive of good - intelligence does not originate good.
Our own intelligence is outnumbered, conquest is impossible. But the intelligence of a single Man can (if they let it) defend himself and his allies against any number of foes - if they let it.
*
Intelligence is like a good shaman - who can place an impenetrable magic circle around his village, disable the weapons of the tribes' enemies, deflect the mind-probes of the aggressors to conceal his people; he has a million tricks to hold fast in a spiritual assault, and draws strength from a million hidden sources.
He cannot be defeated: so long as he fights to defend sacred ground.
Only if he allows himself to be lured into stepping-out from the gods-protected zone of rightful occupation does he become vulnerable; and then the whole tribe may be threatened with invasion, subversion; death and absorption.
*
Incredible? Yes.
The good-Incredible does not originate with intelligence, nor is intelligence able to recognise it; only to defend it once recognised
The good-Incredible originates outwith, and is recognised only by an open heart - which is also vulnerable to hurt.
*
An open heart cannot be defended, but when it is hurt (as it will be) it can be healed - however, only the Incredible can heal the hurt open heart.
*
So we absolutely need the Incredible, or else we cannot be open-hearted, and cannot discern the good Incredible from the evil; and then we will sooner-or-later be overcome; by one means or another.
But with the Incredible, we cannot, and will not, be overcome; ever.
*
Saturday 3 August 2013
Mormonism: poised between incredibilities
*
Incredible: 1b - Hard to believe. New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
**
It strikes me that Mormonism is an incredible religion, in the two-sided sense that it both hard to believe and hard not to believe!
I realize that to most non-Mormons this is untrue - in the sense that they find Mormonism one-sidedly hard to believe and easy to disbelieve - hard to accept and extremely easy to dismiss.
But, when not due to sheer ignorance, that attitude is often due to them being blinded by negative prejudice; because there are remarkable facts about Mormonism which it is hard to believe are not due to its being true.
There are at least four two-sidedly incredible aspects of Mormonism - that is they are both hard to believe, and hard not to believe.
*
1. Joseph Smith.
On the one hand, it is hard to believe that such an ordinary and flawed person as Joseph Smith should have been a prophet of God; on the other hand it is hard to believe that anybody except a prophet of God could have done what he did.
2. The book of Mormon
On the one hand, the convoluted story of how the book of Mormon came to be written is bizarre, unprecedented - in a word incredible; on the other hand, it is very hard to believe that a book of such length, quality, complexity could have been dictated verbatim and unrevised in extremely difficult conditions and in just a few months.
3. The organization of the LDS church
On the one hand, the piecemeal emergence of the Mormon church, the adoption of elements from various traditions, the revisions and corrections of doctrine and so on - all seem like ad hoc improvisations and strain credibility; on the other hand, the results were incredible: a church which commanded great strength and devoutness and expanded exponentially for 180 years and successfully scaled up from a few hundreds to many millions.
4. Mormon theology
Contradicts so much of the theology of the historical Christian church, and so profoundly, that it is very hard to believe that almost all Christians could have been so wrong about so many things for such a long time; on the other hand, the Mormon theology is so simple, systematic and also Biblically coherent that it is incredible that Christians could have failed to discover it for so many centuries.
**
I could go on - but I hope the point has been made that if Mormonism is given its due, then incredibilities abound, and are rather exactly poised!
It is incredible that something as incredible as Mormonism could be true: it is also incredible that something as coherent, as long-term successful, and as good as Mormonism could be false.
*
Incredible: 1b - Hard to believe. New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
**
It strikes me that Mormonism is an incredible religion, in the two-sided sense that it both hard to believe and hard not to believe!
I realize that to most non-Mormons this is untrue - in the sense that they find Mormonism one-sidedly hard to believe and easy to disbelieve - hard to accept and extremely easy to dismiss.
But, when not due to sheer ignorance, that attitude is often due to them being blinded by negative prejudice; because there are remarkable facts about Mormonism which it is hard to believe are not due to its being true.
There are at least four two-sidedly incredible aspects of Mormonism - that is they are both hard to believe, and hard not to believe.
*
1. Joseph Smith.
On the one hand, it is hard to believe that such an ordinary and flawed person as Joseph Smith should have been a prophet of God; on the other hand it is hard to believe that anybody except a prophet of God could have done what he did.
2. The book of Mormon
On the one hand, the convoluted story of how the book of Mormon came to be written is bizarre, unprecedented - in a word incredible; on the other hand, it is very hard to believe that a book of such length, quality, complexity could have been dictated verbatim and unrevised in extremely difficult conditions and in just a few months.
3. The organization of the LDS church
On the one hand, the piecemeal emergence of the Mormon church, the adoption of elements from various traditions, the revisions and corrections of doctrine and so on - all seem like ad hoc improvisations and strain credibility; on the other hand, the results were incredible: a church which commanded great strength and devoutness and expanded exponentially for 180 years and successfully scaled up from a few hundreds to many millions.
4. Mormon theology
Contradicts so much of the theology of the historical Christian church, and so profoundly, that it is very hard to believe that almost all Christians could have been so wrong about so many things for such a long time; on the other hand, the Mormon theology is so simple, systematic and also Biblically coherent that it is incredible that Christians could have failed to discover it for so many centuries.
**
I could go on - but I hope the point has been made that if Mormonism is given its due, then incredibilities abound, and are rather exactly poised!
It is incredible that something as incredible as Mormonism could be true: it is also incredible that something as coherent, as long-term successful, and as good as Mormonism could be false.
*
Wednesday 6 April 2016
Christianity is incredible not paradoxical, commonsensical not contradictory - a fairy tale not a philosophy
That's today's aphorism - an encouragement to think of, to formulate, Christianity as something common-sensical in its mechanisms and causality, yet incredible in its claims.
Incredibility - It is an error to try and 'normalize' Christianity, to claim that it is obvious and no big deal - that being Christian is merely the product of reason and logic and solid history and that one would have to be uninformed, dishonest or crazy not to believe it.
Actually, Christianity is incredible, stretching of credibility - hard to believe because its claims are so extreme and astonishing; and incredible too in the scope and power of its truth when that truth is understood.
And if 'reasonableness' is one extreme to be avoided, so is paradox. Paradox, beloved of a certain type of intellectual (Charles Williams?) is not sophisticated but a failure to understand. Paradox stuns - it fails to bridge the worldly and heavenly, this life and the next - sooner or later paradox leads to despair; therefore it must be shunned.
When we try to explain Christianity to modern people we should be prepared that it will probably sound to them both as simple as a child's fairy tale and as unbelievable as a child's fairy tale.
It is a mistake to soften this impact, or to dress it up with philosophical imprecision and paradox masquerading as complexity, or to try and diffuse the impact of the strangeness and apparent absurdity of Christianity in a world where nothing is finally believed except that nothing is really real.
Because the bottom line is that Christianity is a story - essentially, the story told by the gospels; extended to including our own personal place in the story - which makes it real - and as a story Christianity resists explanation in terms of 'meaning' (or philosophy) - just as a children's fairy tale becomes alien and unrecognisable when its supposed meaning is explained by an anthropologist, folklorist, or psychologist.
As so often, Tolkien got to the nub of it: Christianity is a Fairy Story that is true - it is the true Fairy Story. The implication, which Tolkien himself didn't follow up - but which CS Lewis did - is that Christianity ought to be explained as a Fairy Story, without compromising in the direction of modern notions of plausibility.
The story is told - and then we must each, as individuals, seriously ask God concerning its truth - ask God within us by meditation, ask God the Father in prayer... whatever - but that is how we can and indeed must evaluate the truth of a story.
(And once we know the story is true, then we can - if we need or wish to - spend the rest of its life in understanding just how it is true.)
Incredibility - It is an error to try and 'normalize' Christianity, to claim that it is obvious and no big deal - that being Christian is merely the product of reason and logic and solid history and that one would have to be uninformed, dishonest or crazy not to believe it.
Actually, Christianity is incredible, stretching of credibility - hard to believe because its claims are so extreme and astonishing; and incredible too in the scope and power of its truth when that truth is understood.
And if 'reasonableness' is one extreme to be avoided, so is paradox. Paradox, beloved of a certain type of intellectual (Charles Williams?) is not sophisticated but a failure to understand. Paradox stuns - it fails to bridge the worldly and heavenly, this life and the next - sooner or later paradox leads to despair; therefore it must be shunned.
When we try to explain Christianity to modern people we should be prepared that it will probably sound to them both as simple as a child's fairy tale and as unbelievable as a child's fairy tale.
It is a mistake to soften this impact, or to dress it up with philosophical imprecision and paradox masquerading as complexity, or to try and diffuse the impact of the strangeness and apparent absurdity of Christianity in a world where nothing is finally believed except that nothing is really real.
Because the bottom line is that Christianity is a story - essentially, the story told by the gospels; extended to including our own personal place in the story - which makes it real - and as a story Christianity resists explanation in terms of 'meaning' (or philosophy) - just as a children's fairy tale becomes alien and unrecognisable when its supposed meaning is explained by an anthropologist, folklorist, or psychologist.
As so often, Tolkien got to the nub of it: Christianity is a Fairy Story that is true - it is the true Fairy Story. The implication, which Tolkien himself didn't follow up - but which CS Lewis did - is that Christianity ought to be explained as a Fairy Story, without compromising in the direction of modern notions of plausibility.
The story is told - and then we must each, as individuals, seriously ask God concerning its truth - ask God within us by meditation, ask God the Father in prayer... whatever - but that is how we can and indeed must evaluate the truth of a story.
(And once we know the story is true, then we can - if we need or wish to - spend the rest of its life in understanding just how it is true.)
Wednesday 12 January 2022
Cricket bowlers should Not be allowed to target the batsman's head
Steven Smith just after being hit in the neck by a fast bowler
In cricket, the bowler should not be allowed to target the batsman's head.
