Thank you for this. It struck me, not all that long ago, that here, in the (Mid) West, the thing we most readily 'worship' is a belief that 'The Free Market' will save us. It will bring justice and equity. All we have to do is believe, loose the fetters upon it, and, I suppose, clap our hands. That has replaced theism of all other beliefs. And that is turning out to be a fraud; a false God, one of powers and principalities. I'm not clapping.
A heresy is said to be something that is very nearly true. Free markets are often good things. What you have brought up is Free Market Ideology, and that fits in well with Paul's essays, current and past.
One of the first things I heard from Paul years back was a conversation with former AB Rowan Williams, and it struck a real chord for me, and along this line, too Thomas - he'd noted that the tendency of The Machine was to "plow up the entire earth to turn it to money", or words to that effect. Out-of-mainstream economists observe that the bent of Money itself is to get hold of the rest of it, and concentrate its power, and it's working: More unhoused folks on the street here, more deteriorated housing stock, more struggling for resources, with the excuse that "...it's just the workings of The Market", and the concentration of wealth is speeding up. Paul's also raised my awareness that the techbros in Silicon Valley have their eyes on the disturbing prize of controlling our data and our interaction with the world and each other in pursuit of the false God of the Singularity. Worse, and more earthly than that, the same folks are getting their fingers into the issuance, control and manipulation of growing amounts of trans-national currency, which won't end well for most of us. To Edwin's point below, practically nobody with any sort of authority can even begin to suggest that our cultivated neediness for consumer validation might be better tempered with limits in some Wendell Berry-esque understanding of our role on the planet, or with concern for our neighbors near or far, or that there's also a future that doesn't require endless growth. If they did, there'd be tar and feathers on the national stage. We / I have been well trained to be good consumers, commodifying the earth and its resources for our pleasure in ways increasingly hedonistic; and, I think are turned into consumables ourselves. I do, however, see hints of refusal to 'conform' with this old set of assumptions with people my sons' age and younger. I hope its all in time, but I'm reading some of the same signs in the culture that Paul shared here. A most insightful piece, I think, and there is something vile about the ability and willingness of a certain type of personality for the turning of a crowd into a raging mob.
Just a hunch, the bigger the empires the bigger the dualities? And there is more opportunity for real horror in a complex society with its weaving of fantasy and contested symbols? Who rules, indeed? Look after the olive trees in Palestine.
Whoofff. The sorta-monastic cleric Richard Rohr's been writing to that effect for the several years I've been reading him, so, yup, prob'ly. Thanks for this lens.
I think so, the market itself is theoretically neutral, it’s the people who use it who abuse it. Money is ‘only’ a means of exchange, but some people end up having a lot more than others. Is that an inherent fault of the market or its inhabitants, and if it is, how do we correct it without making the market even less free?
Not only games rigged in their favor but control of the most basic commodity for survival—food. It’s obvious how contaminated the food supply is to people who either can’t afford to eat organic food (and I’m beginning to wonder if there even is such a thing or another well promoted scam) or don’t grow any themselves. I read about a new product being developed by Richard Branson, Zuckerberg, Gates and Bezos called BIOMILQ. Local women donate breast tissue and milk for a Target gift card for this start-up enterprise. Several of these same men (and Elon Musk’s brother) are already involved in fake chicken breast production. This product has already been approved in California for sale.
Something very sinister is here and, even if this has nothing to do with any supernatural force, one thing is obvious to me: greed and the love of power have found a home in the souls of some very powerful people.
Of course organic food is rigged. From the moment someone figured out they could make money on selling food as "organic", it became a scam. That led to the promulgation of standards for organic food, which producers promptly learned how to game to their benefit, and to use to drive out competitors.
Was not Goodhart's Law taught from old, that "Once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"?
When we last "spoke"", I said "the power to start your own small business is so treasured here in Eastern Europe, especially" I thought that the heart of the capitalism system, actually. Though I decried crony capitalism. To me, Facism is government hand-in-hand with business. - - But all this is neither here nor there, the important thing, as I am to be around, is to learn what you mean by capitalism. Which is fascinating. I am not such an idiot that I do not wish to learn. If I may - the term nationalism means many things to many, some evil, some helpful, some in-between. Is that possible with capitalism?
This was the most amazing essay. I can spend hours studying it. I'll have questions but I just want to study for a day or two. Thank you for this.
I suggest picking up Hannah Arendt's "On the Origins of Totalitarianism" (self-explanatory) and Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation", which is a fine dissection of the rationale (and rationalizations) which followed the English industrial revolution.
Thank you. You see I read Arendt as opposing Totalitarianism. I'm in Eastern Europe. Communist ideology has killed tens of times more people than Hitler. Both are horrible totalitarianism, but I fear Marxist inspired totalitarianism so much more, and I think much more likely to take power, with (apology to Lewis) hideous strength.
I have not rad Polahyi and will take a look. I'm pretty much trying to be open here, to see why "capitalism" is a bad word (acknowledging it can go wrong) - To me it is the best of all the bad systems I know. Coming from two Grandfathers who had small businesses, I think it most often helps families and communities tremendously. Look at the horror world of countries where it is/was forbidden. Even worse than the West, yes?
Dictionary, capitalism is "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit:" As long as we help the poor (govt should be partly socialism I see that) then I think this works.
The poor suffer far less under capitalism. Human nature (sin) eliminates the possibility to practice pure communism. Every time "people's republics" lead not to communism but to immense suffering and death.
Forbidding ownership for profit, we know historically, is the road to terrible suffering and ruin for families and societies.
I always assumed that a ‘free market’ works in a free society where there is moral or economic parity between the parties. In our perfect world the butcher sells his meat to the baker who sells his bread to the butcher. They both sell their wares to the chieftain who has a duty to provide for their safety as well as resolving any disputes. I suppose what you refer to as capitalism is the imbalance of wealth and power. Probably one for another wonderful essay!
I grew up an Evangelical Conservative, and this idea underpins a great deal of the worldview. I notice that many boomer conservatives are absolutely unable to question this axiom, but younger people aren't so married to it.
For me, eventually I figured out that the Free Market was working against us too, taking us for a ride; to name a timely example, literally poisoning us with toxic chemicals in food that big agribusiness corps gladly inflict upon the American people for maximum profit and addictiveness, while selling less poisonous versions of the same thing overseas to meet their stricter public health standards and laws. Ah, the joys of the "Free Market!"
Depending on my mood, I am amused and/or horrified at the facile responses of commenters/trolls who say one or another notion or policy is "Economics 101" and therefore inevitable while not noting that the concept of market failure is also usually included in "Economics 101."
Absolutely. 'The market' is just mammon in disguise, I think. Generally, the two factions in our political world have their own idols. For the right, it's 'the market', for the left it's 'justice' or 'equality.' There are many minor gods, but those seem to be the Big Two.
It was either back in 2017 or 2018 that I first found myself explicitly thinking about the forces underpinning the modern world as a sort of pantheon of divinized/demonic personalities. I began to write a sort of hybrid between a short story and a catalogue which I titled “In the Hall of the Modern Gods” with the concept that there was some endless temple full of gods and their worshippers that I could visit in my dreams. It became a place that I would add trends I was noticing from the news with short vignettes about the nature of these various “gods” and their worshippers. It would almost write itself. Some gods were ancient archetypes—Aries, for example, made an appearance in a guise which would likely have been recognizable to the Greeks; others were definitely unique to the modern world (I was compelled to name “Compounded Interest” a neglected, though exceedingly powerful, son of Mammon who would threaten to usurp his father).
I write in it less than I once did, but I return to it often. While obviously fictive, I can’t shake the impression that what we are seeing in the news has a semblance of personality and willfulness about it.
Great observation. I increasingly think in this way too, but I have never written it down. I'd love to see you publish who is in your hall. I see that you have an empty Substack there ...
Very well, I have been meaning to post for awhile, but have always found Substack's user interface rather confusing and not messed with it. I just publish a few of them, and plan on publishing more in the coming days, as I have time to edit.
The trend here in the US over the past decade is an increasingly frantic attempt by our ruling class to fuse these ‘Big Two’ and denounce any ideas running counter to them as heresies. Anyone who questions any tenet of neoliberal economics or neoconservative foreign policy is either accused of being some flavor of bigot, or a ‘Russian asset’ and then shunned from polite society, legitimate political discourse, censored, etc.
