Christina, my understanding -- so far -- is that matter/spirit dualism is being supplanted by a cosmology which sees computation as everything. Both "matter" and "mind" -- in this new-ish cosmology -- are patterns of data flow. The transhumanist eschatology then involves the expansion of human-centric computational power to the extent that reality and virtual reality will become one and the same thing; what we think of, is what will manifest itself around us -- whether that's because hyper-intelligent nanobots will physically rearrange our immediate vicinity for us, or because we've replaced the sensory input coming from our eyes, ears, nose, etc, with stuff piped directly from our computational counter-reality.
I say "our" as an empathetic member of the human race of which transhumanists are still a part, but I'll fight their vision of the future as long as I live!
Earlier Machine-ideologies were largely dualist, but, interestingly enough, the new ideologies seem to be inverse Platonism, inverse mysticism. The desire for Oneness is intense, but it is not the desire for unity with the transcendent God, but a desire for oneness with the wholly immanent Machine. Once all minds are uploaded into cyberspace, they would be at one with one another, and the Machine would be their god, only it would be an anti-God, since it embodies the principle of nothingness. The transhumanists speak of raising humans to higher levels, but all I see is the rapid descent of man to an ontological level approaching something even less than base matter. The rocks of the sacred mountains are suffused with the energies of God, but man who in his free will has chosen to flee God is doomed to eternal coldness and emptiness.
And in conjunction with what you're saying, I think of this from Philip Sherrard's "A Single Unified Science":
"The divorce between the spiritual and the material means that material forms are regarded as totally non-spiritual, and thus either as illusion or as only to be known through identifying their reality with their purely material aspects. Such a debasement of the physical dimension of things is tantamount not only to denying the spiritual reality of our own created existence, but also, through depriving natural things of their theophanic function, to treating a Divine revelation as a dead and soulless body. And in this case it is not only of a kind of suicide that we are speaking; we are also speaking of a kind of murder."
Also nicely said. Could we also say that in the condition and adventure bestowed on us by the Creator, bodies need souls and souls need bodies and it is precisely in the creative tension, the relationship between the two that the journey into or away from God takes place. Gregory of Nyssa territory. Erich Voeglin also speaks of the human condition as "metaxy" or an "inbetweeness" that is dynamic and best accounted for in story, myth, image. And that, in turn, seems first cousin to Maximus the Confessor's vision of the human as a microcosmic working into and out of God's macrocosmic redemption. All good strategies for escaping the lure of quantification's hyptnotically reductive power. Obdience to Yeshua's "take up your cross."
The power of the vision of D. H. Lawrence and of Orthodoxy (particularly the patristic theologians) is that they give equal precedence to the soul and body. It was clear early on that reductionistic materialism would lead to the Machine, but reductionistic idealism can also lead to the same place. The secret to overcoming this is in the secret of the 2-in-1 of the body and soul on a microcosmic level, and the 3-in-1 of the trinity on the macrocosmic level. The early Church Fathers understood all this, but modern minds have been tainted by binary logic. John Moriarty is so helpful because he recovers the truth of ancient logic (for the ancient Egyptians something could be yes and no, one and many at the same time).
The point of the Trinity being the best guide for and educator of the body-soul life is exactly right and helpful. Lawrence is certainly a kindred voice and Moriarity, a new presence for me, is a welcome gift of this salon conversation. He and others might well direct me to go out and touch grass instead of diving deeper online or buying another book but thank you for the introduction.
Farasha, was Lawrence a Christian? I’m curious. I always assumed - wrongly? - he had gone his own way into a kind of animism? I’d be very interested to know more, and if you have any recommended reading. (More generally, I always enjoy your contributions, thank you).
Philip Sherrard is one of my major influences. About 20 years ago, Sherrard's "The Rape of Man and Nature" was one of the major texts that helped me along on my path from agnostic, secular environmentalism and primitivism to a religious view of the world and reality.
This stuff is all very scary. Normally I’d say let people have their strange ideologies, but it’s a greater cause for concern when people with a lot of wealth and power start playing God. Reminds me of Ursula K Le Guin’s sci-fi novel “The Lathe of Heaven.”
Well put. Transhumanist theories on transcendence seem somewhat contradictory to me (like how are they saying that the material world is the only thing that is meaningful and also that they trying to escape the material world??) but “inverse Platonism” is a helpful way to describe it!
Transhumanism really comes down to the desire for immortality. Since transhumanists believe in nothing sacred, nothing divine, and since they have no conception of the afterlife, they are working towards immortality here and now. Of course, it is a sick, twisted version of immortality, since every single authentic religious tradition advocates "dying before one dies," namely the sacrificing of one's ego and lower self, yet it is precicely the ego and lower self that the transhumanists want to preserve. There is something fundamentally very sad about the transhumanist vision, since it denies a person the reality that even the Epicureans accepted. If all we are is a bundle of memories that can be uploaded onto the "cloud," we are nothing at all.
You put that well. that the disagreements we have at the practical level are really about what our eschatological beliefs are. In everyday conversation we never have opportunity to talk about big picture philosophical or religious beliefs and so can not really get at the causes of our deep divides. I can't even take my kid to the orthodontist without contemplating the tranhumanist ideas presented to me everywhere. For example, the doctor last time had on these glasses with little periscopes on each eye. He can stand up straight and gaze ahead while seeing down into the patient's mouth. I suppose it is marketed as ergonomic but I thought it was a needless improvement on the human ability to turn and face the patient.
And yes, it is showing that even those who claim to believe that material reality alone exists do crave transcendence... as Paul says if you take God off the throne something else will have to go there and in the materialist world that something is made by us, or is us.
When we see and comprehend this everywhere but have no way to begin to explain our views it is so isolating. The people who are being drawn into this new world "where the rules of the ecosystem no longer apply" mostly have no idea that that is what they are joining. They are just believers in the myth of progress with no idea that such a myth or any alternative to it exists.
Even among my extended family this is prevalent and almost impossible to discuss.
You tell an interesting tale. I can imagine a dentist/optometrist/etc using a hi-tech camera pointed directly at the patient's mouth/eye/etc, with such high resolution that he can see everything in minutest detail, but never once turn from his computer screen to see the patient, read the expressions, understand. An excellent example of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Scary.
Good point, I may be assuming way more philosophical rigor in this theory than is actually present! Intellectual arrogance is a common trait among quantitatively gifted people in the US who make up a lot of the tech/Silicon Valley world, as scientific/technological/mathematical aptitude is considered more valuable than other skills by us right now culturally… and this inflates a lot of people’s perception of their own capacity to know what is best for the world. Although I never worked in tech, I worked in quantitative side of public health, and there was a persistent lack of willingness amongst the number crunches and policy researchers to engage with the more philosophical questions relevant to the field… “what is health?” “What does our culture believe about sickness and death and is this biasing what we decide to measure or optimize for?”
Just today collected a library book about Caroline Norton (The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser), who in in 1820s was legally deprived access to her three small children following a trial that saw her accused of adultery. Her name was cleared in the trial, but her husband was still able to keep the children from her *and* control her earnings as an author, because (as most may know) at that time property owned by women reverted to the husband upon and within marriage. She became an activist and fought for women’s and mothers’ rights to, respectively, their own children and income/creative work.
I don’t yet know all the details or how well written the book is or isn’t, but it got me thinking about the situation women are facing today, that is the threat of being erased. In Norton’s day women’s identity and agency disappeared within marriage (levels of disappearance depending upon the whims and mercy of each husband). Today those who actually consider themselves the ones who fight for human rights are in large part enabling women’s erasure, the focus currently being on sports. Some say this sort of statement is hyperbolic, but the reality is even this ten years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Additionally, corporations and government are working together to pit groups against each other, with new and ridiculous offenses against trans individuals announced almost daily. Only days ago, an American politician was accused of endangering the lives of trans people because he asked a question.
Is there some sort of warped cyclical nature to thought that causes it all to go ballistic every century or so? What’s next for women? Since this has already seeped into literature and even music (“being a woman is a ‘vibe’”), it’s pretty apparent it’s not stopping with sports, and writing about women, even by women, is endangered. (And much else.)
Apologies if this comes off as unorganized thought - it’s 02:00 wandering of the mind thanks to sleeplessness. Any continuing thoughts, info, etc.?
My feeling is that our continual and now almost ubiquitous use of the internet to communicate, whereby in so many cases through text alone is a major reason for the degree and intensity of
bifurcation and polarization...of course prompted and guided by social media (as in twitter for example).....essentially we need face to face contact for the resolution of differing opinions and positions, we need vulnerability and to see the whole person
...with the screen acting as a kind of buffer / shield peoples communication and behaviour is wildly different than in real life...
Log off and see how you feel about the issues you describe. Just my thoughts
Yes to this and perhaps the conversation about whether it is happening and why, should also include, or maybe even be solely about, what are we going to do about it? I can tell you that is accepted as fact amongst the educated twenty somethings that a man who dresses, acts, looks and claims to be a woman should be referred to in the feminine, including the pronouns of choice. I know this because I have three of my very own 20 somethings who chastise me for refusing to play along, refusing to say "she" when discussing the latest male makeup artist who is "trans" and goes by some hyper feminized moniker. They also claim to be feminists and when I explain the utter insanity of accepting the infiltration of men into our sacred realm of childbearing, for instance, (a stealthier move through the use of language I have never seen, I mean...chest feeding?? Pregnant people?? Menstruating people??) they come incredibly close to accusing me of bigotry and such crimes as "being mean". This is a very serious situation and I for one, a woman who feels outrage that men are once again getting away with devaluing women's roles and biology by claiming "anyone can do it", will never accept a man is a woman. But what to actually *do* about it?
in my opinion - its very tricky as we are all dependent on our culture, you got two sides to the coin I suppose, comfort and facilities and so on and then all this bullshit....they are one package,,
start a new culture, maybe??
People also afraid to speak, I know Lesbians would good jobs who feel the same way, but afraid to speak up for fear of being attacked and essentially losing livelihood....
I was thinking on this, and I guess You're "saying" a person should stand up for what's right, right? No matter the consequences.
My recollection, tho, is that You're retired like I am. Not everyone is in that position. Easy to say what other people should do. Now, if You have a story about how You sacrificed Your career so You could "live not by lies" I'd be really glad to hear about. I'm sure it would be fascinating.
Thank You for the link to Solzhenitsyn. It was interesting.
That *is* a grand story You tell, and *is* a tale of the Hero’s Journey, right? I’d be sympathetic, like I’m sure others are, except for “a couple” things.
What You “say” is factually true. What I wrote isn’t backed up by Solzhenitsyn’s story. After all, he *is* an international hero. But how’d You overlook the previous sentence I wrote? “If You can do it [fight back against Wokeism] (sic) the public sphere without fear of losing Your livelihood, that'd be great.”
All I was trying to do was encourage Heidi. She’s up against a rock and a hard place. If she can speak out that black isn’t white, and down isn’t up, I think that’s taking a *great* step down the path of the Hero. Especially when it’s her *kids* who are Woke.
So, You’re correct that being a kamikaze doesn’t square with “live not by lies.” But what You imply is that I’m recommending Heidi to, as Solzhenitsyn says, “smile in a cowardly fashion.” That it’d be better to be one who’s “willing to abandon all our principles,” or “to remain consciously a servant of falsehood.” That the best course would be to be “a part of the herd and a coward.”
That’s what You’re implying. So I’m a bit incredulous when You say, “Don't be offended, @jt. I didn't call you out.” I have vague recollection of a similar dialogue over at Bari Weiss’s.
The story You laid out about Yourself is one for others to emulate. That’s great. Especially in this crowd. Really. What You’re doing with Your life is really solid.
This is indeed worth consideration. Living not by lies is exactly what we should all be striving for. There are countless stories of people who have stood for their values against seemingly impending disaster with varying results, including my own which is that I refused to ask for proof of vaccination from clients and left my job and lost *all* but one friend when I was honest about my position on the covid 19 vaccine. Those friends are now wanting to reconnect, but I am bitter. My husband, likewise, has been banished from his office for any reason for over two years now and while this is not a financial hardship due to his ability to conduct his professional life online, it was a shock that he has not yet recovered from. It created a...sort of cynical hard edge regarding the world that didn't exist previously and a desire to cease all participation in social events now that things have cooled somewhat. It does actually require courage to say, "no, I don't believe that" and suffer the consequences, be they mental, physical or spiritual. Mostly, it takes courage to be lonely. As my kids say, "mom, is this really your hill??" Yep. Apparently it is.
Phew! I just saw this after I posted below. I'm overwhelmed by Your courage. I shudder to think of the hardships You and Your husband faced. You picked one-a the hardest, but best, hills to die on.
I can see where You'd be *very* cynical about things and Your friends and all. If I suggested You'd probably feel better with a fuller social life, I'd be saying "do what I say, not what I do." But that's just me.
Hope You can hang in there, Heidi. You're a real hero.
There is a very wise woman named Sandra Dodd who is an elder in the radical unschooling world.
She became curious about this movement as it was starting and adolescents were being swept up and away from their parents and communities (mostly in the US) into the transgender identity politics bubble.
She had questions.
She was curious.
What was this and where did it come from.
And how could we save our kids from a future of hormones and surgeries and sadness.
She started a group on Facebook called “Transgender - Parents with questions”
It’s a great resource and I really appreciate her commitment.
I've often wondered about the implications of many authors' (Paul included, of course) critique of wokeism and (extreme) liberalism, and of gender ideology, on the issue of women liberation, amongst others. Because it was Liberalism that sought to erase the limitations more traditionally oriented societies imposed upon women; and did so in the name of equality - which is a word that nowadays sends shivers down the spine of any sober thinking individual.