This really ought to be common sense, because a high speed hard leather cricket ball can cause severe, permanent, or even lethal damage. But a practice has grown-up which allows this to some extent in some forms of cricket; because it can be very exciting for the spectators.
In the longer forms of the game, even a very fast bowler is allowed to bowl at the batsman's head or neck - so long as the ball bounces first.
(Bowling that arrives above shoulder height has usually not been permitted in the one-day types of cricket, or has been strictly limited. But not for safety reasons but because when a ball is very high it is difficult to score from.)
The problem of this kind of delivery was highlighted when the Australian batsman Philip Hughes was killed in 2014 by a ball which struck his neck and broke an artery. Hughes died soon afterwards.
But the damage of being hit in the head or face may be more subtle.
Edited from an article by Jarrod Kimber:
There was a five-year period from September 2014 where [Steve] Smith averaged 96.2 against seam bowling (with a minimum of 1000 runs in that period). The next best was Kane Williamson, averaging 55.8. Smith was nearly double his nearest contemporary.
He transformed from a part-time legspinner who Ricky Ponting didn't think could be a top-six player, into the greatest modern batter, and not even by a little bit; the runs he scored were incredible. Making a hundred every 2.1 Tests. His overall average in that period was 78.7. Eight scores over 150. The whole thing was crazy.
[And then Jofra Archer hit him on the neck, and things changed...]
Since September 2019, Smith has averaged 40 in Tests, which in recent times is not terrible. It is only terrible for him because he was so much better than anyone else...
Kimber does not mention even the possibility that being hit on the neck by Jofra Archer produced lasting physical damage, and was potentially the main factor in impairing Steve Smith's batting ability over the past two years - yet surely that is an obvious possibility?
After being struck, Smith was clearly dazed and had to retire for a while; and when he later returned to bat (which - medically speaking - he certainly should not have been allowed to do) he seemed functionally impaired in his behaviour.
Smith then had prolonged concussion reported lasting several days, with measured mental impairment; and he had to miss the next Test match. Since then, he has 'never been the same'...
Since Smith continues to average about 40 runs per innings, which is good, we are not talking about a gross impairment. But compared with his almost superhuman abilities before that concussion; it could be that there was some subtle and lasting damage to nerves or brain, which has been sufficient to reduce his ability from incredible to just very good.
There are also other examples of batters who were 'never the same again' after being hit in the head or neck by fast bowling - Jimmy Adams, captain of the West Indies, was hit in the face (causing broken bones) and went from being the top-rated Test Match batsman in the world to relative mediocrity.
Cricket writers always attribute the lasting effect of being hit in the head/ neck to 'psychology'; to a loss of 'confidence', a failure of nerve; but that is not a legitimate inference when there is a possibility that there has been permanent physical damage.
Maybe the degree of harm would not be noticeable in a normal person, or even a normally-competent batter - but at the very highest level of human physical attainment, among the very best sportsmen - even a little neural damage may be enough to take the edge off reaction times and/or coordination - to reduce ability from the very best to... just okay.
In other words, I suspect that the amount and duration of damage to a batsman from being hit in the face or neck has been seriously underestimated - because the possibility of permanent neurological harm from this kind of injury has not even been considered.
Of course, accidents will continue to happen. For instance, sometimes a batter gets hit on the head because he accidentally ducks into a waist high ball. But the potential for permanent physical harm can certainly be reduced by making it illegal to deliver the cricket ball to arrive above the shoulder. This would stop such bowling being used as a deliberate strategy.
It must be acknowledged that such a change would have an effect of making an aspect of Test cricket less exciting. Some of the great and memorable 'duels' of Test Match cricket involved a fast bowler targeting the head, and the batter fighting him off. The 2019 Smith Archer duel was one of these.
But, Roman gladiators fighting and killing each other were doubtless even more exciting...
In the end, cricket ought to be a game of skill primarily; rather than a 'life or death' struggle not to be smashed in the face or on the neck by a hard leather sphere travelling at 90-plus mph.
Tuesday 12 August 2014
How important is death?
*
How important is death?
So important that God had to become mortal and die - in order that we could be saved (to everlasting life).
This is the mystery of Christ's incarnation and atonement. Why did God need to become a Man and actually die in order to make salvation possible?
This is, I think, what seems so impossible and ridiculous to other (non-Christian) monotheists - the idea that Almighty God the creator would have to become a Man and die in order to save Mankind!
This is 'incredible', not obvious, not common sense - it is more a doctrine of the weakness of God, the limitations of God, than of His power - yet it is close to the essence of Christianity: pretty much what all Christians must believe to be Christian.
Christianity - it's literally incredible.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/is-christianity-too-good-to-be-true.html
*
How important is death?
So important that God had to become mortal and die - in order that we could be saved (to everlasting life).
This is the mystery of Christ's incarnation and atonement. Why did God need to become a Man and actually die in order to make salvation possible?
This is, I think, what seems so impossible and ridiculous to other (non-Christian) monotheists - the idea that Almighty God the creator would have to become a Man and die in order to save Mankind!
This is 'incredible', not obvious, not common sense - it is more a doctrine of the weakness of God, the limitations of God, than of His power - yet it is close to the essence of Christianity: pretty much what all Christians must believe to be Christian.
Christianity - it's literally incredible.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/is-christianity-too-good-to-be-true.html
*
Saturday 30 October 2021
The fingerprints of strategic demonic leadership are all-over the globalist totalitarian plans
It is an inference that clearly does not occur to most people, or is ruled-out by assumption; but I perceive the fingerprints of overall and ultimate demonic leadership all through the world (and Western) history of the past couple of hundred years.
Whenever we try to understand the roots of currently evil phenomena, we seem always to find them extending back and back across at least several human generations.
That is, we find that there have been many decades over which there was a steady pressure - and incremental 'progress' towards the current evil; which implies a continuing motivation towards evil at the highest levels.
To take a topical example; the current frenzied push to peck the entire world population (old and young; man, woman and child) with lifelong, multiple injections of... something.
A system of compulsory and frequently-repeated bodily introduction of a conjectural, neither known nor understood, class of substances; the actual contents of which are and will be changed in an open-ended fashion.
The Plan for this to happen every-where and to every-body regardless of effect - despite whatever effect - in a managed interpretative context where all possible harm is deniable and denied.
And the process of development, pecking and (non-)follow-up has been exempted from all personal, political and legal responsibility.
On the one hand, there is an enforced global unanimity of official 'fact's that this literally-incredible business is necessary and beneficial; on the other hand, there has been massive compliance and aggressive enthusiasm from much of the populace.
(But especially the professional and managerial classes - who seem to perceive their societal role only in terms of how most rapidly and completely to get the Establishment Plan implemented.)
Knowing such obvious evil as evil ought to require no argument - yet such is the value-system in-place in the world today, that this unprecedented evil is seen as a great and necessary Good (or, just as malignantly, as 'morally-neutral' - as if there was such a thing!).
Therefore, before the Peck Plan could become even a vague possibility; there has needed to be a comprehensive, thorough and multi-pronged inversion of human values - so that what is true, beautiful and virtuous become substantially the opposite of what they are; in terms both of natural and spontaneous, universal human morality; and also by inversion of the (additional) value elements of traditional Christian morality.
But such an astonishing situation needed to have been carefully prepared over a long period of time.
It had to be - because ordinary humans do- (or did-) not change their fundamental convictions overnight - or just because they were told to.
In the past, many people would work, suffer, fight and die in defense of their values - and would retain core values across many generations.
But not any more.
Indeed, when it is considered how the ground was prepared for this 'moment' we confront a degree of relentless purpose that is utterly alien to what we know of human beings - especially to evil humans.
It surely ought to be obvious (from experience of others, and in ourselves) that evil humans are mostly selfish and short-termist - from a secular perspective, that is what makes them evil.
However, to execute any long-term plan means eschewing maximizing short-term benefit; and it also means considerable subordination of selfish pleasures and satisfactions to the needs of the plan. Why should someone who primarily wants his own pleasures and Now, be prepared to sacrifice these desires to some 'plan'?
To get selfish and short-termist humans to cooperate through many decades requires extraordinary levels of self-sacrifice from those who lead the process - most of whom would themselves be required to live and die without much personal gratification on a mortal timescale.
In other words; when we contemplate strategic evil, plans pursued over several or many generations; we must account for the fact of a leadership that is capable of such a thing. And, furthermore, a leadership that is also sufficiently powerful to impose their plan on a mass of humans who are dominantly-motivated by their own short-term gratifications.
When the plan is global and crosses many generations - there must have been a leadership of immense power, who are themselves immune to the normal constraints of human time - and a leadership for whom, personally, a decade is 'the short-term'.
We are talking, in other words, of evil spirits, fallen angels, demons - those who are immortal spirits (i.e. without bodies, whose spirits persist forever); and therefore live on a timescale far greater than evil mere-mortal humans.
The many incredible and astonishing global policies and trends we perceive as of 2021 - the need for steady strategies toward evil ends that span multiple human lifespans - become instantly comprehensible if we assume that the leadership was demonic.
Once this perspective has been assimilated; clear demonic fingerprints can be seen all-over the plans of the Global Totalitarian Establishment.
...Which observation tells us all that we need to know in order to respond in a Good, Godly and Christian way.
Saturday 17 May 2014
Desire versus happiness?
*
*
Traherne is trying to make sense of the fact that in one sense God is perfectly happy and satisfied, while in another sense God has 'wants' and is therefore dissatisfied. God's wants are the source of our own happiness, since otherwise we would not exist. But in another sense - Traherne's 'Platonism' has it that God already had those things he wanted, 'from all Eternity'.
So earthly life is something which is dynamic, changing, happens in time and has a forward direction (e.g. from wants to their satisfaction) - and to some extent and some-how - God shares in that wanting and dynamism; while in an ultimate and Heavenly sense God wants nothing, since He already has everything.
