Thanks for the comment. It's a good caution. One point I was trying to make on the podcast was indeed that science and Scientism are not the same thing.
Having said that, the questions raised I think are more complex than this. It's not necessary to believe that humans once rode on dinosaurs or that Genesis 1 is a science textbook to see the obvious questions that Darwinian theory raises about what a human is, what an eternal soul is, and what the 'creation' of humans with a special purpose means if evolutionary theory is correct. This is why I would like to do more reading and thinking. I always assumed, as you do, that there was 'zero conflict' between these things, but you will find that not really to be the case if you come into the Church.
Anyway, as I say, I'd like to think and read more about it over time. If you have any recommended reading, please do let me know.
Thanks very much indeed for this list, Zach. Much to explore here. I much appreciate you taking the time to lay it out. Some of these I'm familiar with already, but a lot of them I'm not. Now I just need the time to read them ...
As a rule I tend to agree about the debate/argument around creation and evolution in this context. Because I haven't thought about it, I want to work out my thinking by looking at all sides of the discussion. I certainly have questions that are tugging at me since my discussion with John. And as you know, I am deeply sceptical of science, not just as an ideology but as a means of explaining anything much beyond the workings of bits of matter. It is not a great question for me fath-wise, however. You are right that this is much more of an issue in America than in Europe. I suspect that this is down to the Western (protestant) tendency to want answers to everything.
On a side note, I'm pleased to see that you know Fr Stephen Freeman. I have been reading and listening to him since my early explorations into Orthodoxy, and we were briefly in touch. He is a rare online voice of wisdom.
I just watched the video linked below this afternoon. It’s a tremendously powerful and in places moving advocacy for religious faith in the face of the three big things which are often cited by atheists as reasons to undermine it: science, evil, technological solutions to problems. It is by the late UK Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. It’s well worth a listen:
The neo-Darwinian synthesis is obsolete. Because modern science is idiotic enough to neglect formal and final causes, it's completely blind to the fact that organisms are shaped by the environment. Hell, even Dawkins is finally coming to this realization. Lee Cronin, supposedly the world's most eminent "origin of life" researcher, did not even know what teleology was before a short while ago. They limit themselves to a mechanized version of efficient cause (billiard ball determinism).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the infamous Lenski experiment show nothing ground-breaking? Because an organism is able to adapt to its environment, this proves neo-Darwinian evolution? After over 73,000 generations of E. coli, the most significant result was the development of the Cit+ trait, which enables them to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen. The things are placed in stressful environments, so why wouldn't they change? This was able to be recreated in a matter of 2 weeks in another lab with only 100 generations in the presence of oxygen (the researchers of this experiment said the trait was "switched on" in the genes). This is akin to blowing a constant current of air on a plant to strengthen it. Life is not mechanistic for goodness' sake, so this is not surprising whatsoever. Even so, is the E. coli still not E. coli? The birds on the Galápagos: they're still birds—just because their beaks changed shape means they "evolved"? Natural selection as a full-blown theory of change, by the way, is a narrow hypothesis in that it is limited solely to efficient cause. Most random mutations are harmful anyway, and many new traits come about by “breaking” extant genes (e.g., dogs). There are also various waiting time problems that occur if one is limited to the fossil record, not to mention the limited population sizes, but one does not even have to go this far to demonstrate the stupidity of it.
Furthermore, I can't understand why proponents of naturalism and such think that we're merely stupid apes (to use Sam Harris' description—which is actually not a bad hypothesis by itself, especially when using him as proof) bred to survive and procreate yet have the capacity to discover the hidden truths of the cosmos, such as that we are merely stupid apes (I, for one, love apes). Under their theory of evolution, why are religions and mythologies not true despite being found naturally in every culture? Naturalism isn't very natural. Yet, every other behavior we display is treated as natural. This is all very deliberate on their part. Not to mention, what the hell is suicide, and why does it exist, i.e., how can this trait be passed down? Evolutionary psychology is a stupid tautology: anxiety exists because if we didn't have anxiety we would get eaten. This is another example of limiting everything to the mechanized version of efficient cause. The explanations for beauty are even dumber. Even Nietzsche was skeptical of Darwin due to the anomaly of the existence of the aesthetic sense in this model. Again, however, one still does not have to go this far.
Donald Hoffman, a scientist based in the US, has finally picked up on this (a little behind James & Bergson). He argues that the physics we have is premised on the interface to reality we gathered during the evolutionary process. He has also stated that consciousness causes brain activity, and he is a scientist who has not, for once, equated correlation with causation. One of the problems with this, however, is that he is really describing the perceptual defects of the cultural/technological milieu in which modern science operates, akin to how Descartes' view of reality was shaped by the mechanical print milieu. Print stripped all of the sensuous facts of the word (see "The Gutenberg Galaxy"). Speech is analog and acoustic, not visual. (The scribes, however, retained a human element through the written word.) We become what we behold.