Looking at the literal expression : "free" and "market"... But I'm not sure that I know what the words mean any more. My open air market where I buy most of my food and vegetables is a good place, with good people whom I know individually. And the people selling work with no roof over their heads, in all weather, and that makes them.. different. Not comfort loving. Not.. (too) bourgeois. And "free", what does that mean ? "Free" as in, not a slave, or as in not having to fork out "filthy" lucre to buy ?
We could spend years on this site talking about the word "free"...
One thing that I do know, though. Lots of people talk about the evils of capitalism, but they almost never make the connection to a world where everybody should ? have the right to work for a living to make money to be "free" and independant to be able to buy the things they want. And be judged on their... merit. Because working for money for a living goes hand in hand with the capitalist dream. That's why the situation is so messy, in my opinion.
Thanks, Debra, I'm grateful for the conversation here as I'm presently developing values of how I can be "in the world without being of the world". For me, it's started with reducing my 'footprint' with the predatory financialists and their supporters among the tech monopolists, and the other monopolists and consumerists wherever I become aware of them skulking around. I repair old things for use, and live smaller than I used to and more simply (even if I don't have a composting toilet. Yet.) Something Paul had suggested a year or so back in a presentation to the Estonian Aldous Huxley society: "...to set your boundaries and to refuse to step over them. To be a conscientious objector to The Machine." There's no easy way, but there are things a conscientious person can do.
I like the idea if reducing my footprint with predatory financialists, except that the man who takes care of our financial portfolio (!!!!) has come to dinner at our house on several occasions ; we have been to his house, know his wife, and he is not a predator. He can see that my husband and I are not like most of his other clients, and it intrigues him. This year I sent him an E-Mail telling him that I had noticed that he was not really happy in his job : unsatisfied, and wanting more out of a job. While at our house, he pulled out a book about the occult. He hasn't answered me, but... I am sure that he is thinking about it.
The man who comes to our house to take care of our computer because we are too stupid to do it, and can fork out the money, can talk with me (an unrepentant shooter off of the mouth...) for some time while working on the computer, and both of us enjoy our conversation. He agrees with a lot of what I say (preach ?) about technology...
As for setting boundaries, I wish that I could... save myself, but who can save himself ? I'm pretty sure I can't. Today I have fallen down the black hole of the Internet. Tomorrow ?
Shopping at an open market IS a step away from the global financialists, I think; I suspect your personal financial advisor is just a person doing a job, and not one of the transnational actors selling digital 'currencies' or torturing the financial exchanges for profit, or running 'social media' companies, which are becoming the same people. Thanks for sharing back. Tim
Considering how much of American Christianity acknowledges or outright worships the Prosperity Gospel (Jesus wants you to be rich! Buy my book!), I don't think there is any doubt. And since the closest thing we have to shared culture is what entertainment we're consuming, we are locked into the business-entertainment complex.
Revelation 13 may be coming or what John Michael Greer describes in his book The Long Descent
Or something else. History is filled with horror and who are we to say it can not happen to us.
If you had told a German in July 1914 what was going to happen to his country and indeed across the world in the next 31 years he would have rejected it right out of hand has having any possibility.
Revelation 13
The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.[b]
9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.
10 “If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”[d]
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.
The Beast out of the Earth
11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.
While psychoanalysis seems to me a load of nonsense, Jung was on to something big with his theory of archetypes. Bruno Bettleheim’s book on the enduring importance of archetypes in fairy tales and child development is very solid. Waldorf education has (or had before it was eviscerated by wokeness) a powerful understanding of the needs of young children for the calmness and security of traditional sex roles in a family and the need for early education teachers to model the serene mother with handicraft and homemaking as a social art. Rudolph Steiner’s religious ideas are a bit off the rails (see anthroposophy) but his ideas on early childhood education and care of the disabled are spot on. The latter made him persona non grata with Hitler, always a good sign. Bending these archetypes out of shape is destructive of the whole paradigm. Five years ago the Waldorf fair at our area school featured a puppet show of “the woodcutter and her wife” read by a man in a dress. So much of progressivism is not about building something new but about destroying something beautiful.
I like to think that we do not really have the power to destroy, because LOGICALLY that power is God's. When you think about the phrase from Job that I return to : "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.", it gives you perspective on this, and enables you to understand that Man's behavior is a symptom of his... suffering, his helplessness, his folly, but not... his power.
Also, something that I learned from my children about destruction : the small child who is really best equipped to experience total helplessness in frustration, asserts his initial act in emerging as self in destruction, because he does not yet have the means to create. It is so much more difficult to create than to destroy. So.. creation and destruction have their roles in our lives. This is.. not comfortable at all for us to think or experience.
Very true. But if as Saint Paul said “when I was a child I thought as a child….but when I became a man I put away childish things” many of us seem stuck, unable to grow up. And yes, you are correct, it is extremely uncomfortable to live through such times.
I am not Jungian at all, rather I am rather an enemy of Jung and his way of thinking which is very popular in American society, and has been for a long time. I was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst, read a lot of Freud, in French translation, but with a German speaking mentor to point out the betrayals that French (and English...) translation had inflicted on Freud's thought. And I am very indebted to Christopher Lasch as an American intellectual who had a very good understanding of the Freudian approach to consciousness, and man's place in society.
Freud gives primary importance to the person's story/history, and the way that he/she tells it, while basically Jung is much more interested in... repeating patterns, and generalization. The problem being that when you indulge in too much generalization, the particulars are abrased, and disappear under the bulldozer of generalization. Modern medecine (and psychiatry) in the Western world is about applying generalized protocols arrived at with statistical analysis, and not listening to the particular person to hear his/her STORY. I believe that you can't treat A PERSON only by applying generalized protocols, mainly because in order to work well, treatment has to address the person, in a relationship with a doctor. A... flesh and blood person ? I believe that would be best, because AT ROCK BOTTOM we are flesh and blood persons, subject to birth and death. Even Christian talk about resurrection cannot get around (or should not get around) the rock bottom observation that in order to be resurrected, YOU HAVE TO DIE first.
I am simplifying this a lot here, and there is much generalization in what I am saying, unfortunately...
You are certainly in a much stronger position than me to hold an opinion on psychoanalysis, and what you say makes sense. It reminds me of how all antidepressants are supposed to be dispensed with an understanding that there will be follow up by a therapist, but in reality is prescribed by family doctors with no oversight. There is simply no meaningful way for the numbers of people on antidepressants to receive the counseling they need.
People’s complete avoidance of the subject of death, their obliviousness of it’s inevitability and blithe assumption of heaven never cease to amaze me.
I have told people here before, but you might be interested in finding the work of Paul Tournier, a Swiss Christian G.P. who wrote "The Medecine of the Person", and many other books on the subject of applying generalized protocols to treat illness, and cutting down, or out, on listening to the patient's story, and accompanying him in changing his ways. Tournier wrote for quite some time, and his books are still in print in English translation. In "Medecine of the Person", published in around 1936 ? 1940 ? he has a very perspicacious analysis of where Freud came up short in psychoanalysis, and the capital role of confession in the Catholic Church. I can't quote it to you ; you will have to read the book to find it.
There is a fair amount in the book that will surprise and maybe dismay 21st century English speaking readers, but what he says about the role of faith and belief in healing, the role of honestly examining one's conscience is still true, in my opinion. Has Man really changed all that much after all this time ? I think not.
Brilliant archetypal analysis of the larger forces at 'play' in these times. I have done a course with the Assisi Institute on Archetypal Pattern Analysis, based on the work of Jung, and your analysis is excellent! Not that I am an expert in such ideas, but I have personally found appreciating the archetypal perspective very freeing, and adding depth of meaning unavailable elsewhere. What I thought was missing from your article, and perhaps to come, was reference to the larger plan of the Good/God. Focusing on Wotan/Satan/the Void of faith and belief can lead for some, to a sense of despair, and hopelessness. Humans have a bias towards the negative, and I think there is also a vast, archetypal force at play, ushering in the new. for sure, we are in a time of chaos, but chaos in its best meaning, which is a necessary re-formation of elements and parts, so that the old can give way to the new. Those with a eye to see are responsible to help usher in the new, that which is being born, in a way which protects the newborn whatever. As good midwives do in real births, protecting the emerging life from fear, and panic is essential. So, I hope you can write some more from this hopeful perspective.
