Bruce Charlton's Notions

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We are such entities and we live in such a world that we will do wrong, over and again, in small things and in large.Life is a process of trail and error - and it very much looks as if that may be part of the point of being alive as earthly, incarnate mortals.

So, doing the wrong things cannot be regarded as fatal to human purpose.

But, but, but - on the many, many occasions that we err, we have to acknowledge error; we must acknowledge that when we do wrong we have done wrong.

We must not (must not) get into a habit of self-justification.

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A rooted and inflexible attitude of self-justification is the basis of some of the morally-worst behaviour I have seen in men and women.

In men self-justification comes out at the Right Man, the man who is always right about Everything, who never acknowledges ignorance or error or bad motivations in himself - the man who is always been 'in the right' in every situation of his life. The man who believes that If Only everybody had always listened to him and always done what he said, then the world would be a much much better place.

The Right Man acts as if it would be a world-ending catastrophe is ever he admitted error; as if the two possibilities are to be a person who is always right about everything or always wrong about everything.  

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In women self-justification typically comes out as the Victim, the woman who is always being slighted - either deliberately or casually; offensively patronised or subject to negative discrimination; ignored or picked-on; treated as 'just a woman' or treated 'as if she was a man'.

The Victim acts as if it would be a world-ending catastrophe if she were not the centre of attention in all situations and at all times, yet she finds intolerable the psychological pressure of being the centre of attention - because then people always expect something of her.

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Both the Right Man and the Victim are characteristic modern types, and both are encourages by mainstream modern culture as expressed in the Mass Media - which embodies the attitudes and evaluations of the Right Man and the Victim.

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But if self-justification is something is a common evil - then its opposite is (of course!) also an evil: the inability to hold to any principle, because of unclarity, unsureness, uncertainty; the evils of nihilism and despair.

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I have been exploring Rudolf Steiner over the past seven or so years - the amounts to a really large project of reading or listening-to scores of his works; tackling books and essays about his ideas; several biographies and memoirs... and reading online sources and watching videos of all kinds of people talking about Anthroposophy.

I did this initially because of Owen Barfield, who regarded Steiner as a thinker of world historical importance and who was an Anthroposophist from his middle twenties - one of the first in Britain. And then because I agreed with Barfield's estimate - but in an extremely qualified fashion.

I am gradually forming some kind of overview of the problem with Steiner; how it is that he can be so important - a major genius; and at the same time mostly, nearly always, productive of utter nonsense. How he can be so important, yet his legacy is mostly a series of essentially (i.e. in their essence) bogus initiatives in education, farming, politics, and medicine.

His writings on medicine, for example, are so terribly bad that I would not know where to begin in criticising them - they are wrong at almost every level - in their basic approach, their detail, the kind of mind set they encourage... they have nothing to do with medicine as I understand it.


But really this is nothing unusual for geniuses. When it comes to most geniuses, we are quite happy to take what we value and leave the rest behind. We value Isaac Newton for his mathematics and physics, and leave aside his theology and alchemy... and we do not find it hard to acknowledge that Newton was perhaps the greatest scientist ever and also a horrible man.

The deep problem with Steiner is that he insists over and again and with all the force he can muster - that his work is a wholly consistent and coherent whole which should be taken in toto. The Anthroposophical Society (in practice) regards Steiner in exactly this way - he is wholly well-motivated, wholly good, always right.

They really do regard Steiner as being as infallible as any human ever has been - and that is the way that his ourvre has been preserved and is presented to the world. It began during Steiner's life; and it has continued ever since. Any acknowledged faults are so minor and quibbling as merely to stress his overall and essential infallibility (rather like when job applicants admit to such 'faults' as perfectionism and working too hard).


But Steiner had flaws, including serious ones; and probably the worst was his defensive refusal ever to admit that he had changed his mind, said anything wrong or made a mistake. He was what Colin Wilson termed a Right Man - whose self-esteem depends on a brittle self-image that - ultimately, at root - he is always right, all the time, about everything.

If ever a Right Man is confronted with contradiction or incoherence - then he will explain (perhaps patiently, perhaps angrily) at endless length how this is not really contradiction or incoherence - at a deeper or higher level, everything fits together perfectly; and anyone who says otherwise is malign, foolish or incompetent.

The type is surely familiar to most people.


The problem for Steiner's self-image is that - at least at the level of obvious common sense; he changed a great deal, many times, throughout his life. And, being the massively productive genius that he was, the amount of information and assertion he generated was phenomenal - yet somehow all his life, and all his enormous body of work - had to be made into a unity, bound-together in a fully harmonious system...

This led Steiner into all kinds of tortuous assertion, selection, special pleading - and what would certainly be called dishonesty if it wasn't that he seemed to have been able to persuade himself; so I suppose it is a species of delusion.

In the last year of his life, Steiner wrote an autobiography The Story of My Life (published 1928) covering the first 2/3 of his life. It is very interesting, at times profound - I would recommend it. If you don't fancy reading; it is available free of charge and beautifully read by Dale Brunsvold in an audiobook format.

But it is a fiction of Steiner's life, not history. It isn't just that Steiner focuses (quite rightly) on spiritual aspects as contrasted with material one; it is that the picture painted is untrue: it is an old man looking back and making a unity of what was diverse, making coherent what was a sequence of U-turns and reversals. It is projecting the elderly Steiner back onto his childhood, youth and young adulthood.


The autobiography asserts that Steiner was secretly (on the inside) always exactly what he ended being - a magically insightful and charismatic figure of hypnotic presence; the dominant, confident leader of an international movement and but that this was necessarily hidden for various reasons, or people had misunderstood, or enemies had misrepresented, or whatever.

To the eye of common sense; Steiner was a very insecure young man, often lonely, dependent on being looked-after by others (including his first wife - that seems to have been almost the entirety of the relationship); apparently lacking direction and being rather passively led by offers and opportunities from others, rather than by any life strategy.  

Steiner was always extremely intelligent; but his personality underwent not one but many extreme transformations. The younger Steiner showed no signs of spirituality or clairvoyance; and was variously, explicitly, obviously at different times a Roman Catholic, Kantian, atheist, political radical, materialist, nihilist, Nietzchian, anti-Christian and much more.

Somehow this is all brought into a apparent coherence by a brilliant act of synthesis that has convinced Anthroposophists ever since. But the real story is much more interesting and remarkable. It is a story of one of the most extreme personal transformations in history; such that one can hardly recognise the older and younger Steiner as being the same person.


This is important to recognise because Steiner did himself a terrible disservice by his insistence on consistency, coherence, and system; he made it almost impossible for anyone but a disciple prepared to swallow everything uncritically to take him seriously.

By insisting on taking him in an all or nothing fashion, Steiner created a small minority of cult-followers who are intellectually servile and worshipping; and a barrier against the vast majority of people who are interested and impressed only by a small proportion of his output.

The best thing that could happen to Steiner would be if he came to be treated as just an ordinary genius.

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It is often remarked that the political right are remarkably accepting of trends which they regard as deadly, and prone as individuals to lapse into a state of pessimistic and passive paralysis.

Of course, there is a sense in which this is a 'realistic' response to current and predicted events; yet despair is a sin.

There is a sense in which the right is prone to lapse into a state in which they see events not only running against them, but where they perceive that nothing constructive could - even in principle - be done to stop and reverse these trends.

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I suspect that this is because the right has - over centuries - internalized the (intrinsically leftist) assumption that politics ought to be a matter of procedures: of laws, regulations, practices, systems. 

The idea of legitimate politics then becomes equated with the business of setting-up these procedures.

Wisdom in politics then becomes a matter of foresight into how these procedures will work out.

The notion, on the modern mainstream right, is that only when new procedures have a high probability of benefit with a low predicted incidence of serious harm, is it reasonable to intervene.

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And - contemplating the morass of modern society - thoughtful rightists can see no way through the mass of interlinking leftist procedures.

They cannot - in all honesty - even imagine as a thought experiment, a set of alternative procedures (of laws, regulations, systems) which would reliably (and without too many breakages) lead to the outcomes they desire.

And so they despair, and so they give-up.

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But to concede that good government is a matter of good procedures is to concede the debate before it has begun.

The old ideal of good government was government by a wise man: a King Arthur, or a King Alfred the Great.

Of course there will always be need for some procedure - Alfred was a pioneer of English law - but equally all procedures rely on human wisdom.

The difference is in which direction the ideal lies, and in which direction the system is pushing: is it, as with modernity, pushing in the direction of making a human-proof system; or one in which human wisdom has the best chance of operating.