Hoffman's theories of consciousness are resolvable via Aristotle's hylomorphism: matter as potency, form as act. Our physical bodies are how our souls manifest themselves in communion with this earthly world. Looking at brain tissue under the microscope and calling it yourself is a confusion of categories. The brain tissue is there to serve your soul, although, of course, our physical bodies are subject to pains and passions which go against the truer ends of our souls. However, the brain is not the seat of consciousness (i.e., mind or soul); rather, consciousness is the seat of the brain and, for that matter, the whole body. All living things are ensouled matter. We should not toy with our genes because they don't define everything to begin with; they are that way in accordance with the form, or essence, of the organism. This is why nature is such a nuisance to agriculture: it's constantly reforming itself to its true essence.
It's all formal cause. The environment is the formal cause of the content (the medium is the message). Medical research shows that cancer is a way of life (akin to the ancient view that sickness is the result of sinful behavior). Neuroplasticity, epigenetics, etc. are just sexy buzzwords to describe all of this. This modern pathology to categorize everything in such a groundless, abstract manner is not as neutral as moderns think it is. Secularism is yet another flavor; vanilla is a flavor. It's a put-on by stupid apes (like Harris & Dawkins—however, this is an insult to actual apes) to make themselves feel smart. It’s philistinism (and unnatural) to not participate in higher dimensions of reality. New Atheism, for example, is pure tribalism and superstition. Reality is fundamentally poetic. It's as if the modern sciences are a deliberate attempt to deny this. To think of the trillions of dollars wasted each year and the incalculable number of lives and ecosystems destroyed by the ignorance of what was once a part of basic philosophical knowledge…
The nature of the Machine is that it precisely lacks nature. Machines don't heal, nor do the people trapped inside of them. This is why so many people take pharmaceuticals for every little thing. The Machine’s medicine is just as abstract as itself. It is premised on looking at the arrangement of the physical substrate when one is “healthy” and then throwing groundless, abstract forms at the structure in order to forcefully, artificially reshape it to that state when it is “unhealthy,” most likely due to the body & mind's failed attempt to conform to the vacuousness of the Machine in the first place. All of this disease we face is not that natural selection isn't able to act—it's that we are forms (souls), bugs in the Machine, unable to fulfill their telos. Materialists materialize virtue. The Machine is formally caused by the collective materialistic ways of billions of people (Mammon), the products of which are really just groundless, lifeless forms that we can't truly conform to anyway. Science progressively saves us from itself. We already have everything we need. The arts heal more than SSRIs, for they conform us to magical, mystical environments that the contextless environments produced by SSRIs are modeled to replicate in effect. SSRIs give the effects of art on the fly because there's no integration of this in our lives as robots or cogs in the Machine. This is also why various therapies are becoming increasingly popular. Prayer and liturgy are higher, truer forms of this. The supreme example is the divine Logos: Jesus Christ heals the blind.
Thank you. I think we're almost in full agreement, but I'll clarify some things perhaps just as some food for thought.
Plato and Aristotle were relatively ignorant of the effects of technology. All human artifacts are media, as in they structure, or mediate, experience (see the work of the Catholic Marshall McLuhan; he was a metaphysician, not a communications theorist as everyone wrongly has it). They skew our perception in accordance to their form. In some sense, the pre-moderns took this for granted.
Introducing the iPhone into a technologically simple village will completely alter the whole structure of it. This is not determinism; it's how we unwittingly willfully respond to the temptations of technology (Adam), the effects of which can be described via medieval faculty psychology (for these purposes, the sensus communis; psychē = soul). For example, you having to put a lot of interpretation into who I am due to the lack of sensory data to go off of is an example of this. For this reason, Twitter allows people to paint the worst pictures imaginable of their interlocutors, leading to sharp tribal divisions, conspiratorial paranoia, and manically comical representation. It's patent witchcraft.
The phonetic alphabet divides non-visual speech (totally analog) into meaningless bits of sounds, phonemes, and assigns them each an otherwise groundless, arbitrary visual component. The adoption of this alphabet stripped us from the magical acoustical space of the pre-literates by placing emphasis solely on the visual (Plato vs. the poets) and led to the syllogism (which is totally abstract). This is seen in the linear, continuous nature of formal logic (dialectic). The phonetic alphabet also led to the invention of the concept of visual space as well as other abstract visual continua like Democritean atomism and Euclidean space itself. Acoustic space, on the other hand, can be described as the center of a sphere without boundaries, where space is made by the thing in itself. Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber, described that his senses became much more acute and involved in his environment when he lived in the wilderness. He said he could tell the source of a sound without even looking at it, even if it was the mere shuffling of some leaves underfoot. Despite claiming to be an atheist, he rediscovered the old spirits of the forest and worshipped them (e.g., Grandfather Rabbit); he was really a pagan.