Thank you Paul. I read this just as I was getting ready to pray Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and just after I completed the Ember Days Michaelmas fast last weekend, so you seeded ground that was well tilled. September 29 is the Feast Day of St. Michael. May he continue to defend us in battle and protect us from the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
In popular discourse we're presented with the idea that all of a sudden, one day, Hitler showed up and bewitched a whole mild-mannered civilization and turned it into a murder machine. This narrative omits the whole series of events where Germany basically got scapegoated for the Great War, was traumatized and humiliated by ridiculous punitive measures in the aftermath, and descended into degenerate cultural anarchy during the Weimar era.
By the time Tiny Mustache Man showed up, the German people had been thoroughly beaten down and traumatized, humiliated, and demoralized. Thus, when a charismatic strongman offers a provocative vision to capture the national imagination, it wasn't a hard sell. The land had been, so to speak, cleared out, tilled, and fertilized, so when seeds of Wotan showed up, they easily took root.
Future iterations of societal control would nail down the correct Huxleyan proportions of comfort and slower paced revolution; a lot of things in Weimar Germany look a lot like the 2020s sexual degeneracy, but in our case it took about 60 years to reach that point, compared to Germany's decade or so, and it happened in the background of the Machine sweetly humming, in contrast to the miserable conditions of the average post-Great War German. Slow and steady wins the race, I guess, when you're trying to demoralize a civilization.
Ah, Progressive Wokeness; the Sermon on the Mount without God, love, or forgiveness, what an apt way to put it. Four years ago I thought it was at the precipice of a total takeover, now I'm not so sure. Everybody seems to be very tired of it, just as everyone now seems quite tired of the pandemic propaganda and the polite thing to do seems to be just not talk about it and act like it never happened.
Wokeness was the leading candidate for our national bewitching in America, but I'm increasingly doubtful it has much staying power. Public indifference, if not hostility, toward the narratives the mainstream media puts out about big issues like war in Eastern Europe or the Middle East suggests those have flopped as well. Progressive students protesting for weeks on end for Palestine strike me as the giant snake eating its own tail, so to speak. It's hard for me to see where we go from here, but I wonder if we're near the end of the overlords pulling the levers of power making any pretense at all of having public support. Maybe I'm just feeling overly optimistic in the moment, but it feels like the spell has been broken and most people aren't believing what they've been told anymore - or at least, not accepting it without reservation. Where things go from here seems to be getting increasingly murky.
I'm not sure about that 'popular discourse.' Maybe it's popular now on the Internet, I don't know, but I remember studying the rise of Hitler in school, and everybody knew, then as now, what the reasons were for his unlikely rise - the non-spiritual reasons, anyway. Every historian still knows this, and I imagine every A-Level student. What has changed is the culture war, in which Good Progressives face off against Bad Fascists and we're all encouraged to ignore the cause of everything.
I agree that wokeness is a phase. It is not the basis of some future tyranny (or indeed paradise) because it is fundamentally based on falsehoods. It's a fantasy ideology that can only be indulged in by the comfortable.
I’ve long felt that Western Christianity has forgotten, or at least sorely underestimates, spiritual warfare. Perhaps because we have become so spiritually complacent that the battle is over, in a sense? When various third-world missionaries supported by our church visit stateside for a bit, the stories they tell of tangible spiritual warfare almost seem made up.
I’ve been reading “Welcome to the Orthodox Church” by Frederica Mathewes-Green (thank you, Paul for recommending this book in one of your posts). She writes:
“The devil has largely disappeared from Western Christian theology. I think this was one unanticipated effect of St. Anselm’s theory, it presents salvation primarily as an interaction between the Father and the Son, and the devil has no practical role. Of course, people did not immediately eliminate the devil from their understanding of the world, but in time he began to fade. He became an extra standing at the edge of the stage with a tail and pitchfork, while the Father and Son got all the lines. Even among conservative Christians, many don’t believe in the devil anymore, or they consider him irrelevant. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make him go away.
“Orthodox would say that there is not only evil resulting from the brokenness of creation, but also the deliberate, malicious work of demons, intelligent beings that hate the human race."
My belief is that spiritual warfare and physical warfare became co-mingled during the Cold War, and when the Vietnam War began to show the incongruities of that mingling people were happy to abandon spiritual warfare. For an example see https://todaysmartyrs.org/index.php/movie-review-the-field-afar/
Hmmm. I would rather that those horses NOT be prophetic.
Can my little individual /personal voice have any... power over all of this ?
If you read or see "Macbeth", you can hear how Macbeth receives from some rather shady.. not very feminine looking old ladies the prediction/prophecy that he will become king, and then everything falls apart, largely because of HIS WIFE'S AMBITIONS FOR HIM. At one point he says, "if chance will have me King, then chance may crown me", but then he is pushed into ACTING and making conscious, voluntary choices, etc etc., and we know how the story ends.
Pretty depressing.
No, I would rather things not go (down) this route. "Macbeth" is a terrifying play. One for our times.
Thank you for your insightful commentary, as always.
I likewise have found the Jungian account of archetypal forces helpful in making sense of our times. However, in my analysis, I can't convince myself that there is anything unique about the Christian story, or woke progressivism, with respect to how these archetypal patterns play out on the worldly stage. I see enlightenment rationalism/woke progressivism/transhumanism (a continuum, in my opinion) as doing to modern society precisely what Christianity did to the ancients - overturning the foundational story and thereby precipitating a fall and descent into chaos.
The Paganism of the ancient Greek and Roman societies gave rise to robust and thriving civilizations. As a foundational story, Paganism "worked." The early Christians, and then Emperor Constantine, upended the traditional stories and replaced them with the Christian one. And the Roman Empire thereafter proceeded to decline and fall, while continuing to engage in the sorts of atrocities and corrupt behavior that plagued the Empire (and all other civilizations) in its Pagan days.
While the Christian story may have saved souls (I have no way of knowing one way or another), it did not save the Empire, and, if anything, likely contributed to its decline and fall. See, e.g., Gibbons. Emperor Julian the Apostate saw this coming, and started his reactionary Make Rome Pagan Again movement, but to no avail. His critiques of the new ideology, and calls for reverence of the Pagan traditions that built civilization, seem quite resonant with the critiques you offer here. In both cases, we have the archetypal pattern of the forces of Progress against the forces of Tradition, with Progress inevitably winning out and then bringing society into a death spiral.
Progress for the Roman Empire was Christianity. Progress for the modern West is woke progressivism. Tradition for the Roman Empire was Paganism. Tradition for the modern West is Christianity. I see Obama as the Emperor Constantine who made woke progressivism the official religion of the Empire. Those of us (including myself) who reject the new foundational story being foisted upon us by the elites are the apostates now. We are the heirs of Emperor Julian. And, like Julian, our voices, however reasonable, will be drowned out by the forces of Progress. We can't and won't win. Like the Roman Empire in the wake of Emperor Constantine, the modern West is declining and will fall. All we can hope for on a worldly level is that the fall is not a worst-case scenario (nuclear holocaust, mass starvation, extermination camps, etc.).
You say: "Believing ourselves to be rational creatures possessed of free will and limitless choice, we are in fact continuing to play out strange and twisted variants on the Christian story. The result is that we are putty in the hands of dark forces that we once believed in and now pretend not to." But looking at history, it is pretty tough to argue that humanity was NOT putty in the hands of these dark forces back when Christianity was the foundational story. When and where was this Golden Age? While I'm as inclined as anyone to romanticize historical periods (who wouldn't want to be an ancient Druid??), the handiwork of these dark forces is readily apparent across time and space, without much seeming regard to foundational stories.
But ultimately I arrive at what I think is a somewhat similar place to you - the tower of Babel always falls. Building the Kingdom of Man always ends in calamity. There is no refuge in the world. It is, to use Buddhist terminology, Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha. Inherently impermanent, not-self, and dissatisfactory.