We are quick to condemn, and rightly so, the many excesses of this Liberalism-gone-haywire, but perhaps we forget that what we see around us is the logical unfolding of ideas that we all supported not even 50 years ago, such as gay rights or women liberation. Now that we're so unhappy about where that current has brought us, I wonder on what grounds we could draw a line and say "we want to be sexually liberated, but not children taken to strip clubs by their teachers" or, more dramatically, "we believe in the equality of the sexes but not in men going through artificial pregnancy."
Gender ideology comes from queer theory, which is a branch in the tree of feminism... And feminism wouldn't have thrived in a society that wasn't liberal.
So our critique of liberalism should include a revision of the idea of equality. Equality should be understood in terms of equality before the eyes of God, as children equally worthy of His love and kindness, but not in terms of equality of behavior and material opportunities.
In a 1934 book by J. D. Unwin called Sex and Culture, the author makes an anthropological study of 86 different societies and comes to the conclusion that sexual restrictions are positive for cultural and economic development. Unwin is a hardcore atheist and advocates for legal equality between men and women and yet, rather reluctantly, closes his book with the following words:
“In the past, […] the greatest energy has been displayed only by those societies which have reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum by the adoption of absolute monogamy. In every case, the women and children were reduced to the level of legal nonentities... Eventually they were freed from their disadvantages, but at the same time the sexual opportunity of the society was extended. Sexual desires could then be satisfied in a direct or perverted manner... So the energy of the society decreased, and then dissapeared.”
Also, here's a link to a fascinating article where the author claims that being constrained by the limits of the household wasn't really a problem before the nuclear family became the norm as a result of industrial capitalism: the traditional family before that was a large community that included a wider kinship and people unrelated by blood, as well as a broad palette of rich relationships, roles and activities. In this context, the traditional division of gender roles seems most natural, and even perhaps biased in favor of women.
I would gladly give up my legal personhood if that meant less paperwork!
At core, it all boils down to a question related to the teleology of life: are we here for the pursuit of unlimited pleasure and individual liberty? Or do we accept self-sacrifice, each of us according to their nature, as inherent to our human experience, according to the will of God? Truth is, only the latter will bring about true happiness, for individuals as well as society at large.
There is no difficulty in this, its a choice, the person can choose to prioritize this ""Fáilte ar ais Program" or not.......same with everything. What do we elevate? What do we venerate? Fear, egotism, personal survival and so on,,,,,I feel it in my life the heaviness of my sense of self, the lighter it becomes, the easier it is to wing it....
"Through soaring, birds gain altitude and travel quickly by taking energy from wind currents in the atmosphere."
DT Suzuki's Zen and the Samurai, is a life changer as is Zen Mind Beginners Mind......
"Even an insect can travel a thousand miles if it clutches onto a horses tail"
My father taught me, "if you have to force it your doing it wrong" and though not true in every situation, in most....as per the flawless movement of the cat, the Vaslav Nijinsky moment, the vicious cutting away of superfluous muscular tension that as Alan Watts so succinctly describes as the ego / the sense of self itself.....
once the heaviness is gone, everything is possible, there is no world but infinite dimensions
Taking into account the arguments and consternation of ethno-nationalists, my instinct is that the arrival of new people from all over the world onto this island actually makes the process of restoring
the trinity easier. Tá fáilte roimh chách anseo ach caithfimid teanga na tíre a labhairt.....otherwise we remain in the Cromwellian era,,,,and the curse cannot be lifted...
I heard once that Genghis Khan told his warriors that until the very moment of death you are invincible. Do not fear a single thing in this world
So I leave you with this song beautifying the great Thomas Sankara! In the spirit of Internationalism and in recognition that the great majority of Europe's riches are in fact Africa's
I have not heard "if you are working hard, you are doing it wrong" since I was 14 years old. I was working as a hod carrier for my uncle, and the mortar man, an old African American gentleman, gave me that as the best advice I ever had. This was in the Southern US when Jim Crow law ruled. Though times are worse now, humanity can still shine through.
I don't know that the arrival of lots of new people from elsewhere (like me) is going to help restore the language though. I'd have thought it would make it even less likely. Although very few of my Irish friends can speak it in any case.
Wolves and forests are definitely needed. But again, a growing population pursuing 'growth' and the usual global agenda is moving in the other direction.
Still, I increasingly share the sentiment that simply digging in the heels is a failed stategy, and also somehow spiritually wrong. The upheaval is here now. I don't know that it will give you want you seek here. But it is not allowing a restoration.
Well, by my estimation yourself and your family are a great credit to the country,,,,,so your point about your Irish friends not being able to speak Irish kinda makes my point.
And though I am speaking in generalities, it could be said that everyone loves the Irish except the Irish themselves....my feeling is that ground up movements are easier to organise in more chaotic diverse environments,,,,the rebel commander Tom Barry described the Irish as having a slave mentality through the centuries and detailed the difficulty of organisation because of that....
the introduction of chaos, which I viscerally experienced returning to Dublin yesterday from Estonia (the contrast is stark) is exactly in my opinion what Ireland needs: to be shaken up.... I am writing a book at the moment called "Hibernia and its Constellations" ... so one line as per this the Irish Question: "Ireland's like a big pot, with all the people who have never left here cooking slowly over a long period, stewing in their own juices"....
Ireland pre-immigration was insular and corrupt to the very core, still is, and I would say and I am not alone in saying it, one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the earth.....the new arrivals shake things up!
Now I am not advocating a permanent state of chaos, or limitless immigration,,,,I believe firmly in establishing an ideal population size and then working off of that.....and I believe (could be wrong) the language opens the door to the forest and the wolves.....essentially in my 44th year, I see it all as spiritual, no amount of logic will solve the problems we face,,,and thus my respect for your approach.
Growth and the usual global agenda are pathetically weak orientations / philosophies in the face of Gaelic culture,,,,,but if there is no Gaelic culture you cannot expect people to jump ship into the icy water, people need something to go to.
Imagine the impact it would make if you did an interview in the Irish language a year from now sharing your ideas through the Gaelic frame,,,,,,,the language is a spirit track, those who walk it are walking in a different world....
“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”
Well, be careful what you wish for. My home island is also experiencing that chaos and I fear where it leads. But again, I feel increasingly that some imevitability is at play. Everything will be up for grabs soon.
By the way, if you've never met Mark Boyle, he would heartily concur with your three wishes. You two might get along.
First I invoke that well serving principle: the map is not the territory....what I'm saying - its just a frame, an option.....nothing is true or as Robert Anton Wilson might say "reality is always plural and mutable".....whats happening now (our angst at the perceived threats of xyz) is as central to our nature as joy, sleep, hunger, aging , getting lost and laughing.....everything is eating everything else or put another way from 6 easy Pieces (if I remember correctly) change is the central principle of physics.....humans are hunter / scavenger / collectors.....predators most essentially, when they don't hunt, they / we predate on each other - none of us pulling our hair out at the fact, little children in Congo don't get to go to school instead toil in the mines, so we can what were doing in this very moment, that mother working her fingers to the bone in a factory in Bangladesh, the heat of the sun on that banana plantation....you get what I'm saying, I am myself a Klaus S in dominion over that world, using people for my own benefit, justifying it and then willfully resigning the cruelty of it to the dark back rooms of my mind....while i get on with my "important work" ..... fuck it man,,,,,,,zen is the door out, allowing oneself to be unburdened, a cat would be a great teacher right now,,,,
Anyway,,, as the man was saying, seems that Cromwell was responsible for approx 80% decimation in forest here,,,,,,and I found out today, that the following characters lived in the forests: the wolves of course, priests (which amused me), ,,,and more surprising to my stereotyped brain Tories
"As a political term, Tory was an insult (derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí, meaning "outlaw", "robber", from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit" since outlaws were "pursued men") "
and of course the wild Irish, what a mad combo......
Don't see why an English man couldn't learn Irish if an Irish man can learn English,,,
going across now....... as to your comment,,,,,,,its not what I wish for, just how it seems to me,,,,,,, people should get used to the idea that violence is a part of life, and like any substance its toxic depending on dosage...... was reading Tarot cards on the Streets in Riga a week and a half ago and after patience and diplomacy failed I stood up, opened my left hand and measured a light to medium open handed slap on a homeless guy who had insisted on punching and kicking me several times while I was sitting down,,,,wasn't a bit angry and considered it a medicine for him, a bit of faux anger and showing him my right fist,,,the fear in his eyes told me the medicine had worked.....boundaries were again respected....
People breach boundaries cause they can......govt are just a group of hyped up over confident people, etc etc....
Nothing meaningful to contribute, just wanted to say that I lived on the island, in the North, for 4 years (that was over 16 years ago now) and I miss it. Sometimes the longing is almost physical. I've traveled to numerous places on the planet, but if I could choose anywhere to return, or better yet live, it would be Ireland.
I'm an Irish citizen by birth, but didn't set foot on the island until I was 17. I've spent every moment since (except the moments there, about a month every few years) with a physical longing to return. Truth be told, I had that longing my whole life, I just didn't recognize it for what it was. I've currently settled for teaching my children Irish in an apartment in the southern US and raising a few potted plants. But OH to have some land and an old house near my father in Liatroim.
The soul -- psyche -- refers somehow to a butterfly in its Greek etymology, I've heard. So, does the inner butterfly have a future? Did it ever have a past? I think when you start talking about the heart instead (the thing that pumps blood and has its own neurons), you start to ask some questions that the transhumanists somehow haven't even thought of yet, and the contrast between their dreams and the rooted biological-spiritual reality of the precious human body becomes quite stark indeed. I mean, compare these two passages:
"You've got to get out of your head and into your heart. Right now your thoughts are in your head, and God seems to be outside you...As long as you are in your head, you will never master your thoughts, which continue to whirl around your head like snow in a winter's storm or like mosquitoes in the summer's heat. If you descend into your heart, you will have no more difficulty. Your mind will empty out and your thoughts will dissipate...You will find life in your heart. There you must live."
— Saint Theophan the Recluse [Quoted by Archimandrite Meletios Webber in “The Mind, the Heart and the Way of Salvation” (Divine Ascent #9)]
Versus:
"The next organ on our list for enhancement is the heart, which, while an intricate and impressive machine, has a number of severe problems. It is subject to a myriad of failure modes and represents a fundamental weakness in our potential longevity...Although artificial hearts are beginning to be feasible replacements, a more effective approach will be to get rid of the heart altogether."
Lovely quote from St. Theophan. Called to mind a similar one from St. Isaac the Syrian:
“Let us take refuge in the Lord, and ascend a little to the place where thoughts dry up, and stirrings vanish. Where memories fade away and the passions die, where human nature becomes serene, and is transformed as it stands in the other world.”
The other day I had a bit of a row with a couple of writers who also have a newsletter here on Substack. It was on the comments section for a book review by one of them. After giving the matter some thought, my conclusion was that, although both of them write about religion and, to the best of my knowledge, actually believe in God, their writing focused solely on academic issues: they describe faith with the cold detachment of someone describing, say, the composition of soils across Europe. Which for some might be a fascinating topic, but you get where I'm going...
What I like about my favorite authors is that their faith informs every word they write; it is not put in parenthesis, appearing as a mere side note, if appearing at all, buried under a thick shrub of scholarly data. And yet - in the case of Paul here and also, for example, David Bentley Hart (some authors from The Post-liberal Order also come to mind) -, their texts are full of compelling ideas, owned or borrowed, and don't come across as less scholarly or serious for being an expression of a deeply rooted sense of faith and spirituality.
So I guess I just wanted to make the case for a bolder, more outspoken approach to faith when it comes to discussing matters of the soul, even in the context
of scholarly work - which is, of course, expected to be intellectually rich, well informed and thought provoking. Any thoughts on the matter?
It is one thing to believe in God, and quite another to put one's trust in Him. The "scholarly view" is often too detached to be of any practical use, it is only when combined with obedience that any real "fruit" can be cultivated.
Your thoughts reminded me of a thread I've sometimes picked at - on the issue of transparency. Can one "hide" behind one's so-called "wisdom"? (Sounds awfully foolish to me). I think what we are thirsting after is authenticity - the failures along with the successes, the temptations along with the victories - which characterizes the condition in which we find ourselves.
We become like the things we worship, so I've heard. Perhaps when one worships "cold hard facts" above all else, one becomes cold and hard and therefore brittle and of little practical use. Maybe the "facts" are, at some deep level, really chains. Or maybe they're just excuses. What's the difference, anyway?
What we need... is to be un-deceived. (James 1:22)
I like your distinction between faith and trust, because the latter is more intimate and personal. Which is funny, because our whole argument was about impersonalist indian philosophy.
These scholars wouldn't claim, I think, to have any wisdom, because the whole idea of wisdom doesn't have a place in modern academic practice. It's all about entertaining the intellect with many intricate and flowery theories and models, and choosing the one that sounds more reasonable (or novel, or exotic, or...). Which is all very good, but perhaps not when discussing matters of faith. A choice based on personal taste and inclination, but never on what is actually considered -or experienced- to be true and real can never be called faith. Intellectual faith is no faith at all.
'Obedience': I have a particular love for those rather rough sounding words which are actually so necessary and comforting. Another example: 'repentance'.
Thanks for sharing your story! I'll check out the video as well.
There is also an important distinction to be made between faith and belief.
I had a conversation with an atheist not too long ago in which he claimed that faith was essentially belief in that which cannot be proven. How to respond to such confusion?