What happens to children (at least here in the US) is that they undergo an education system that imposes figure-without-ground thinking (e.g., standardized tests rip passages from their original context and place them in a random order), which is ultimately what the "disenchantment" feeling is. When you're a child, you have very acute senses for subtlety and nuance and easily see the spiritual core of reality. Everything is essentially anagogical. "Santa Claus" is the spirit of St. Nicholas and gift-giving in the air: it's a very real thing indeed. This is not measurable by scientific instruments because they are inherently designed to measure what we design it to measure of physical reality. Even Sartre said that the the eye exists because of seeing, the nose because of smelling, the ear because of hearing, and sexual organs because of sex, not the other way around.
A child's serotonin levels being up is also not the bottom of it, for what is doing this *feeling* anyway? Again, this form of reductionism is another instance of our technology totally ruining our perception of reality. Phenomenologically speaking, this is absurd, as it is on a plentitude of other levels that are way too multitudinous to lay out here. "Serotonin" as a descriptor in most of these cases is an abstract mental object of the mind, and its actual physical correlate is a form. All of these "chemicals" are ultimately physical correlates to our existence as spiritual beings in these mortal, fleshly bodies. Matter doesn't *feel* itself—this is the soul (qualia). Matter (potency) serves spirit, so it's a physical correlate (however, this isn't to say our mortal bodies don't have their own passions—they very much do indeed). Physical reality is a substrate imprinted upon by form.
Many scientists deliberately abuse their power to abstract everything so as to tyrannize and intimidate unsuspecting minds. Like I said, it's a total put-on. They're akin to witches who cast spells (figure) which hypnotize people from reality (ground). This is not a conspiracy theory—just look at the power they wield and the amount of damage they're doing. Their vision of reality is a superstition without any spiritual benefits. Modern science has been carefully engineered over the past four centuries to dominate and control nature. An AI chatbot resembles humans from the outside and you can make a lot of predictions about humans with them, but internally it looks nothing like them. This, I strongly believe, is the essence of modern science (after all, it is based on alchemy). I.e., it is merely some elaborate grammar that we've engineered to dominate and control nature. In objective terms similar to their own, a computer is just some fancy silicon chips that harness electricity in ways that our minds can easily assign meanings to. To other creatures, this is totally meaningless. Just because an airplane flies doesn't prove materialism; it's just another way we've controlled matter to do stuff for us. Also, what is energy in the first place? Physicalists take existence, matter, energy, and information for granted. Information is form. Metaphysically speaking, the ground of everything is God.
Furthermore, I wish not to imply that "evolution" isn't real. However, I am saying it's a nebulous term that has become a buzzword for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Being *shaped* by "pressures" is formal cause. Also, a new species is a new species just because scientists slap a new label on it? Modern science is all *visual*, negating all the other sensuous facts of reality. This is complimentary to the various media in which it operates (e.g., textbooks and abstract laboratories/white lab coats). One mustn't be intimidated by the guise scientists put on; they're philosophically and spiritually very illiterate (which is ultimate reality). Again, the level of confusion is so deep that it is impossible to adequately expound upon here.
Additionally, healing, for example, is formally caused. There's evidence that cells can modify themselves, although this is not surprising at all. In fact, this isn't an example of emergence (see David Bentley Hart's work). It's because everything is done in accordance to what our souls need in order to operate in this earthly, physical, fallen world. The ground is the soul, while the figure is the body (yet, even this is a metaphysical grammar—however, grammars are vessels of truth, though not necessarily absolutely perspectival). Our souls themselves have a telos, as do the various organs of our physical bodies. However, I don't believe that flesh inherits the Kingdom (this isn't to say that it is bad—after all, Christ was incarnate—but it is fallen and subject to contradictory passions and finally death). I believe that in the end, all of creation will be restored to its full glory in Christ, as signaled by the resurrection.
God bless you and I hope you have a blessed rest of this important day,
Oh. Wisconsin in the fall! I might have to gather some time and resources and make the journey. Also, very much enjoyed the conversation with the always lively John Heers. We're coming down the final stretch toward Pascha. I hope you have a fruitful Holy Week! Thank you for all the writing and speaking you have done over the last 2 years.
A fruitful week to you too, Basil. I hope to be in Wisconsin: it will depend upon the lifting the current jab requirement, but there seem to be some signs that that might happen.
Paul-Greatly appreciate all of your inspired work. I have shared many of your substack pieces with my dozen book club friends and I selected and will present The Wake at next months club gathering. Should make for a great discussion. Thanks for all that you do. It is resonating with many and I suspect very few are tiring of you speaking of religion or spirituality. Your essays are substack gems.