Are systems and procedures the ultimate authority - or is the wisdom of a wise man the authority?

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The right needs to accept that no systems are human-proof, nor would it be a good thing if they were.

The right needs to stop looking for solutions in terms of an alternative set of procedures,  laws and systems.

The right needs to think in terms of aiming at outcomes; and of government as a matter of having the best people in authority, not in terms of having such a perfect constituion that people are irrelevant.

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The leftist ideal is a government so systemically-perfect that all personnel are interchangeable, indeed perhaps humans could be replaced by chimpanzees (or computers).

That cannot be the ideal of the right.

The right - and this applies to both the religious and the secular right - needs to think in terms of a government which aims to does the right things.

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Doing the right things is therefore a matter of

1. Wanting to do the right things, and

2. Being competent to do the right things.

But the second depends on the first:

among governors, among those in authority: 

motivation is more important than competence. 

Indeed, competence without proper motivation is the most dangerous situation of all.)

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On the right there must be a focus on what needs doing, and on government by those who recognize these needs, then - preferably - by those who are best able to achieve these needs.

Procedures, laws and systems must take a second place.

Human beings should count for most.

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That much is shared between the secular right and the religious right: but the 'ideology' of what is right, what is needed, is of course very different indeed.

However, until there is a recognition that rightist politics is mostly about the outcomes aimed-at - the right will continue to be paralyzed.

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Here it comes:

There does not need to be a plan in order for the right to start work, in order for the right to govern.

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The right must not - ever - place its trust in systems. 

There does not need to be a set of new laws and regulations by which the right hopes to achieve a given outcome - but there does need to be a will that certain outcomes be achieved.

And that will will have at least a chance of finding a way.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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My internet 'fast' did not seem to produce any striking benefits in my spiritual status - but one thing that came to the fore was to re-experience the conviction that the greatest enemy to salvation is a hard, closed, cold and cynical heart.

This seems to be the most difficult thing to overcome; because it has such a high opinion of itself.

And it is a factor in many religious people, and it is (I feel) characteristic of many Christian denominations - perhaps especially in the public arena, in debate and dispute.

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The hard heart shows itself in many ways:

The Right Man - the man who is - and always has been - right about everything (he sees himself as nobody's fool - others may be deceived, but not him!).

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The Oppressed Woman - no matter how objectively privileged, she is being treated unequally when it comes to the good things in life: her situation is making her feel bad; and her sense of hurt is an absolute, metaphysical injustice which requires immediate remedy.

Other versions of this hardness of heart feel resentment in terms of their class, race, region, sexuality... in the end everything is evaluated and judged from the perspective of, and in terms of, this victim-status.

The Oppressed Woman is thus a variant of the Right Man - because, ultimately and as the bottom line, nothing is their fault.

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The Cynical Adolescent - the hard-nosed sentimentalist, beady-eyed and harsh toned in criticism of others and a prickly crybaby in terms of sensitivity to the criticisms of others; sees himself as the subject only to science and logic but also 'passionate' about things which are exempted from this requirement. Sensation-seeking but lazy. Extravert but selfish. Fickle but moralistic. And so on...

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The ultra-correct Christian - a man with a formula. The formula may be a model of church authority, a highly specific idea of tradition, a set of rituals, a way of reading scripture, some creeds or rules especially prohibitions and practices... Christianity is seen 'legalistically' - in Pharisaic terms. Christianity by committee. No need for Love - indeed no place for it.

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In other words, I would much rather that people had soft, open, warm, child-like hearts and were wrong; than that they believed, said and did everything right - but had hard, closed, cold and cynical hearts.

I would much rather a child-like, simple, loving Christianity that is full or errors and inconsistencies; than the opposite.

And these opposites, precisely, may be the only actually-available options.

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Love is primary - and can save from any situation at any time; but the rejection of Love is terminal - and often self-reinforcing.

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I absolutely demand of religion that it be sweet - and no amount of correctness, toughness, power or courage can compensate for its lack; because a religion without sweetness cannot be truly Christian and can become utterly demonic, while sweetness will always have a door open to salvation.

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I once met a man who believed, really believed, in an evil God.

He had been brought-up a devout traditionalist Christian, a practising Christian - with the usual metaphysics including that God created everything from nothing (ex nihilo). And he believed that this Christian God was in truth sadistic, was evil.


Why? This was his reasoning, so far as I could understand it:

"I have evil desires. These desires will not go away. I do not yield to them, but they torment me. My life is made extremely miserable, with no hope of relief.

"I acknowledge that these desires are evil. And that God made me the way that I am. Therefore God is evil.

"God could have made me otherwise, but God made me evil and made me miserable without relief. A God that makes an evil Man is evil; a God that chooses to inflict lifelong misery is a sadist."


(This was a specific man, with a specific and (to him, acknowledged) abhorrent sin. But, we are all predisposed to sin, he can be taken as a more-than-usually-insightful representative of Everyman.)


And I believe this man was logical in his inferences, based upon his assumptions. He was, nonetheless, wrong - because his assumptions were wrong (or, at least, not necessarily true). Specifically, he was wrong in assuming that God had created him wholly and from nothing.


If, instead, the man had assumed that he contained evil, but that this evil was not 'built' into him but was simply the way he happened to be, from eternity... If he had assumed that men differ, each is an individual - and that this was the way he 'happened to be'... then he would not have blamed God.

He may instead have seen that God was doing everything possible to save him.

My understanding (contrary to this man) is that we all lived before this immortal life, as spirits. And that this man's incarnation as a mortal on earth was something mutually agreed between him and God, as a 'chance' for this man to overcome the evil he had always suffered; and to be saved into eternal resurrected life in Heaven.

This, I believe, is how it is for all of us.

This man could have remained a spirit in Heaven with God, and his life would then have been happier. But instead he chose mortal incarnation, so that he might become more free free, more of an agent, more God-like; so that he might attain the fullness of spiritual development, as a participant in God's creation, as a resurrected immortal Man like Jesus Christ. 

It was a risk, a risk he (as a pre-mortal spirit) decided to take.


And in fact the plan had mostly worked. This man probably had been saved - all but.

He had acknowledged and repented his sin - despite that doing so made him miserable. All that he would need to do was, before or after he died, accept Jesus as his saviour and follow him through the trasnformation of resurrection to life eternal.

However, perhaps this man was still alive because he had not yet accepted Jesus as his Saviour; and perhaps he had not done this because he did not want to enter a Heaven made and ruled by 'the kind of God' who had 'made' him the way he was - who had (as this man understood it) implanted in him the desire for evil.


Therefore, in practice, this man's salvation was seriously endangered by his - largely undetected and unanalysed metaphysical assumptions.

Probably he was not even aware that it was possible to be a Christian on the basis of completely different metaphysical assumptions - as, for example, Mormons are.

But this man, like most Christians, believe that to be a real Christian one must believe in creation-from-nothing.


My impression was that this man was being severely tempted to regard his sin as not a sin. Maybe this wasn't really a sin after all? He was, I think, tempted to reject his model of Christianity with an evil God - the kind of God who would make fake sins just to torment people; and instead to seek the path of earthly pleasure and happiness.  

Instead of regarding his life on earth as having been made miserable when it could have been made easier, he could instead have regarded his life on earth as a great and successful chance to attain salvation despite the sin that he had borne from eternity.

This man might instead have felt gratitude and comfort at God's love in creating a world where this salvation was made possible; and gratitude to Jesus for having enabled him personally to attain the joy of life everlasting.


You might assert that all this metaphysical speculation is 'theoretical' merely, and would make no substantive difference to the daily (hourly) problem of suffering from sinful desires, known to be sinful; but you would be wrong.

I would answer that it makes all the difference whether God is responsible for our condition... or whether God is working with us to save us despite sin.

It makes all the difference between regarding oneself as a victim, living in a world designed by an evil and sadistic God... or living as a cherished son of God, in a world designed by a loving and compassionate God aiming at our ultimate salvation to joy. 


I believe that we are each individuals, from eternity; that therefore some men are/ always-have-been better than others overall, from eternity. Some men are (always have been) prone to particular abhorrent sins, or are more aware of their sins.

Therefore, salvation must be individually-tailored ('bespoke salvation).

This man was overall better than most men; however he was prone to a sin that he (and others) found particularly abhorrent.

This man just saw more clearly what we all ought to see. Yet perception of one's own sin is only half of what is needful - the other half is to be able to make sense of things in a framework where we can know that God, the creator, is good; and is working for our personal good.