Whether this is regarded as an explanation - or hand-waving woo-woo - depends on whether you can make intuitive sense of this concept of 'static' eternity - and whether or not you feel that if reality is non-wanting and fully satisfied this necessarily implies that earthly wanting and changing is thereby relegated to the status of something either temporary and trivial (in the context of eternity) or simple falsehood and delusion.
*
Another example, from my experience:
I was walking across the Town Moor a couple of days ago, and I was perfectly happy; the skies were blue with wisps of high cloud and thronging with skylarks in full song, the atmosphere was of spring, my mind was full of gratitude and contentment - I wanted for nothing, I would not have swapped my situation with anyone else past, present, or future.
Yet that 'moment' (of about 15 minutes) was in transition, from home to the office, at a point in my life. I was actually walking, moving - in a particular direction.
Furthermore, I had engineered the moment by taking a long route to work in order to enjoy the open fields; that moment occurred in a finite and mortal life I was traversing; and that moment was embedded in many other people's lives and ultimately in a divine reality.
*
My point is that in a personal, psychological way it is perfectly understandable to experience perfect contentment in the context of a strategic, planned, purposive state of 'wanting'.
But this is not easily understandable in terms of metaphysical principles; from that perspective they are seemingly contradictory, the one seems to exclude the other, or one is real and the other a delusion.
My point is that this is an example where it is straightforward to understand God in personal or 'human' terms - in terms of wanting and also being satisfied, but not in abstract or philosophical terms.
*
And as usual, parenthood makes the whole thing lucid: a Father loves his kids just as they are - he does not want them different; the present moment and status are often felt as unimprovable perfection.
And (not 'yet' or 'but' or 'however'), at the same time, and not as any felt paradox or contradiction; parenthood is also about looking ahead, planning, anticipating, unfolding: a trajectory.
Blissful present contentment which wants nothing, is also in transition.
That just is the way it is. It is the abstract-analytic separation of present from past and future, of happiness from wanting, which causes the trouble.
*
From Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne (1636-74)
42
This is very strange that God should want. For in Him is the fulness of all Blessedness: He overfloweth eternally. His wants are as glorious as infinite: perfective needs that are in His nature, and ever Blessed, because always satisfied. He is from eternity full of want, or else He would not be full of Treasure. Infinite want is the very ground and cause of infinite treasure. It is incredible, yet very plain. Want is the fountain of all His fulness. Want in God is treasure to us. For had there been no need He would not have created the World, nor made us, nor manifested His wisdom, nor exercised His power, nor beautified Eternity, nor prepared the Joys of Heaven. But he wanted Angels and Men, Images, Companions: And these He had from all Eternity.
*
Traherne is trying to make sense of the fact that in one sense God is perfectly happy and satisfied, while in another sense God has 'wants' and is therefore dissatisfied. God's wants are the source of our own happiness, since otherwise we would not exist. But in another sense - Traherne's 'Platonism' has it that God already had those things he wanted, 'from all Eternity'.
So earthly life is something which is dynamic, changing, happens in time and has a forward direction (e.g. from wants to their satisfaction) - and to some extent and some-how - God shares in that wanting and dynamism; while in an ultimate and Heavenly sense God wants nothing, since He already has everything.
Whether this is regarded as an explanation - or hand-waving woo-woo - depends on whether you can make intuitive sense of this concept of 'static' eternity - and whether or not you feel that if reality is non-wanting and fully satisfied this necessarily implies that earthly wanting and changing is thereby relegated to the status of something either temporary and trivial (in the context of eternity) or simple falsehood and delusion.
*
Another example, from my experience:
I was walking across the Town Moor a couple of days ago, and I was perfectly happy; the skies were blue with wisps of high cloud and thronging with skylarks in full song, the atmosphere was of spring, my mind was full of gratitude and contentment - I wanted for nothing, I would not have swapped my situation with anyone else past, present, or future.
Yet that 'moment' (of about 15 minutes) was in transition, from home to the office, at a point in my life. I was actually walking, moving - in a particular direction.
Furthermore, I had engineered the moment by taking a long route to work in order to enjoy the open fields; that moment occurred in a finite and mortal life I was traversing; and that moment was embedded in many other people's lives and ultimately in a divine reality.
*
My point is that in a personal, psychological way it is perfectly understandable to experience perfect contentment in the context of a strategic, planned, purposive state of 'wanting'.
But this is not easily understandable in terms of metaphysical principles; from that perspective they are seemingly contradictory, the one seems to exclude the other, or one is real and the other a delusion.
My point is that this is an example where it is straightforward to understand God in personal or 'human' terms - in terms of wanting and also being satisfied, but not in abstract or philosophical terms.
*
And as usual, parenthood makes the whole thing lucid: a Father loves his kids just as they are - he does not want them different; the present moment and status are often felt as unimprovable perfection.
And (not 'yet' or 'but' or 'however'), at the same time, and not as any felt paradox or contradiction; parenthood is also about looking ahead, planning, anticipating, unfolding: a trajectory.
Blissful present contentment which wants nothing, is also in transition.
That just is the way it is. It is the abstract-analytic separation of present from past and future, of happiness from wanting, which causes the trouble.
*
Thursday 16 October 2014
The greatness of George Orwell - and his fatal flaw
*
Having discovered that George Orwell's wife is buried just a few hundred yards from where I am writing (in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne), and that Orwell himself seems to have intended to be buried here
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/george-orwell-intended-and-expected-to.html
..is a trivial micro-factoid in the scheme of things, but has had the effect of making me start thinking again about Orwell.
*
My generation was fed Orwell at school from our mid teens - some of the essays such as Shooting an Elephant and Boys' Weeklies; excerpts from the documentary books such as Down and Out.. and ...Wigan Pier; and the two late political novels Animal Farm and 1984.
That Orwell was mostly correct about things was not really argued, but assumed; on the basis that he seemed obviously correct to almost everybody; so far as the English were concerned, Orwell was simply expressing the national character better than we ourselves could have done.
Orwell was claimed both by the Left - on the basis that he was explicitly a socialist through most of his life; and he was claimed by the Right - on the basis that his two best known novels are anti-communist warnings against totalitarianism.
In sum: Orwell's influence was much as any writer reasonably could have hoped for. And his warnings about the dangers of Leftism and the operations of totalitarianism were as lucid, as explicit, and as forceful as any writer could have made them.
*
And yet Britain today is an 'Orwellian' society to a degree which would have seemed incredible even 25 years ago. The same applies to the USA, where Orwell was also revered.
In particular, the exact types of abuses, manipulations and distortions of language which Orwell spelled-out in fiery capital letters 100 feet high have come to pass; have become routine and unremarked - and they are wholly-successful, barely-noticed, stoutly-defended - and to point them out is regarded either as trivial nitpicking or evasive rhetoric.
The current manifestations of the sexual revolution, deploying the most crudely Orwellian appropriations and taboos of terminology, go further than even Orwell envisaged. The notion that sexual differences could so easily be subverted, and their evaluations so swiftly reversed; apparently at will and without any apparent limit would - I think - have gone beyond the possibilities Orwell could have realistically imagined.
*
(Indeed, it is characteristic of the Kafka-esque absurdity of modern Western life that a plain description of everyday reality - say in a state bureaucracy, the mass media or university - is simply disbelieved, it 'does not compute' and is rejected by the mind. And by this, nihilistic absurdity is safeguarded.)
*
I think Orwell would never have believed that people would accept, en masse, and so readily go along with (willingly embrace and enforce, indeed), the negative relabelling of normal biological reality, and he substitution of arbitrary and rapidly changing inverted norms: for Orwell, The Proles were sexually normal, like animals, and would continue so. The elites, whatever their personal preferences and practices, left them alone in this - presumably because sexuality was seen as a kind of bedrock.
And this leads to Orwell's fatal flaw - which was exactly sexuality. He was, like most radicals, an advocate and practitioner of promiscuous extra-marital sex - indeed he regarded this as the natural thing, and it would be wrong to suppress it. And he was essentially an agnostic/ watery Anglican; Orwell was not quite anti-Christian as such (although arguably anti-Catholic - on political grounds: he - mistakenly - regarded it as a species of totalitarianism); but I think he saw Christianity as being a personal matter, and one that ought not influence or constrain national laws and public morality.
*
Orwell was, of course, a patriot - strongly so; indeed his patriotism was a kind of bottom line for him, and he loathed those such as communists and national socialists who put other countries interests above their own; and especially those numerous Leftists in public life (at many levels, and going up to the top - including a King) who subverted Britain and covertly worked to promote Nazi or (mainly) Soviet policies.
At that time patriotism was a given for the mass of English people - although the upper class was full of traitors and fifth columnists, and the Scots, Welsh and (especially) Irish had developed an anti-English nationalism which allied itself with England's Enemies (the Scots and Welsh Nationalists were socialists/ communists, the Irish Republic allied with the Nazis).
But patriotism melted away and was aggressively suppressed in the decades after Orwell's death, and an attempt in 1993 by Prime Minister John Major to use Orwell's description of characteristic Englishness as a rallying point for national revival was mocked and ignored.
A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.
*
In the end, Orwell's secular morality of 'decent behaviour' (decent, that is, except in the sexual realm - where it was pretty much a matter of grabbing as much as you could get away with); was revealed as spineless, sentimental, and having no basis - once Christianity had been stripped-out of British public (then private) life.
Orwell, like so many radicals of his time and ours, simply took for granted the rock-bottom which was provided by a Christian society - and he thought that we could pick and choose the bits we liked - the essential decency and gentleness and common sense - while leaving out the bits we didn't like: God, Jesus Christ, and the so-called 'puritanical' and anti-fun attitudes to lifestyle such as sex, alcohol, gambling and the like.
(In Wigan Pier, Orwell ridicules the then-strong puritanical strand of English socialism, implicitly including ascetic Nonconformists, as sandal-wearing, vegetarian cranks who put-off the common sense masses.)