Around 500 hundred years ago the western civilisation burned alive around 50,000 Human beings. In the name of religion/ Christianity. They burned them alive with the Bible in hand. They accused them of witchcraft making potions/poison and being different. But they didn’t burn them all. They have been planning there revenge. The humans you call the Machine have control through knowledge. They have the code to the book that made men burn women! The bible is the book of Fractunation. You put people in trance using Fractunation then implant commands or false memory while under trance. They have the money. They are the power. There having there revenge. Look deep inside your Soul good Sir and understand that you are a God as I am and every other Human on this planet is connected to us and all our beautiful Lights in side us make the Divine Light. We burned ourselves with bible in hand once before.
Paul, I’m curious: my subscription period runs from October to October: does the special offer remain valid till Oct 2023, i.e. if I pay the reduced price now, the subscription will simply keep running from Oct for the following year? When I pressed the button it just took me to my profile page, with apparently no further action visible. Many thanks.
Just to say my "Billing period renews Jul 9" and I see no way myself to renew at present, to say nothing of a discounted rate. I did find a button to "change" my subscription to monthly or become a Founder Member.
I don't actually know. I just have the ability to make these offers. I suspect they only apply to new subscribers though. you could write to Substack and ask. Sorry not to be more helpful.
On a completely different (but thematic) track. I came across an article on Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. I remember back in college it was a hip read and if you could actually wind your way through (or maybe pretended you did) it was a signal of a great hipster intellectual merit. Nothing against the novel, mind you. I, alas, failed twice to make it very far into it--to my hipster-cred shame!
But according to the article the novel is a premonition of some solid Kingsnorthian themes.
Fascinating and frightful article! I've never approached Pynchon, but just this week watched PT Anderson's "Inherent Vice", based on the Pynchon book. It is a complete trip. Now, I'm intrigued...
The only Pynchon novel I ever made it through was The Crying of Lot 49. It's fairly short. I am curious again with Gravity's Rainbow. But it would be a project.
It's very dreamlike and often confusing. Hallucinatory at times and funny. Pynchon's look back on the end of the hippie dream and the dark forces taking over? A fantastic character study and I had to let go of "trying to understand" and enjoy the ride. Fantastic cast and I think Anderson is one of our modern film geniuses. It has made me extremely curious to read the novel and about Pynchon in general. Thanks again for your linked article!
Paul, nice touch with the Percy French painting. Percy was the kind of man that rarely exists in the West today. He was a civil engineer who became a prolific Irish songwriter, poet and artist.
That we struggle mightily to produce men like that today is further condemnation of The Machine.
Thank you Paul for all your revelatory writings, I have learned a great deal. Orthodox in general do not evangelize but the Orthodox story needs to be told more often and in my opinion who better to tell it than one who has been found and brought into the fold. Please continue to share your faith; I believe it’s what you are being called to do. Have a blessed Pascha.
So glad you're able (hopefully) to get to the midwest. I've been sending links to these essays to many of my Chicago area friends, and they really resonate. Road trip in the fall!
I see your name being referenced by other writers alot ( Medium Substack and the like ) Must be a good thing right? Usually they will say something like " Kingsnorth wants to flee to the wilds" and something about a new type of Christian worship. Anyway the Lord really blessed me in a strange way today. I am honestly sitting here in almost shock. My needs are not always what I would think are the Lords way but dang He Loves unconditionally is all I can say. Happy Easter to you and your readers. Looking forward to more.
Happy Easter! Well, you have one more week to go but I’m Catholic, writing on Good Friday, sliding into Easter and the celebration of the Resurrection.
Just finished a sublime Triduum, in Latin, chants in semi-darkness. Yes, the old Latin rite, still alive in a few churches and extremely packed, mostly by people under 50, hungry for the mysterious and the spiritual. It’s fashionable to shout doom and gloom from the rooftops but there is the light. “Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt” (John 1:5). And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. God is in control. He has always been in control. The deception of the world is to convince people that they’ve been abandoned.
All rule tends to be or become misrule. A slight variation of "Power tends to corrupt." The rule (Kingdom) of God is the only exception because it is not of this world. Why is there so much corruption in "the church?" Because "the church" as it self-identifies is not an arm of God; it is a self-appointed rule, falsely claiming to be of God. Churches, church leaders, and church hierarchies are sons (and daughters) of Balaam, false prophets as he was. The only difference is that Balaam had an ass that spoke truth.
Thanks for the comment. It's a good caution. One point I was trying to make on the podcast was indeed that science and Scientism are not the same thing.
Having said that, the questions raised I think are more complex than this. It's not necessary to believe that humans once rode on dinosaurs or that Genesis 1 is a science textbook to see the obvious questions that Darwinian theory raises about what a human is, what an eternal soul is, and what the 'creation' of humans with a special purpose means if evolutionary theory is correct. This is why I would like to do more reading and thinking. I always assumed, as you do, that there was 'zero conflict' between these things, but you will find that not really to be the case if you come into the Church.