The goodness of God is something each can know for himself, by direct intuitive knowledge - but for too many people this direct knowing is blocked by malign metaphysical assumptions; and Christianity is rejected because the Christian God is regarded as necessarily, logically evil - his goodness rejected as a false claim.

Right, real, true metaphysics can therefore - in some circumstances - make all the difference in the world.   

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The world view of the secular Right is as fundamentally despair-inducing as any secular world view - and offers the disadvantage of being on the Right and therefore likely to make the adherent subject to multi-level discrimination from micro-social interactions up to spectacular international heresy-hunts.

So why do people do it?

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One good reason is honesty: the admirable (but existentially quixotic - because existentially pointless, from a secular perspective) personal desire to tell the truth about some things which are subject to systematic and mandatory lying.

So, why are the secular Right honest? Given that the secular Right world view is utilitarian and they personally are likely to suffer for their honesty?

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It is an interesting and important question. From my own experience, and the many years when I was on the secular Right and took hits for it, I can say that I was honest because I couldn't help it.

In a sense, I would have been happier to be on the Left, and indeed had periods when I ostensibly was on the Left - made considerable efforts to become a real Lefty-intellectual or man-of-the-people; but I just couldn't make it stick for more than short periods - and would return to the Eeyore-like gloom of the secular Right - and, like Eeyore, to take pleasure from pungently-expressed satire, sarcasm, and pessimism.

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The goal of all this?

Nothing much more profound than love of decency, comfort, good order, minimization of suffering, beauty, kindness... stuff like that. Not terribly different from what the Left says it wants, but what it never can get because it lies about everything.

Yet, the secular Right can't get it either because these things do not motivate sufficiently strongly. They just don't.

When the chips are down, the comfort seeker will minimize discomfort; the decency-valuer will try to restore the least worst likelihood as soon as possible -  intransigent resistance or restoration is beyond him.

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No, the 'decent' secular Right is in a state of chronic motivation-deficit.

The secular Right therefore only makes things happen when it embraces negative emotions, when it embraces evil.

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Examples:

At a national level, patriotism is good, but is a relatively weak motivation - whereas classic Nationalism (late 19th-early 20th century style) is bad, but can (for a few decades) be a very powerful motivation.

Patriotism based on love of country or culture is good but relatively feeble; Nationalism based on hatred of a specific group is evil but (for a while) may be extremely powerful.

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At a personal level, the desire for decency and good manners are good but weak motivations - whereas the desire personally to seek worldly power, pleasure, prestige in a wholly selfish manner untrammeled by traditional constraints such as decency, good manners, kindness etc... well that is both evil and also may in some instances be very effective (at least, for a while).

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So the secular Right as a political movement and at the individual level always has this choice between being good (albeit a limited good) but weakly motivated and largely ineffectual - or else, in seeking increased motivation, to move towards enhanced power and effectiveness, to become evil: to embrace selfishness and hatred, and to call them good.

(That is to say to propagate moral inversion - just as we see on the politically correct Left.)

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And, since the secular Right is indeed secular, it intrinsically lacks the necessary powerful motivational resources to reject evil when tempted by evil.

The strongest and most effective on the secular Right will (like Nietzsche and many since) celebrate evil by boasting of strength, To say:

Yes I am evil, but look! - I am strong! Be like me: feel the power of motivation: embrace hatred - it works!

Meanwhile, the good people on the secular Right stand-by shaking their heads and wringing their hands...

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So it is not that the secular Right are necessarily bad people - of course they are not! Many are good (in a limited fashion - but better than most).

But, if or when their evil co-conspirators unleash the forces of hatred - when quiet and wholesome love of X is inverted into hatred of Y - then what motivating and encouraging alternative can the decent secular Right offer from their meaningless, purposeless and alienated universe?

What use is Eeyore against a pack of cackling hyenas?

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In their souls, human beings more and more come to resemble the thought, to resemble that which they regard as knowledge. This will seem a strange truth to the modern mind, but it is so, nevertheless. To see certain things in their proper light, with clarity of thought, with thoughts saturated with reality — that is vitally important.

For example; to regard Darwinism as the one and only valid conception of the world, believing the only possible truth to be that man descends from the animals  - that I descend entirely from forces which also produce the animals ... such thoughts, in our age, tend to make the soul resembles its own conceptions of itself.

When the body is discarded, the soul is then confronted with the sorry fate of having to perceive its resemblance with its own thought! A man who lives in the physical body believing that animal forces alone were at work in his evolution, fashions for himself a kind of consciousness in which he will perceive his own likeness to animal nature.

It is ordained that in times to come, what the human being considers himself to be, that he will become.

This development is part of the wise guidance of worlds, in order that the human being may attain full and free consciousness of the Self. On the one side the Gods were bound to make it possible for man to become what he makes of himself; and in order that he might imbue this self-created being with super-sensible meaning, that he might be able to find in this self-created being, something that gives him an eternal aim — in order that this might be, Christ Jesus fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha.

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Harmony with the Self, together with a knowledge which lets man after death be truly man, — this will arise for future times only if human beings become aware, here, in the physical body, of their true connection with the spiritual world.

Those who are afraid of concrete facts of spiritual knowledge because of their materialistic ideas will, of course, for a long time yet be unwilling to acknowledge that any such change took place - nevertheless it will have to be acknowledged sooner or later.

In order to further their aims, the Spirits of Darkness will need to attach particular value to the breeding of confusion among men so that they will not succeed in forming the right thoughts and ideas into which, after death, they are transformed.

What man thinks himself to be, that he is obliged to become... This is a truth that was destined, after the great changes in the nineteenth century and from then onwards, to find its way to men. The human being must be voluntarily anything that he can be really; he must be able to think about his own being if he is to be truly himself in his life of soul.

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Spirits of Darkness, who oppose Man's destiny, inspired human beings to announce the following: “Man is what he eats.” And although this is not, in theory, widely acknowledged, the practical conduct of life amounts very nearly to being an acknowledgement of the principle that man is what he eats — that and nothing else.

Indeed this principle is more and more being applied and developed in external life. To a far greater extent than people believe, the grievous and tragic events of the present time are an outcome of the tenet: Man is what he eats. Humanity is already infiltrated by the principle that “man is what he eats.” And it gives rise, indirectly, to much contention.

That is why the spread of thoughts and ideas corresponding to the realities of the times is so very necessary. Thought will gradually have to be known as a concretely real power of the soul, not merely as the miserable abstraction produced so proudly by the modern age.

Men living in earlier times were still linked, by an ancient heritage, with the spiritual world. Although for many centuries now, atavistic clairvoyance has almost entirely ebbed away, this heritage still lives in the feeling and in the will. But the time has come when everything that is conscious must become a real power — hence the Spirits of Darkness strive to counter really effective thoughts by abstract thoughts in the form of all kinds of programmes for the world.

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Thoughts must be imbued with greater and greater reality. There are still many people who say: “Oh, well, in all good time we shall discover what transpires after death; why trouble about it now? Let us attend to the requirements of life and when we reach yonder world we shall soon discover what it is.”

But if it is true that in yonder world a man becomes what he has pictured himself to be, then something else is also true. For example: A man dies, leaving relatives behind him. Although thought may not be entirely lacking in these relatives, they may be materialistically minded, and then, quite inevitably, they will think either that the dead man is decaying in the grave or that what still exists of him is preserved in the urn.

This thought is a real power; it is an untruth. When those left behind think that the dead man no longer lives, is no longer there; this thought is real and actual in the souls of those who form it. And the dead man is aware of this thought-reality, is aware of its significance for him.

It is therefore a matter of fundamental importance whether those left behind cherish in their souls the thought of The Dead living on in the spiritual world, or whether they instead succumb to the woeful idea that the dead man... well, he is dead; he lies there decaying in the grave.

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Edited from Lecture 2 of Behind the Scenes of External Happenings - a lecture given in Zurich, 1917.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA178/English/RSPC1947/BeScen_index.html
I would recommend these two lectures as superb examples of Steiner at his prophetic best - not an easy read, but densely-packed with profound insights and wisdom.

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From Out of the Silent Planet, a science fiction novel by C.S. Lewis, 1938.

Scene:

Oyarsa is the ruling 'planetary intelligence' (or 'angel') of Malacandra (i.e. Mars).

Ransom was brought to Mars by Weston to be a sacrifice to the inhabitants.

Ransom escapes from Weston and befriends the inhabitants of Malacandra; but Weston (and his side-kick Devine) have shot and killed several of the Martians.