I asked him if that is the definition the Marine Corps has in mind when they say "Semper Fidelis" (Always Faithful). The caricature of the obsequious and naïve choir boy the word "Faith" conjures in some minds is VERY different than the reality we use the word faith to describe.
When the Scripture says "God is faithful," (1 Corinthians 1:9, 18, 10:13) it is surely not implying that God believes in things which cannot be proven.
I'm just a layman, and have been following Jesus since 2007 and have been heavily involved in various ministries since 2009. I'm an Aerospace Engineer by trade and a combat veteran so I'm biased to understanding how complex systems function and especially how to put Biblical wisdom into practice.
That's a very interesting profile! There should be more engineers who are as devoted to Christ as you.
I'll try to check out the material, but can't promise anything.... You see, I've been blessed with a Guru that happens to be the most eloquent, prolific and learned speaker in Gaudiya Vaishnavism today - he also happens to be a saint...! -, so I have a lot of catching up to do.
In case feel curious, you can listen to one of his talks here:
My definition of faith is trusting in something you have good reasons to believe is true. Now those reasons can be a mix, none of them by themselves usually sufficient to generate trust, but the combination effects the trust. It can be mix of the following - the examples of others who also have faith, historical reasons, scientific reasonings, cultural tradition, upbringing, spiritual experiences, miracles, answers to prayers, dreams, visions (the last two frequent among Muslims that convert to Christ, I have a Jewish friend for whom a visionary encounter with Jesus was key). Everyone with faith has their own particular and peculiar combination of events, reasons, experiences that engendered faith. Trust is actually I think a better translation of the Greek word in the New Testament as faith and believe have been trivialized as low grade religious words. Pisteuo the Greek word for believe, the verb form of the noun pistis translated as faith means “to trust in, rely on, adhere to” much stronger than the common understanding of believe which is to be faithful to mental intellectual concepts in your mind. Faith is an encounter with a reality.
The Sanskrit word which is usually translated as faith is shraddha. It is the tendency to serve God that arises spontaneously when the heart has received a direct glimpse of spirituality, however faint or even unconscious, through association with a saint. When shraddha is more developed, it takes the form of the unshakable conviction that by serving God we are directly or indirectly taking care of all our responsibilities.
I'll always support "a bolder, more outspoken approach to faith" in writing. You're speaking specifically about scholarly work, but I see in my own reading that bolder faith is at work in poetry and fiction. Do you think that scholarly work could learn from the freed-up writing in more creative settings?
Absolutely. (Please forgive my presumption if your question was not directed at me).
And the primary difference, in my opinion, is motive. Anything one seeks to make a living of, is easily reduced to a job.
There are excellent examples of those who do wonderful work - N.T. Wright being one I admire - but work it remains. There is a world of difference between a Christian who has spent decades learning how to make a living out of ministry and a layman who has found in Jesus the joy which is above all others worth pursuing (C.S. Lewis, for example).
One is an expert in maps, and can accurately describe the pitfalls and obstacles without having seen them himself. But the other has walked the path, map in hand, and has actually overcome things the scholar easily avoids. Only followers learn how the map is symbolic of reality, and where reality is symbolic of the map, regardless of their vocation.
With respect to writing - what is the end we are pursuing?
Rilke once put it like this:
"You must seek for whatever it is that obliges you to write. You must discover if its roots reach down to the very depths of your heart. You must confess to yourself whether you would truly die if writing were forbidden to you. This above all: ask yourself in the night, in your most silent hour - must I write? If there is an affirmative reply, if you can simply and starkly answer 'I must' to that grave question, then you will need to construct your life according to that necessity."
Otherwise, beware lest it become a job (Galatians 3:10).
I like your differentiation of "expert in maps" and the one who has "walked the path, map in hand." It reminds me of the hair-splitting between a job and a vocation. Both are God-given in the end, but I'd argue that only a vocation is an end unto itself.
For the writer who walks with God and writes accordingly, is the divinely-inspired writing the end unto itself? (In contrast, religious experts writing about faith would see the work as a means toward colder knowledge, advancement, or other elements of a job.)
I'm not sure what you mean by writing being an end unto itself, (and not a means of communication?), but I would likely cringe to hear such a thing called "divinely-inspired."
There is mention, I think, of the thing we've touched on here in The Great Divorce:
"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower- become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
I would venture to say that any so-called "Saint" who cares primarily for his or her own reputation, is likely not divinely inspired. (1 Timothy 1:15)
Mystical, devotional, spiritual compositions are the most elevated and beautiful form of discourse, wether created with a primarily aesthetic intention or not. Most, if not all scriptures, are written in verse, and have an irresistible formal appeal.
Then, did you happen to read "Purge Me With Hyssop" by our friend Paul here? A little masterpiece. Or Tolstoy's 'God Sees Truth, But Waits'? Or...?
So yes, I just generally have very little interest in poetry or prose that's unrelated to spirituality (not in the New Age sense of the word, of course). And yes, scholarly work can certainly become more interesting when it gets creative, but here too I'd make the case for a strong spiritual groundedness. Because when we don't have that, our intellect tends to run loose and that often leads to poor creative decisions.
However, the highest (scholar) literature is not an act of creativity but of revelation.
I used to teach religious studies in the Academy. Let me tell you: religion departments are one place where one absolutely cannot and must not utter the word belief. I left. Good riddance. Seyyed Hossein Nasr once told me: "Imagine a school for aspiring violinists where none of the teachers have picked up a violin. It would be a sham, a laughing stock. And yet, this is exactly what religion in the academy has turned into, namely instructors in a topic they know nothing about."
Haha incredible! My guru is no enemy of higher education, but he once told me: "If one goes back to university after finding Sri Guru, that means he has no faith!"
You have described the “spiritual but not religious” person. They are well-meaning but they keep their distance because they are afraid of the changes they know they will need to make if they go in 100%. So they’re holding back. Reminds me of an episode in Matthew 19:16-30 where a rich young man asks Jesus how he can attain eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments, and the rich young man says that he has been doing so all his life. Then Jesus tells him to give away everything to the poor and follow Him. The rich young man goes away sad because he has great possessions. Then Jesus says the rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. The interpretation of this Bible passage is this: whatever it is that a person is attached to - wealth, family, honors, physical beauty - will prevent him from enjoying eternal happiness, from union with God. Note that the rich young man couldn’t bear to give it all away because he had GREAT possessions. He had a LOT of stuff, many attachments. Wealth, in itself, isn’t bad, as long as it is used properly and as long as your relationship to it is spiritually healthy. It’s when wealth or whatever attachment (including to family and friends) becomes a hindrance to union with God, that it becomes dangerous.
That's a beatiful reflection, I couldn't agree more.
I'm currently a monk, and the moment when I finally decided to take the leap was during a sermon where my guru talked about the moment Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a saint from medieval India, left everything behind to lead a renounced life. It was very dramatic, because we were in the very place where He jumped into the Ganges and crossed it crying out "Krishna, Krishna!" (it's a sanskrit name of God). I was playing the mridanga (a drum made of clay), and he was singing and speaking in between verses. He said: "You must abandon all other attachments! It's impossible to approach God if you have any other desires that than to please Him."
It's like when Jesus said you can't be the slave of two masters. And certainly intellectual cultivation can be a powerful attachment, completely worldly even if its content is related to Religion.
I'm reading the Life of St. Silouan the Athonite by St. Sophrony and this bit from St. Sophrony caught attention last night:
“The Areopagites took a different route. They gave priority to cogitation, not prayer. Those who set out on that track are often misled. Easily achieving intellectual assimilation of even apophatic forms of theology, they content themselves with the intellectual delights experienced. Not attributing due significance to their unconquered passions, they easily imagine that they have achieved what the Areopagites teach, whereas in the overwhelming majority of cases, while apprehending the logical structure of this theological system existentially they do not attain to the One they seek.”
No Man is and Island by Thomas Merton. I read it years ago and recently picked it back up. Carries more weight now. The chapter Asceticism and Sacrifice is particularly good.
I'm not sure I'm able to discern the theme of this edition, except the usual one, the one we're all here for, that everything is going to Hell and don't we know it! Still, these are books I recommend to the dispirited, knowing that people who take my advice may become more dispirited:
Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick.
I imagine most readers of this Substack have read them, but some may not have.
Love in the Ruins, by Walker Percy. This is Percy's funniest book, and it and its sequel, The Thanatos Syndrome, have a ( forgive the cliche ) prophetic quality.
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's a beautiful book, and a tonic for the soul.
Good suggestions. Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick will get you thinking! I've also found the books by Matthew Crawford quite interesting and helpful. Check out "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in the Age of Distraction", or his latest, "Why We Drive." Cheers.
The Allotment- It's Landscape and Culture. Especially its culture which champions the joy of being independent. Producing one's own food and sharing the pleasure of doing so with like minded people. Not sure if it's still in print though.
Shoshana Zuboff's 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' is a must-read, in my opinion. Profoundly eye-opening.
England had its own Wendell Berry, albeit one from a slightly earlier generation. His name was Adrian Bell, and Richard Hawking has written a fine book on him called 'At The Field's Edge.' I wrote a brief review of it here:
A while back, someone on here recommended C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and I loved it. It's relevant to the themes Paul writes about, and thoroughly enjoyable.
All three books are good in their own ways, but Perelandra (the 2nd book) is one of the most beautiful books ive read, although That Hideous Strength (3rd book) is probably the most relevant to our current time and place. The first book (Out of the Silent Planet) is a fine adventure novel with great world building but not as deep as the other two, so if you start it and are wondering what the big deal about the trilogy is, read at least Perelandra (or skip right to it, it can be read by itself)
I'd toss the supernatural thrillers by fellow Inkling, Charles Williams', into the mix. They blew my mind when I first read them and are probably even more relevant today given the weird war on the real we are currently in.
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, translated by Benedicta Ward, published by Penguin Books, 2003, available in paper and ebook format.
Meint noch irgendjemand, die apokalyptischen Reiter würden an uns vorbeistürmen, ohne ihre Spuren der Verwüstung zu hinterlassen?
Das Gericht ist da, es ereignet sich jetzt und überall.
Und es ist keine „Rache der Natur“! Das wäre zu billig gedacht. Die „Natur“ rächt sich ebenso wenig wie G’tt sich je „gerächt“ hat.
Unser Tun hat inhärente Konsequenzen – genauso wie unser Reden und Denken und das Unterlassen dieser „Tätigkeiten“. Diese Konsequenzen folgen nicht unbedingt immer gleich „auf den Fuß“; manche brauchen Zeit, um sich zu entfalten und sichtbar bzw. spürbar zu werden.
Wenn sie es dann schließlich sind – so wie die derzeitigen Hitzewellen, die das Laub der Bäume und diese selbst verdorren lassen – verbietet sich das Wehklagen und hektische Fordern bzw. Ergreifen von (Sofort-)Maßnahmen.
Vielmehr sollten wir entschieden in uns gehen und innehalten. Bei diesem Innehalten bleiben wir abstinent von allem Agieren und sogar von allem Überlegen und Planen.
Wir sind einfach mal nur DA, in aller Aufmerksamkeit, die uns zu Gebote steht. Wir sind da und nehmen wahr, was ist. Und halten es aus. Das genügt fürs erste, denn dabei machen wir jedenfalls schon mal keinen Unfug.
Dabei gehen uns nicht nur die Augen auf; vielmehr werden sie uns sogar übergehen von all der Trauer, Scham und Reue, die in uns aufsteigen. So beginnt die Wandlung: in der Präsenz. Und in unserer Präsenz ist immer schon die Gegenwart von יהוה!
I teach government to American high school students and I return to work in a couple of weeks. The material on transhumanism and the adjacent trans movement has been absolutely fascinating for several reasons, especially since a majority of my students have found themselves aligned with the “Transhumanist Party” when they take political inventory quizzes. Even in my deeply conservative county and school district, at least 10-15% of the kids identify as trans or some different gender, which makes sense to me now. The kids also spend every last minute buried on their phones and have crippling anxiety about nearly everything. The machine is certainly alive and well. Too bad I can’t take a sledgehammer to every piece of modern technology in the room. Teaching and learning would be so much easier. American education needs a serious neo-Luddite movement.
“ Regarding World History, I always aim to bring out the shift in thinking from pre modern to modern in order to question how we as a Western society became so terribly engrossed with ourselves.”
Can I ask how specifically you do this? I also teach world history, and have been trying to do this but I don’t know how effective I have been, and I’m always looking for ideas! It’s not easy to find history teachers who believe this, at least on the internet, and are willing to say it and give advice. Thanks in advance!
of the Renaissance, like the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe, had some mixed results. I have been reading lately about the effect scholasticism had on thinking in the west (maybe it was here? I can’t remember where I saw the discussion). I spend a good bit of time on the early Middle Ages and Byzantium, and the ideas of the ecumenical councils (I teach in a Christian school so I can be very open about this). I wanted to explore more this year with my students the origin of so many ideas that seem to have taken root in the west that didn’t in the east- some good and some bad. This is my real question right now- how do I help them identify and evaluate some of those ideas and their essence when it’s the very air we breathe? Seeing themselves as characters in a very old, very long story seems to help students engage more with how this affects them today. It seems to me that studying history, especially distant history, is a great way to get students to see their own modern assumptions in contrast to other eras. I do spend some time on Plato’s ideals, which younger students (these are mostly 9th graders) seem to think is funny and makes them feel smart, but it’s a way of getting them into the practice of thinking about what the essence of an idea is. I also do what I call role play dialogue. I give every student a part (some person or group of people in history) and then during the traditional lecture I will periodically stop and ask a particular student to explain how this was affecting their “character”. They seem to like that and it keeps them on their toes. It also seems to help them understand better that people weren’t just “stupid” but were reacting to events in a way consistent with their perspective, however right or wrong or helpful or harmful that perspective may have been. Then we can evaluate the effects of that response and get into how they can evaluate their own response to events or ideas. Because of what I see in culture today, and youth culture in particular, I am trying to get them to learn to question ideas that come at them - most of it is not in discussion format but in advertising or videos or slogans or songs, and it’s hard to argue with ideas that just move on to something else the second you ask of it a probing or “essence” question. I am grateful not to be a teenager right now!