Anyway, as I say, I'd like to think and read more about it over time. If you have any recommended reading, please do let me know.
Thank you Zach for such a superb list of recommendations. Appreciate the trouble you have taken.
Thanks very much indeed for this list, Zach. Much to explore here. I much appreciate you taking the time to lay it out. Some of these I'm familiar with already, but a lot of them I'm not. Now I just need the time to read them ...
As a rule I tend to agree about the debate/argument around creation and evolution in this context. Because I haven't thought about it, I want to work out my thinking by looking at all sides of the discussion. I certainly have questions that are tugging at me since my discussion with John. And as you know, I am deeply sceptical of science, not just as an ideology but as a means of explaining anything much beyond the workings of bits of matter. It is not a great question for me fath-wise, however. You are right that this is much more of an issue in America than in Europe. I suspect that this is down to the Western (protestant) tendency to want answers to everything.
On a side note, I'm pleased to see that you know Fr Stephen Freeman. I have been reading and listening to him since my early explorations into Orthodoxy, and we were briefly in touch. He is a rare online voice of wisdom.
Blessings to you,
Paul
I just watched the video linked below this afternoon. It’s a tremendously powerful and in places moving advocacy for religious faith in the face of the three big things which are often cited by atheists as reasons to undermine it: science, evil, technological solutions to problems. It is by the late UK Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. It’s well worth a listen:
https://youtu.be/0ixGCAe58_A
The neo-Darwinian synthesis is obsolete. Because modern science is idiotic enough to neglect formal and final causes, it's completely blind to the fact that organisms are shaped by the environment. Hell, even Dawkins is finally coming to this realization. Lee Cronin, supposedly the world's most eminent "origin of life" researcher, did not even know what teleology was before a short while ago. They limit themselves to a mechanized version of efficient cause (billiard ball determinism).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the infamous Lenski experiment show nothing ground-breaking? Because an organism is able to adapt to its environment, this proves neo-Darwinian evolution? After over 73,000 generations of E. coli, the most significant result was the development of the Cit+ trait, which enables them to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen. The things are placed in stressful environments, so why wouldn't they change? This was able to be recreated in a matter of 2 weeks in another lab with only 100 generations in the presence of oxygen (the researchers of this experiment said the trait was "switched on" in the genes). This is akin to blowing a constant current of air on a plant to strengthen it. Life is not mechanistic for goodness' sake, so this is not surprising whatsoever. Even so, is the E. coli still not E. coli? The birds on the Galápagos: they're still birds—just because their beaks changed shape means they "evolved"? Natural selection as a full-blown theory of change, by the way, is a narrow hypothesis in that it is limited solely to efficient cause. Most random mutations are harmful anyway, and many new traits come about by “breaking” extant genes (e.g., dogs). There are also various waiting time problems that occur if one is limited to the fossil record, not to mention the limited population sizes, but one does not even have to go this far to demonstrate the stupidity of it.
Furthermore, I can't understand why proponents of naturalism and such think that we're merely stupid apes (to use Sam Harris' description—which is actually not a bad hypothesis by itself, especially when using him as proof) bred to survive and procreate yet have the capacity to discover the hidden truths of the cosmos, such as that we are merely stupid apes (I, for one, love apes). Under their theory of evolution, why are religions and mythologies not true despite being found naturally in every culture? Naturalism isn't very natural. Yet, every other behavior we display is treated as natural. This is all very deliberate on their part. Not to mention, what the hell is suicide, and why does it exist, i.e., how can this trait be passed down? Evolutionary psychology is a stupid tautology: anxiety exists because if we didn't have anxiety we would get eaten. This is another example of limiting everything to the mechanized version of efficient cause. The explanations for beauty are even dumber. Even Nietzsche was skeptical of Darwin due to the anomaly of the existence of the aesthetic sense in this model. Again, however, one still does not have to go this far.
Donald Hoffman, a scientist based in the US, has finally picked up on this (a little behind James & Bergson). He argues that the physics we have is premised on the interface to reality we gathered during the evolutionary process. He has also stated that consciousness causes brain activity, and he is a scientist who has not, for once, equated correlation with causation. One of the problems with this, however, is that he is really describing the perceptual defects of the cultural/technological milieu in which modern science operates, akin to how Descartes' view of reality was shaped by the mechanical print milieu. Print stripped all of the sensuous facts of the word (see "The Gutenberg Galaxy"). Speech is analog and acoustic, not visual. (The scribes, however, retained a human element through the written word.) We become what we behold.