*
But it turned out that the Christian thing was much more coherent, more interconnected and inter-dependent, and much deeper-rooted than Orwell and his contemporaries supposed. The act of digging so deep to uproot and thoroughly extirpate just that single aspect of sexual prohibitions was - in practice - to render ineffectual all decent social rules.
Indeed, the extirpation of Christian sexual morality was less like digging than quarrying - and when the job was done, the gentle, fertile beauties of the English landscape were reduced to sterile rubble.
*
(Orwell recognized the national significance of sub-replacement fertility - that it was an index of decadence and demoralization - but he did not foresee that exactly this, would be an inevitable consequence of his personal and ideological preferences for sexual 'freedom'. Many of us have made the same error - and continue to do so - in this, as in so many other ways, Orwell was a representative man.)
*
In the end England's greatest and most formidable foe of totalitarianism, and his legacy of lucid explanation and stern warning, was undone by one fatal flaw.
The sexual revolution, which Orwell supported, weakened then destroyed Christianity as a force in national life - destroyed that massive edifice of religion which was, it turned-out, as a matter of fact, the only thing that stood between England and totalitarianism.
*
Having discovered that George Orwell's wife is buried just a few hundred yards from where I am writing (in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne), and that Orwell himself seems to have intended to be buried here
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/george-orwell-intended-and-expected-to.html
..is a trivial micro-factoid in the scheme of things, but has had the effect of making me start thinking again about Orwell.
*
My generation was fed Orwell at school from our mid teens - some of the essays such as Shooting an Elephant and Boys' Weeklies; excerpts from the documentary books such as Down and Out.. and ...Wigan Pier; and the two late political novels Animal Farm and 1984.
That Orwell was mostly correct about things was not really argued, but assumed; on the basis that he seemed obviously correct to almost everybody; so far as the English were concerned, Orwell was simply expressing the national character better than we ourselves could have done.
Orwell was claimed both by the Left - on the basis that he was explicitly a socialist through most of his life; and he was claimed by the Right - on the basis that his two best known novels are anti-communist warnings against totalitarianism.
In sum: Orwell's influence was much as any writer reasonably could have hoped for. And his warnings about the dangers of Leftism and the operations of totalitarianism were as lucid, as explicit, and as forceful as any writer could have made them.
*
And yet Britain today is an 'Orwellian' society to a degree which would have seemed incredible even 25 years ago. The same applies to the USA, where Orwell was also revered.
In particular, the exact types of abuses, manipulations and distortions of language which Orwell spelled-out in fiery capital letters 100 feet high have come to pass; have become routine and unremarked - and they are wholly-successful, barely-noticed, stoutly-defended - and to point them out is regarded either as trivial nitpicking or evasive rhetoric.
The current manifestations of the sexual revolution, deploying the most crudely Orwellian appropriations and taboos of terminology, go further than even Orwell envisaged. The notion that sexual differences could so easily be subverted, and their evaluations so swiftly reversed; apparently at will and without any apparent limit would - I think - have gone beyond the possibilities Orwell could have realistically imagined.
*
(Indeed, it is characteristic of the Kafka-esque absurdity of modern Western life that a plain description of everyday reality - say in a state bureaucracy, the mass media or university - is simply disbelieved, it 'does not compute' and is rejected by the mind. And by this, nihilistic absurdity is safeguarded.)
*
I think Orwell would never have believed that people would accept, en masse, and so readily go along with (willingly embrace and enforce, indeed), the negative relabelling of normal biological reality, and he substitution of arbitrary and rapidly changing inverted norms: for Orwell, The Proles were sexually normal, like animals, and would continue so. The elites, whatever their personal preferences and practices, left them alone in this - presumably because sexuality was seen as a kind of bedrock.
And this leads to Orwell's fatal flaw - which was exactly sexuality. He was, like most radicals, an advocate and practitioner of promiscuous extra-marital sex - indeed he regarded this as the natural thing, and it would be wrong to suppress it. And he was essentially an agnostic/ watery Anglican; Orwell was not quite anti-Christian as such (although arguably anti-Catholic - on political grounds: he - mistakenly - regarded it as a species of totalitarianism); but I think he saw Christianity as being a personal matter, and one that ought not influence or constrain national laws and public morality.
*
Orwell was, of course, a patriot - strongly so; indeed his patriotism was a kind of bottom line for him, and he loathed those such as communists and national socialists who put other countries interests above their own; and especially those numerous Leftists in public life (at many levels, and going up to the top - including a King) who subverted Britain and covertly worked to promote Nazi or (mainly) Soviet policies.
At that time patriotism was a given for the mass of English people - although the upper class was full of traitors and fifth columnists, and the Scots, Welsh and (especially) Irish had developed an anti-English nationalism which allied itself with England's Enemies (the Scots and Welsh Nationalists were socialists/ communists, the Irish Republic allied with the Nazis).
But patriotism melted away and was aggressively suppressed in the decades after Orwell's death, and an attempt in 1993 by Prime Minister John Major to use Orwell's description of characteristic Englishness as a rallying point for national revival was mocked and ignored.
A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.
*
In the end, Orwell's secular morality of 'decent behaviour' (decent, that is, except in the sexual realm - where it was pretty much a matter of grabbing as much as you could get away with); was revealed as spineless, sentimental, and having no basis - once Christianity had been stripped-out of British public (then private) life.
Orwell, like so many radicals of his time and ours, simply took for granted the rock-bottom which was provided by a Christian society - and he thought that we could pick and choose the bits we liked - the essential decency and gentleness and common sense - while leaving out the bits we didn't like: God, Jesus Christ, and the so-called 'puritanical' and anti-fun attitudes to lifestyle such as sex, alcohol, gambling and the like.
(In Wigan Pier, Orwell ridicules the then-strong puritanical strand of English socialism, implicitly including ascetic Nonconformists, as sandal-wearing, vegetarian cranks who put-off the common sense masses.)
*
But it turned out that the Christian thing was much more coherent, more interconnected and inter-dependent, and much deeper-rooted than Orwell and his contemporaries supposed. The act of digging so deep to uproot and thoroughly extirpate just that single aspect of sexual prohibitions was - in practice - to render ineffectual all decent social rules.
Indeed, the extirpation of Christian sexual morality was less like digging than quarrying - and when the job was done, the gentle, fertile beauties of the English landscape were reduced to sterile rubble.
*
(Orwell recognized the national significance of sub-replacement fertility - that it was an index of decadence and demoralization - but he did not foresee that exactly this, would be an inevitable consequence of his personal and ideological preferences for sexual 'freedom'. Many of us have made the same error - and continue to do so - in this, as in so many other ways, Orwell was a representative man.)
*
In the end England's greatest and most formidable foe of totalitarianism, and his legacy of lucid explanation and stern warning, was undone by one fatal flaw.
The sexual revolution, which Orwell supported, weakened then destroyed Christianity as a force in national life - destroyed that massive edifice of religion which was, it turned-out, as a matter of fact, the only thing that stood between England and totalitarianism.
*
Sunday 11 December 2011
What is it to live without sin? What is active evil?
*
I feel that the modern understanding of what it is to live without sin is mistaken.
This mistake means that the very worst sinners feel clean and pure, and react incredulously to any notion that they are faithful and diligent servants of evil such as have seldom been seen before on this earth.
*
A man who lived without sin is not to be defined in terms of a man who objects all true and correct moral laws.
Rather, the man without sin is he who lives at all times in complete communion with God.
*
The correct understanding is only indirectly-related to the modern understanding of sin.
According to the modern understanding of sin, as breaking moral rules, the worst sinner is the one who breaks the most rules, or who breaks the most serious rules.
Therefore, for moderns virtue is measured in terms of behavior - that is in terms of objective, observable behaviour and how it corresponds to the laws of morality.
*
But the proper understanding of sin is mystical: to be sin-less is when the human soul is in continuous communication with God.
And by contrast, sin is not directly about behavior but about the soul being turned-away-from God, thereby by choice being cut-off from God - wholly concerned with the self.
*
Thus the meaning of Pride as the key sin - pride being the choice to prefer one's own will to God's will.
*
The modern secular Leftist elites do not perceive their own state of near-complete enthrallment to sin because they perceive themselves to be obedient to all the important laws of morality (especially after these moral laws have been revised and up-dated by people like themselves).
Modern secular Leftists do not recognize that their sin lies in the Pride of having turned away from God and trusting to themselves alone.
Indeed, modern secular Leftists perceive spiritually advanced Christians (including Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints) as sinful - insofar as they broken the rules of modern morality enshrined in political correctness.
*
This is a kind of ultimate in Pride: to set oneself in judgement over The Saints, the Mother of God and indeed God Himself.
Yet some of these people believe themselves to be Christians - and morally more 'advanced' than the Christians of the past!
*
We are (nearly) all sinners, humanity is wretched and (almost always) turned away from God and deep in Pride; yet sin is compounded, becomes active evil, when propagated deliberately, when propagandized, when subsidized, when enforced.
It is in this sense that the modern intellectual elites: politicians, bureaucrats and officials; lawyers; managers; journalists; teachers... are among the most evil people ever to have lived.
They not merely do evil impulsively, they not merely fail to discern evil, but strategically plan the triumph of evil - which they disguise from themselves and others by framing the world to exclude evil.
(By replacing evil with misery, they can do anything at all - so long as it can be rationalized as tending eventually, many steps down the line, to reduce the sum 'total' of misery.)
These modern creatures who rule the West (nothing like them has been seen before, except as isolated individuals or minute cults) are cut-off from God; they are nihilists (deniers of reality) and they zealously spread their disease.
*
They are so far gone that they find the idea of sin, of evil to be incomprehensible.
The reality of their own near-demonic state of sin is therefore literally incredible to them.
They lack the concepts to understand what they have become: because they have willfully-destroyed these concepts, and are now diligent agents of the destruction of these concepts in others.
*
It sounds bad: it is.
It sounds hopeless: it isn't.
I am describing my former self: repentance is possible no matter how far gone a person may be, it is never too late+.