In this scene Weston has been brought in front of the Oyarsa to explain his motivations and conduct.

Ransom mostly translates Weston for the Oyarsa; but later in the passage Weston speaks directly to the Oyarsa using a basic 'pidgin' form of the Malacandran language.

'Hnau' means a sentient being, a 'person'. Hrossa and Pfifltriggi are types of sentient Martian (i.e. types of hnau).

Maleldil is God; the lord of the silent world is Lucifer/ the devil (said here to be the fallen planetary intelligence ruling the Earth - Earth being the Silent Planet of the novel's title).

***

'Speak to Ransom and he shall turn it into our speech,' said Oyarsa.

Weston accepted the arrangement at once. He believed that the hour of his death was come and he was determined to utter the thing - almost the only thing outside his own science which he had to say. He cleared his throat, almost he struck a gesture, and began:

'To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and beehive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization - with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower. Life -'

'Half a moment,' said Ransom in English. 'That's about as much as I can manage at one go.'

*

Then, turning to Oyarsa, he began translating as well as he could. The process was difficult and the result - which he felt to be rather unsatisfactory - was something like this:

'Among us, Oyarsa, there is a kind of hnau who will take other hnaus' food and - and things, when they are not looking. He says he is not an ordinary one of that kind. He says what he does now will make very different things happen to those of our people who are not yet born. He says that, among you, hnau of one kindred all live together and the hrossa have spears like those we used a very long time ago and your huts are small and round and your boats small and light and like our old ones, and you have one ruler. He says it is different with us. He says we know much. There is a thing happens in our world when the body of a living creature feels pains and becomes weak, and he says we sometimes know how to stop it. He says we have many bent people and we kill them or shut them in huts and that we have people for settling quarrels between the bent hnau about their huts and mates and things. He says we have many ways for the hnau of one land to kill those of another and some are trained to do it. He says we build very big and strong huts of stones and other things - like the pfifltriggi. And he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people.'

*

As soon as Ransom had finished, Weston continued.

'Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization.'

'He says,' began Ransom, 'that living creatures are stronger than the question whether an act is bent or good - no, that cannot be right - he says it is better to be alive and bent than to be dead - no - he says, he says - I cannot say what he says, Oyarsa, in your language. But he goes on to say that the only good thing is that there should be very many creatures alive. He says there were many other animals before the first men and the later ones were better than the earlier ones; but he says the animals were not born because of what is said to the young about bent and good action by their elders. And he says these animals did not feel any pity.'

*

'She,' began Weston.

'I'm sorry,' interrupted Ransom, 'but I've forgotten who She is.'

'Life, of course,' snapped Weston. 'She has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and today in her highest form civilized man - and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplanetary leap which will, perhaps, place her for ever beyond the reach of death.'

'He says,' resumed Ransom, 'that these animals learned to do many difficult things, except those who could not; and those ones died and the other animals did not pity them. And he says the best animal now is the kind of man who makes the big huts and carries the heavy weights and does all the other things I told you about; and he is one of these and he says that if the others all knew what he was doing they would be pleased. He says that if he could kill you all and bring our people to live in Malacandra, then they might be able to go on living here after something had gone wrong with our world. And then if something went wrong with Malacandra they might go and kill all the hnau in another world. And then another - and so they would never die out.

*

'It is in her right,' said Weston, 'the right, or, if you will, the might of Life herself, that I am prepared without flinching to plant the flag of man on the soil of Malacandra: to march on, step by step, superseding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find, claiming planet after planet, system after system, till our posterity - whatever strange form and yet unguessed mentality they have assumed - dwell in the universe wherever the universe is habitable.'

'He says,' translated Ransom, 'that because of this it would not be a bent action - or else, he says, it would be a possible action - for him to kill you all and bring us here. He says he would feel no pity. He is saying again that perhaps they would be able to keep moving from one world to another and wherever they came they would kill everyone. I think he is now talking about worlds that go round other suns. He wants the creatures born from us to be in as many places as they can. He says he does not know what kind of creatures they will be.'

*

'I may fall,' said Weston. 'But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond.'

'He is saying,' Ransom translated, 'that he will not stop trying to do all this unless you kill him. And he says that though he doesn't know what will happen to the creatures sprung from us, he wants it to happen very much.'

*

Weston, who had now finished his statement, looked round instinctively for a chair to sink into. On Earth he usually sank into a chair as the applause began. Finding none he was not the kind of man to sit on the ground like Devine - he folded his arms and stared with a certain dignity about him.

'It is well that I have heard you,' said Oyarsa. 'For though your mind is feebler, your will is less bent than l thought. It is not for yourself that you would do all this.'

'No,' said Weston proudly in Malacandrian. 'Me die. Man live.'

'Yet you know that these creatures would have to be made quite unlike you before they lived on other worlds.'

'Yes, yes. All new. No one know yet. Strange Big!'

'Then it is not the shape of body that you love?'

'No. Me no care how they shaped.'

'One would think, then, that it is for the mind you care. But that cannot be, or you would love hnau wherever you met it.'

'No care for hnau. Care for man.'

'But if it is neither man's mind, which is as the mind of all other hnau - is not Maleldil maker of them all? - nor his body, which will change - if you care for neither of these, what do you mean by man?'

*

This had to be translated to Weston. When he understood, he replied: 'Me care for man - care for our race - what man begets-' He had to ask Ransom the words for race and beget.

'Strange!' said Oyarsa. 'You do not love any one of your race - you would have let me kill Ransom. You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, that what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left.'

'Tell him,' said Weston when he had been made to understand this, 'that I don't pretend to be a metaphysician. I have not come here to chop logic. If he cannot understand - as apparently you can't either - anything so fundamental as a man's loyalty to humanity, I can't make him understand it.'

*

But Ransom was unable to translate this and the voice of Oyarsa continued:

'I see now how the lord of the silent world has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little blind Oyarsa in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you can give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey. Do you know why he has done this?'

'Me think no such person - me wise, new man - no believe all that old talk.'

'I will tell you. He has left you this one because a bent hnau can do more evil than a broken one.

***


COMMENT

Weston's views are pretty much identical with my own from the late 1990s into the mid 2000s.

The humour and wisdom of the passage comes from the contrast between Weston's idealistic abstractions and Ransom's translations into plain, honest language (the language of Malacandra is intrinsically plain and honest, since it is an unfallen world).

*

The Oyarsa's message:

There are natural moral laws that all people are born with - and one of these is the love of humankind. Lucifer (who rules the earth) has taught you to break all the moral laws except this one.

But love of humankind is not one of the greatest moral laws - rather it ought to be subordinate to other laws which you break.

Furthermore, Lucifer has exaggerated the application of this law to the point where it becomes folly and has set up this folly as your ruling principle. And now you can do nothing but obey it, without constraint and regardless of the consequences.

But you cannot give any reason why you should obey this moral law, and disobey all the other (and greater) moral laws.

Lucifer left you this single natural moral law, the love of humankind, for this reason: a warped man who is actively and zealously pursuing a single moral law is capable of far more evil than a man with no morality at all.


*

Would I have seen through mine/ Weston's views if I had read OTP at that time, and seen what they translated into 'in plain language'?

Sadly, I doubt it...

*

It is striking that two of the most influential spiritual writers (and movement-leaders) of the early twentieth century - CG Jung and Rudolf Steiner - both lived in Switzerland at the same time, and not far apart - and saying many of the same things...

Yet, apparently (from what little was written or recorded) the two men cordially disliked and rejected one another. 

This mutual dislike is not difficult to understand; but it is unfortunate - especially for Jung; because Steiner's work contained the answer to Jung's insoluble problem of how to 'integrate' Modern Man, and to overcome his alienation. 

Jung was far more prestigious a person - by birth and education, and concerned to maintain his upper class social status. To him, Steiner must have appeared as what he mostly was (from the bulk of his writings and lectures); just another Theosophist; an upstart cultist, locked-into what Jung frequently described the typical errors of the Theosophical Society; that is, a false emphasis that led to modern Westerners, superficially and selectively, trying to copy knowledge and practices from a promiscuous brew of 'Eastern' religion and philosophy. 

Such an attitude from Jung would, I don't doubt, strike Steiner as both ignorant and snobbish; Steiner being older and from a working class Austrian background.  

Also Steiner was, by nature, a 'right man' who would never acknowledge that his ideas had changed or that he ever made an error - and so he never repudiated his usage of the vast body of standard, mainstream Theosophical Society-derived 'information' (identical with, and presumably derived from, Madame Blavatsky, and her successors) about Man and Cosmology, that quantitatively dominate Steiner's public discourses. 