So how do we survive? Well, in a worldly sense, we don't. We're all going to die. Modern civilization will, sooner or later, crumble (or explode). There's nothing we can do on the broader stage to stop these archetypal patterns from playing out. The task before us, instead, is a spiritual one. We must recognize the dark forces at play, often by seeing them first in the world and then identifying them within ourselves. As Jung points out, often what angers us most in the outside world is a manifestation of our own worst personal demons, our shadow. As we bring conscious awareness to these forces, their grip on us weakens, thereby creating space for the Better Angels to manifest.
Are there eternal consequences for how we fair in this struggle? I have no idea. But at the very least, engaging in this struggle as if there were is the surest pathway towards psychological survival and peace. Engaging in the cultural and political wars, on the other hand, throws opens the doors of our psyche to the darkest of forces (speaking from experience). Anyway, these are my rambling, half-baked thoughts. I'm looking forward to more thought-provoking essays from you on these issues.
I don't think there was ever a Golden Age, though some times are better than others. I am going to be arguing against the notion of 'Christian civilisation' in my Erasmus Lecture next month. I don't think Christ came to build us a civilisation, or to teach us how to build one. He pretty obviously instructs his followers to reject the world at every level. So yes, it's all a spiritual task. In that sense, culture is a distraction.
Great, I’m looking forward to hearing your Erasmus Lecture. “He pretty obviously instructs his followers to reject the world at every level.” That is radical stuff in the best possible way and very much the sort of conversation I’m interested in reading/hearing more of.
To be in the world, but not of it. Pretty radical stuff!
It always makes me chuckle when people dismiss Christianity as some sort of state sponsored control mechanism when in it's purest sense it's encouraging people to be the exact opposite of what the system needs to fuel it.
Sadly though, the Church of England, IMHO and experience, is, in many ways, just that. It's embracing of woke culture, despite being directly contrary to the teachings of The Gospels, being a prime example. After a relatively brief dalliance with the C of E, I realised what an awful mass of contradictions it has allowed itself to become and settled on treading the Orthodox path.
I suppose the question of how and when to engage in cultural/political discussion turns on one's intentions. If one's intent is to change the prevailing culture or politics, then one is engaging in the cultural/political wars in a spiritually destructive way. Jordan Peterson, for instance, strikes me as a prominent example of an otherwise wise man who has fallen into this trap. Not judging, I've done it too (and still do sometimes).
However, if one's intent is to better understand and describe the Adversary, then it is spiritually beneficial. My personal project as of late has been to make the psychological shift from the former attitude to the latter.
That's an interesting thought. I struggle myself with the question of how much, or if at all, to engage. Trying to outline the shape of what's happening seems like a genuinely worthy reason to do so - maybe the only one. It's only by understanding the shape of things that we can ascertain how to act.
I entirely agree about Peterson, who is fast becoming a role model in what not to do on this front. To me it can't be a coincidence that he remains a Jungian and that, despite talking endlessly about Christianity, can't bring himself to make the jump.
You have a gift for explaining things as you see them, through the lens of faith, without dramatizing what you see or resorting to alarmist and defeatist predictions. Nor do you sugarcoat what is mostly pretty dire. It’s a tightrope performance and the thoughtful comments here show how fruitful your perspective is. I’m very grateful for your work.
Jordan Peterson did an enormous service by calling the attention of a generation of mostly young men to their own failure to grow up. He has seemingly not moved beyond that despite having a bully pulpit.
I’m looking forward to it, I’ve been a bit confused on this topic myself lately, and at least at first glance it seems the topic of your lecture would contradict your—I believe correct—assertion throughout these essays: that Christ formerly sat on our society’s throne (but no longer does). How is it that he sat on our society’s throne, but society wasn’t Christian? A former pastor of mine, Dr Paul Gardner originally affiliated with the COE, focused a lot on the Lordship of Jesus and what exactly that meant, and I think he has some good points. I guess the question is what level is His Lordship/kingdom at; clearly not of this world, but obviously should still impact our individual souls, and more broadly socially as our being as salt and light having some effect. I guess if we’re to always or usually be in the minority, the two fit together naturally and there is no contradiction.
I find that without understanding something of this it’s all too easy for me to focus too much on the cultural/civilizational/historical aspects of Christianity, rather than the direct reality of the risen lord and my need for salvation and sanctification and theosis.
I think that it is dangerous to talk about paganism as though it is an anhistorical phenomenon. Before we even get to Rome, Athens' city state at the time of Pericles, and even before, had people in it who, although they refused to publicly say that the "old" gods didn't exist and were not for thinking, intelligent, SOPHISTICATED men, thought so, and behaved that way in private.
I believe that Christianity arose against a backdrop of the failure of the old gods, and paganism. Religious belief, particularly among the aristocracy, the elites, was formal, because these people already believed basically in the triumph of reason, and the rational, in their philosophical movements.
When Jesus Christ arrived on the scene, paganism as a vital, inspiring religious force was already agonizing. Talking about Julian confuses paganism, and the old Greco- Roman ? mythology with Greece's PHILOSOPHICAL tradition. Julian was in Greece, but studied philosophy, if I am not mistaken. That is very important to my mind. And probably by the time Julian arrived at the scene, paganism as he knew it was already a form of spiritual.. tourism, and not a living, religious force ? For people with money, status, and importance, in any case.
Why was paganism agonizing at the time of Jesus' birth ? Kitto in his book, "The Greeks" suggests that already, globalization had led people to desert belief in the old gods because they appeared to have different attributes elsewhere, and this made people.. sceptical. Because pagan beliefs are beliefs that are rooted in place, and in individual, particular places. They are not cosmopolitan. Paul has been telling us about this, I think... Athens, Alexander, Rome, they are all empires built on generalizing a universal message, and that leads to cosmopolitism, which leads to... where we are right now.
I am always very interested to read that the tower of Babel falls because... the tower of Babel does NOT fall.
Genesis tells us that Man leaves off building the city and the tower as his universal language becomes... babble. But the tower does NOT fall. It is always there, still standing, and Man continues building on it at regular intervals. We are building on it at breakneck speed right now.
So... why do we almost universally believe that it falls, when... it doesn't ?
Thank you Paul; very well written - great companion article to Toma Holand's "Dominion" I am reading right now (:)). What starts with the Wild Hunt 1889 ends with ... Walpurgis Night - 30 April 1945. Spooky
Thank you - this essay provided food for much thought.
There's one point - or two, depending on how one counts - I'd like to make, regarding your quote from St Paul on principalities and powers. This is from Ephesians 6 : 12. However, St Paul writes in the following:
"13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;"
This then is what we need to do, and this is why our own, personal daily prayer is so important. It's not simply about fighting, it's about being armed against the destructive powers and principalities.
One other thing: more and more it looks to me as if we're living in an Age of Faux Gnosis, where more and more 'experts' are called on to explain the world, which they do by pretending to have 'gnostic insights' which is beyond us poor peasants to understand, even as they provide us with a few specks of their secret knowledge.
I came across a fellow on a visit to a cold Inverness last Saturday. He was sporting a striking Fleece. A particularly gory, literally heartbreaking image of Jesus on the cross at the moment of impact by the "sword of destiny".
A powerful, visceral blood drenched depiction. The image screaming loudly amongst the Saturday shoppers, a bewildering, shocking fractured moment in time (for me).
I was compelled to ask the bearer for an explanation of such "news".
"May i ask... that is a very powerful image you are wearing...How come?"
Ah... I don't know what that Fleece could look like, but Google Grünewald's Crucifixion in the Retable of Issenheim, and although it is rather... bloodless, it raises the hair on the back of your head.
Our ancestors were a lot less squeamish than we are...
Thank you for this. It struck me, not all that long ago, that here, in the (Mid) West, the thing we most readily 'worship' is a belief that 'The Free Market' will save us. It will bring justice and equity. All we have to do is believe, loose the fetters upon it, and, I suppose, clap our hands. That has replaced theism of all other beliefs. And that is turning out to be a fraud; a false God, one of powers and principalities. I'm not clapping.
A heresy is said to be something that is very nearly true. Free markets are often good things. What you have brought up is Free Market Ideology, and that fits in well with Paul's essays, current and past.