*
+Strictly, never too late in this world; for so long as the choice can be framed and presented, it is never too late. Consider the 'Good' thief in Luke 23:
*
I feel that the modern understanding of what it is to live without sin is mistaken.
This mistake means that the very worst sinners feel clean and pure, and react incredulously to any notion that they are faithful and diligent servants of evil such as have seldom been seen before on this earth.
*
A man who lived without sin is not to be defined in terms of a man who objects all true and correct moral laws.
Rather, the man without sin is he who lives at all times in complete communion with God.
*
The correct understanding is only indirectly-related to the modern understanding of sin.
According to the modern understanding of sin, as breaking moral rules, the worst sinner is the one who breaks the most rules, or who breaks the most serious rules.
Therefore, for moderns virtue is measured in terms of behavior - that is in terms of objective, observable behaviour and how it corresponds to the laws of morality.
*
But the proper understanding of sin is mystical: to be sin-less is when the human soul is in continuous communication with God.
And by contrast, sin is not directly about behavior but about the soul being turned-away-from God, thereby by choice being cut-off from God - wholly concerned with the self.
*
Thus the meaning of Pride as the key sin - pride being the choice to prefer one's own will to God's will.
*
The modern secular Leftist elites do not perceive their own state of near-complete enthrallment to sin because they perceive themselves to be obedient to all the important laws of morality (especially after these moral laws have been revised and up-dated by people like themselves).
Modern secular Leftists do not recognize that their sin lies in the Pride of having turned away from God and trusting to themselves alone.
Indeed, modern secular Leftists perceive spiritually advanced Christians (including Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints) as sinful - insofar as they broken the rules of modern morality enshrined in political correctness.
*
This is a kind of ultimate in Pride: to set oneself in judgement over The Saints, the Mother of God and indeed God Himself.
Yet some of these people believe themselves to be Christians - and morally more 'advanced' than the Christians of the past!
*
We are (nearly) all sinners, humanity is wretched and (almost always) turned away from God and deep in Pride; yet sin is compounded, becomes active evil, when propagated deliberately, when propagandized, when subsidized, when enforced.
It is in this sense that the modern intellectual elites: politicians, bureaucrats and officials; lawyers; managers; journalists; teachers... are among the most evil people ever to have lived.
They not merely do evil impulsively, they not merely fail to discern evil, but strategically plan the triumph of evil - which they disguise from themselves and others by framing the world to exclude evil.
(By replacing evil with misery, they can do anything at all - so long as it can be rationalized as tending eventually, many steps down the line, to reduce the sum 'total' of misery.)
These modern creatures who rule the West (nothing like them has been seen before, except as isolated individuals or minute cults) are cut-off from God; they are nihilists (deniers of reality) and they zealously spread their disease.
*
They are so far gone that they find the idea of sin, of evil to be incomprehensible.
The reality of their own near-demonic state of sin is therefore literally incredible to them.
They lack the concepts to understand what they have become: because they have willfully-destroyed these concepts, and are now diligent agents of the destruction of these concepts in others.
*
It sounds bad: it is.
It sounds hopeless: it isn't.
I am describing my former self: repentance is possible no matter how far gone a person may be, it is never too late+.
*
+Strictly, never too late in this world; for so long as the choice can be framed and presented, it is never too late. Consider the 'Good' thief in Luke 23:
39And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.
40But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?
41And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
42And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
43And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
*
Saturday 9 December 2023
The holly bears a berry - a Christmas carol from The Watersons
Nothing says "Christmas" better than The Watersons - from Hull, Yorkshire; and there is no better carol than this one.
I absolutely love this harmonization, and the way it is sung. Everything about it - the tone, the dialect, the sliding harmonies, the open chords... just incredible.
It evokes in me a genuinely ancient quality; a medieval, or even dark ages, feel.
This was recorded during the Watersons' first incarnation, from the 1960s; the group consisting of (left to right) two sisters Norma and Lal, brother Mike (lead vocal); and cousin John (bass) standing to the left.
Wednesday 6 November 2019
Perhaps the greatest piece of music of all? Chaconne from Bach's second Partita for solo violin.
This is the version I own - part of a boxed LP set of all six solo violin sonatas and partitas by JS Bach played by Sigiswald Kuijken, that I bought in 1984-5.
I should say upfront that this perfomance, which I regard as truly great in its intensity and musicality; is not the most tonally beautiful you can find; because Kuijken uses a restored ancient instrument, held without use of the chin, with an 18th century bow - and deploying the kind of techniques for playing that Bach will have known and himself deployed.
Therefore the sound produced is more rasping and less rich than we are used to since the technical innovations of the 19th century. You will either adjust to this, or not.
But the sheer concentration and insight into the music is incredible. The piece is - as you can see from the score - extremely difficult to play at all; but of course the point is to play it such that the greatness of the music itself comes-through (not as a virtuoso exercise). This perfomance merits total concentration on the part of the listener - and the reward is that it is so moving as almost to be unbearable in its unearthly strivings at the limit of what is expressible by Man.
Also it just gets better and better; up to the very last, single, note.
Note: I have previously posted two transcriptions of this piece: one for saxophone quartet and the other (first rate quality - Bach-Busoni, played by Ogdon) for piano.
Friday 6 May 2016
The problem of pain/ suffering - versus a child-like faith in God our loving Father
The existence of human suffering is used, in modern culture, as a refutation of the Christian belief that God loves us - indeed it tends to be used as an argument against the existence of God, with the assumption that God is loving built-in.
"Yeah, but how can you explain Hitler, and cancer and stuff? God wouldn't allow that"
Like most modern arguments, this is used in such a context and with such an expectation that the Christian is supposed to rebut it in a sentence or maybe two...
The logic goes something like: If God was real, he would have made a better world than this - therefore God is not real.
(Interestingly, the alternative that God is real but not primarily loving - a view affirmed by considerably more than a billion people, doesn't seem to be considered - because mainstream modern Western culture is specifically anti-Christian; so the 'USP' of Christianity {that God is love} is simply taken for granted as characteristic of any God.)
How would I answer such a challenge - if given the luxury of somebody's attention for a few sentences? I would need to state how I regard God, and also the purpose of human life - when both of these are known (but not until then) there is a possibility of explaining the problem of pain.
1. God is the creator, and our loving Father. We can often understand things by this real-metaphor. In other words, we are children, immature but growing, trying to understand why our parents behave the way they do.
2. The purpose of life on earth is 'educational' - we each are growing towards greater divinity (to be more like God) in an environment that is meant to provide maturing, deepening, challenging experience.
3. Every person's specific situation and needs are unique - so there are no general answers to 'why?' something happens to some people - but only explanations of this happening to this person in such a time and place.
4. Therefore, we may be able to understand the reason for our own personal suffering - if we sufficiently understand God, ourselves and our own specific needs and those of people around us. But, given the incredible complexity of things, and the multitude of possibilities, the only imaginable way we could understand even this limited question is from a divine perspective - i.e. if God grants us a personal revelation to explain to us our situation, to explain why X happened to me.
5. And clearly - given the reality of human uniqueness - we can never know this detailed information for most of the seven billion people on the planet, and the billions more who lived in the past.
*
Also - in general - we need to take a step-back and recognize the nature of what is being asked when a Christian - and I mean a sincere Christian, not merely some person such as a bishop who is claiming to be a Christian - argues that suffering refutes the lovingness of God.
Such a Christian is in the position of a child saying that because bad stuff happens this means 'therefore' his parents do not love him. There is an equation being made between 'my happiness' and my parents love for me - specifically the assertion that if I am suffering, it is because my parents do not love me.
This, I think, is a sufficiently accurate summary of 'the problem of pain' argument in many situations. It is usually a childish and selfish argument - that is, an argument motivated by selfishness and childish in its refusal to acknowledge self-ignorance and immaturity in a context which involves an already-existing lack of belief in the goodness (or reality) of God.
Consider: A child may be, often is, in situations where his parents seem (from the perspective of that child) to be inflicting suffering for no reason - this is one of the great sadnesses of parenting.
For example, taking a child for a painful medical procedure. A Father may be holding the child still while the doctor does something which from the child's perspective is a form of torture. From the child's perspective, Daddy brought me to this horrible place and Daddy is holding me tight so that this nasty man can hurt me.
But, in a good family, this does not destroy, does not even challenge, the child's confidence (faith) in the absolute love of his parents.
The reality is that the Father is doing all this from love of his child - although there is no way that a young child can comprehend the situation.
In practice a child is very likely to be hurt and confused by the situation; but also in practice the little boy clings even more tightly to his Father - because that child knows that whatever happens (or seems to be happening), his Father loves him and wants the best for him.
So the answer to the problem of pain is very simple - simple enough for a young child to understand; and indeed simple Christians of past generations understood this without having to be told. The context is that we know that God is our loving Father, and therefore the more we suffer here and now, the more we want and need him; the more we ought to cling tight onto him.
"Yeah, but how can you explain Hitler, and cancer and stuff? God wouldn't allow that"
Like most modern arguments, this is used in such a context and with such an expectation that the Christian is supposed to rebut it in a sentence or maybe two...
The logic goes something like: If God was real, he would have made a better world than this - therefore God is not real.
(Interestingly, the alternative that God is real but not primarily loving - a view affirmed by considerably more than a billion people, doesn't seem to be considered - because mainstream modern Western culture is specifically anti-Christian; so the 'USP' of Christianity {that God is love} is simply taken for granted as characteristic of any God.)
How would I answer such a challenge - if given the luxury of somebody's attention for a few sentences? I would need to state how I regard God, and also the purpose of human life - when both of these are known (but not until then) there is a possibility of explaining the problem of pain.
1. God is the creator, and our loving Father. We can often understand things by this real-metaphor. In other words, we are children, immature but growing, trying to understand why our parents behave the way they do.