I'm also a schoolteacher, and where I teach, cell phones are strictly forbidden -- it helps so much! And often my homework assignments -- even for eleventh graders -- are something like "Go outside -- no phone, no friends -- and just pay attention to what you see, hear, smell and feel for fifteen minutes." And it's staggering how liberating this is for my students -- and even overwhelming, in a positive way -- to be told by an adult to set the damn screen down and reinhabit their own senses on their own planet -- they are actually desperate for that, only they have no autonomy left to just decide to do that on their own anymore -- they need to be told. They need it to be an assignment.
Graham- Have you ever read John Senior? He was a traditionalist Catholic and what he did at University of Kansas was remarkable. He founded the Integrated Humanities program. Though he never proselytized, there were too many conversions to Catholicism, so the University shut him down. His whole intention, like you express here, was to reconnect students to reality via wonder.
Senior also wrote two books worth mentioning, "The Destruction of Christian Culture" and, "The Restoration of Christian Culture". Though he wrote in a Catholic context (he was a fairly late convert), I don't think it is a stretch to believe it wouldn't take much to reorient Senior's work to your own project, both as a teacher and a writer. These two books are surpassingly excellent either way.
I hope all is well with you in the New Siberian Underground.
p.s. It is also worth looking into Wyoming Catholic College which was founded largely on Senior's ideas. The freshman at WCC arrives earlier than the rest and are taken on a month long excursion into the wilderness. There they are taught how to survive and even to lead the group. How different than the "education" i.e., deep enstupification, that most of us ever got.
In our homeschool there are no screens. When I am asked for advice by people new to homeschooling I find that almost nothing we do will work for them if they take for granted that their kids will have cell phones or even abundant computer access. It is just so easy and natural for kids to read and do all sorts of projects when this stuff is out of the way! (put on plays, build rafts, play music, climb trees, carve and whittle, bike around town....) And conversely, it is so difficult with the distractions. I don't mean phone off during school time, I mean no internet most of the time so that kids begin to think of things they want to do in the physical present. It's a secret superpower. People will just be amazed with how my kids behave and the things they do... and I want to cry and tell them that my kids are not amazing they are fully human and quite ordinary. We are all being adjusted to a diseased state and normal looks like something unachievable.
Yes, we did the same. Then they left home and went to college and are just as attached to their devices as kids whi went to elementary and high school. Shrug. Still, they *are* aware of the societal sickness and they did have all those years without phones and the internet since smart phones were not allowed until "junior" year, and driving, so 16. I teach at a homeschooling co-op and have requested no phones in the area and the *parents* have balked. They want to be on their phones, taking pictures, listening to podcasts and scrolling social media while I teach their children history. It's shocking.
I don't want to be paranoid. No one is attacking , really. Lots of people think it is really nice that we can homeschool and our kids can do these things but they don't go so far as to do it themselves. Being attacked for being different is not hard to imagine, and certainly with Covid rules there was no mercy for the outliers.
"Sometimes a man needs a holiday from his opinions: and Lord knows, you all do by now.”
Yes.
I am getting the Volkskrant every morning ( a sort of Dutch Guardian) and I am done with it quicker and quicker. So many opinions; even the facts are opiniated often. And most of them so well intended, but still .. opinions.
But is it not the same here in a way: a lot of high quality discussions and responses. But very philosophical.
I resist putting much time in it because I prefer action guided by vision.
I work with males because what I feel is sorely lacking is male leadership in the world and in relationship with the female. Leadership means that as male you can’t be passive or playing the rebel. A mature male has a sense of purpose, shares it with the female, initiates always intelligent cooperation (with her, his world), uses conflict for deeper clarity so that both can win and is really being committed to this, etc.
In my male groups it is always about making it practical in your life: and generally that always requires an action which we don’t like to begin with. Fear, laziness, pettiness/cowardness, self-image or just plain superficiality stand in the way. So it mostly starts with confronting ourselves. To begin with myself because as a leader I can take it easy, do it routinely, or putting myself on the line, enter the unknown and lead by example.
If it looks that I am here self-promoting and -congratulating, showing off, that is not what it is about. I am not even successful in terms of the number of people I attract. It’s a poor lot. But I put in the effort to reach out, on my websites etc. I give it my all whatever the response because of one thing: it has my heart.
What I mean to say is this: I think all of us here have something special to offer something which is vital, alive, contrary to the Machine. Do we give it our all to bring our special gift/talent whatever to the world. Paul does it in his way. But we have all different talents and have something else to bring and confront in our daily life. Looking at the Parable of the Talents is the question not: what do we do with it? Practically, daily. Why not share our struggles here?
I've found over the years a lot of variations on the notion that 'writing' or 'thinking' or 'philosophy' are opposed to 'action.' Usually the former are dismissed in favour of the latter. I understand the instinct - there certainly are a lot of useless waffly thoughts in the world, perhaps including mine.
But overall I reject the distinction. Firstly because, as I can testify, writing is an extremely active pursuit. It takes everything you have. Then, if you do it well and if you're lucky, it will be a great agent of change; if change is what you're after, which it may not be. But words change things, all the time.
It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless.
But also of course, what people say on little internet boards like this doesn't reflect their totality. I think the most useful thing I'll be doing today is collecting the eggs for my elderly neighbours and looking after their hens while their family is away. Also, sowing some grass. For most people, 'action' and 'philosophy' can't really be separated. Shouldn't be, anyway.
Action for me is doing your best according to your deepest wishes and your best knowledge. For you it is writing. I believe what you are doing is probably exactly the right thing for you. Only you can tell if there is still some escapism in it, but I don't see it. So no need to defend yourself.
"It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless."
Fully agree. It requires the willingness to learn from our follies, but generally we only really learn from experience. So act on the best of your knowledge and find out if it was folly after all or not.
"'action' and 'philosophy' can't really be separated. Shouldn't be, anyway."
Yes, it shouldn't, and that was the point of my post.
I wasn't so much defending myself as defending writing, an art/craft with which I have a deeply conflicted relationship ... but still, I think it is very much 'action.' In fact, like you then, I don't think there is anything that is not 'action.' But your post aside, the division between 'action' and other less 'useful' things (writing, prayer, meditation, relaxation) is so deep in Western culture and it never ceases to annoy me!
I agree. Basically because in normal usage their is no dicriminating between what constitutes an original act and a re-action. As long as you stretch yourself, taking a risk (proof: there is some fear) to respond authentically and new/fresh (you feel it) you act.
The danger is that we keep on perfecting what we already know. So how not to do that? For me fear is the door.
That is beautiful Jon. For me personally it is still relevant to discriminate where I re-act instead of respond. The last is from my 'heart', brings me in the unknown and there is always some fear as I don't know what will happen next.
Thank You. "there is always some fear as I don't know what will happen next."
IMO, One can learn to enjoy the feeling of not-knowing. And that can ease the strain of trying to control things. Granted, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). That's just me on a good day.
As a woman, every month I live through a series of days that I call moon-time winter. I know what action and inaction is because during these winters my body's energy is aligned only for one thing: total stillness of both mind and body. Through iteration after iteration of winters, I've come to learn that despite their relative lack of visible movement, writing is action, thinking is action, philosophizing is also action. I've had to let go of my attempts to "use" my winter time for at least mildly "productive" things such as thinking; as much as I tried, it always felt and feels at odds with what's at hand and it depletes me. We can reflect on and debate until the end of days what constitutes action and what doesn't. For me, the body decides. And if I apply a contrary will, then I pay the price.
On another note - "It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless." This reminds me of one of Krishnamurti's teachings, something to the effect of "without understanding relationship, any course of action will only breed conflict." Yes to writing being a tool towards understanding, yes to listening and speaking being tools towards understanding, yes to curiosity and sharing and being willing to be changed by our interactions. Thank you Paul for your writing and the work you do.
"Help me see the world through your eyes, so that we may speak a common language. Sometimes being teachable is all I truly have to give."
One of the founders of the internet (sorry, can't remember his name), back when it was still called the Arpanet worried that a ubiquitous internet would simply mean "garbage at the speed of light." When you look at how the internet is currently used, and the most popular web sites/moves (yep, if you guess "porn", you're right) well, I think he was prophetic. I'm beginning to feel that about opinions, too. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like I'm drowning in opinions. As I've thought about it, I suppose one of the reasons I feel that way is because like any human being, I'm hardwired to be an information gatherer. For most of human existence, the individual lived in a paucity of information: would it rain tomorrow? would the scratch on my hand kill me? are Roman legions marching towards my village. . . well, you get the idea. Acquiring information was an essential survival trait. If you knew the Mongols were heading your way, you could get your family and animals and head for the hills.
The availability of information began to change with Guttenberg, I suppose (or the earlier printing press invented by a Korean for those living there). Greater literacy certainly helped, and then there was Carnegie in the 1800s in the US and his gift of the public library. Fast forward to today, and the internet, supercharged the availability of information or data. Instead of having to seek out and find information, it is now being blasted at us 24/7 via all sorts of channels: smart devices, TVs, radio, elevator Muzak, video screens at the gas stations, and on and on . . . advertising is everywhere.
But I don't think humans have developed the skills to override our natural info gathering tendencies. And that's a crippling problem. We're just like ducks in a shooting gallery as a firehose of "stuff" is blasted at us. It's a struggle to filter the stuff that is being shoved in our faces, in our ears. How do we know what's worth paying attention to, or ignoring? Hard enough if you're an adult, but what about the kids tethered to their computers and smart devices? The addictive techniques that big corporations are using to keep our eyeballs on our screens makes all of this even harder to resist. For many, get rid of their device and the reassuring ping of a new text or email and they go a little nuts.
So, I get the points being made here by both Paul and Steven, but gosh sakes, I'm honestly sick of opinions (including the one I just made) as well as the ill-informed assertions that seem to be the typical discourse nowadays.
And I'm not sure how to deal with it. Any suggestion? I'm already trying to filter what's being sent my way. For example, I turn off my phone when I'm outside working (my wife hates that), I don't automatically flick on the radio or play music when I'm in my truck, I'm trying to limit my time connected to the internet and the amount of time I read anything on my smart phone in favor of reading actual paper books and magazines. And, at least for me, I'm trying to filter my opinions. Of course, I can't shut off my brain, but instead of tossing yet one more opinion into the fray, I'm trying to listen more and ask more questions.
in my exeperience the brain basically is a computer. it often tries to help, it thinks it knows it all, knows what is best. what helps me to change the focus is learning to listen to the heart: it always gives a real perspective, which often means: no opinion anymore. I just don't know. "I'm trying to listen more and ask more questions. : Yes, that helps me too.
Steven, groetjes! I used to read the Volkskrant in the morning, Het Parool in the evening, when I lived in Amsterdam back in the day when there was a morning paper and an evening paper. Both papers have gone completely “woke”, judging from their online editions.
What should I do with my talents? To answer the question, I prayed a lot. Ask and you shall receive. I got an answer. Not like St. Paul, being thrown off his horse, but close, a supernatural event, a miracle you could say, which brought me back to the Catholic Church after 40 years away.
But it’s not been smooth sailing because this new life called for detachment from things I used to cling to. Afterwards of course, it was a relief and I realized those things were not important in view of eternity. You need a philosophy of life which rests on your belief in what your life is for. For me, it’s union with God. Everything in my life is directed to that end.
Well, let me give you a topic... about the Machine... more and more I see in these times that the Machine is directing us towards self-created happiness. To find peace and happiness we have yoga, mindfullness, meditation etc. etc. These days it seems to me that new methods to reach happiness are popping up like mushrooms. Even feelings of sadness and grief have all kinds of self-help methods to turn them back into peace and happiness... Here in The Netherlands one of the best selling magazines is called Happinez... full of all kinds of articles about how to be happy, how to reach inner peace etc. Like happiness is an ultimate lifestyle or life goal we should reach. I came from that path, never found that peace or happiness, I am very new on the Christian path that brought me everything I was looking for, and now... more and more I start to see in all of this the Machine that you write about. I even know many Christians who search for these forms of inner peace and happiness...
Thanks Lidy, that has made me think and start to form an idea. It's not a fully formed one so ideal for general conversation and refinement. While I think there is sometimes a danger thinking in terms of analogies (if you think about atoms as billiard balls, you become really clever at describing very small billiard balls for example I think...), the analogy of the Machine is nevertheless useful. So here is my tangled train of thought spurred by your words.
Machines usually produce fumes. Is unhappiness the equivalent of fumes from the machine? And does this then imply that defeat of unhappiness is ultimately a fools errand which the machine cannot or does not want to succeed as it ultimately runs on the fumes of its own production?
No answers to this as I pop away at my keyboard writing machine software.
Finally, it's really interesting to see the geographical distribution of the readers of this stack. So add a pin to the map for Estonia for me someone.
Stephen: I do think there is some kind of treadmill effect, like you describe the machine and the fumes. It does not lead upwards, but drives people around in circles...letting them think they proceed... just my opinion, viewing the world (and internet) around me.