One of the first things I heard from Paul years back was a conversation with former AB Rowan Williams, and it struck a real chord for me, and along this line, too Thomas - he'd noted that the tendency of The Machine was to "plow up the entire earth to turn it to money", or words to that effect. Out-of-mainstream economists observe that the bent of Money itself is to get hold of the rest of it, and concentrate its power, and it's working: More unhoused folks on the street here, more deteriorated housing stock, more struggling for resources, with the excuse that "...it's just the workings of The Market", and the concentration of wealth is speeding up. Paul's also raised my awareness that the techbros in Silicon Valley have their eyes on the disturbing prize of controlling our data and our interaction with the world and each other in pursuit of the false God of the Singularity. Worse, and more earthly than that, the same folks are getting their fingers into the issuance, control and manipulation of growing amounts of trans-national currency, which won't end well for most of us. To Edwin's point below, practically nobody with any sort of authority can even begin to suggest that our cultivated neediness for consumer validation might be better tempered with limits in some Wendell Berry-esque understanding of our role on the planet, or with concern for our neighbors near or far, or that there's also a future that doesn't require endless growth. If they did, there'd be tar and feathers on the national stage. We / I have been well trained to be good consumers, commodifying the earth and its resources for our pleasure in ways increasingly hedonistic; and, I think are turned into consumables ourselves. I do, however, see hints of refusal to 'conform' with this old set of assumptions with people my sons' age and younger. I hope its all in time, but I'm reading some of the same signs in the culture that Paul shared here. A most insightful piece, I think, and there is something vile about the ability and willingness of a certain type of personality for the turning of a crowd into a raging mob.
Just a hunch, the bigger the empires the bigger the dualities? And there is more opportunity for real horror in a complex society with its weaving of fantasy and contested symbols? Who rules, indeed? Look after the olive trees in Palestine.
Whoofff. The sorta-monastic cleric Richard Rohr's been writing to that effect for the several years I've been reading him, so, yup, prob'ly. Thanks for this lens.
Grateful... one hunch at a time...
PS: Thanks for your thought- provoking observation :)
Free markets are morally neutral, rather like shops or cars - it’s what we do with them that counts. We can make means into ends of almost anything.
But is any technology, such as a free market, morally neutral?
I think so, the market itself is theoretically neutral, it’s the people who use it who abuse it. Money is ‘only’ a means of exchange, but some people end up having a lot more than others. Is that an inherent fault of the market or its inhabitants, and if it is, how do we correct it without making the market even less free?
There are no 'free markets' in the West. There is only capitalism, which is corporate/state power posing as freedom.
Sociopaths prefer games rigged in their favor.
Not only games rigged in their favor but control of the most basic commodity for survival—food. It’s obvious how contaminated the food supply is to people who either can’t afford to eat organic food (and I’m beginning to wonder if there even is such a thing or another well promoted scam) or don’t grow any themselves. I read about a new product being developed by Richard Branson, Zuckerberg, Gates and Bezos called BIOMILQ. Local women donate breast tissue and milk for a Target gift card for this start-up enterprise. Several of these same men (and Elon Musk’s brother) are already involved in fake chicken breast production. This product has already been approved in California for sale.
Something very sinister is here and, even if this has nothing to do with any supernatural force, one thing is obvious to me: greed and the love of power have found a home in the souls of some very powerful people.
Of course organic food is rigged. From the moment someone figured out they could make money on selling food as "organic", it became a scam. That led to the promulgation of standards for organic food, which producers promptly learned how to game to their benefit, and to use to drive out competitors.
Was not Goodhart's Law taught from old, that "Once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"?
When we last "spoke"", I said "the power to start your own small business is so treasured here in Eastern Europe, especially" I thought that the heart of the capitalism system, actually. Though I decried crony capitalism. To me, Facism is government hand-in-hand with business. - - But all this is neither here nor there, the important thing, as I am to be around, is to learn what you mean by capitalism. Which is fascinating. I am not such an idiot that I do not wish to learn. If I may - the term nationalism means many things to many, some evil, some helpful, some in-between. Is that possible with capitalism?
This was the most amazing essay. I can spend hours studying it. I'll have questions but I just want to study for a day or two. Thank you for this.
I suggest picking up Hannah Arendt's "On the Origins of Totalitarianism" (self-explanatory) and Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation", which is a fine dissection of the rationale (and rationalizations) which followed the English industrial revolution.
Thank you. You see I read Arendt as opposing Totalitarianism. I'm in Eastern Europe. Communist ideology has killed tens of times more people than Hitler. Both are horrible totalitarianism, but I fear Marxist inspired totalitarianism so much more, and I think much more likely to take power, with (apology to Lewis) hideous strength.
I have not rad Polahyi and will take a look. I'm pretty much trying to be open here, to see why "capitalism" is a bad word (acknowledging it can go wrong) - To me it is the best of all the bad systems I know. Coming from two Grandfathers who had small businesses, I think it most often helps families and communities tremendously. Look at the horror world of countries where it is/was forbidden. Even worse than the West, yes?
Dictionary, capitalism is "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit:" As long as we help the poor (govt should be partly socialism I see that) then I think this works.
The poor suffer far less under capitalism. Human nature (sin) eliminates the possibility to practice pure communism. Every time "people's republics" lead not to communism but to immense suffering and death.
Forbidding ownership for profit, we know historically, is the road to terrible suffering and ruin for families and societies.
I always assumed that a ‘free market’ works in a free society where there is moral or economic parity between the parties. In our perfect world the butcher sells his meat to the baker who sells his bread to the butcher. They both sell their wares to the chieftain who has a duty to provide for their safety as well as resolving any disputes. I suppose what you refer to as capitalism is the imbalance of wealth and power. Probably one for another wonderful essay!
I grew up an Evangelical Conservative, and this idea underpins a great deal of the worldview. I notice that many boomer conservatives are absolutely unable to question this axiom, but younger people aren't so married to it.
For me, eventually I figured out that the Free Market was working against us too, taking us for a ride; to name a timely example, literally poisoning us with toxic chemicals in food that big agribusiness corps gladly inflict upon the American people for maximum profit and addictiveness, while selling less poisonous versions of the same thing overseas to meet their stricter public health standards and laws. Ah, the joys of the "Free Market!"
Depending on my mood, I am amused and/or horrified at the facile responses of commenters/trolls who say one or another notion or policy is "Economics 101" and therefore inevitable while not noting that the concept of market failure is also usually included in "Economics 101."
Absolutely. 'The market' is just mammon in disguise, I think. Generally, the two factions in our political world have their own idols. For the right, it's 'the market', for the left it's 'justice' or 'equality.' There are many minor gods, but those seem to be the Big Two.
It was either back in 2017 or 2018 that I first found myself explicitly thinking about the forces underpinning the modern world as a sort of pantheon of divinized/demonic personalities. I began to write a sort of hybrid between a short story and a catalogue which I titled “In the Hall of the Modern Gods” with the concept that there was some endless temple full of gods and their worshippers that I could visit in my dreams. It became a place that I would add trends I was noticing from the news with short vignettes about the nature of these various “gods” and their worshippers. It would almost write itself. Some gods were ancient archetypes—Aries, for example, made an appearance in a guise which would likely have been recognizable to the Greeks; others were definitely unique to the modern world (I was compelled to name “Compounded Interest” a neglected, though exceedingly powerful, son of Mammon who would threaten to usurp his father).
I write in it less than I once did, but I return to it often. While obviously fictive, I can’t shake the impression that what we are seeing in the news has a semblance of personality and willfulness about it.
Great observation. I increasingly think in this way too, but I have never written it down. I'd love to see you publish who is in your hall. I see that you have an empty Substack there ...
Very well, I have been meaning to post for awhile, but have always found Substack's user interface rather confusing and not messed with it. I just publish a few of them, and plan on publishing more in the coming days, as I have time to edit.
I just subscribed with anticipation. No pressure.
I agree with you about SS interface, it is so confusing....
The trend here in the US over the past decade is an increasingly frantic attempt by our ruling class to fuse these ‘Big Two’ and denounce any ideas running counter to them as heresies. Anyone who questions any tenet of neoliberal economics or neoconservative foreign policy is either accused of being some flavor of bigot, or a ‘Russian asset’ and then shunned from polite society, legitimate political discourse, censored, etc.