Steiner, indeed, reacted very badly to any criticism, including thoughtful, informed and sympathetic critiques; almost never refuting it directly but instead engaging in irrelevant and blistering ad hominem rants to his loyal followers! Whereas Jung, despite being far moodier, more selfish and bad-tempered than Steiner in his personal relationships, displayed a kind of sublime indifference to his critics.

Yet, buried within this mass of errors, and arbitrary (and implausible) assertions concerning medicine, education, agriculture, and anything else that anybody asked him about - Steiner contains the insight which could have made coherent sense from Jung's almost random, and contradictory, insights.  

Steiner's early books that led to The Philosophy of Freedom, and his later remarks derived from these works - including some of his cultural and prophetic insights concerning the 'destiny' of modern Man and what would happen if this destiny was rejected, were exactly what Jung most needed to know. 

Jung - who lived with a sound mind until 1961, might even have found these ideas more lucidly expounded by Steiner's posthumous disciple Owen Barfield; e.g. in Romanticism comes of age (1944), or Saving the appearances (1957).  

The core problem that Jung needed to solve, and never did solve; was that his idea of an integrated and un-alienated Man was that of an earlier stage of human history, a child, a dreamer or a psychotic. This arose because Jung regarded a life dominated by the mythic collective unconscious as the ideal and answer. 

To solve this, Jug needed a true and sufficiently-complete set of basic, metaphysical assumptions; on which could be built practical advice. But Jung's metaphysics was incomplete.  

Jung's solution to modern Man' search for soul was therefore to engage deliberately with the collective unconscious, and to become conscious of its content; to seek there the unity and engagement that was lacking. 

This was correct as far as it went; but Jung's methods all involved an atavistic, regressive, sinking-down into the unconscious, and aiming to bring-back the findings. 

He advised seeking a half-way state between the modern consciousness and ancient un-consciousness; striving either to maintain awareness and memory during a descent towards dreams or psychosis; or else assembling an intermediate and symbolic discourse (or images, ideas etc.) to bridge between them. 

In Steiner/ Barfield terms, Jung only acknowledged Original Participation and the modern Consciousness Soul - but disregarded Final Participation. 

From Steiner/ Barfield's perspective; Jung was trying and failing, because it is not possible to reverse the direction of human developmental-evolution. It is not possible to return to something like the Classical-Medieval mindset; during which Man lived-in, and was satisfied-by, Public Systems of symbol, ritual, sacred text and picture mythic or legendary narrative, allegory and the like. 

Jung, in essence, was advocating that modern Man re-create (by acts of personal - and private - creativity) some such symbolic intermediary for himself; make his own 'private religion'. This is what Jung did himself, in his private notebooks, his sculptures and pictures. 

But Jung also stated that any such private spirituality nonetheless had universal significance; so long as it drew from the collective unconscious. 

What emerged was unsatisfactory - it alleviated to some partial and temporary degree the alienation and dis-integration of modern Man (i.e. it has symptomatic therapeutic value) - but the method was inadequate, just didn't work well enough. 

It did not suffice. 

Why? Because we cannot return with full consciousness and memory and control of our thoughts to the collective unconscious/ Original Participation. What Jung offered was - at best - an alternation between modern consciousness and a simulacrum of the more ancient mind - but not the actuality of the ancient mind. 

The intermediate state of active imagination was - in effect - a kind of lucid dreaming or dissociated semi-sleep state; and this state is both unstable ('metastable' tending either toward waking or sleep) and also insufficient as a solution to the problems of modern Man. 

It is trying to be simultaneously passive, spontaneous and-unconscious; and at the same time active, creative and conscious. These are opposite states - and can only be alternated or else 'averaged'.  

Hence Jung and Jungians can be observed to lack the hallmarks of wisdom, insight, discernment etc. which would characterize an integrated and unalienated person; and they lack the resources (or honesty) to explain this failure.    

Steiner/ Barfield's solution was a third state that Barfield termed Final Participation; in which integration and participation (i.e. escape from alienation) was attained in a new and qualitatively different kind of thinking*. 

This was conceptualized primarily as a learning experience; and the fullness and permanency of this state could be attained only in Heaven (or else after many further incarnations) - thereby explaining its own 'failure': i.e. why Final Participation could only be partial and temporary in this mortal life.  

Jung believed in a life after death, but never integrated this with his other ideas; which his why his ideas have been merely therapeutic - i.e. directed at making this mortal life less miserable and more fulfilling. 

Jung's concepts therefore underlie much of New Age spirituality - which operates at the level of consumption and lifestyle: a quantitative amplification of whatever ideology is already present (nearly-always mainstream leftist); but without the strength to have a qualitative impact; without providing a profound or powerful alternative and satisfying motivation for modern living. 

Therefore, I regard Jung as one of those sources that are harmful if pursued primarily: Jung will not lead anyone to The Truth. 

But, for those who have already grasped The Truth and who have a Romantic Christian attitude (ie. with personal intuitive discernment acknowledged as the basis of metaphysics); then Jung's work can be an exciting and valuable resource. Read selectively; Jung can even be seen as himself a proto-Romantic Christian. 

Jung's ideas are overall a mass of contradictions: wisdom and foolishness; insight and triviality; truth-seeking and self-serving dishonesty... 

But if approached in the properly critical spirit, we may discover there many helpful and inspiring formulations.  

*Note: By contrast, Jung's reports of his own experiences of the collective unconscious are perceptual. That is; Jung describes visions, conversations and dramatic scenarios between himself and persons or events. These have a 'hallucinatory' quality - i.e. they are subjective, private perceptions; outwith normal discourse and imperceptible to others. 

Further comment: If the reader is unclear about any of the terminology used above, I would advise doing a word/s search on this blog (search box located to the upper left corner of the opening screen) to get background or further explanation.  

*
1. Patriarchy: Men lead. In all situations in private and public life, it is right and necessary that men take leadership. The male sex is primary; therefore, in an ultimate sense, society and reality should be, and will be, organized around the needs of men.

2. Feminism: Women should be privileged. In all situations and circumstances in private and public life, it is right and necessary that women are privileged. The female sex is primary; therefore, in an ultimate sense, society and reality should be, and will be, organized around the needs of women.

3. Complementarianism: Men and women have distinct roles and responsibilities. In some situations it is right and proper that men lead and are privileged, in some situations that women lead and are privileged.

*

Due to its unfamiliarity, complementarianism requires further explanation:

The sexes are complementary, two different parts of a single whole. But not two 'halves' whatever that might mean - rather, two different but necessary elements.

Complementarianism entails that each sex alone (and therefore, each individual person) - while it can survive (for a while), is in some ultimate (metaphysical) spiritual sense incomplete; and the fullness of spiritual development therefore requires both sexes (and therefore at least two persons - one man and one woman) in a dyadic fashion.

*

Note that I utterly reject the meaningfulness and possibility of Equality of the sexes - because Equality just-does mean Sameness - and the sexes just-are Different (or else we would not be having this discussion).

(In fact, not just sexes but people are different. And people who are different deserve and require different treatment. 'Sameness' is never more than expedient, contextual and approximate.)

I know that sameness is not what Equality is 'supposed to' mean; but I am saying that this sameness is, in fact, what Equality does mean - or else sometimes Equality is just an alternative word for Feminism.

*

Other (more subtle, more nuanced) meanings of Equality cannot be held - the other-meanings will be too slippery, they will inevitably slide-into the meaning 'sameness'.

Equality is a falsehood, a fake abstraction, and to impose Equality is impossible - therefore Equality is evil in practice, because it is false, and to impose falsehood is impossible, and to try and impose an impossibility is necessarily to do evil.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=equality

*

Both Patriarchy and Feminism are ultimately accepting that one or other sex will dominate overall; and the disagreement is over which sex will dominate; and which will be (therefore) subordinate.

History tells us that (like it or not) Patriarchy is socially-sustainable, for many dozens of generations, for many thousands of years.

Feminism is, by contrast, very recent, with only a few generations track record. But objective social analysis over the past century or two shows us that Feminism is parasitic, uncreative, self-destroying as a general policy - hence it is unsustainable over the long term.

*

Therefore,  Patriarchy, Feminism and Complementarianism are, I think, the only actually possible relationships between the sexes - and, of these, only Patriarchy and Complementarianism are viable.

The question then is, of Patriarchy and Complementarianism , which is true and which is best?