Hoffman's theories of consciousness are resolvable via Aristotle's hylomorphism: matter as potency, form as act. Our physical bodies are how our souls manifest themselves in communion with this earthly world. Looking at brain tissue under the microscope and calling it yourself is a confusion of categories. The brain tissue is there to serve your soul, although, of course, our physical bodies are subject to pains and passions which go against the truer ends of our souls. However, the brain is not the seat of consciousness (i.e., mind or soul); rather, consciousness is the seat of the brain and, for that matter, the whole body. All living things are ensouled matter. We should not toy with our genes because they don't define everything to begin with; they are that way in accordance with the form, or essence, of the organism. This is why nature is such a nuisance to agriculture: it's constantly reforming itself to its true essence.
It's all formal cause. The environment is the formal cause of the content (the medium is the message). Medical research shows that cancer is a way of life (akin to the ancient view that sickness is the result of sinful behavior). Neuroplasticity, epigenetics, etc. are just sexy buzzwords to describe all of this. This modern pathology to categorize everything in such a groundless, abstract manner is not as neutral as moderns think it is. Secularism is yet another flavor; vanilla is a flavor. It's a put-on by stupid apes (like Harris & Dawkins—however, this is an insult to actual apes) to make themselves feel smart. It’s philistinism (and unnatural) to not participate in higher dimensions of reality. New Atheism, for example, is pure tribalism and superstition. Reality is fundamentally poetic. It's as if the modern sciences are a deliberate attempt to deny this. To think of the trillions of dollars wasted each year and the incalculable number of lives and ecosystems destroyed by the ignorance of what was once a part of basic philosophical knowledge…
The nature of the Machine is that it precisely lacks nature. Machines don't heal, nor do the people trapped inside of them. This is why so many people take pharmaceuticals for every little thing. The Machine’s medicine is just as abstract as itself. It is premised on looking at the arrangement of the physical substrate when one is “healthy” and then throwing groundless, abstract forms at the structure in order to forcefully, artificially reshape it to that state when it is “unhealthy,” most likely due to the body & mind's failed attempt to conform to the vacuousness of the Machine in the first place. All of this disease we face is not that natural selection isn't able to act—it's that we are forms (souls), bugs in the Machine, unable to fulfill their telos. Materialists materialize virtue. The Machine is formally caused by the collective materialistic ways of billions of people (Mammon), the products of which are really just groundless, lifeless forms that we can't truly conform to anyway. Science progressively saves us from itself. We already have everything we need. The arts heal more than SSRIs, for they conform us to magical, mystical environments that the contextless environments produced by SSRIs are modeled to replicate in effect. SSRIs give the effects of art on the fly because there's no integration of this in our lives as robots or cogs in the Machine. This is also why various therapies are becoming increasingly popular. Prayer and liturgy are higher, truer forms of this. The supreme example is the divine Logos: Jesus Christ heals the blind.
Many blessings,
Matthew
Thank you. I think we're almost in full agreement, but I'll clarify some things perhaps just as some food for thought.
Plato and Aristotle were relatively ignorant of the effects of technology. All human artifacts are media, as in they structure, or mediate, experience (see the work of the Catholic Marshall McLuhan; he was a metaphysician, not a communications theorist as everyone wrongly has it). They skew our perception in accordance to their form. In some sense, the pre-moderns took this for granted.
Introducing the iPhone into a technologically simple village will completely alter the whole structure of it. This is not determinism; it's how we unwittingly willfully respond to the temptations of technology (Adam), the effects of which can be described via medieval faculty psychology (for these purposes, the sensus communis; psychē = soul). For example, you having to put a lot of interpretation into who I am due to the lack of sensory data to go off of is an example of this. For this reason, Twitter allows people to paint the worst pictures imaginable of their interlocutors, leading to sharp tribal divisions, conspiratorial paranoia, and manically comical representation. It's patent witchcraft.
The phonetic alphabet divides non-visual speech (totally analog) into meaningless bits of sounds, phonemes, and assigns them each an otherwise groundless, arbitrary visual component. The adoption of this alphabet stripped us from the magical acoustical space of the pre-literates by placing emphasis solely on the visual (Plato vs. the poets) and led to the syllogism (which is totally abstract). This is seen in the linear, continuous nature of formal logic (dialectic). The phonetic alphabet also led to the invention of the concept of visual space as well as other abstract visual continua like Democritean atomism and Euclidean space itself. Acoustic space, on the other hand, can be described as the center of a sphere without boundaries, where space is made by the thing in itself. Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber, described that his senses became much more acute and involved in his environment when he lived in the wilderness. He said he could tell the source of a sound without even looking at it, even if it was the mere shuffling of some leaves underfoot. Despite claiming to be an atheist, he rediscovered the old spirits of the forest and worshipped them (e.g., Grandfather Rabbit); he was really a pagan.