2. The purpose of life on earth is 'educational' - we each are growing towards greater divinity (to be more like God) in an environment that is meant to provide maturing, deepening, challenging experience.
3. Every person's specific situation and needs are unique - so there are no general answers to 'why?' something happens to some people - but only explanations of this happening to this person in such a time and place.
4. Therefore, we may be able to understand the reason for our own personal suffering - if we sufficiently understand God, ourselves and our own specific needs and those of people around us. But, given the incredible complexity of things, and the multitude of possibilities, the only imaginable way we could understand even this limited question is from a divine perspective - i.e. if God grants us a personal revelation to explain to us our situation, to explain why X happened to me.
5. And clearly - given the reality of human uniqueness - we can never know this detailed information for most of the seven billion people on the planet, and the billions more who lived in the past.
*
Also - in general - we need to take a step-back and recognize the nature of what is being asked when a Christian - and I mean a sincere Christian, not merely some person such as a bishop who is claiming to be a Christian - argues that suffering refutes the lovingness of God.
Such a Christian is in the position of a child saying that because bad stuff happens this means 'therefore' his parents do not love him. There is an equation being made between 'my happiness' and my parents love for me - specifically the assertion that if I am suffering, it is because my parents do not love me.
This, I think, is a sufficiently accurate summary of 'the problem of pain' argument in many situations. It is usually a childish and selfish argument - that is, an argument motivated by selfishness and childish in its refusal to acknowledge self-ignorance and immaturity in a context which involves an already-existing lack of belief in the goodness (or reality) of God.
Consider: A child may be, often is, in situations where his parents seem (from the perspective of that child) to be inflicting suffering for no reason - this is one of the great sadnesses of parenting.
For example, taking a child for a painful medical procedure. A Father may be holding the child still while the doctor does something which from the child's perspective is a form of torture. From the child's perspective, Daddy brought me to this horrible place and Daddy is holding me tight so that this nasty man can hurt me.
But, in a good family, this does not destroy, does not even challenge, the child's confidence (faith) in the absolute love of his parents.
The reality is that the Father is doing all this from love of his child - although there is no way that a young child can comprehend the situation.
In practice a child is very likely to be hurt and confused by the situation; but also in practice the little boy clings even more tightly to his Father - because that child knows that whatever happens (or seems to be happening), his Father loves him and wants the best for him.
So the answer to the problem of pain is very simple - simple enough for a young child to understand; and indeed simple Christians of past generations understood this without having to be told. The context is that we know that God is our loving Father, and therefore the more we suffer here and now, the more we want and need him; the more we ought to cling tight onto him.
Sunday 16 May 2021
The System Antichrist
Does your church have spiritual authority?
No. And it never will again.
In 2020 the Christian churches of the world voluntarily, without objection, with full publicity - handed-over their spiritual authority to the secular powers.
Whatever kind of Christian church - this happened...
Church buildings were closed. Pastors ceased to visit. There was no mass, no gathering of Christians to pray or sing, no laying-on of hands, no weddings or funerals or baptisms. Missionary activity ceased.
This was all done - willingly, while celebrating the fact - because church leaders handed-over full spiritual authority to the secular powers. Bishops did what they were told, said what they were supposed to say, and apparently thought what they were supposed to think; and did not do/ say/ think what they were told not to; protestant and other denominations likewise.
If, now, churches have-opened or will re-open - this is only because church leaders have been told it is okay. They believe they did right, and would do the same again.
They have also been told what they can and cannot do (say? think?) when the churches re-open - so the ultimate authority of the secular remains.
But what this all means is that spiritual authority in the world has been destroyed.
The secular authorities are atheist in assumptions, leftist in aims, anti-Christian in bias.
So there is no high-level spiritual authority in the world. It Has Gone.
It is gone - therefore it cannot be handed-back from the secular to the church leadership. When spiritual authority was handed over to the secular leadership spiritual authority died.
(Spiritual authority is not the kind of thing that can be put into deep freeze for a year, thawed-out and re-activated!)
Christians really need to grasp that since early 2020 the world has changed, spiritually, permanently.
The Christian church - meaning 'the church' of all professing Christians; and also each of the specific major denominations of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant denominations, Mormon and all others with a large institutional organization - has undergone the biggest and most devastating collapse since the time of Jesus.
2020 was the worst year for Christians, ever. Nothing in history comes close.
And the catastrophe is amplified many-fold by the near total denial that it has happened!
The mass of Christians (and almost all their 'leaders') are currently so corrupt that they cannot even notice and acknowledge when the fundamental supporting props of their church (whichever church) have been kicked away and stamped into dust!
Dishonesty is rife, and horribly compounded by dishonesty about dishonesty. In a world of insane nonsense; the simple and obvious truth is the one thing that is denied - and self-identified Christians are as bad as anybody.
Well, these are The End Times, with all that entails. We can't say we were not warned - for all the good it did.
What was not so clear from the prophecies is that the defining feature of the End Times is that Christians would not even notice!
Although that is a feature of the Antichrist idea - that self-styled followers of Christ would be following an imposter.
But instead of a charismatic and fascinating Antichrist who pretends to the mantle of Jesus; we instead have the grey, managerial puppets of a dreary global bureaucracy of international political institutions, finance, mass media, big business, etc.
We have a System Antichrist that is not even claiming to be 'another Christ', nor Christian, nor religious nor or spiritual in any way...
Yet The System is followed by church leadership and the mass of Christians as if it was The Good Shepherd himself.
It is literally incredible... but the new normal: our everyday reality.
Tuesday 21 October 2014
Deep Sleep dreams compared with Dreaming (REM) Sleep dreams: visions, meditations, inspiration and revelation
*
Most, almost-all, the dreams that we remember are those which occur in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, such that this type of sleep is termed Dreaming Sleep. By contrast, Deep Sleep is usually recalled as dreamless, and when someone is woken from it (difficult) and does recall dream content, it is conceptually simple, slow, non-narrative.
Yet, I have come to believe that it is these slow, simple dreams of Deep Sleep which really matter, while the narrative dreams REM sleep are nearly always trivial.
I need a new name for the 'dreams' of Deep Sleep - because they are so different from REM dreams. I propose Slow Motion Segment - because although the Deep Sleep content is very simple and may be in words, emotions, or any other domain; when the 'dream' is visual it is not really static - not like a picture - but more like a slow motion segment of video - like a second of waking time, stretched-out and its inner workings and evolution examined in incredible detail.
So, just as the release of the cricket ball from a bowler's fingers (or a baseball from the pitcher's fingers) can barely be seen in real time (taking only thousandths of a second), in 'super slo-mo', the extraordinary and evolving, interacting intricacies of finger, wrist and arm movement can easily be observed: that is a metaphor for what goes-on in the 'dreams' of Deep Sleep.
*
I have read many, many accounts of dreams - in all sorts of writings from the psychoanalytic, through the scientific, to the personal; and people have told me their dreams, and of course I have my own dreams... and the overwhelming impression is that dream content is nearly-always (but not always) trivial, emotionally-shallow, and lacking in serious significance.
REM dreams, by and large, are not a profound message awaiting decoding, they are at the level of a TV soap opera - sometimes emotionally sensational in a manipulative sort of way, but ultimately just froth: 'chewing gum for the mind".
But Deep Sleep is the most therapeutic, recreative and necessary form of sleep - despite that its mental contents are apparently not explicitly accessible. We are only indirectly aware of the consequences of Deep Sleep - seldom of the goings-son: we feel the difference that Deep Sleep makes, but are seldom aware of what made than difference.
*
Meditation is, or should be, about linking-up the conscious mind with the slow, simple and significant world of Deep Sleep - and not with the flashy trivialities of REM sleep - which lead merely to hallucinations, delusions and other delirious phenomena.
The content of meditation is not supposed to be like a REM dream, but more like a Slow Motion Sequence - an examination and experience of something tiny and apparently-fragmentary that waking life would barely notice, it would flash-by in an instant; but which is revealed as rich and significant and enlightening.
*
This means that when a mystic reports his visionary experience derived from this Deep Sleep type of meditation, he will be using the language of waking consciousness to describe what was perhaps a tiny and apparently insignificant moment of awake time, and will have to contextualise, elaborate and interpolate details in order to make sense of the Slow Motion Segment.
Indeed, this is, I think, why Deep Sleep and Visionary and Meditative and Inspirational and Revelatory experiences are seldom explicitly remembered (they are remembered by the effect, rather than by their content) - the awake time-scale is so extremely different from the experiential timescale of Deep Sleep.
I would say, many hundreds of times slower; so that Deep Sleep might spend an hour of awake time (as measured in the 'real world) examining the inward workings and implications of one experienced second of Deep Sleep dreaming...
*
So to take a revelatory vision such as William Arkle's Hand of God
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-vision-of-william-arkle-question-of.html
My belief is that the actual vision which underlay the written account was probably of the nature of a slow motion segment - a short, visual and emotional experience, which was known in extraordinary detail - but which can only be recalled and described in narrative language of the type we associate with the awake state and REM sleep.
*
I think this is also what happens in inspiration - for example in science. A very simple, short segment - known intuitively in rich inner detail - is what provides the insight, and not an extended explicit narrative: I am thinking of the simple visions of Kekule's Benzene Rings symbolised by ouroboros snakes with tail in mouth, or Szilard's Eureka moment about nuclear fission as a traffic light changed to green.
*
What about those relatively rare examples of REM sleep dreams which are experienced as significant: Jung's Archetypal, Mythic or Great dreams. I suppose that these are a combination of normal narrative dreams of REM sleep, with an incursion of Deep Sleep and its Slow Motion Segments - so that, as it were, the trivial REM dream story suddenly slows down a hundredfold, and becomes extremely detailed, reveals great profundities: an epiphanic moment showing 'the world in a grain of sand'.
*
These reflections came to me while pondering the prophecies of Isaiah from the Old Testament (and Book of Mormon); and how obscure yet significant they seem to the waking mind.