Stepping off that treadmill which the world pushes us to endure is a “step” in the right direction. I am not adept at memorizing scripture but to paraphrase Jesus. “Do not worry for I have overcome the world”. That assertion gives me peace, “ a peace which surpasses all understanding.” I have found that being a Christian is a journey and a process of deepening my attachment to Jesus. For He is the vine, the source of life, and I am so happy to be a branch. I wish you well, Lidy, on your journey with Jesus! Melanie
Thank you so much, Melanie. Yes it is a process of deepening, indeed. Being a church minister's daughter the words of the bible were quite familiar to me. But knowing bible words and knowing God and Jesus (truly being caught by God's Spirit) are two completely different things, I discovered eight months ago ;-)
Dana: True! We ingest everything that the internet, television and magazines vomit out over us and it seems as if we have to be happy and have to create happiness, and as if something is wrong if we don't. All kinds of positive vibes are being collected from buddhism, hinduism and God knows what other sources and put into media to teach us how to create our own peace and happiness... I think that is a big illusion qnd a great concern
Hmm, in Romans 14 the Kingdom of God is described as being “ righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. In 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to the “joy given by the Holy Spirit” and Jesus said, “fear not little flock for the Father is pleased to give you the kingdom” and “the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” and “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink and rivers of living water will flow from his inner being” Are we missing a simplicity of means?
I believe the only way to true and lasting inner peace is to be found in the Bible and in the immense love of Jesus for each and everyone of us. But not only outside Christianity; even among Christians, in particular in our Western society, I see everywhere that -next to belief in the great gift that Christ gave to humanity by His death and resurrection- inner peace is sought in yoga, meditation, sayings from buddhism etc. etc. No one seems to see the huge contrast between the Christian message and these self-help methods. All around me people are saying it's normal to mix these... I see this 'blending' of cultures and religions into recipes for inner peace and happiness happening all over the place, but nowhere is Christ to be found in that. What I do see is The Machine, trying to blend into the message of Christ and disprove it...
Our culture has been fascinated with measurement and quantity for millennia now. We've been on a quest to reduce all of reality to measurements. We are then told that we can reconstruct all of reality from these measurements via algorithms and computation.
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics shows us, once and for all, however, that there is no measurement without a measurer. Science would have us believe that the measurer will eventually be replaced by the measured - once our computers are sufficiently advanced.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The measurer cannot be measured. The wave-function collapse does not happen "in time." It is not just "very fast." It is in fact perpendicular to time.
In our quest to endlessly measure and quantify, we have denied an entire dimension of our own existence. We must now reclaim it.
I never thought that my choice of which supermarket to shop for groceries would provoke a metaphysical reflection. But it did. Sterile, over priced Whole Foods, now owned by Amazon with rows of shiny new self check out kiosks. No human interaction; by oneself, for one self with one’s trove of consumables. Contrast with family-owned Market Basket with lanes of human cashiers, from different cultures, maybe even refugees wanting to get a start in this country, and also grocery baggers with intellectual disabilities like Down syndrome able to do work and derive meaning and satisfaction. Efficient - no. Human - yes!
I think YouTube is a great place to start only because watching him and listening is such an amazing experience. It definitely helped me ride the waves of thought in Hut at the Edge of the Village. The book feels more alive when you can hear his voice across the pages. John Moriarty's speech is lyrical to say the least. Honestly it feels like someone enchanting their words before giving them out to the wider world. He is bewildering. You want to be bewildered with John Moriarty.
I have been working on a collaborative writing project with a couple of friends looking to produce a market friendly product. We have discovered a certain underlying conflict which seems to pop up over and over again. Stated simply, they are devoted to "the formula", which is the formalization of the underlying archetypes. In my view, the archetypes exist, and the formula is just a facsimile of these archetypes.
I'm inclined to follow the characters we have developed and let them take a greater role in telling the story, letting them manifest the archetypes. They are inclined to move them as pawns until the plot fits the formula and then try to reanimate the characters. This is a very difficult way for me to work, though I am doing my best to be helpful and not sulk despite the fact that with every rewrite the story and characters seems to get less and less vibrant and more and more formulaic.
I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the roles of archetypes, formula, and characters in crafting a story. Anyone's thoughts about collaborative story telling too.
I can definitely sympathize with the feeling of wanting to be a helpful team player in collaborative narratives (film, in my experience).
Formulaic storytelling is certainly market-friendly, but your use of archetypes could be a remedy to the story feeling unoriginal or (much worse) unsurprising. If you work from the archetypes into the characters (generalized to personalized), then you'll have a better shot at telling a story that makes sense according to the characters. Even if it's a Hero's Journey-type narrative structure, personalized characters could keep it from feeling formulaic.
Does that make sense? And what are the archetypes y'all are working with?
Yes, I think that makes sense. We are working with the Hero's Journey-type narrative structure, but our hero in particular has been reduced to a cardboard cutout in my opinion.
I have tried to suggest that we give ourselves a little wiggle room with the formula and don't feel the need to hit every point along the Hero's Journey with such force--let our character tell the story--but I know my refrain is becoming a bit confrontational despite my best efforts.
How would you explain the difference between the archetype and the formula? I'd love to find a way to suggest and communicate this kind of compromise, and learn everything I can from this process, even if we don't end up working together in the future.
Makes sense. Plot vs. character is a tricky balance, especially if you're working with more of a environment-first story than a character-first story.
Here's my stab at the difference: The "formula" (if you mean the narrative structure) is something that is "market-ready," i.e. recognizable to many people who would likely buy the narrative as a product. I'd argue that the formula is deadening because it depends so much on familiarity and is measured as an investment. The formula is the cage.
The archetype, while still recognizable (the prophet, the cowboy, the good-hearted prostitute, the smothering mother, etc.), is more flexible because it's character-based and so can be personalized. This room for personalization is where characters start to breathe and perhaps become "memorable" if not iconic. The archetype is the canary in the cage, with the chance to be let out with the right personalization.
To communicate a compromise, you could recommend a character-first story because a character that audiences will love and remember is the one that influences the plot, rather than one being marched through its structure.
Hope I haven't lost the thread in this long-winded response.
Currently I’m being inspired by and making copious notes on
Thomas Paine, enlightenment , revolution and the birth of modern nations by Craig Nelson.
The conditions and tumult of the 18th century in England and the America’s etc. has been an eye opener and a broadening point of reference for our own problems. Reading it I keep thinking that reaffirming and renewing the 18th centuries Enlightenment impulse might be a help to us now.
I can’t even imagine what good use they would have made of the Internet.
Below are a few quotes from the book and a related one from Bertrand Russel.
“In time, a global avant-garde of highly educated progressives dedicated to making the most of their lives through a program of self-improvement , education, communication, invention, pragmatism, natural philosophy and virtue gathered in communities of correspondence as each in turn underwent a great awakening an Enlightenment. As their intellectual and spiritual Renaissance ancestors had done, these 18th century moderns traveled across continents and oceans to meet and debate: turned conversation into an art form: strove to tolerate if not assimilate contrary opinion in a universal search for truth among cosmopolitan gentlemen “( and women)
"Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without guidance of another. Sapere Aude! (dare to know) Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of enlightenment"
Immanuel Kant
“It is only through a rational outlook, through a revival of liberal tentativeness and tolerance, that the world can survive.”
I would say we never can use our intelligence without the guidance of another. We always have premises and assumptions, often unexamined, that inform and guide our “rationality”. A paraphrase of Martin Luther - reason and logic are whores for they will serve any master. My premise - looking at reality it seems that in the end death is king, except with the possible exception of Jesus, for me probable, no, certain because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. So I trust in him as the way, truth, and life and the door into the One in whom I live and move in and have my being.
I abhor the modern “rationalists” who are nothing but reductionists.
But to the enlightenment thinkers reason , I think , was not separate from common sense, virtue, tolerance , humility regarding their own thinking or even spiritual faith.
It was Luther’s teaching that people did not need authoritarian intermediaries between themselves and God , the Bible and basically the truth which naturally led to a faith in their ability to think for themselves that was the pre revolutionary spark that helped ignite the enlightenment and the American revolution. Without Luther the printing press never would have been put to use and most of us would still be illiterate, relying on priests for all our information and still the private property of Kings.. The Enlightenment thinkers were though great opponents of any fanaticism, extremism and dogmatism which they considered abuses of god given reason.
When B.H Liddell Hart was asked what one axiom had he learned from his lifetime of studying war he replied, "Bad Means never lead to Good Ends." I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
Indeed, the result is by necessity a reflection of the method. This is a central theme in anarchist critique of marxism, its whole 'temporary prole dictatorship' phase (can of course also be applied to any ideologi/religion/plan). The tactic where means mirrors ends they call prefigurative politics, and it seems an effective antidote to authoritarian tendencies among revolutionaries.
The conflation of identity with behaviors and lifestyles is the cornerstone of all demands for LGBTQ+ rights. First, it is claimed that these identities are as immutable as pigmentation in organs of the body, and therefore require legal protection.
Furthermore it is claimed that to prohibit or discriminate against actions which inevitably emerge from LGBTQ+ identities would deny members of these groups of their right to pursue happiness.
Therefore prohibitions of, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ activities must be outlawed in all domains of the public realm: government, business, education, sports, recreation, and so on.
I believe it is essential to directly refute these claims, along the following lines:
We are not obligated to approve of the attitudes, values, behaviors, and lifestyles of people who identify as LGBTQ+.
Christina, my understanding -- so far -- is that matter/spirit dualism is being supplanted by a cosmology which sees computation as everything. Both "matter" and "mind" -- in this new-ish cosmology -- are patterns of data flow. The transhumanist eschatology then involves the expansion of human-centric computational power to the extent that reality and virtual reality will become one and the same thing; what we think of, is what will manifest itself around us -- whether that's because hyper-intelligent nanobots will physically rearrange our immediate vicinity for us, or because we've replaced the sensory input coming from our eyes, ears, nose, etc, with stuff piped directly from our computational counter-reality.
I say "our" as an empathetic member of the human race of which transhumanists are still a part, but I'll fight their vision of the future as long as I live!
Earlier Machine-ideologies were largely dualist, but, interestingly enough, the new ideologies seem to be inverse Platonism, inverse mysticism. The desire for Oneness is intense, but it is not the desire for unity with the transcendent God, but a desire for oneness with the wholly immanent Machine. Once all minds are uploaded into cyberspace, they would be at one with one another, and the Machine would be their god, only it would be an anti-God, since it embodies the principle of nothingness. The transhumanists speak of raising humans to higher levels, but all I see is the rapid descent of man to an ontological level approaching something even less than base matter. The rocks of the sacred mountains are suffused with the energies of God, but man who in his free will has chosen to flee God is doomed to eternal coldness and emptiness.
Brilliant, Farasha. Beautifully said.
And in conjunction with what you're saying, I think of this from Philip Sherrard's "A Single Unified Science":
"The divorce between the spiritual and the material means that material forms are regarded as totally non-spiritual, and thus either as illusion or as only to be known through identifying their reality with their purely material aspects. Such a debasement of the physical dimension of things is tantamount not only to denying the spiritual reality of our own created existence, but also, through depriving natural things of their theophanic function, to treating a Divine revelation as a dead and soulless body. And in this case it is not only of a kind of suicide that we are speaking; we are also speaking of a kind of murder."
Also nicely said. Could we also say that in the condition and adventure bestowed on us by the Creator, bodies need souls and souls need bodies and it is precisely in the creative tension, the relationship between the two that the journey into or away from God takes place. Gregory of Nyssa territory. Erich Voeglin also speaks of the human condition as "metaxy" or an "inbetweeness" that is dynamic and best accounted for in story, myth, image. And that, in turn, seems first cousin to Maximus the Confessor's vision of the human as a microcosmic working into and out of God's macrocosmic redemption. All good strategies for escaping the lure of quantification's hyptnotically reductive power. Obdience to Yeshua's "take up your cross."
The power of the vision of D. H. Lawrence and of Orthodoxy (particularly the patristic theologians) is that they give equal precedence to the soul and body. It was clear early on that reductionistic materialism would lead to the Machine, but reductionistic idealism can also lead to the same place. The secret to overcoming this is in the secret of the 2-in-1 of the body and soul on a microcosmic level, and the 3-in-1 of the trinity on the macrocosmic level. The early Church Fathers understood all this, but modern minds have been tainted by binary logic. John Moriarty is so helpful because he recovers the truth of ancient logic (for the ancient Egyptians something could be yes and no, one and many at the same time).
The point of the Trinity being the best guide for and educator of the body-soul life is exactly right and helpful. Lawrence is certainly a kindred voice and Moriarity, a new presence for me, is a welcome gift of this salon conversation. He and others might well direct me to go out and touch grass instead of diving deeper online or buying another book but thank you for the introduction.
Farasha, was Lawrence a Christian? I’m curious. I always assumed - wrongly? - he had gone his own way into a kind of animism? I’d be very interested to know more, and if you have any recommended reading. (More generally, I always enjoy your contributions, thank you).
Philip Sherrard is one of my major influences. About 20 years ago, Sherrard's "The Rape of Man and Nature" was one of the major texts that helped me along on my path from agnostic, secular environmentalism and primitivism to a religious view of the world and reality.
This stuff is all very scary. Normally I’d say let people have their strange ideologies, but it’s a greater cause for concern when people with a lot of wealth and power start playing God. Reminds me of Ursula K Le Guin’s sci-fi novel “The Lathe of Heaven.”
Well put. Transhumanist theories on transcendence seem somewhat contradictory to me (like how are they saying that the material world is the only thing that is meaningful and also that they trying to escape the material world??) but “inverse Platonism” is a helpful way to describe it!