*

If the relationship between the sexes is to be anything more than mere social expediency (something that can be wrangled-over and experimented-with indefinitely) then we need to look deeper into the justification for social arrangements - to ask 'why?' - and this leads back as far as the mind can reach. 

My argument here is that Complementarianism is true and right; and I can argue that this is backed up by historical evidence (but this depends on how it is interpreted) and also that it feels right (but others may feel differently). The only decisive kind of argument is one based on reality: are men and women really complementary, or not?

*

Until Mormonism, Complementarianism lacked an explicit metaphysics, theology and philosophy. Mormonism has thrived for eight generations and seems to be well set, but complementarianism does not have the long track record of sustainability which is seen for Patriarchy.

However, I suggest that Complementarianism does seem to be an unarticulated 'norm' towards which Patriarchy tends in actual practice.

I mean by this that the religion, the ideology, the law, may be Patriarchal - asserting male domination in every situation - but under stable conditions and with social development, tacitly but effectively women come to dominate some areas of life; and this can be seen as validating the reality of Complementarianism.

*

The most important question about Patriarchy and Complementarianism is: which is true? Is it that men are naturally leaders and naturally dominant in all situations; or are there domains in which women are naturally leaders and naturally dominant?

And - given that various social arrangements are possible - what is the Good, right, and proper form of social arrangement? Specifically, what is the best social arrangement from a Christian perspective?

*

Ultimately, this refers back to the ultimate purpose of human life, both to salvation and also to the possibility of what is variously termed spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification - which is the divinization of Humankind, to become Sons and Daughters of God.

For mainstream Christians, from this ultimate perspective, Men and Women are interchangeable; either a man or a woman considered in isolation can be saved, and either a man or woman can in isolation go through the fullest process of divinization.

More exactly, for (most) mainstream Christians, there is no pre-mortal life, so sexuality is only an attribute of mortal life - people are born either a man or a woman; but in eternal life sexuality is stripped away and people are neither men nor women.

*

So, for mainstream Christians, sexuality is a temporary expediency, not fundamental, not structural to our divine natures - indeed sexuality and sexual difference is a rather negative, earthly hence not-Heavenly thing. This ultimately accounts for the chronic negativity Christianity has displayed towards the body, sexuality, marriage and family - so powerfully documented for me in the works of Charles Williams - and the tendency to give highest status to the solitary celibate ascetic.

For mainstream Christians, social sexual arrangments are merely a matter of expediency - and considerations of expediency lead to Patriarchy.

It is NOT that the social structures of Patriarchy are actually based-upon and built-upon the ultimate structure of the mainstream understanding of the Christian religion - but rather it is that Patriarchy is socially expedient compared with Feminism, and mainstream Christianity does not conflict with this.

*

But for Mormons the situation is different. Men and women can be saved individually to eternal life and can undergo very considerable spiritual progression; but to attain the very highest level of divinization requires the dyad of a man and woman together in a celestial marriage.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/on-reality-of-complementarity-of-sexes.html

Thus, for Mormonism, sex is is not so much biological as metaphysical: part of the very structure of reality. Sex goes back to pre-mortal life, to pre-existence. Indeed, it (probably) goes back to before we were made spiritual children of God. So the eternal seeds or potentialities which were 'pre-spirit-human' were either male or female.

The implication is that Mormonism does conflict with Patriarchy, and does imply by contrast a system which treats the sexes as complementary.

Mormonism fundamentally contradicts the kind of Patriarchy which has been seen in human history (and including sometimes in Christian history) and which is argued-for by some modern Christians where all men dominate all women, and all women are submissive to all men, in all circumstances.

*

The situation envisaged by Mormonism is complex and contextual - but the basic complementarity is between (male) Priesthood and (female) Motherhood.

In practice, on earth and during mortal life - not all men are priesthood holders, not all women are mothers; and it is conceivable that men might be called mothers or be made to function biologically as mothers, and women might be called priests and enact priestly roles; but in reality and in principle and ultimately and over eternity - these are the proper and sexually differentiated roles of men and women.

Social organization ought-to reflect the difference; and men ought-to dominate those aspects of life pertaining to priesthood functions, while women ought-to dominate those areas of life pertaining to motherhood.

The precise definitions and details of what this complementarity of Priesthood and Motherhood means in practice and how it may be implemented are not important, and indeed are not prescribed - what I want to clarify now is that this is an example - it is the primary example - of complementarity.

No doubt there are others.

*

*

Reading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary and mixing in some ideas from Rupert Sheldrake, provides me with what seems a very promising way of thinking about that long-standing philosophical chestnut - free will versus determinism.

*

McG makes it clear that the Left hemisphere perceives reality in a deterministic way - as linear sequential chains of discrete causes and effects.

Yet the Left brain also has a problem, an intractable problem, of truly linking cause with effect, since reality is seen as static units resembling a 'snapshot' and it is difficult/ impossible to see how a cause statically-conceived can actually 'cause' anything.

But although the Left hemisphere can perceive that its own perspective is inadequate, it is intrinsically incapable of conceptualising anything else!

It has its precise and partial way of representing reality, and that is all that it can do.

*

Determinism is like that.

If we conceptualise the world in terms of causes and effects, then of course then can be no free will since we have already decided that everything is caused by something else.

On the other hand, this assumption opens up an infinite regress (as Aristotle realised) which can only be terminated by a first cause or unmoved mover. For some reason, modern thinking never acknowledges this infinite regress of causality - just too impatient I guess...

*

To assume that reality is conceptualised in terms of causal chains is and unfounded - it is not something that humanity has discovered.

Rather it is something that modern man cannot help doing.

We know it cannot be the whole truth - yet (we moderns, at least) cannot conceive of any other way of imagining things.

*

Well, McGilchrist points to another way - the Right hemisphere way.

Whereas the Left sees reality as a sequence of snapshots, the Right sees reality as a dynamic whole.

A dynamic whole cannot be expressed in terms of a sequence of snapshots; but how can it be expressed?

*

My notion is to conceive of Right brain function in terms of three-dimensional and dynamic morphic fields to complement the Left brain conceptualised in linear cause and effect sequences of static units.

(In reality, there are both linear sequences and morphic fields on both sides of the brain, considerable overlap - but McG is completely convincing that there is also a qualitative functional distinction, and this can be summarised - the point can be made - by treating the Left as if it were purely linear sequential and the Right as if it were a morphic field.)

This seems helpful to me; the idea of Right brain as a field of activity exerting its effects in a manner analogous to magnetic fields or gravitational fields.

*

Note: by Sheldrake's account a morphic field imposes form, pattern, structure onto the system in it influence - organising disparate events and processes; furthermore the field is teleological, containing 'attractors' which dynamically shape the system towards goals.

*

The Right brain (by this view) is in contact with the environment by being affected by other morphic fields - the gives it the distinctive 'holistic' grasp that the Left brain lacks.

McG conceives the optimal cognitive situation as being when the Right hemisphere dominates, using the Left for specific detailed processing tasks, then the Right taking up the results of Left processing and integrating them into the larger whole.

This could be imagined as the Right brain taking detached linear sequences of the Left brain (like strings of beads) and embedding them into dynamic three dimensional patterns of organisation - so that each causal sequence is put into its proper place and related to other sequences and to the much larger and dominant aspects of form that are not encoded as causal sequences...

*

So, this picture of the brain would have free will as fundamentally a Right brain phenomenon; with free will operating as a field; this picture standing in contrast to free will being more usually (but incoherently) considered in a Left brain fashion, as the first, (somehow) uncaused and initiating step of a chain of causes and effects leading to obervable behaviour.

*

I am suggesting that morphic fields, conceptualised in terms of McG's Right hemisphere functionality, could be considered a mechanism for the operation of free will, an explanation for 'how' it works.

This is, of course, merely a manner of thinking about free will: a new analogy which breaks the tyrannical power of free will conceptualised in terms of Left brain causal chains.

To see free will as a field does not describe what free will actually is, or what makes it free. In a sense the shift from linear to field thinking has only pushed back the explanation by another step - but this pushing back does create the space necessary as a preliminary to recognizing that the exclusion of free will is a metaphysical property of a form of representation, and that the exclusion of free will is not a property of the observed world.

*

Because free will is a metaphysical concept, not a physical concept - free will cannot be discovered by science, but nor can its absence be discovered by science.

There is a very widespread notion that 'science' has discovered that free will is an illusion, never existed, was merely a religious dogma.