Looking at the literal expression : "free" and "market"... But I'm not sure that I know what the words mean any more. My open air market where I buy most of my food and vegetables is a good place, with good people whom I know individually. And the people selling work with no roof over their heads, in all weather, and that makes them.. different. Not comfort loving. Not.. (too) bourgeois. And "free", what does that mean ? "Free" as in, not a slave, or as in not having to fork out "filthy" lucre to buy ?
We could spend years on this site talking about the word "free"...
One thing that I do know, though. Lots of people talk about the evils of capitalism, but they almost never make the connection to a world where everybody should ? have the right to work for a living to make money to be "free" and independant to be able to buy the things they want. And be judged on their... merit. Because working for money for a living goes hand in hand with the capitalist dream. That's why the situation is so messy, in my opinion.
No easy way out of this one.
Thanks, Debra, I'm grateful for the conversation here as I'm presently developing values of how I can be "in the world without being of the world". For me, it's started with reducing my 'footprint' with the predatory financialists and their supporters among the tech monopolists, and the other monopolists and consumerists wherever I become aware of them skulking around. I repair old things for use, and live smaller than I used to and more simply (even if I don't have a composting toilet. Yet.) Something Paul had suggested a year or so back in a presentation to the Estonian Aldous Huxley society: "...to set your boundaries and to refuse to step over them. To be a conscientious objector to The Machine." There's no easy way, but there are things a conscientious person can do.
I like the idea if reducing my footprint with predatory financialists, except that the man who takes care of our financial portfolio (!!!!) has come to dinner at our house on several occasions ; we have been to his house, know his wife, and he is not a predator. He can see that my husband and I are not like most of his other clients, and it intrigues him. This year I sent him an E-Mail telling him that I had noticed that he was not really happy in his job : unsatisfied, and wanting more out of a job. While at our house, he pulled out a book about the occult. He hasn't answered me, but... I am sure that he is thinking about it.
The man who comes to our house to take care of our computer because we are too stupid to do it, and can fork out the money, can talk with me (an unrepentant shooter off of the mouth...) for some time while working on the computer, and both of us enjoy our conversation. He agrees with a lot of what I say (preach ?) about technology...
As for setting boundaries, I wish that I could... save myself, but who can save himself ? I'm pretty sure I can't. Today I have fallen down the black hole of the Internet. Tomorrow ?
Shopping at an open market IS a step away from the global financialists, I think; I suspect your personal financial advisor is just a person doing a job, and not one of the transnational actors selling digital 'currencies' or torturing the financial exchanges for profit, or running 'social media' companies, which are becoming the same people. Thanks for sharing back. Tim
Considering how much of American Christianity acknowledges or outright worships the Prosperity Gospel (Jesus wants you to be rich! Buy my book!), I don't think there is any doubt. And since the closest thing we have to shared culture is what entertainment we're consuming, we are locked into the business-entertainment complex.
Revelation 13 may be coming or what John Michael Greer describes in his book The Long Descent
Or something else. History is filled with horror and who are we to say it can not happen to us.
If you had told a German in July 1914 what was going to happen to his country and indeed across the world in the next 31 years he would have rejected it right out of hand has having any possibility.
Revelation 13
The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.[b]
9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.
10 “If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”[d]
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.
The Beast out of the Earth
11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.
While psychoanalysis seems to me a load of nonsense, Jung was on to something big with his theory of archetypes. Bruno Bettleheim’s book on the enduring importance of archetypes in fairy tales and child development is very solid. Waldorf education has (or had before it was eviscerated by wokeness) a powerful understanding of the needs of young children for the calmness and security of traditional sex roles in a family and the need for early education teachers to model the serene mother with handicraft and homemaking as a social art. Rudolph Steiner’s religious ideas are a bit off the rails (see anthroposophy) but his ideas on early childhood education and care of the disabled are spot on. The latter made him persona non grata with Hitler, always a good sign. Bending these archetypes out of shape is destructive of the whole paradigm. Five years ago the Waldorf fair at our area school featured a puppet show of “the woodcutter and her wife” read by a man in a dress. So much of progressivism is not about building something new but about destroying something beautiful.
I like to think that we do not really have the power to destroy, because LOGICALLY that power is God's. When you think about the phrase from Job that I return to : "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.", it gives you perspective on this, and enables you to understand that Man's behavior is a symptom of his... suffering, his helplessness, his folly, but not... his power.
Also, something that I learned from my children about destruction : the small child who is really best equipped to experience total helplessness in frustration, asserts his initial act in emerging as self in destruction, because he does not yet have the means to create. It is so much more difficult to create than to destroy. So.. creation and destruction have their roles in our lives. This is.. not comfortable at all for us to think or experience.
Very true. But if as Saint Paul said “when I was a child I thought as a child….but when I became a man I put away childish things” many of us seem stuck, unable to grow up. And yes, you are correct, it is extremely uncomfortable to live through such times.
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK? I cut down trees, I wear high heels....
I am not Jungian at all, rather I am rather an enemy of Jung and his way of thinking which is very popular in American society, and has been for a long time. I was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst, read a lot of Freud, in French translation, but with a German speaking mentor to point out the betrayals that French (and English...) translation had inflicted on Freud's thought. And I am very indebted to Christopher Lasch as an American intellectual who had a very good understanding of the Freudian approach to consciousness, and man's place in society.
Freud gives primary importance to the person's story/history, and the way that he/she tells it, while basically Jung is much more interested in... repeating patterns, and generalization. The problem being that when you indulge in too much generalization, the particulars are abrased, and disappear under the bulldozer of generalization. Modern medecine (and psychiatry) in the Western world is about applying generalized protocols arrived at with statistical analysis, and not listening to the particular person to hear his/her STORY. I believe that you can't treat A PERSON only by applying generalized protocols, mainly because in order to work well, treatment has to address the person, in a relationship with a doctor. A... flesh and blood person ? I believe that would be best, because AT ROCK BOTTOM we are flesh and blood persons, subject to birth and death. Even Christian talk about resurrection cannot get around (or should not get around) the rock bottom observation that in order to be resurrected, YOU HAVE TO DIE first.
I am simplifying this a lot here, and there is much generalization in what I am saying, unfortunately...
You are certainly in a much stronger position than me to hold an opinion on psychoanalysis, and what you say makes sense. It reminds me of how all antidepressants are supposed to be dispensed with an understanding that there will be follow up by a therapist, but in reality is prescribed by family doctors with no oversight. There is simply no meaningful way for the numbers of people on antidepressants to receive the counseling they need.
People’s complete avoidance of the subject of death, their obliviousness of it’s inevitability and blithe assumption of heaven never cease to amaze me.
I have told people here before, but you might be interested in finding the work of Paul Tournier, a Swiss Christian G.P. who wrote "The Medecine of the Person", and many other books on the subject of applying generalized protocols to treat illness, and cutting down, or out, on listening to the patient's story, and accompanying him in changing his ways. Tournier wrote for quite some time, and his books are still in print in English translation. In "Medecine of the Person", published in around 1936 ? 1940 ? he has a very perspicacious analysis of where Freud came up short in psychoanalysis, and the capital role of confession in the Catholic Church. I can't quote it to you ; you will have to read the book to find it.
There is a fair amount in the book that will surprise and maybe dismay 21st century English speaking readers, but what he says about the role of faith and belief in healing, the role of honestly examining one's conscience is still true, in my opinion. Has Man really changed all that much after all this time ? I think not.
Silicon ouija board. That is a powerful description. Thanks.
It works because people WANT to believe. If the Computer says so, it must be true.
Brilliant archetypal analysis of the larger forces at 'play' in these times. I have done a course with the Assisi Institute on Archetypal Pattern Analysis, based on the work of Jung, and your analysis is excellent! Not that I am an expert in such ideas, but I have personally found appreciating the archetypal perspective very freeing, and adding depth of meaning unavailable elsewhere. What I thought was missing from your article, and perhaps to come, was reference to the larger plan of the Good/God. Focusing on Wotan/Satan/the Void of faith and belief can lead for some, to a sense of despair, and hopelessness. Humans have a bias towards the negative, and I think there is also a vast, archetypal force at play, ushering in the new. for sure, we are in a time of chaos, but chaos in its best meaning, which is a necessary re-formation of elements and parts, so that the old can give way to the new. Those with a eye to see are responsible to help usher in the new, that which is being born, in a way which protects the newborn whatever. As good midwives do in real births, protecting the emerging life from fear, and panic is essential. So, I hope you can write some more from this hopeful perspective.