Transhumanism really comes down to the desire for immortality. Since transhumanists believe in nothing sacred, nothing divine, and since they have no conception of the afterlife, they are working towards immortality here and now. Of course, it is a sick, twisted version of immortality, since every single authentic religious tradition advocates "dying before one dies," namely the sacrificing of one's ego and lower self, yet it is precicely the ego and lower self that the transhumanists want to preserve. There is something fundamentally very sad about the transhumanist vision, since it denies a person the reality that even the Epicureans accepted. If all we are is a bundle of memories that can be uploaded onto the "cloud," we are nothing at all.
oooh, inverse mysticism is a new idea for me. brilliant way of saying it.
You put that well. that the disagreements we have at the practical level are really about what our eschatological beliefs are. In everyday conversation we never have opportunity to talk about big picture philosophical or religious beliefs and so can not really get at the causes of our deep divides. I can't even take my kid to the orthodontist without contemplating the tranhumanist ideas presented to me everywhere. For example, the doctor last time had on these glasses with little periscopes on each eye. He can stand up straight and gaze ahead while seeing down into the patient's mouth. I suppose it is marketed as ergonomic but I thought it was a needless improvement on the human ability to turn and face the patient.
And yes, it is showing that even those who claim to believe that material reality alone exists do crave transcendence... as Paul says if you take God off the throne something else will have to go there and in the materialist world that something is made by us, or is us.
When we see and comprehend this everywhere but have no way to begin to explain our views it is so isolating. The people who are being drawn into this new world "where the rules of the ecosystem no longer apply" mostly have no idea that that is what they are joining. They are just believers in the myth of progress with no idea that such a myth or any alternative to it exists.
Even among my extended family this is prevalent and almost impossible to discuss.
You tell an interesting tale. I can imagine a dentist/optometrist/etc using a hi-tech camera pointed directly at the patient's mouth/eye/etc, with such high resolution that he can see everything in minutest detail, but never once turn from his computer screen to see the patient, read the expressions, understand. An excellent example of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Scary.
“Am I understanding that correctly?”
I’m not even sure they understand it correctly.
Good point, I may be assuming way more philosophical rigor in this theory than is actually present! Intellectual arrogance is a common trait among quantitatively gifted people in the US who make up a lot of the tech/Silicon Valley world, as scientific/technological/mathematical aptitude is considered more valuable than other skills by us right now culturally… and this inflates a lot of people’s perception of their own capacity to know what is best for the world. Although I never worked in tech, I worked in quantitative side of public health, and there was a persistent lack of willingness amongst the number crunches and policy researchers to engage with the more philosophical questions relevant to the field… “what is health?” “What does our culture believe about sickness and death and is this biasing what we decide to measure or optimize for?”
Just today collected a library book about Caroline Norton (The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser), who in in 1820s was legally deprived access to her three small children following a trial that saw her accused of adultery. Her name was cleared in the trial, but her husband was still able to keep the children from her *and* control her earnings as an author, because (as most may know) at that time property owned by women reverted to the husband upon and within marriage. She became an activist and fought for women’s and mothers’ rights to, respectively, their own children and income/creative work.
I don’t yet know all the details or how well written the book is or isn’t, but it got me thinking about the situation women are facing today, that is the threat of being erased. In Norton’s day women’s identity and agency disappeared within marriage (levels of disappearance depending upon the whims and mercy of each husband). Today those who actually consider themselves the ones who fight for human rights are in large part enabling women’s erasure, the focus currently being on sports. Some say this sort of statement is hyperbolic, but the reality is even this ten years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Additionally, corporations and government are working together to pit groups against each other, with new and ridiculous offenses against trans individuals announced almost daily. Only days ago, an American politician was accused of endangering the lives of trans people because he asked a question.
Is there some sort of warped cyclical nature to thought that causes it all to go ballistic every century or so? What’s next for women? Since this has already seeped into literature and even music (“being a woman is a ‘vibe’”), it’s pretty apparent it’s not stopping with sports, and writing about women, even by women, is endangered. (And much else.)
Apologies if this comes off as unorganized thought - it’s 02:00 wandering of the mind thanks to sleeplessness. Any continuing thoughts, info, etc.?
Hey Sleepless,
My feeling is that our continual and now almost ubiquitous use of the internet to communicate, whereby in so many cases through text alone is a major reason for the degree and intensity of
bifurcation and polarization...of course prompted and guided by social media (as in twitter for example).....essentially we need face to face contact for the resolution of differing opinions and positions, we need vulnerability and to see the whole person
...with the screen acting as a kind of buffer / shield peoples communication and behaviour is wildly different than in real life...
Log off and see how you feel about the issues you describe. Just my thoughts
with love
B
Beautiful!!!
Yes to this and perhaps the conversation about whether it is happening and why, should also include, or maybe even be solely about, what are we going to do about it? I can tell you that is accepted as fact amongst the educated twenty somethings that a man who dresses, acts, looks and claims to be a woman should be referred to in the feminine, including the pronouns of choice. I know this because I have three of my very own 20 somethings who chastise me for refusing to play along, refusing to say "she" when discussing the latest male makeup artist who is "trans" and goes by some hyper feminized moniker. They also claim to be feminists and when I explain the utter insanity of accepting the infiltration of men into our sacred realm of childbearing, for instance, (a stealthier move through the use of language I have never seen, I mean...chest feeding?? Pregnant people?? Menstruating people??) they come incredibly close to accusing me of bigotry and such crimes as "being mean". This is a very serious situation and I for one, a woman who feels outrage that men are once again getting away with devaluing women's roles and biology by claiming "anyone can do it", will never accept a man is a woman. But what to actually *do* about it?
in my opinion - its very tricky as we are all dependent on our culture, you got two sides to the coin I suppose, comfort and facilities and so on and then all this bullshit....they are one package,,
start a new culture, maybe??
People also afraid to speak, I know Lesbians would good jobs who feel the same way, but afraid to speak up for fear of being attacked and essentially losing livelihood....
Don't be afraid would be my thought for now
Do? What You *are* doing. Taking a righteous stand. Not easy for very many to do.
If You can do it the public sphere without fear of losing Your livelihood, that'd be great. If not, don't be a kamikaze. IMO.
That doesn't really square with "live not by lies."
Yeah? Where's the lie?
I was thinking on this, and I guess You're "saying" a person should stand up for what's right, right? No matter the consequences.
My recollection, tho, is that You're retired like I am. Not everyone is in that position. Easy to say what other people should do. Now, if You have a story about how You sacrificed Your career so You could "live not by lies" I'd be really glad to hear about. I'm sure it would be fascinating.
But otherwise...
Thank You for the link to Solzhenitsyn. It was interesting.
That *is* a grand story You tell, and *is* a tale of the Hero’s Journey, right? I’d be sympathetic, like I’m sure others are, except for “a couple” things.
What You “say” is factually true. What I wrote isn’t backed up by Solzhenitsyn’s story. After all, he *is* an international hero. But how’d You overlook the previous sentence I wrote? “If You can do it [fight back against Wokeism] (sic) the public sphere without fear of losing Your livelihood, that'd be great.”
All I was trying to do was encourage Heidi. She’s up against a rock and a hard place. If she can speak out that black isn’t white, and down isn’t up, I think that’s taking a *great* step down the path of the Hero. Especially when it’s her *kids* who are Woke.
So, You’re correct that being a kamikaze doesn’t square with “live not by lies.” But what You imply is that I’m recommending Heidi to, as Solzhenitsyn says, “smile in a cowardly fashion.” That it’d be better to be one who’s “willing to abandon all our principles,” or “to remain consciously a servant of falsehood.” That the best course would be to be “a part of the herd and a coward.”
That’s what You’re implying. So I’m a bit incredulous when You say, “Don't be offended, @jt. I didn't call you out.” I have vague recollection of a similar dialogue over at Bari Weiss’s.
The story You laid out about Yourself is one for others to emulate. That’s great. Especially in this crowd. Really. What You’re doing with Your life is really solid.
Until You recommend for *others* to be kamikazes.
Me? I try to “live not by lies.”
This is indeed worth consideration. Living not by lies is exactly what we should all be striving for. There are countless stories of people who have stood for their values against seemingly impending disaster with varying results, including my own which is that I refused to ask for proof of vaccination from clients and left my job and lost *all* but one friend when I was honest about my position on the covid 19 vaccine. Those friends are now wanting to reconnect, but I am bitter. My husband, likewise, has been banished from his office for any reason for over two years now and while this is not a financial hardship due to his ability to conduct his professional life online, it was a shock that he has not yet recovered from. It created a...sort of cynical hard edge regarding the world that didn't exist previously and a desire to cease all participation in social events now that things have cooled somewhat. It does actually require courage to say, "no, I don't believe that" and suffer the consequences, be they mental, physical or spiritual. Mostly, it takes courage to be lonely. As my kids say, "mom, is this really your hill??" Yep. Apparently it is.
Phew! I just saw this after I posted below. I'm overwhelmed by Your courage. I shudder to think of the hardships You and Your husband faced. You picked one-a the hardest, but best, hills to die on.
I can see where You'd be *very* cynical about things and Your friends and all. If I suggested You'd probably feel better with a fuller social life, I'd be saying "do what I say, not what I do." But that's just me.
Hope You can hang in there, Heidi. You're a real hero.
To paraphrase Solzenhitzyn, we keep doing what we're doing.
We refuse to participate in the lie.
What to *do*?
There is a very wise woman named Sandra Dodd who is an elder in the radical unschooling world.
She became curious about this movement as it was starting and adolescents were being swept up and away from their parents and communities (mostly in the US) into the transgender identity politics bubble.
She had questions.
She was curious.
What was this and where did it come from.
And how could we save our kids from a future of hormones and surgeries and sadness.
She started a group on Facebook called “Transgender - Parents with questions”
It’s a great resource and I really appreciate her commitment.
I've often wondered about the implications of many authors' (Paul included, of course) critique of wokeism and (extreme) liberalism, and of gender ideology, on the issue of women liberation, amongst others. Because it was Liberalism that sought to erase the limitations more traditionally oriented societies imposed upon women; and did so in the name of equality - which is a word that nowadays sends shivers down the spine of any sober thinking individual.
We are quick to condemn, and rightly so, the many excesses of this Liberalism-gone-haywire, but perhaps we forget that what we see around us is the logical unfolding of ideas that we all supported not even 50 years ago, such as gay rights or women liberation. Now that we're so unhappy about where that current has brought us, I wonder on what grounds we could draw a line and say "we want to be sexually liberated, but not children taken to strip clubs by their teachers" or, more dramatically, "we believe in the equality of the sexes but not in men going through artificial pregnancy."
Gender ideology comes from queer theory, which is a branch in the tree of feminism... And feminism wouldn't have thrived in a society that wasn't liberal.
So our critique of liberalism should include a revision of the idea of equality. Equality should be understood in terms of equality before the eyes of God, as children equally worthy of His love and kindness, but not in terms of equality of behavior and material opportunities.
In a 1934 book by J. D. Unwin called Sex and Culture, the author makes an anthropological study of 86 different societies and comes to the conclusion that sexual restrictions are positive for cultural and economic development. Unwin is a hardcore atheist and advocates for legal equality between men and women and yet, rather reluctantly, closes his book with the following words:
“In the past, […] the greatest energy has been displayed only by those societies which have reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum by the adoption of absolute monogamy. In every case, the women and children were reduced to the level of legal nonentities... Eventually they were freed from their disadvantages, but at the same time the sexual opportunity of the society was extended. Sexual desires could then be satisfied in a direct or perverted manner... So the energy of the society decreased, and then dissapeared.”
Also, here's a link to a fascinating article where the author claims that being constrained by the limits of the household wasn't really a problem before the nuclear family became the norm as a result of industrial capitalism: the traditional family before that was a large community that included a wider kinship and people unrelated by blood, as well as a broad palette of rich relationships, roles and activities. In this context, the traditional division of gender roles seems most natural, and even perhaps biased in favor of women.
https://unherd.com/2022/05/the-nuclear-family-has-failed/
I would gladly give up my legal personhood if that meant less paperwork!
At core, it all boils down to a question related to the teleology of life: are we here for the pursuit of unlimited pleasure and individual liberty? Or do we accept self-sacrifice, each of us according to their nature, as inherent to our human experience, according to the will of God? Truth is, only the latter will bring about true happiness, for individuals as well as society at large.
The 3 things required on this island:
1) The Return of the Language
2) The Return of the Forest
3) The Return of the Wolf
There is no difficulty in this, its a choice, the person can choose to prioritize this ""Fáilte ar ais Program" or not.......same with everything. What do we elevate? What do we venerate? Fear, egotism, personal survival and so on,,,,,I feel it in my life the heaviness of my sense of self, the lighter it becomes, the easier it is to wing it....
"Through soaring, birds gain altitude and travel quickly by taking energy from wind currents in the atmosphere."
DT Suzuki's Zen and the Samurai, is a life changer as is Zen Mind Beginners Mind......
"Even an insect can travel a thousand miles if it clutches onto a horses tail"
My father taught me, "if you have to force it your doing it wrong" and though not true in every situation, in most....as per the flawless movement of the cat, the Vaslav Nijinsky moment, the vicious cutting away of superfluous muscular tension that as Alan Watts so succinctly describes as the ego / the sense of self itself.....
once the heaviness is gone, everything is possible, there is no world but infinite dimensions
Taking into account the arguments and consternation of ethno-nationalists, my instinct is that the arrival of new people from all over the world onto this island actually makes the process of restoring
the trinity easier. Tá fáilte roimh chách anseo ach caithfimid teanga na tíre a labhairt.....otherwise we remain in the Cromwellian era,,,,and the curse cannot be lifted...