This is a mistake - the actual situation is that the assumptions and methods of science have made free will incomprehensible.

Modern people cannot even imagine what is meant by free will - and assume that this means that science has discovered the absence of free will, or discovered that free will is an unnecessary hypothesis.

*

Free will is not a thing which is, or is not, out there in the natural world waiting to be detected - or found absent.

Free will is a metaphysical assumption - just as determinism is a metaphysical assumption.

But determinism is carrying the day in practise, because people cannot understand what kind of a thing free will might be. Public thought can only see reality as chains of cause and effect, and can only assume that every human act of will, every choice, must have had a cause or causes (whether we know them or not) - and therefore every act of will or choice can be explained-away.

People are simply locked into this way of thinking and can see no escape from it.

Perhaps understanding Left and Right brain differences, and thinking of causation in terms of organising fields instead of linear sequences, might open up the recognition that there is no 'must' about determinism.

*

When we feel that reality 'must' be deterministic, we are simply reading-off the distal consequences of our proximate assumptions.

Change the assumptions, and determinism melts.

*

Demons are living, conscious, purposive immaterial-spirit Beings; but computers are regarded as non-living material objects made of minerals, performing electrical and 'digitally-segmented' procedures. 

How can demons influence - say - 'the internet'? This seems difficult, or impossible, to understand because, with the usual assumptions included in the question, we seem to be suggesting that immaterial living spirit can (somehow?) affect solid, dead matter. 

We are falling back into asserting an incoherent or paradoxical 'ghost in the machine' scenario...

As usual, the problems are with false assumptions; assumptions that intrinsically pre-judge and have-excluded the very possibility under question.

Instead, these are some assumptions about reality which I take to be true, and which make sense of the idea of demons influencing the internet directly, by 'incarnating' into computational systems:  

1. The spiritual is primary, and the material is a sub-set of the spiritual. 

In other words, matter might be pictured as somewhat like 'condensed spirit'. 

This means that all matter is spiritual, necessarily and unavoidably. So there is no 'problem' about spirit affecting matter, because all matter is 'within' spirit to-start-with. 

2. The spiritual world exists as Beings - (is 'organized' as Beings) which are living, conscious, purposive entities. 

So everything we might assume is a 'thing' is instead actually either 'itself'-a-Being, or part-of a Being. 

So each Man is a Being; but (for instance) Man's bones, or veins, are (apparently) not Beings; but are parts of a Being. 

If a tree is a Being in its own right, maybe a mushroom is part of a larger Being (containing many mushrooms linked underground). A mountain might be a Being, perhaps; or it might be part of a Being that is an island, a continental plate, or The Earth? 

(We don't usually know the boundaries of Beings nor how they are organized, so I am simply illustrating the principle.) 

3. A Being can form part of a larger Being, and often includes smaller Beings. 

Men are Beings that contain Beings. 

And example might be a white blood cell in our blood, which (we might imagine) has no idea that it is part of a human being! But simply lives-out its life in hunting cellular debris or invading germs, eating and assimilating them, reproducing etc. 

And Men, as Beings, are contained-by other Beings.

For instance; a Man, whose life and activity forms part of a larger human grouping; a tribe, or maybe a nation about which he may be ignorant and which 'uses' his abilities and labour for its own purposes. 

This means that a larger Being - containing Men - must be genuinely real (not just a convenient metaphor), and is typically a spiritual (not material) Being. In the past this was, when the Man-containing Being was Good, conceptualized as a presiding angel - when the larger Being is evil, it is a demon.  

(Both might, and typically do, exist; contesting over the component Men - e.g. a national Archangel versus a Globalist demon; varying in dominance through time, and each group angel/ demon 'using' different Men, for different roles; and different selective aspects of those Men.) 

What is happening here is that only a part of each component Man is truly a component of the larger Being that is the tribe or nation or whatever group it may be. The Man's essential Being is Not a part of any larger Being, but may choose to affiliate-with or reject that larger Being and its purposes. 

What happens is that some of that Man's attributes are in fact being 'organized' into a larger unity; while the essential Being is eternal and cannot be assimilated-into any larger Being - but necessarily stands apart from all possible Systems, and decides whether or not to join-with them. 

From the perspective of the larger Being; the component smaller Beings are organized into hierarchical and specialized functions, and used to perform particular tasks in particular sequences; analogous to the parts of an army - each operating under 'orders'.    

Putting together the above three assumptions, we can see that the agenda of evil might be administered overall by a Being such as Satan, who is analogous to a general directing lower ranks towards a particular strategy. These lower ranks might include demons participating in a hierarchy of organized and specialized functions; the lower ranks also include Men - and other Beings and parts-of-beings such computers, programs, the internet... 

While demons are supposed to be wholly committed to evil by their natures; the Men who participate in the System of evil are only partially being used for that purpose. 

So a Man might regard his job as 'just' digging holes and building walls, or collecting and summarizing data in an office; and this activity might be integrated into an evil-orientated agenda... or a Good and Godly one; and to varying degrees. 

Yet the situation is not static, and evil operates purposively to increase itself and corrupt other Beings; so the Man in an evil-aiming organization who digs holes, or the one that deals with 'information' - might be confronted-with links between his activity, and its aims and consequences. 

So that he will become aware of his participation in evil, and then needs consciously to decide whether to endorse or repent this participation - each of which will have different consequences for how much of himself participates in the System.

(ie. If an aware Man then repents his participation, corruption does not proceed; if he refuses to repent and regards his evil as Good, he will be embracing the value-inversions of evil; then that Man will become more positively orientated towards evil goals.)    

Anyway; to return to the original question of how demonic evil might use the internet to pursue its goals; we can see that there are multiple potential mechanisms, operating at all levels... (And bearing in mind that the-spiritual is primary, and the-material a manifestation of spirit.)

Planning the organizations which comprise 'units' of demons, Men, and other Beings/ parts of Beings such a computers and their programs... 

'Personnel' decisions about which particular individuals or units are performing specialized functions within these systems (by directing the flow and sequence of tasks)... 

There is the administration of these organizations, filtering their inputs and outputs, emphasis given to selected outputs etc.

Once any evil entity is within any organization, and that organization is regarded as running on the basis of un-influence-able material processes; then evil evil-orientated choices of evil-affiliated Beings will operate to increase the power of evil within that organization*.

As always, insofar as it is purposive, the demonic agenda is - to some, variable extent - either consented-to or chosen by those who participate. 

Genuinely unwitting participation is possible - but since this is not corrupting, it is regarded by the ruling evil entities as merely a temporary phase, a means to the end of corrupting a Being.

Sooner or later, individuals participating in evil will be brought to awareness of the goals and direction of their role - and this moment will be engineered such that the individual is likely to conceptualize the evil he is doing as - inversely - actually a higher type of 'Good'...

As when architects are induced to embrace deliberate ugliness as actually a higher, more sophisticated kind of beauty; or politicians embrace the Big Lie as in-service-to a higher 'truth' - such as social justice; or when the enforced mutilation and poisoning of children is justified as part of a more-profound ethic of choice, liberation and inclusion.   

In other words, demonic influence does not need to happen by such weird/ spooky ideas as a demon putting his spiritual-thumb into a software process to shape a particular outcome. Although, insofar as the electrical instantiation of a software process is a material part-of primarily spiritual reality; material action will manifest in accordance with spiritual realities; and then the outcome of processing will not be explicable within the System - (and will be put-down to some unknown 'random' error or failure). 

In other words, the material is never independent of the spiritual; and the spiritual is always controlling the material. 

The material elements of computers or the interest are already and always part of the life of primarily spiritual Beings; so, to posit their being subject to net-evil orientations is merely to assert that demonic spirits have become dominant, overall, in that particular aspect of this created earth. 

*Note: This is why mainstream modern materialism - which fundamentally misunderstands evil and denies the reality of demons - leads inevitably to an incremental corruption of society. Once a demon has gained entry anywhere (and this is inevitable, sooner or later) he can operate undetected; his identity will be denied, and his effects explained-away as random errors or incompetence. This may be one reason why it was possible for prophets of the past to predict these End Times. 

Once a Modern Man has overthrown the culturally-inculcated 'materialist' picture of a mechanical-random universe without meaning or purpose; and has instead made the assumption that he lives in 'a creation' - then he will probably need to consider the nature of The Creator - i.e. God; and God's motivation in creating this reality. 

This whole question was opened-out for me by the work of William Arkle; for whom it was the beginning point of enquiry in many of his books and essays. Arkle helped me to realize that this is, in a sense, the most profound of questions; and one which may provide something like a Master Key for understanding.  