Thank you Paul. I read this just as I was getting ready to pray Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and just after I completed the Ember Days Michaelmas fast last weekend, so you seeded ground that was well tilled. September 29 is the Feast Day of St. Michael. May he continue to defend us in battle and protect us from the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
In popular discourse we're presented with the idea that all of a sudden, one day, Hitler showed up and bewitched a whole mild-mannered civilization and turned it into a murder machine. This narrative omits the whole series of events where Germany basically got scapegoated for the Great War, was traumatized and humiliated by ridiculous punitive measures in the aftermath, and descended into degenerate cultural anarchy during the Weimar era.
By the time Tiny Mustache Man showed up, the German people had been thoroughly beaten down and traumatized, humiliated, and demoralized. Thus, when a charismatic strongman offers a provocative vision to capture the national imagination, it wasn't a hard sell. The land had been, so to speak, cleared out, tilled, and fertilized, so when seeds of Wotan showed up, they easily took root.
Future iterations of societal control would nail down the correct Huxleyan proportions of comfort and slower paced revolution; a lot of things in Weimar Germany look a lot like the 2020s sexual degeneracy, but in our case it took about 60 years to reach that point, compared to Germany's decade or so, and it happened in the background of the Machine sweetly humming, in contrast to the miserable conditions of the average post-Great War German. Slow and steady wins the race, I guess, when you're trying to demoralize a civilization.
Ah, Progressive Wokeness; the Sermon on the Mount without God, love, or forgiveness, what an apt way to put it. Four years ago I thought it was at the precipice of a total takeover, now I'm not so sure. Everybody seems to be very tired of it, just as everyone now seems quite tired of the pandemic propaganda and the polite thing to do seems to be just not talk about it and act like it never happened.
Wokeness was the leading candidate for our national bewitching in America, but I'm increasingly doubtful it has much staying power. Public indifference, if not hostility, toward the narratives the mainstream media puts out about big issues like war in Eastern Europe or the Middle East suggests those have flopped as well. Progressive students protesting for weeks on end for Palestine strike me as the giant snake eating its own tail, so to speak. It's hard for me to see where we go from here, but I wonder if we're near the end of the overlords pulling the levers of power making any pretense at all of having public support. Maybe I'm just feeling overly optimistic in the moment, but it feels like the spell has been broken and most people aren't believing what they've been told anymore - or at least, not accepting it without reservation. Where things go from here seems to be getting increasingly murky.
I'm not sure about that 'popular discourse.' Maybe it's popular now on the Internet, I don't know, but I remember studying the rise of Hitler in school, and everybody knew, then as now, what the reasons were for his unlikely rise - the non-spiritual reasons, anyway. Every historian still knows this, and I imagine every A-Level student. What has changed is the culture war, in which Good Progressives face off against Bad Fascists and we're all encouraged to ignore the cause of everything.
I agree that wokeness is a phase. It is not the basis of some future tyranny (or indeed paradise) because it is fundamentally based on falsehoods. It's a fantasy ideology that can only be indulged in by the comfortable.
This essay reminds me of this one by N S Lyons
https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/a-prophecy-of-evil-tolkien-lewis?r=1qdjn7&utm_medium=ios
I’ve long felt that Western Christianity has forgotten, or at least sorely underestimates, spiritual warfare. Perhaps because we have become so spiritually complacent that the battle is over, in a sense? When various third-world missionaries supported by our church visit stateside for a bit, the stories they tell of tangible spiritual warfare almost seem made up.
I’ve been reading “Welcome to the Orthodox Church” by Frederica Mathewes-Green (thank you, Paul for recommending this book in one of your posts). She writes:
“The devil has largely disappeared from Western Christian theology. I think this was one unanticipated effect of St. Anselm’s theory, it presents salvation primarily as an interaction between the Father and the Son, and the devil has no practical role. Of course, people did not immediately eliminate the devil from their understanding of the world, but in time he began to fade. He became an extra standing at the edge of the stage with a tail and pitchfork, while the Father and Son got all the lines. Even among conservative Christians, many don’t believe in the devil anymore, or they consider him irrelevant. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make him go away.
“Orthodox would say that there is not only evil resulting from the brokenness of creation, but also the deliberate, malicious work of demons, intelligent beings that hate the human race."
My belief is that spiritual warfare and physical warfare became co-mingled during the Cold War, and when the Vietnam War began to show the incongruities of that mingling people were happy to abandon spiritual warfare. For an example see https://todaysmartyrs.org/index.php/movie-review-the-field-afar/
How could those horses not be prophetic?
Hmmm. I would rather that those horses NOT be prophetic.
Can my little individual /personal voice have any... power over all of this ?
If you read or see "Macbeth", you can hear how Macbeth receives from some rather shady.. not very feminine looking old ladies the prediction/prophecy that he will become king, and then everything falls apart, largely because of HIS WIFE'S AMBITIONS FOR HIM. At one point he says, "if chance will have me King, then chance may crown me", but then he is pushed into ACTING and making conscious, voluntary choices, etc etc., and we know how the story ends.
Pretty depressing.
No, I would rather things not go (down) this route. "Macbeth" is a terrifying play. One for our times.
Thank you for your insightful commentary, as always.
I likewise have found the Jungian account of archetypal forces helpful in making sense of our times. However, in my analysis, I can't convince myself that there is anything unique about the Christian story, or woke progressivism, with respect to how these archetypal patterns play out on the worldly stage. I see enlightenment rationalism/woke progressivism/transhumanism (a continuum, in my opinion) as doing to modern society precisely what Christianity did to the ancients - overturning the foundational story and thereby precipitating a fall and descent into chaos.
The Paganism of the ancient Greek and Roman societies gave rise to robust and thriving civilizations. As a foundational story, Paganism "worked." The early Christians, and then Emperor Constantine, upended the traditional stories and replaced them with the Christian one. And the Roman Empire thereafter proceeded to decline and fall, while continuing to engage in the sorts of atrocities and corrupt behavior that plagued the Empire (and all other civilizations) in its Pagan days.
While the Christian story may have saved souls (I have no way of knowing one way or another), it did not save the Empire, and, if anything, likely contributed to its decline and fall. See, e.g., Gibbons. Emperor Julian the Apostate saw this coming, and started his reactionary Make Rome Pagan Again movement, but to no avail. His critiques of the new ideology, and calls for reverence of the Pagan traditions that built civilization, seem quite resonant with the critiques you offer here. In both cases, we have the archetypal pattern of the forces of Progress against the forces of Tradition, with Progress inevitably winning out and then bringing society into a death spiral.
Progress for the Roman Empire was Christianity. Progress for the modern West is woke progressivism. Tradition for the Roman Empire was Paganism. Tradition for the modern West is Christianity. I see Obama as the Emperor Constantine who made woke progressivism the official religion of the Empire. Those of us (including myself) who reject the new foundational story being foisted upon us by the elites are the apostates now. We are the heirs of Emperor Julian. And, like Julian, our voices, however reasonable, will be drowned out by the forces of Progress. We can't and won't win. Like the Roman Empire in the wake of Emperor Constantine, the modern West is declining and will fall. All we can hope for on a worldly level is that the fall is not a worst-case scenario (nuclear holocaust, mass starvation, extermination camps, etc.).
You say: "Believing ourselves to be rational creatures possessed of free will and limitless choice, we are in fact continuing to play out strange and twisted variants on the Christian story. The result is that we are putty in the hands of dark forces that we once believed in and now pretend not to." But looking at history, it is pretty tough to argue that humanity was NOT putty in the hands of these dark forces back when Christianity was the foundational story. When and where was this Golden Age? While I'm as inclined as anyone to romanticize historical periods (who wouldn't want to be an ancient Druid??), the handiwork of these dark forces is readily apparent across time and space, without much seeming regard to foundational stories.
But ultimately I arrive at what I think is a somewhat similar place to you - the tower of Babel always falls. Building the Kingdom of Man always ends in calamity. There is no refuge in the world. It is, to use Buddhist terminology, Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha. Inherently impermanent, not-self, and dissatisfactory.