I heard once that Genghis Khan told his warriors that until the very moment of death you are invincible. Do not fear a single thing in this world
So I leave you with this song beautifying the great Thomas Sankara! In the spirit of Internationalism and in recognition that the great majority of Europe's riches are in fact Africa's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj1fI8TNswc
Go forward with sword in hand!
Beannachtaí deartháireacha agus deirfiúracha!
I have not heard "if you are working hard, you are doing it wrong" since I was 14 years old. I was working as a hod carrier for my uncle, and the mortar man, an old African American gentleman, gave me that as the best advice I ever had. This was in the Southern US when Jim Crow law ruled. Though times are worse now, humanity can still shine through.
hey Ray,
As per your comment, this song maybe summarizes why and in which ways hard work can be sub-optimal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPyy-mT8ktE
A true apprentice program is to teach someone how to "do it right" and then the work you do has real meaning and satisfation
100% Brother! Well said!
This is all good inspiring stuff.
I don't know that the arrival of lots of new people from elsewhere (like me) is going to help restore the language though. I'd have thought it would make it even less likely. Although very few of my Irish friends can speak it in any case.
Wolves and forests are definitely needed. But again, a growing population pursuing 'growth' and the usual global agenda is moving in the other direction.
Still, I increasingly share the sentiment that simply digging in the heels is a failed stategy, and also somehow spiritually wrong. The upheaval is here now. I don't know that it will give you want you seek here. But it is not allowing a restoration.
Hey Paul
Well, by my estimation yourself and your family are a great credit to the country,,,,,so your point about your Irish friends not being able to speak Irish kinda makes my point.
And though I am speaking in generalities, it could be said that everyone loves the Irish except the Irish themselves....my feeling is that ground up movements are easier to organise in more chaotic diverse environments,,,,the rebel commander Tom Barry described the Irish as having a slave mentality through the centuries and detailed the difficulty of organisation because of that....
the introduction of chaos, which I viscerally experienced returning to Dublin yesterday from Estonia (the contrast is stark) is exactly in my opinion what Ireland needs: to be shaken up.... I am writing a book at the moment called "Hibernia and its Constellations" ... so one line as per this the Irish Question: "Ireland's like a big pot, with all the people who have never left here cooking slowly over a long period, stewing in their own juices"....
Ireland pre-immigration was insular and corrupt to the very core, still is, and I would say and I am not alone in saying it, one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the earth.....the new arrivals shake things up!
Now I am not advocating a permanent state of chaos, or limitless immigration,,,,I believe firmly in establishing an ideal population size and then working off of that.....and I believe (could be wrong) the language opens the door to the forest and the wolves.....essentially in my 44th year, I see it all as spiritual, no amount of logic will solve the problems we face,,,and thus my respect for your approach.
Growth and the usual global agenda are pathetically weak orientations / philosophies in the face of Gaelic culture,,,,,but if there is no Gaelic culture you cannot expect people to jump ship into the icy water, people need something to go to.
Imagine the impact it would make if you did an interview in the Irish language a year from now sharing your ideas through the Gaelic frame,,,,,,,the language is a spirit track, those who walk it are walking in a different world....
“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”
― John O'Donohue
What would St Patrick say?
Inniu an lá,
Beannachtaí
Well, be careful what you wish for. My home island is also experiencing that chaos and I fear where it leads. But again, I feel increasingly that some imevitability is at play. Everything will be up for grabs soon.
By the way, if you've never met Mark Boyle, he would heartily concur with your three wishes. You two might get along.
Hey Bud,
First I invoke that well serving principle: the map is not the territory....what I'm saying - its just a frame, an option.....nothing is true or as Robert Anton Wilson might say "reality is always plural and mutable".....whats happening now (our angst at the perceived threats of xyz) is as central to our nature as joy, sleep, hunger, aging , getting lost and laughing.....everything is eating everything else or put another way from 6 easy Pieces (if I remember correctly) change is the central principle of physics.....humans are hunter / scavenger / collectors.....predators most essentially, when they don't hunt, they / we predate on each other - none of us pulling our hair out at the fact, little children in Congo don't get to go to school instead toil in the mines, so we can what were doing in this very moment, that mother working her fingers to the bone in a factory in Bangladesh, the heat of the sun on that banana plantation....you get what I'm saying, I am myself a Klaus S in dominion over that world, using people for my own benefit, justifying it and then willfully resigning the cruelty of it to the dark back rooms of my mind....while i get on with my "important work" ..... fuck it man,,,,,,,zen is the door out, allowing oneself to be unburdened, a cat would be a great teacher right now,,,,
Anyway,,, as the man was saying, seems that Cromwell was responsible for approx 80% decimation in forest here,,,,,,and I found out today, that the following characters lived in the forests: the wolves of course, priests (which amused me), ,,,and more surprising to my stereotyped brain Tories
"As a political term, Tory was an insult (derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí, meaning "outlaw", "robber", from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit" since outlaws were "pursued men") "
and of course the wild Irish, what a mad combo......
Don't see why an English man couldn't learn Irish if an Irish man can learn English,,,
going across now....... as to your comment,,,,,,,its not what I wish for, just how it seems to me,,,,,,, people should get used to the idea that violence is a part of life, and like any substance its toxic depending on dosage...... was reading Tarot cards on the Streets in Riga a week and a half ago and after patience and diplomacy failed I stood up, opened my left hand and measured a light to medium open handed slap on a homeless guy who had insisted on punching and kicking me several times while I was sitting down,,,,wasn't a bit angry and considered it a medicine for him, a bit of faux anger and showing him my right fist,,,the fear in his eyes told me the medicine had worked.....boundaries were again respected....
People breach boundaries cause they can......govt are just a group of hyped up over confident people, etc etc....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jclSQ41NQCc&list=RDMM&start_radio=1&rv=R_3j71cZ514
Yep have heard of Mark, hes well known as an expert in the art of love making around our circles.....
Nothing meaningful to contribute, just wanted to say that I lived on the island, in the North, for 4 years (that was over 16 years ago now) and I miss it. Sometimes the longing is almost physical. I've traveled to numerous places on the planet, but if I could choose anywhere to return, or better yet live, it would be Ireland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2J_TzkV4w&list=RDMMbYubEn15eH4&index=5
Tar ar ais
Come back!
I'm an Irish citizen by birth, but didn't set foot on the island until I was 17. I've spent every moment since (except the moments there, about a month every few years) with a physical longing to return. Truth be told, I had that longing my whole life, I just didn't recognize it for what it was. I've currently settled for teaching my children Irish in an apartment in the southern US and raising a few potted plants. But OH to have some land and an old house near my father in Liatroim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4ae6Wx9xiQ&list=RDMM&index=4
Tar ar ais, tá fáilte romhat!!
Oh the moment our finances allow, we will be there! You know, barring total societal collapse in the meantime.
The soul -- psyche -- refers somehow to a butterfly in its Greek etymology, I've heard. So, does the inner butterfly have a future? Did it ever have a past? I think when you start talking about the heart instead (the thing that pumps blood and has its own neurons), you start to ask some questions that the transhumanists somehow haven't even thought of yet, and the contrast between their dreams and the rooted biological-spiritual reality of the precious human body becomes quite stark indeed. I mean, compare these two passages:
"You've got to get out of your head and into your heart. Right now your thoughts are in your head, and God seems to be outside you...As long as you are in your head, you will never master your thoughts, which continue to whirl around your head like snow in a winter's storm or like mosquitoes in the summer's heat. If you descend into your heart, you will have no more difficulty. Your mind will empty out and your thoughts will dissipate...You will find life in your heart. There you must live."
— Saint Theophan the Recluse [Quoted by Archimandrite Meletios Webber in “The Mind, the Heart and the Way of Salvation” (Divine Ascent #9)]
Versus:
"The next organ on our list for enhancement is the heart, which, while an intricate and impressive machine, has a number of severe problems. It is subject to a myriad of failure modes and represents a fundamental weakness in our potential longevity...Although artificial hearts are beginning to be feasible replacements, a more effective approach will be to get rid of the heart altogether."
— Ray Kurzweil [The Singularity Is Near, 306]
Thank you for those two contrasting quotes. I've never seen the two visions of the hear so clearly contrasted. Beautiful.
That contrast is phenomenal. Thank you!
Lovely quote from St. Theophan. Called to mind a similar one from St. Isaac the Syrian:
“Let us take refuge in the Lord, and ascend a little to the place where thoughts dry up, and stirrings vanish. Where memories fade away and the passions die, where human nature becomes serene, and is transformed as it stands in the other world.”
The other day I had a bit of a row with a couple of writers who also have a newsletter here on Substack. It was on the comments section for a book review by one of them. After giving the matter some thought, my conclusion was that, although both of them write about religion and, to the best of my knowledge, actually believe in God, their writing focused solely on academic issues: they describe faith with the cold detachment of someone describing, say, the composition of soils across Europe. Which for some might be a fascinating topic, but you get where I'm going...
What I like about my favorite authors is that their faith informs every word they write; it is not put in parenthesis, appearing as a mere side note, if appearing at all, buried under a thick shrub of scholarly data. And yet - in the case of Paul here and also, for example, David Bentley Hart (some authors from The Post-liberal Order also come to mind) -, their texts are full of compelling ideas, owned or borrowed, and don't come across as less scholarly or serious for being an expression of a deeply rooted sense of faith and spirituality.
So I guess I just wanted to make the case for a bolder, more outspoken approach to faith when it comes to discussing matters of the soul, even in the context
of scholarly work - which is, of course, expected to be intellectually rich, well informed and thought provoking. Any thoughts on the matter?
It is one thing to believe in God, and quite another to put one's trust in Him. The "scholarly view" is often too detached to be of any practical use, it is only when combined with obedience that any real "fruit" can be cultivated.
Your thoughts reminded me of a thread I've sometimes picked at - on the issue of transparency. Can one "hide" behind one's so-called "wisdom"? (Sounds awfully foolish to me). I think what we are thirsting after is authenticity - the failures along with the successes, the temptations along with the victories - which characterizes the condition in which we find ourselves.
We become like the things we worship, so I've heard. Perhaps when one worships "cold hard facts" above all else, one becomes cold and hard and therefore brittle and of little practical use. Maybe the "facts" are, at some deep level, really chains. Or maybe they're just excuses. What's the difference, anyway?
What we need... is to be un-deceived. (James 1:22)
Here's a story on how I was freed from intellectualism: https://andrewsawyer.substack.com/p/a-lesson-on-obedience
And here's a wonderful conversation on Myths and Lies: https://youtu.be/NzBT39gx-TE
Yes! Let us be swift to listen, slow to speak...
I like your distinction between faith and trust, because the latter is more intimate and personal. Which is funny, because our whole argument was about impersonalist indian philosophy.
These scholars wouldn't claim, I think, to have any wisdom, because the whole idea of wisdom doesn't have a place in modern academic practice. It's all about entertaining the intellect with many intricate and flowery theories and models, and choosing the one that sounds more reasonable (or novel, or exotic, or...). Which is all very good, but perhaps not when discussing matters of faith. A choice based on personal taste and inclination, but never on what is actually considered -or experienced- to be true and real can never be called faith. Intellectual faith is no faith at all.
'Obedience': I have a particular love for those rather rough sounding words which are actually so necessary and comforting. Another example: 'repentance'.
Thanks for sharing your story! I'll check out the video as well.
Thank you for your kind words, Nanda.
There is also an important distinction to be made between faith and belief.
I had a conversation with an atheist not too long ago in which he claimed that faith was essentially belief in that which cannot be proven. How to respond to such confusion?
I asked him if that is the definition the Marine Corps has in mind when they say "Semper Fidelis" (Always Faithful). The caricature of the obsequious and naïve choir boy the word "Faith" conjures in some minds is VERY different than the reality we use the word faith to describe.
When the Scripture says "God is faithful," (1 Corinthians 1:9, 18, 10:13) it is surely not implying that God believes in things which cannot be proven.
Here is my favorite essay on the subject: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B487M8KEkpHZcjlla3RyMmh5c28/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-8w3DwijtQW2ijZmCuRlHXw
Obedience and repentance have also been obfuscated in these confusing times. If you're interested, I happen to have meditated on repentance vs. remorse this morning (Psalm 51): https://twitter.com/ajsawyer716/status/1550053642673172480?s=20&t=Rek4TCUX65VVMCwMpRp4HA
Faith should be understood as faithfulness, loyalty, even obedience. That CS Lewis essay looks great, it'll be a good place to start with his work.
Is the audio a sermon by you? Are you a pastor? (Forgive my ignorance, I don't know if that's even the right word.)
It's a sermon by Tim Keller, I've bounced around a good bit in the last 20 years and he is my favorite preacher (although of course we have our differences). Here's my Keller archive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B487M8KEkpHZNDViMzBiY2QtNmI0OC00Nzc2LThmNjMtMThiMzc4ZTI2ODRj?resourcekey=0-pIOGpDDj7GRvM3QOfe844g&usp=sharing
I happen to be a C.S. Lewis Institute Fellow (Atlanta), here are a few things I've got from Lewis: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B487M8KEkpHZY2ZmSlpLdlVpeHc?resourcekey=0-de-_u6sHM_8ICKABc9Rl3A&usp=sharing
I'm just a layman, and have been following Jesus since 2007 and have been heavily involved in various ministries since 2009. I'm an Aerospace Engineer by trade and a combat veteran so I'm biased to understanding how complex systems function and especially how to put Biblical wisdom into practice.
That's a very interesting profile! There should be more engineers who are as devoted to Christ as you.