If we can suppose Isaiah having true revelations, yet needing to translate these into the shallow, trivial, fast moving world of everyday life - we can imagine that he hit upon a poetic method, in that lyrical poetry can condense vast meanings into few words.
(Perhaps this is, indeed, the primary 'function' of poetry in the human condition?)
There is the problem of translating poetry, and translating between an ancient society and a modern one is also difficult (some say impossible) - but in a divinely-inspired version such as the Authorised/ King James Bible, when being read in a proper spirit - the meanings will be there even for the modern and English speaking reader/ meditator; at least, to those able and willing to attune poetically, and not 'literally'- and thereby to intuit vast depth and detail from few words: words that can unpack hours from seconds.
*
Most, almost-all, the dreams that we remember are those which occur in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, such that this type of sleep is termed Dreaming Sleep. By contrast, Deep Sleep is usually recalled as dreamless, and when someone is woken from it (difficult) and does recall dream content, it is conceptually simple, slow, non-narrative.
Yet, I have come to believe that it is these slow, simple dreams of Deep Sleep which really matter, while the narrative dreams REM sleep are nearly always trivial.
I need a new name for the 'dreams' of Deep Sleep - because they are so different from REM dreams. I propose Slow Motion Segment - because although the Deep Sleep content is very simple and may be in words, emotions, or any other domain; when the 'dream' is visual it is not really static - not like a picture - but more like a slow motion segment of video - like a second of waking time, stretched-out and its inner workings and evolution examined in incredible detail.
So, just as the release of the cricket ball from a bowler's fingers (or a baseball from the pitcher's fingers) can barely be seen in real time (taking only thousandths of a second), in 'super slo-mo', the extraordinary and evolving, interacting intricacies of finger, wrist and arm movement can easily be observed: that is a metaphor for what goes-on in the 'dreams' of Deep Sleep.
*
I have read many, many accounts of dreams - in all sorts of writings from the psychoanalytic, through the scientific, to the personal; and people have told me their dreams, and of course I have my own dreams... and the overwhelming impression is that dream content is nearly-always (but not always) trivial, emotionally-shallow, and lacking in serious significance.
REM dreams, by and large, are not a profound message awaiting decoding, they are at the level of a TV soap opera - sometimes emotionally sensational in a manipulative sort of way, but ultimately just froth: 'chewing gum for the mind".
But Deep Sleep is the most therapeutic, recreative and necessary form of sleep - despite that its mental contents are apparently not explicitly accessible. We are only indirectly aware of the consequences of Deep Sleep - seldom of the goings-son: we feel the difference that Deep Sleep makes, but are seldom aware of what made than difference.
*
Meditation is, or should be, about linking-up the conscious mind with the slow, simple and significant world of Deep Sleep - and not with the flashy trivialities of REM sleep - which lead merely to hallucinations, delusions and other delirious phenomena.
The content of meditation is not supposed to be like a REM dream, but more like a Slow Motion Sequence - an examination and experience of something tiny and apparently-fragmentary that waking life would barely notice, it would flash-by in an instant; but which is revealed as rich and significant and enlightening.
*
This means that when a mystic reports his visionary experience derived from this Deep Sleep type of meditation, he will be using the language of waking consciousness to describe what was perhaps a tiny and apparently insignificant moment of awake time, and will have to contextualise, elaborate and interpolate details in order to make sense of the Slow Motion Segment.
Indeed, this is, I think, why Deep Sleep and Visionary and Meditative and Inspirational and Revelatory experiences are seldom explicitly remembered (they are remembered by the effect, rather than by their content) - the awake time-scale is so extremely different from the experiential timescale of Deep Sleep.
I would say, many hundreds of times slower; so that Deep Sleep might spend an hour of awake time (as measured in the 'real world) examining the inward workings and implications of one experienced second of Deep Sleep dreaming...
*
So to take a revelatory vision such as William Arkle's Hand of God
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-vision-of-william-arkle-question-of.html
My belief is that the actual vision which underlay the written account was probably of the nature of a slow motion segment - a short, visual and emotional experience, which was known in extraordinary detail - but which can only be recalled and described in narrative language of the type we associate with the awake state and REM sleep.
*
I think this is also what happens in inspiration - for example in science. A very simple, short segment - known intuitively in rich inner detail - is what provides the insight, and not an extended explicit narrative: I am thinking of the simple visions of Kekule's Benzene Rings symbolised by ouroboros snakes with tail in mouth, or Szilard's Eureka moment about nuclear fission as a traffic light changed to green.
*
What about those relatively rare examples of REM sleep dreams which are experienced as significant: Jung's Archetypal, Mythic or Great dreams. I suppose that these are a combination of normal narrative dreams of REM sleep, with an incursion of Deep Sleep and its Slow Motion Segments - so that, as it were, the trivial REM dream story suddenly slows down a hundredfold, and becomes extremely detailed, reveals great profundities: an epiphanic moment showing 'the world in a grain of sand'.
*
These reflections came to me while pondering the prophecies of Isaiah from the Old Testament (and Book of Mormon); and how obscure yet significant they seem to the waking mind.
If we can suppose Isaiah having true revelations, yet needing to translate these into the shallow, trivial, fast moving world of everyday life - we can imagine that he hit upon a poetic method, in that lyrical poetry can condense vast meanings into few words.
(Perhaps this is, indeed, the primary 'function' of poetry in the human condition?)
There is the problem of translating poetry, and translating between an ancient society and a modern one is also difficult (some say impossible) - but in a divinely-inspired version such as the Authorised/ King James Bible, when being read in a proper spirit - the meanings will be there even for the modern and English speaking reader/ meditator; at least, to those able and willing to attune poetically, and not 'literally'- and thereby to intuit vast depth and detail from few words: words that can unpack hours from seconds.
*
Saturday 6 June 2015
Cancer is not a disease - it is a process, not a thing
*
I get the impression that many people are terribly confused about what cancer is - or rather they are just plain wrong about what cancer is. In particular they think of it as a disease category.
This is - of course - inculcated and exploited by medical researchers, the mass media, celebrities and the massive cancer charities (e.g. Cancer Research UK is a deeply dishonest and exploitative bureaucracy - and a fund of self-serving disinformation on many matters).
*
People assume that cancer is like pneumonia - ie. a group of lung diseases; but cancer is like 'infection' or 'inflammation' - cancer is a pathological process.
So it is misleading to talk about 'fighting' cancer or 'eradicating' cancer as if it was a disease - as in the Cancer Research UK slogan: 'We will beat cancer sooner'.
Do we fight, eradicate or 'beat' processes such as infection or inflammation? There are general and often effective 'infection control' mechanisms (quarantine, hygiene etc.), there are general anti-inflammatory drugs (steroids, NSAIDs) but this activity does not generate the strident, militaristic nonsense that is usual with cancer talk.
Infection is part of the condition of life on earth; so is cancer. Cancer is not going-away.
*
In general, people suffer diseases - as a man might suffer from pneumonia. But people afflicted with various diseases resulting from the cancer process are described as 'victims', they are said to be 'fighting' cancer. If they die, they have lost their long 'struggle' with cancer.
These are all fake and misleading metaphors, which cloak exploitation and ignorance.
In reality Cancer research, as such, is about the biology of a pathological process - which is as large, vague, complex and obscure - as as remote from curing disease or helping sick people - as research about the biology of 'infections' or the incredible intricacies of the immune system would be.
*
Cancer is not one thing, nor is cancer many things - cancer is not a thing.
The word cancer describes - in general terms - a pathological process, a disease process, something which has gone wrong with certain aspects of the functioning of an organism.
To say what cancer is involves technical terms and uncommon knowledge, to understand what cancer is requires effort, a willingness to learn - to concentrate and read (or listen) for quite a few minutes at a stretch. The understanding must be built-up.
Most people won't do this, some people can't do this - hence very few people indeed have any idea what cancer is - or rather, they have an idea so false and misleading that it misunderstands the very nature of cancer.
This depth and level of misunderstanding of cancer is, I guess, is what has created a situation so wide-open to exploitation - and, by Heavens, it surely has been exploited!
*
I get the impression that many people are terribly confused about what cancer is - or rather they are just plain wrong about what cancer is. In particular they think of it as a disease category.
This is - of course - inculcated and exploited by medical researchers, the mass media, celebrities and the massive cancer charities (e.g. Cancer Research UK is a deeply dishonest and exploitative bureaucracy - and a fund of self-serving disinformation on many matters).
*
People assume that cancer is like pneumonia - ie. a group of lung diseases; but cancer is like 'infection' or 'inflammation' - cancer is a pathological process.
So it is misleading to talk about 'fighting' cancer or 'eradicating' cancer as if it was a disease - as in the Cancer Research UK slogan: 'We will beat cancer sooner'.
Do we fight, eradicate or 'beat' processes such as infection or inflammation? There are general and often effective 'infection control' mechanisms (quarantine, hygiene etc.), there are general anti-inflammatory drugs (steroids, NSAIDs) but this activity does not generate the strident, militaristic nonsense that is usual with cancer talk.
Infection is part of the condition of life on earth; so is cancer. Cancer is not going-away.
*
In general, people suffer diseases - as a man might suffer from pneumonia. But people afflicted with various diseases resulting from the cancer process are described as 'victims', they are said to be 'fighting' cancer. If they die, they have lost their long 'struggle' with cancer.
These are all fake and misleading metaphors, which cloak exploitation and ignorance.
In reality Cancer research, as such, is about the biology of a pathological process - which is as large, vague, complex and obscure - as as remote from curing disease or helping sick people - as research about the biology of 'infections' or the incredible intricacies of the immune system would be.
*
Cancer is not one thing, nor is cancer many things - cancer is not a thing.
The word cancer describes - in general terms - a pathological process, a disease process, something which has gone wrong with certain aspects of the functioning of an organism.
To say what cancer is involves technical terms and uncommon knowledge, to understand what cancer is requires effort, a willingness to learn - to concentrate and read (or listen) for quite a few minutes at a stretch. The understanding must be built-up.