So how do we survive? Well, in a worldly sense, we don't. We're all going to die. Modern civilization will, sooner or later, crumble (or explode). There's nothing we can do on the broader stage to stop these archetypal patterns from playing out. The task before us, instead, is a spiritual one. We must recognize the dark forces at play, often by seeing them first in the world and then identifying them within ourselves. As Jung points out, often what angers us most in the outside world is a manifestation of our own worst personal demons, our shadow. As we bring conscious awareness to these forces, their grip on us weakens, thereby creating space for the Better Angels to manifest.
Are there eternal consequences for how we fair in this struggle? I have no idea. But at the very least, engaging in this struggle as if there were is the surest pathway towards psychological survival and peace. Engaging in the cultural and political wars, on the other hand, throws opens the doors of our psyche to the darkest of forces (speaking from experience). Anyway, these are my rambling, half-baked thoughts. I'm looking forward to more thought-provoking essays from you on these issues.
I don't think there was ever a Golden Age, though some times are better than others. I am going to be arguing against the notion of 'Christian civilisation' in my Erasmus Lecture next month. I don't think Christ came to build us a civilisation, or to teach us how to build one. He pretty obviously instructs his followers to reject the world at every level. So yes, it's all a spiritual task. In that sense, culture is a distraction.
Great, I’m looking forward to hearing your Erasmus Lecture. “He pretty obviously instructs his followers to reject the world at every level.” That is radical stuff in the best possible way and very much the sort of conversation I’m interested in reading/hearing more of.
To be in the world, but not of it. Pretty radical stuff!
It always makes me chuckle when people dismiss Christianity as some sort of state sponsored control mechanism when in it's purest sense it's encouraging people to be the exact opposite of what the system needs to fuel it.
Sadly though, the Church of England, IMHO and experience, is, in many ways, just that. It's embracing of woke culture, despite being directly contrary to the teachings of The Gospels, being a prime example. After a relatively brief dalliance with the C of E, I realised what an awful mass of contradictions it has allowed itself to become and settled on treading the Orthodox path.
I suppose the question of how and when to engage in cultural/political discussion turns on one's intentions. If one's intent is to change the prevailing culture or politics, then one is engaging in the cultural/political wars in a spiritually destructive way. Jordan Peterson, for instance, strikes me as a prominent example of an otherwise wise man who has fallen into this trap. Not judging, I've done it too (and still do sometimes).
However, if one's intent is to better understand and describe the Adversary, then it is spiritually beneficial. My personal project as of late has been to make the psychological shift from the former attitude to the latter.
That's an interesting thought. I struggle myself with the question of how much, or if at all, to engage. Trying to outline the shape of what's happening seems like a genuinely worthy reason to do so - maybe the only one. It's only by understanding the shape of things that we can ascertain how to act.
I entirely agree about Peterson, who is fast becoming a role model in what not to do on this front. To me it can't be a coincidence that he remains a Jungian and that, despite talking endlessly about Christianity, can't bring himself to make the jump.
You have a gift for explaining things as you see them, through the lens of faith, without dramatizing what you see or resorting to alarmist and defeatist predictions. Nor do you sugarcoat what is mostly pretty dire. It’s a tightrope performance and the thoughtful comments here show how fruitful your perspective is. I’m very grateful for your work.
Jordan Peterson did an enormous service by calling the attention of a generation of mostly young men to their own failure to grow up. He has seemingly not moved beyond that despite having a bully pulpit.
I’m looking forward to it, I’ve been a bit confused on this topic myself lately, and at least at first glance it seems the topic of your lecture would contradict your—I believe correct—assertion throughout these essays: that Christ formerly sat on our society’s throne (but no longer does). How is it that he sat on our society’s throne, but society wasn’t Christian? A former pastor of mine, Dr Paul Gardner originally affiliated with the COE, focused a lot on the Lordship of Jesus and what exactly that meant, and I think he has some good points. I guess the question is what level is His Lordship/kingdom at; clearly not of this world, but obviously should still impact our individual souls, and more broadly socially as our being as salt and light having some effect. I guess if we’re to always or usually be in the minority, the two fit together naturally and there is no contradiction.
I find that without understanding something of this it’s all too easy for me to focus too much on the cultural/civilizational/historical aspects of Christianity, rather than the direct reality of the risen lord and my need for salvation and sanctification and theosis.
I think that it is dangerous to talk about paganism as though it is an anhistorical phenomenon. Before we even get to Rome, Athens' city state at the time of Pericles, and even before, had people in it who, although they refused to publicly say that the "old" gods didn't exist and were not for thinking, intelligent, SOPHISTICATED men, thought so, and behaved that way in private.
I believe that Christianity arose against a backdrop of the failure of the old gods, and paganism. Religious belief, particularly among the aristocracy, the elites, was formal, because these people already believed basically in the triumph of reason, and the rational, in their philosophical movements.
When Jesus Christ arrived on the scene, paganism as a vital, inspiring religious force was already agonizing. Talking about Julian confuses paganism, and the old Greco- Roman ? mythology with Greece's PHILOSOPHICAL tradition. Julian was in Greece, but studied philosophy, if I am not mistaken. That is very important to my mind. And probably by the time Julian arrived at the scene, paganism as he knew it was already a form of spiritual.. tourism, and not a living, religious force ? For people with money, status, and importance, in any case.
Why was paganism agonizing at the time of Jesus' birth ? Kitto in his book, "The Greeks" suggests that already, globalization had led people to desert belief in the old gods because they appeared to have different attributes elsewhere, and this made people.. sceptical. Because pagan beliefs are beliefs that are rooted in place, and in individual, particular places. They are not cosmopolitan. Paul has been telling us about this, I think... Athens, Alexander, Rome, they are all empires built on generalizing a universal message, and that leads to cosmopolitism, which leads to... where we are right now.
I am always very interested to read that the tower of Babel falls because... the tower of Babel does NOT fall.
Genesis tells us that Man leaves off building the city and the tower as his universal language becomes... babble. But the tower does NOT fall. It is always there, still standing, and Man continues building on it at regular intervals. We are building on it at breakneck speed right now.
So... why do we almost universally believe that it falls, when... it doesn't ?
What's in it for us to believe that it falls ?
Thank you Paul; very well written - great companion article to Toma Holand's "Dominion" I am reading right now (:)). What starts with the Wild Hunt 1889 ends with ... Walpurgis Night - 30 April 1945. Spooky
Seems like we will riding horses again in The End Times, I like that personally. Time to saddle up and ride out.
YES. Like that a lot. It sure beats sitting in front of a computer for getting excited, and maybe finding a sense of rhythm, a.. BEAT.
Thank you - this essay provided food for much thought.
There's one point - or two, depending on how one counts - I'd like to make, regarding your quote from St Paul on principalities and powers. This is from Ephesians 6 : 12. However, St Paul writes in the following:
"13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;"
This then is what we need to do, and this is why our own, personal daily prayer is so important. It's not simply about fighting, it's about being armed against the destructive powers and principalities.
One other thing: more and more it looks to me as if we're living in an Age of Faux Gnosis, where more and more 'experts' are called on to explain the world, which they do by pretending to have 'gnostic insights' which is beyond us poor peasants to understand, even as they provide us with a few specks of their secret knowledge.
Slightly off-topic (but not by much, oddly), Rory Cranston wrote a thought-provoking piece for the LotusEaters.com website on the symbolism of the horses - worth a read https://lotuseaters.com/england-and-the-equine-24-04-24
Alas, it's paywalled. But the first part reminded me also of that white stag story, which I had forgotten about.
Argghh! Sorry!
I came across a fellow on a visit to a cold Inverness last Saturday. He was sporting a striking Fleece. A particularly gory, literally heartbreaking image of Jesus on the cross at the moment of impact by the "sword of destiny".
A powerful, visceral blood drenched depiction. The image screaming loudly amongst the Saturday shoppers, a bewildering, shocking fractured moment in time (for me).
I was compelled to ask the bearer for an explanation of such "news".
"May i ask... that is a very powerful image you are wearing...How come?"
"Well its the warmest top I have"
Ah... I don't know what that Fleece could look like, but Google Grünewald's Crucifixion in the Retable of Issenheim, and although it is rather... bloodless, it raises the hair on the back of your head.
Our ancestors were a lot less squeamish than we are...