Because, as so often - it is asking the right question that is crucially-important. Most questions are unanswerable; but the Right Questions typically bring their own answers (if we let them) - without need for further investigation. 

Thus, understanding is mostly about questions and the assumptions behind them; such that wisdom is right-questioning.

What this means here is that there is a choice of how to proceed in understanding God the Creator. Do we, for example, follow most Christian 'theologians' through recorded history, and at this point switch to the mode of philosophy - the mode of (for instance) logical reasoning, as The Way to understand God?  

Or do we, like Arkle (and some other Romantic Christians) aim to understand God as a Person? 

Do we, for instance, try to imagine and intuit what it was like to be God the Creator before creation - and to understand empathically what God may have aimed-at in embarking-upon creation, and continuing the work of creating? 

This is a critical point in any Christian's development; the point at which he must choose how God is to be understood: should he regard God as a person primarily, a person fundamentally like-ourselves, and therefore understandable by us -- or something else, fundamentally unlike ourselves.

Judaism and (especially) Islam have decisively chosen to regard God as fundamentally unlike ourselves; but Christianity has been divided on this matter; as we can see even among the Gospels and Epistles - where there are passages in which God the Father of Jesus is spoken of very personally - and others in which the discussion is abstract and unlike human persons.

Each Christian - it seems - makes this choice between God as a person (like us) or God-impersonal (unlike us); although in the past this choice was usually implicit and often unconscious. 

One gets a strong impression that through history most laity (and some saints) had a very personal understanding of God while theologians and priests tended towards abstraction; with an ultimate understanding of God as impersonal, unlike-Man - and these warned against the perils and pitfalls of 'anthropomorphism'. 

Perhaps the matter can be summarized as a distinction between (on the one hand) Christians who saw the gulf between Man and God as between creator and created - and therefore with God the Creator as ultimately unlike Man; and therefore Man as unable empathically to know God, as one person knows another. 

This attitude means that God's motivations for creation cannot be empathically-understood, nor is intuition much help - because God is infinitely un-like us; so God's reason/s for anything (including creation) are necessarily incomprehensible. 

 

On the other hand; there are those Christians who regard Christianity as a religion in which we are God's children - and so ultimately like-unto God; and where Jesus Christ was a Man who was (and is) a fully-divine creator; who we can choose to follow to an eternal resurrected life as divine Men. 

From this choice of a personally-rooted Christianity; Men can (by an empathic intuition) legitimately infer something of God's probable personal motivations for embarking on creation. 

We may also find these inferences confirmed by statements in the Gospels (especially the Fourth Gospel called 'John') and other teachings - but we will also find contradictory statements. 

We can thus assume that God's motivations were rooted in love; and the desire for God's family of Men to be able to rise to the same level of divinity as God the Creator.

Ultimately to form an eternal and expanding Heavenly Family, who will (each in his or her unique fashion) participate in the 'ongoing' work of creation. 

In a nutshell, such a Christian may come to feel that creation was primarily 'about' Men, and aimed-at the raising up of Men from a starting state of divine-childhood, to the fullest and highest possible 'grown-up' divine-status - on a level with God the prime creator...

Raised to the same status - but not The God, not a prime creator; since there is only one such. 

And exactly this can be seen described in parts of The Gospels: the assumption is that God's intent is that what happened with Jesus will happen to as many as possible of other Men. 

Positively, we can understand God's motivations as expanding the scope and differentiation of an eternal loving family, and of raising-up at least some 'divine friends' to the level of full-co-creators - as has already happened with Jesus Christ. 

It is a motive much like that we ourselves experience in our joy at wanting to have a large and loving family, and for each of those family members to develop in his or her own uniqueness; and in chosen and joyous harmony with each other (love of Man for neighbour) and with God's creation (love of God).  

Negatively, we can say that before creation God was lonely, bored, under-stimulated and with an eternity of this stretching-ahead... 

Thus, divine creation may negatively be understood as a 'cure' for God's pre-creation state as relatively solitary, and experiencing a dull, static, uneventful existence. 

We may also realize that the only permanent (eternal) 'cure' for boredom is to dwell among other Men, who are each genuinely free agents, each with free will and individual creativity. 

It would Not be an answer to boredom for God to live among automata, un-free puppets, or any kind of reality (or virtual reality) that had been wholly-created by Himself. To avoid boredom forever requires genuine free agency among Beings. 

This may help understand why free will is an absolute requirement of creation - from the perspective of God's personal motivations. 

The above brief discussion is intended to illustrate how a serious effort to understand God, and God's motivations, can be of real help in understanding this mortal life. And I also take it as a kind of confirmation of the validity (backed by Scripture) of regarding God the Creator as a person; a person sufficiently like-unto-our-selves that God's nature and motivations are accessible to our empathy and intuition. 

In his Geography of Consciousness ('GoC' - 1974), William Arkle describes eight levels of consciousness spanning the physical and ideal worlds - at the lowest end is Man as almost unconscious: passive, instinctive and immersed in the social group; at the highest level, Man's consciousness has become that of a god: free, agent, autonomous, participating in the work of creation.

But as probably only one or a very few have ever attained Higher Man stage (Saint John the Evangelist, may be an example); it is stages 1-7 which we need to consider...

Higher Man

7. Mystic
6. Poetic
5. Idealistic
4. Sophisticated cynical - the Dead-Centre
3. Responsible
2. Average
1. Lower man

And in particular I wish to focus on the sophisticated cynic of stage 4 - which is the typical and defining stage of Modern Western Man - or, at least, the intellectual and institutional leadership class of Modern Western Man.

To paraphrase Arkle (from pages 117-8 of GoC); the sophisticated cynic is at the Dead-Centre of the evolutionary scheme - poised, suspended, trapped between lower and higher consciousness. This is a state of wide awareness of options and possibilities; made possible by increased knowledge and learning - but experienced as a pervasive relativism.

Everything is known, but nothing known with confidence - all is suspect; one option is balanced and cancelled-out by the others. Movement upward, or downward, immediately leads to loss of confidence and a tendency to return to the Dead-Centre.

And the centre is 'dead' because there is a state of demotivation. The longer a period of time that is spent in the dead centre; the harder it gets to escape. The modern sophisticated cynic may yearn either to become a higher man, to live by pure ideals and non-material values; or (perhaps more often) he yearns to discard sophistication and cynicism and simply lapse back into passivity, instinct, spontaneity and unreflectiveness - to become natural...

But both are equally impossible. His materialism and hedonism reduces and deconstructs all higher values - while he 'knows better' than the natural, spontaneous, instinctive Man - and he finds he just cannot forget or discard his sophistication, science, philosophy, ideology... They come back, again and again, to haunt him.

The sophisticated cynic is therefore pulled in both directions; and also repelled by both directions. The sophisticated cynic is the permanent adolescent - too mature to be a child, too immature to be an adult; too bored by both immaturity and maturity, seeing-through the innocence of childhood and the responsibility of adulthood. He is cut-off from the basic satisfactions of simply getting-by in practical, material life; and also from the spiritual satisfactions of living for ideals located outwith mortal life and human limitation.

As the sophisticated cynic remains trapped by his own pre-conceptions; he may create vast belief-structures of ideology... but although initially promising, these invariably always lead-back (sooner or later) to where he began-from.(All apparent escape tunnels turn-out to be loops.)

The sophisticated cynic knows that the world of communications - of nature, of other people, of his own evanescent thoughts - are doubtful and unreliable: he has often experienced this unreliability. This insight itself implies that some other and solid form of knowing exists (with which communication is implicitly being contrasted); but when it comes to any specific knowledge, the sophisticated cynic remains unsure: he lives in an atomsphere of doubt... Yet at the same time, he doubts his own doubts, suspects there is 'more to life', and cannot embrace a fully nihilistic skepticism. 

Thus the sophisticated cynic is trapped in the Dead Centre of consciousness.

The phase is a necessary point through-which Men must pass if they are to attain the autonomy required by higher consciousness; but if the lessons are to be learned, then the phase must feel real - must indeed be real - at the time it is being experienced. There must to be a pause in progression - and this pause may become prolonged and arrested into stasis.

(The ship must slow to a standstill, and actually stop - but once forward-momentum has been lost, the ship may become becalmed; at which point momentum and friction prevent it from moving again.)

Although many people do get stuck; some do escape - and in the right direction. What gets people out from the perpetual adolescence of sophisticated cynicism? That will be the subject of another post...