Most people won't do this, some people can't do this - hence very few people indeed have any idea what cancer is - or rather, they have an idea so false and misleading that it misunderstands the very nature of cancer.
This depth and level of misunderstanding of cancer is, I guess, is what has created a situation so wide-open to exploitation - and, by Heavens, it surely has been exploited!
*
Friday 13 November 2020
Remember: The buck does Not stop with the agenda of the Global Establishment
It is a snare when we feel a bit smug at knowing 'what is going on' in the world in terms of recognising that it is an agenda - variously described in terms of the Great Reset and Agenda 2030; currently being 'justified' by the birdemic, climate change, antiracism and the sexual revolution.
It is, of course, an important step to realise that these justifications for social transformation are merely dishonest excuses (to be used as expedient, then dumped when required); and that the 'point' behind it all is to implement a new kind of society.
(More accurately, a new kind of 'society' - in scare quotes - since real-life actual human society will be all-but destroyed as a part of the plan - individuals will be isolated and contained, and interaction transferred to online. If you don't yet understand this agenda, at least in outline, then it surely about time you informed yourself.)
But for our understanding to arrive at the tiny Global Establishment of multi-billionaires, media and internet moguls etc. who are planning to monitor and control the masses, everywhere and to a fine level of detail - is not to reach the end of the chain of command. Behind the Establishment, manipulating the Establishment - and with a different agenda - is something else.
Because - just as the masses are being propagandised and misled into living by Big Lies; so are the Establishment being propagandised and misled. Behind the Establishment agenda lies the spiritual agenda - the Satanic Agenda.
The masses have currently chosen to believe the Big Lies that they are being-saved from fake catastrophic threats, just as they previously chose to believe the Lies that they were being-offered an engineered hedonic paradise of peace, comfort, prosperity and fun (sex, drugs, rock-and-roll) in this mortal life.
In sum, the demotivated and cowardly masses - who reject God, creation, purpose and meaning - have willingly being seduced into an inverted value system; underpinned merely by extreme selfish, short-termism.
Yet the Establishment have also chosen to live by Big Lies - only these are different Lies. Distracted by the satisfaction of manipulating, exploiting and tormenting the masses; scornfully prideful at seeing through the Big Lies They peddle to the gullible masses - the Establishment are themselves also being gullibly manipulated, exploited and tormented... by their Satanic masters.
This can be seen in many ways and at many levels; but the point I want to make here is that the Great- Reset/ Agenda 2030 is not possible, will not work - and very obviously so. Their Big Plan for The World is airy-fairy, incoherent nonsense.
There are so many reasons why this is the case, that it seems incredible that the Establishment cannot see it for themselves - but the reason for this extreme self-blindness is ultimately the same reason why the masses are self-blinded and unable to discern the obvious.
Seduced by their own fantasies; and the pervasiveness and depth of hype/ spin/ propaganda and outright-lies that swamp public discourse - including science, academia, research, economics, engineering, logistics, the media etc - the Establishment grossly overestimates its own capability.
And - from exactly the same causes - the Establishment is unable to learn from its own multiple, increasing and cumulative failures.
The more centralised control the Establishment gain, the worse these failures will become - but the spin/ hype/ propaganda/ lies will expand to keep pace. They will tell themselves that failure is success; and that whatever happens is actually The Plan.
At no point will they ever acknowledge their own catastrophic non-competence.
Many stories and legends, as well as real world observation, show the discerning Man that this is a universal blindspot among those who have made a deal with Satan: they really expect to get back more than they have traded; they anticipate a big profit from trading with demons; they are convinced that Satan will keep his side of the bargain... They believe the Father of Lies!...
In conclusion, whatever comes to pass over the next weeks, months, years - we can be 100% confident that it will Not be anything like the plans and strategies of the Global Establishment. And we can be confident that - as individuals - Their fate, as servants of purposive evil, living among other such servants - will be horrible (horrible, even by their own depraved standards).
Evil is self-punishing; and more so the closer people get to direct interaction with the demonic.
Because at that level; the individuals actually know the reality of God, creation and The Good - know the reality and consciously reject it.
This has been termed the 'unforgiveable' sin (against the Holy Ghost). This fact is not because some sinful acts 'cannot be forgiven'; but that such individuals have knowingly made a permanent and irreversible commitment to the side of evil; after which commitment they no longer want repentance and forgiveness.
Anyone can - theoretically - repent and be forgiven, and it is never too late for this asking and granting. But... we must ask; and some individuals will never ask.
They have chosen permanently to become the kind of being who never will ask.
Note: this freely-chosen act of permanent self-damnation is the flip-side of the choice of permanent commitment to God that leads to following Jesus Christ to resurrected life eternal in Heaven. For Heaven we must choose to live by Love forever. And the opposite choice - forever to reject Love - has the opposite consequence.
Tuesday 4 December 2018
The endlessly cyclical world of radical left theorists
I've been dipping into the world of radical left theorists again recently (which I used to know quite well, sometimes from the inside) - and the most dismaying thing I found was that they have learned absolutely nothing. The names of the 'master theorists' being referenced change and rotate; but they are still talking about capitalism!
It is almost quaint to realise that there are thousands of such theorists earnestly discussing capitalism, every hour of every day; in meetings, in magazines and academic journals, in books and blogs... they are still organising/ supporting/ memorialising campaigns, boycotts, marches, strikes, sit-ins, protests and publicity... and they all still blame 'capitalism'.
What is so weird is that they are completely unaware they they themselves are a significant driver of exactly those cultural phenomena (especially the system of total bureaucracy) whose workings-out they expend such energy in exposing and analysing.
They diagnose many of the same things which I also regard as the baddest things in modern society; but they put it all down to Big Business, to 'neoliberalism', to profit-seeking, to 'free markets', competition etc. etc.
It is incredible! In other words, the whole thing is blamed on something which barely exists, and has - like everything else - been crushed almost to death by the totalitarian linked-bureaucracy-media System in which radical leftist theorists personally (as well as collectively) play such an important part.
Indeed, the successful leftist-theorists always become absorbed into exactly this System, and get senior managerial and advisory positions in the bureaucracy, and a harvest of cultural and official accolades.
They see this everywhere, again and again; and yet they have learned nothing! The decades roll past, and they learn nothing.
It is this kind of thing that makes me realise there is something very important missing from the very centre of our culture - so many, many people go for so so very, very long (their whole lives) - reading, discussing, travelling - and they learn absolutely Zero from the experience...
Unless getting more and more cynical, disillusioned, nihilistic and despairing counts as learning.
It is almost quaint to realise that there are thousands of such theorists earnestly discussing capitalism, every hour of every day; in meetings, in magazines and academic journals, in books and blogs... they are still organising/ supporting/ memorialising campaigns, boycotts, marches, strikes, sit-ins, protests and publicity... and they all still blame 'capitalism'.
What is so weird is that they are completely unaware they they themselves are a significant driver of exactly those cultural phenomena (especially the system of total bureaucracy) whose workings-out they expend such energy in exposing and analysing.
They diagnose many of the same things which I also regard as the baddest things in modern society; but they put it all down to Big Business, to 'neoliberalism', to profit-seeking, to 'free markets', competition etc. etc.
It is incredible! In other words, the whole thing is blamed on something which barely exists, and has - like everything else - been crushed almost to death by the totalitarian linked-bureaucracy-media System in which radical leftist theorists personally (as well as collectively) play such an important part.
Indeed, the successful leftist-theorists always become absorbed into exactly this System, and get senior managerial and advisory positions in the bureaucracy, and a harvest of cultural and official accolades.
They see this everywhere, again and again; and yet they have learned nothing! The decades roll past, and they learn nothing.
It is this kind of thing that makes me realise there is something very important missing from the very centre of our culture - so many, many people go for so so very, very long (their whole lives) - reading, discussing, travelling - and they learn absolutely Zero from the experience...
Unless getting more and more cynical, disillusioned, nihilistic and despairing counts as learning.
Thursday 2 April 2020
Why world is your oyster but your future's a clam, They let you think you're king, but you're really a pawn
The Jam - When You're Young - 1979
Life is timeless, days are long when you're young
You used to fall in love with everyone
Any guitar and any bass drum
Life is a drink, and you get drunk when you're young
Life is new, and there's things to be done
You can't wait to be grown up
Acceptance into the capital world
You pull on some weed, then you pull on someone when you're young
But you find out life isn't like that
It's so hard to comprehend
Why you set up your dreams to have them smashed in the end
But you don't mind, you've got time on your side
And they're never gonna make you stand in line
You're just waiting for the right time
You're fearless and brave; you can't be stopped when you're young
You swear you're never ever gonna work for someone
No corporations for the new age sons
Tears of rage roll down your face
But still you say, "it's fun."
And you find out life isn't like that
It's so hard to understand
Why the world is your oyster but your future's a clam
It's got you in its grip before your born
It's done with the use of a dice and a board
They let you think you're king, but you're really a pawn
You're fearless and brave; you can't be stopped when you're young
You used to fall in love with everyone
Any guitar and any bass drum
This song, and this performance, has been running in my mind for the past few days. As always with this band, I tend to get fixated on Bruce Foxton's supreme bass playing; but the whole band really build-up some steam in this remarkable song.
This is from the New Wave era that came just after punk - you still get the punk ethos of angry youth, moody and unreasonable attitudes, machine-gun drumming - but there is a much greater structure, musicianship, excellent lyrics and so forth; for me, probably the greatest era in pop.
Watching this live perfomance I get a sense of that incredible glamour (in the enchanting sense) of pop music for youths and young people; a kind of aching for what is - of course - a kind of illusion.
But with this kind of pop, with this kind of quality, there is a fact of it being produced by people of the same age. The Jam were absolutely fresh: young, raw, very creative and talented - they flared briefly and intensely to light up the world; and then ended.
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