What happens to children (at least here in the US) is that they undergo an education system that imposes figure-without-ground thinking (e.g., standardized tests rip passages from their original context and place them in a random order), which is ultimately what the "disenchantment" feeling is. When you're a child, you have very acute senses for subtlety and nuance and easily see the spiritual core of reality. Everything is essentially anagogical. "Santa Claus" is the spirit of St. Nicholas and gift-giving in the air: it's a very real thing indeed. This is not measurable by scientific instruments because they are inherently designed to measure what we design it to measure of physical reality. Even Sartre said that the the eye exists because of seeing, the nose because of smelling, the ear because of hearing, and sexual organs because of sex, not the other way around.
A child's serotonin levels being up is also not the bottom of it, for what is doing this *feeling* anyway? Again, this form of reductionism is another instance of our technology totally ruining our perception of reality. Phenomenologically speaking, this is absurd, as it is on a plentitude of other levels that are way too multitudinous to lay out here. "Serotonin" as a descriptor in most of these cases is an abstract mental object of the mind, and its actual physical correlate is a form. All of these "chemicals" are ultimately physical correlates to our existence as spiritual beings in these mortal, fleshly bodies. Matter doesn't *feel* itself—this is the soul (qualia). Matter (potency) serves spirit, so it's a physical correlate (however, this isn't to say our mortal bodies don't have their own passions—they very much do indeed). Physical reality is a substrate imprinted upon by form.
Many scientists deliberately abuse their power to abstract everything so as to tyrannize and intimidate unsuspecting minds. Like I said, it's a total put-on. They're akin to witches who cast spells (figure) which hypnotize people from reality (ground). This is not a conspiracy theory—just look at the power they wield and the amount of damage they're doing. Their vision of reality is a superstition without any spiritual benefits. Modern science has been carefully engineered over the past four centuries to dominate and control nature. An AI chatbot resembles humans from the outside and you can make a lot of predictions about humans with them, but internally it looks nothing like them. This, I strongly believe, is the essence of modern science (after all, it is based on alchemy). I.e., it is merely some elaborate grammar that we've engineered to dominate and control nature. In objective terms similar to their own, a computer is just some fancy silicon chips that harness electricity in ways that our minds can easily assign meanings to. To other creatures, this is totally meaningless. Just because an airplane flies doesn't prove materialism; it's just another way we've controlled matter to do stuff for us. Also, what is energy in the first place? Physicalists take existence, matter, energy, and information for granted. Information is form. Metaphysically speaking, the ground of everything is God.
Furthermore, I wish not to imply that "evolution" isn't real. However, I am saying it's a nebulous term that has become a buzzword for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Being *shaped* by "pressures" is formal cause. Also, a new species is a new species just because scientists slap a new label on it? Modern science is all *visual*, negating all the other sensuous facts of reality. This is complimentary to the various media in which it operates (e.g., textbooks and abstract laboratories/white lab coats). One mustn't be intimidated by the guise scientists put on; they're philosophically and spiritually very illiterate (which is ultimate reality). Again, the level of confusion is so deep that it is impossible to adequately expound upon here.
Additionally, healing, for example, is formally caused. There's evidence that cells can modify themselves, although this is not surprising at all. In fact, this isn't an example of emergence (see David Bentley Hart's work). It's because everything is done in accordance to what our souls need in order to operate in this earthly, physical, fallen world. The ground is the soul, while the figure is the body (yet, even this is a metaphysical grammar—however, grammars are vessels of truth, though not necessarily absolutely perspectival). Our souls themselves have a telos, as do the various organs of our physical bodies. However, I don't believe that flesh inherits the Kingdom (this isn't to say that it is bad—after all, Christ was incarnate—but it is fallen and subject to contradictory passions and finally death). I believe that in the end, all of creation will be restored to its full glory in Christ, as signaled by the resurrection.
God bless you and I hope you have a blessed rest of this important day,
Matthew
Oh. Wisconsin in the fall! I might have to gather some time and resources and make the journey. Also, very much enjoyed the conversation with the always lively John Heers. We're coming down the final stretch toward Pascha. I hope you have a fruitful Holy Week! Thank you for all the writing and speaking you have done over the last 2 years.
A fruitful week to you too, Basil. I hope to be in Wisconsin: it will depend upon the lifting the current jab requirement, but there seem to be some signs that that might happen.
Paul-Greatly appreciate all of your inspired work. I have shared many of your substack pieces with my dozen book club friends and I selected and will present The Wake at next months club gathering. Should make for a great discussion. Thanks for all that you do. It is resonating with many and I suspect very few are tiring of you speaking of religion or spirituality. Your essays are substack gems.
Many thanks James!
Around 500 hundred years ago the western civilisation burned alive around 50,000 Human beings. In the name of religion/ Christianity. They burned them alive with the Bible in hand. They accused them of witchcraft making potions/poison and being different. But they didn’t burn them all. They have been planning there revenge. The humans you call the Machine have control through knowledge. They have the code to the book that made men burn women! The bible is the book of Fractunation. You put people in trance using Fractunation then implant commands or false memory while under trance. They have the money. They are the power. There having there revenge. Look deep inside your Soul good Sir and understand that you are a God as I am and every other Human on this planet is connected to us and all our beautiful Lights in side us make the Divine Light. We burned ourselves with bible in hand once before.
Allan- I rushed in where I shouldn't have. I will look further into the matter. Thank you. -Jack
I admit it has taken 40 odd years to get my head around. But the last couple of years have left me with no confusion just grieve.
If there is anything that I can help you with what I said I would be glad to Paul.
John Heers through WAWTAR is shaping the way I want to have conversations, especially around Orthodoxy.
Paul, I’m curious: my subscription period runs from October to October: does the special offer remain valid till Oct 2023, i.e. if I pay the reduced price now, the subscription will simply keep running from Oct for the following year? When I pressed the button it just took me to my profile page, with apparently no further action visible. Many thanks.
Just to say my "Billing period renews Jul 9" and I see no way myself to renew at present, to say nothing of a discounted rate. I did find a button to "change" my subscription to monthly or become a Founder Member.
I don't actually know. I just have the ability to make these offers. I suspect they only apply to new subscribers though. you could write to Substack and ask. Sorry not to be more helpful.
No problem - it probably is only for newcomers.
Happy and restful Easter!
On a completely different (but thematic) track. I came across an article on Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. I remember back in college it was a hip read and if you could actually wind your way through (or maybe pretended you did) it was a signal of a great hipster intellectual merit. Nothing against the novel, mind you. I, alas, failed twice to make it very far into it--to my hipster-cred shame!
But according to the article the novel is a premonition of some solid Kingsnorthian themes.
https://compactmag.com/article/pynchon-s-prophecy
Now that hipsterdom has fallen it might be worth giving the novel another shot. Maybe.
Paul- The Abbey has been quite a ride thus far. I am interested in how this phase wraps up...and what comes next. -Jack
Fascinating and frightful article! I've never approached Pynchon, but just this week watched PT Anderson's "Inherent Vice", based on the Pynchon book. It is a complete trip. Now, I'm intrigued...
Did you find the movie worthwhile?
The only Pynchon novel I ever made it through was The Crying of Lot 49. It's fairly short. I am curious again with Gravity's Rainbow. But it would be a project.
It's very dreamlike and often confusing. Hallucinatory at times and funny. Pynchon's look back on the end of the hippie dream and the dark forces taking over? A fantastic character study and I had to let go of "trying to understand" and enjoy the ride. Fantastic cast and I think Anderson is one of our modern film geniuses. It has made me extremely curious to read the novel and about Pynchon in general. Thanks again for your linked article!
Paul, nice touch with the Percy French painting. Percy was the kind of man that rarely exists in the West today. He was a civil engineer who became a prolific Irish songwriter, poet and artist.
That we struggle mightily to produce men like that today is further condemnation of The Machine.
I believe the witch hunts were just cleaning up the last of The Templars and Gnostics.
Thank you Paul for all your revelatory writings, I have learned a great deal. Orthodox in general do not evangelize but the Orthodox story needs to be told more often and in my opinion who better to tell it than one who has been found and brought into the fold. Please continue to share your faith; I believe it’s what you are being called to do. Have a blessed Pascha.
So glad you're able (hopefully) to get to the midwest. I've been sending links to these essays to many of my Chicago area friends, and they really resonate. Road trip in the fall!
I see your name being referenced by other writers alot ( Medium Substack and the like ) Must be a good thing right? Usually they will say something like " Kingsnorth wants to flee to the wilds" and something about a new type of Christian worship. Anyway the Lord really blessed me in a strange way today. I am honestly sitting here in almost shock. My needs are not always what I would think are the Lords way but dang He Loves unconditionally is all I can say. Happy Easter to you and your readers. Looking forward to more.
Happy Easter! Well, you have one more week to go but I’m Catholic, writing on Good Friday, sliding into Easter and the celebration of the Resurrection.
Just finished a sublime Triduum, in Latin, chants in semi-darkness. Yes, the old Latin rite, still alive in a few churches and extremely packed, mostly by people under 50, hungry for the mysterious and the spiritual. It’s fashionable to shout doom and gloom from the rooftops but there is the light. “Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt” (John 1:5). And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. God is in control. He has always been in control. The deception of the world is to convince people that they’ve been abandoned.
All rule tends to be or become misrule. A slight variation of "Power tends to corrupt." The rule (Kingdom) of God is the only exception because it is not of this world. Why is there so much corruption in "the church?" Because "the church" as it self-identifies is not an arm of God; it is a self-appointed rule, falsely claiming to be of God. Churches, church leaders, and church hierarchies are sons (and daughters) of Balaam, false prophets as he was. The only difference is that Balaam had an ass that spoke truth.