I'll try to check out the material, but can't promise anything.... You see, I've been blessed with a Guru that happens to be the most eloquent, prolific and learned speaker in Gaudiya Vaishnavism today - he also happens to be a saint...! -, so I have a lot of catching up to do.
In case feel curious, you can listen to one of his talks here:
https://youtu.be/1psoh0Sl51U
My definition of faith is trusting in something you have good reasons to believe is true. Now those reasons can be a mix, none of them by themselves usually sufficient to generate trust, but the combination effects the trust. It can be mix of the following - the examples of others who also have faith, historical reasons, scientific reasonings, cultural tradition, upbringing, spiritual experiences, miracles, answers to prayers, dreams, visions (the last two frequent among Muslims that convert to Christ, I have a Jewish friend for whom a visionary encounter with Jesus was key). Everyone with faith has their own particular and peculiar combination of events, reasons, experiences that engendered faith. Trust is actually I think a better translation of the Greek word in the New Testament as faith and believe have been trivialized as low grade religious words. Pisteuo the Greek word for believe, the verb form of the noun pistis translated as faith means “to trust in, rely on, adhere to” much stronger than the common understanding of believe which is to be faithful to mental intellectual concepts in your mind. Faith is an encounter with a reality.
Very interesting! I didn't know that Greek word.
The Sanskrit word which is usually translated as faith is shraddha. It is the tendency to serve God that arises spontaneously when the heart has received a direct glimpse of spirituality, however faint or even unconscious, through association with a saint. When shraddha is more developed, it takes the form of the unshakable conviction that by serving God we are directly or indirectly taking care of all our responsibilities.
I'll always support "a bolder, more outspoken approach to faith" in writing. You're speaking specifically about scholarly work, but I see in my own reading that bolder faith is at work in poetry and fiction. Do you think that scholarly work could learn from the freed-up writing in more creative settings?
Absolutely. (Please forgive my presumption if your question was not directed at me).
And the primary difference, in my opinion, is motive. Anything one seeks to make a living of, is easily reduced to a job.
There are excellent examples of those who do wonderful work - N.T. Wright being one I admire - but work it remains. There is a world of difference between a Christian who has spent decades learning how to make a living out of ministry and a layman who has found in Jesus the joy which is above all others worth pursuing (C.S. Lewis, for example).
One is an expert in maps, and can accurately describe the pitfalls and obstacles without having seen them himself. But the other has walked the path, map in hand, and has actually overcome things the scholar easily avoids. Only followers learn how the map is symbolic of reality, and where reality is symbolic of the map, regardless of their vocation.
With respect to writing - what is the end we are pursuing?
Rilke once put it like this:
"You must seek for whatever it is that obliges you to write. You must discover if its roots reach down to the very depths of your heart. You must confess to yourself whether you would truly die if writing were forbidden to you. This above all: ask yourself in the night, in your most silent hour - must I write? If there is an affirmative reply, if you can simply and starkly answer 'I must' to that grave question, then you will need to construct your life according to that necessity."
Otherwise, beware lest it become a job (Galatians 3:10).
Nice!
I like your differentiation of "expert in maps" and the one who has "walked the path, map in hand." It reminds me of the hair-splitting between a job and a vocation. Both are God-given in the end, but I'd argue that only a vocation is an end unto itself.
For the writer who walks with God and writes accordingly, is the divinely-inspired writing the end unto itself? (In contrast, religious experts writing about faith would see the work as a means toward colder knowledge, advancement, or other elements of a job.)
I'm not sure what you mean by writing being an end unto itself, (and not a means of communication?), but I would likely cringe to hear such a thing called "divinely-inspired."
There is mention, I think, of the thing we've touched on here in The Great Divorce:
"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower- become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
I would venture to say that any so-called "Saint" who cares primarily for his or her own reputation, is likely not divinely inspired. (1 Timothy 1:15)
Mystical, devotional, spiritual compositions are the most elevated and beautiful form of discourse, wether created with a primarily aesthetic intention or not. Most, if not all scriptures, are written in verse, and have an irresistible formal appeal.
Then, did you happen to read "Purge Me With Hyssop" by our friend Paul here? A little masterpiece. Or Tolstoy's 'God Sees Truth, But Waits'? Or...?
So yes, I just generally have very little interest in poetry or prose that's unrelated to spirituality (not in the New Age sense of the word, of course). And yes, scholarly work can certainly become more interesting when it gets creative, but here too I'd make the case for a strong spiritual groundedness. Because when we don't have that, our intellect tends to run loose and that often leads to poor creative decisions.
However, the highest (scholar) literature is not an act of creativity but of revelation.
I used to teach religious studies in the Academy. Let me tell you: religion departments are one place where one absolutely cannot and must not utter the word belief. I left. Good riddance. Seyyed Hossein Nasr once told me: "Imagine a school for aspiring violinists where none of the teachers have picked up a violin. It would be a sham, a laughing stock. And yet, this is exactly what religion in the academy has turned into, namely instructors in a topic they know nothing about."
Haha incredible! My guru is no enemy of higher education, but he once told me: "If one goes back to university after finding Sri Guru, that means he has no faith!"
You have described the “spiritual but not religious” person. They are well-meaning but they keep their distance because they are afraid of the changes they know they will need to make if they go in 100%. So they’re holding back. Reminds me of an episode in Matthew 19:16-30 where a rich young man asks Jesus how he can attain eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments, and the rich young man says that he has been doing so all his life. Then Jesus tells him to give away everything to the poor and follow Him. The rich young man goes away sad because he has great possessions. Then Jesus says the rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. The interpretation of this Bible passage is this: whatever it is that a person is attached to - wealth, family, honors, physical beauty - will prevent him from enjoying eternal happiness, from union with God. Note that the rich young man couldn’t bear to give it all away because he had GREAT possessions. He had a LOT of stuff, many attachments. Wealth, in itself, isn’t bad, as long as it is used properly and as long as your relationship to it is spiritually healthy. It’s when wealth or whatever attachment (including to family and friends) becomes a hindrance to union with God, that it becomes dangerous.
That's a beatiful reflection, I couldn't agree more.
I'm currently a monk, and the moment when I finally decided to take the leap was during a sermon where my guru talked about the moment Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a saint from medieval India, left everything behind to lead a renounced life. It was very dramatic, because we were in the very place where He jumped into the Ganges and crossed it crying out "Krishna, Krishna!" (it's a sanskrit name of God). I was playing the mridanga (a drum made of clay), and he was singing and speaking in between verses. He said: "You must abandon all other attachments! It's impossible to approach God if you have any other desires that than to please Him."
It's like when Jesus said you can't be the slave of two masters. And certainly intellectual cultivation can be a powerful attachment, completely worldly even if its content is related to Religion.
I'm reading the Life of St. Silouan the Athonite by St. Sophrony and this bit from St. Sophrony caught attention last night:
“The Areopagites took a different route. They gave priority to cogitation, not prayer. Those who set out on that track are often misled. Easily achieving intellectual assimilation of even apophatic forms of theology, they content themselves with the intellectual delights experienced. Not attributing due significance to their unconquered passions, they easily imagine that they have achieved what the Areopagites teach, whereas in the overwhelming majority of cases, while apprehending the logical structure of this theological system existentially they do not attain to the One they seek.”
Beatiful, sir, thanks for sharing! In the end it's all about that, isn't it? Attaining the One we seek.
Dear readers
What books can you recommend that would fit with the theme of this substack?
A few that have come up: The Need for Roots by Weil, After Ethics by McIntyre, the American saint Wendell Berry... any others?
The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy G. Patitsas.
No Man is and Island by Thomas Merton. I read it years ago and recently picked it back up. Carries more weight now. The chapter Asceticism and Sacrifice is particularly good.
this is how you lose the time war
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, unfortunately 😔
I'm not sure I'm able to discern the theme of this edition, except the usual one, the one we're all here for, that everything is going to Hell and don't we know it! Still, these are books I recommend to the dispirited, knowing that people who take my advice may become more dispirited:
Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick.
I imagine most readers of this Substack have read them, but some may not have.
Love in the Ruins, by Walker Percy. This is Percy's funniest book, and it and its sequel, The Thanatos Syndrome, have a ( forgive the cliche ) prophetic quality.
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's a beautiful book, and a tonic for the soul.
Good suggestions. Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick will get you thinking! I've also found the books by Matthew Crawford quite interesting and helpful. Check out "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in the Age of Distraction", or his latest, "Why We Drive." Cheers.
Thanks for the suggestion, and cheers to you, sir!
Also it isn’t immediately apparent, but “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury is a literary and poignant exploration and meditation of The Machine.
The Allotment- It's Landscape and Culture. Especially its culture which champions the joy of being independent. Producing one's own food and sharing the pleasure of doing so with like minded people. Not sure if it's still in print though.
Recommended book:
The Tale of The Big Computer, by Olof Johannesson (real author Hannes Alfven)
An accurate review of how the "machine" evolved to what it is and where it is going.
Written in the 1960's ! You have to consider where it is today.
The Lotus Sutra--Burton Watson translation
Some possibilities:
Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher
Various poems and essays by Czesław Miłosz
Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton
Edit: Can’t go wrong with Wendell Berry. Our esteemed host edited a collection of his essays that I’m reading now (The World-Ending Fire).
Shoshana Zuboff's 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' is a must-read, in my opinion. Profoundly eye-opening.
England had its own Wendell Berry, albeit one from a slightly earlier generation. His name was Adrian Bell, and Richard Hawking has written a fine book on him called 'At The Field's Edge.' I wrote a brief review of it here:
https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/englands-real-time-wendell-berry/
A while back, someone on here recommended C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and I loved it. It's relevant to the themes Paul writes about, and thoroughly enjoyable.
All three books are good in their own ways, but Perelandra (the 2nd book) is one of the most beautiful books ive read, although That Hideous Strength (3rd book) is probably the most relevant to our current time and place. The first book (Out of the Silent Planet) is a fine adventure novel with great world building but not as deep as the other two, so if you start it and are wondering what the big deal about the trilogy is, read at least Perelandra (or skip right to it, it can be read by itself)
I'd toss the supernatural thrillers by fellow Inkling, Charles Williams', into the mix. They blew my mind when I first read them and are probably even more relevant today given the weird war on the real we are currently in.
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, translated by Benedicta Ward, published by Penguin Books, 2003, available in paper and ebook format.
Excellent, this is exactly what I need
232
Meint noch irgendjemand, die apokalyptischen Reiter würden an uns vorbeistürmen, ohne ihre Spuren der Verwüstung zu hinterlassen?
Das Gericht ist da, es ereignet sich jetzt und überall.
Und es ist keine „Rache der Natur“! Das wäre zu billig gedacht. Die „Natur“ rächt sich ebenso wenig wie G’tt sich je „gerächt“ hat.
Unser Tun hat inhärente Konsequenzen – genauso wie unser Reden und Denken und das Unterlassen dieser „Tätigkeiten“. Diese Konsequenzen folgen nicht unbedingt immer gleich „auf den Fuß“; manche brauchen Zeit, um sich zu entfalten und sichtbar bzw. spürbar zu werden.
Wenn sie es dann schließlich sind – so wie die derzeitigen Hitzewellen, die das Laub der Bäume und diese selbst verdorren lassen – verbietet sich das Wehklagen und hektische Fordern bzw. Ergreifen von (Sofort-)Maßnahmen.
Vielmehr sollten wir entschieden in uns gehen und innehalten. Bei diesem Innehalten bleiben wir abstinent von allem Agieren und sogar von allem Überlegen und Planen.
Wir sind einfach mal nur DA, in aller Aufmerksamkeit, die uns zu Gebote steht. Wir sind da und nehmen wahr, was ist. Und halten es aus. Das genügt fürs erste, denn dabei machen wir jedenfalls schon mal keinen Unfug.
Dabei gehen uns nicht nur die Augen auf; vielmehr werden sie uns sogar übergehen von all der Trauer, Scham und Reue, die in uns aufsteigen. So beginnt die Wandlung: in der Präsenz. Und in unserer Präsenz ist immer schon die Gegenwart von יהוה!
I teach government to American high school students and I return to work in a couple of weeks. The material on transhumanism and the adjacent trans movement has been absolutely fascinating for several reasons, especially since a majority of my students have found themselves aligned with the “Transhumanist Party” when they take political inventory quizzes. Even in my deeply conservative county and school district, at least 10-15% of the kids identify as trans or some different gender, which makes sense to me now. The kids also spend every last minute buried on their phones and have crippling anxiety about nearly everything. The machine is certainly alive and well. Too bad I can’t take a sledgehammer to every piece of modern technology in the room. Teaching and learning would be so much easier. American education needs a serious neo-Luddite movement.
“ Regarding World History, I always aim to bring out the shift in thinking from pre modern to modern in order to question how we as a Western society became so terribly engrossed with ourselves.”
Can I ask how specifically you do this? I also teach world history, and have been trying to do this but I don’t know how effective I have been, and I’m always looking for ideas! It’s not easy to find history teachers who believe this, at least on the internet, and are willing to say it and give advice. Thanks in advance!
Thanks! Yes, the Christian humanism
of the Renaissance, like the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe, had some mixed results. I have been reading lately about the effect scholasticism had on thinking in the west (maybe it was here? I can’t remember where I saw the discussion). I spend a good bit of time on the early Middle Ages and Byzantium, and the ideas of the ecumenical councils (I teach in a Christian school so I can be very open about this). I wanted to explore more this year with my students the origin of so many ideas that seem to have taken root in the west that didn’t in the east- some good and some bad. This is my real question right now- how do I help them identify and evaluate some of those ideas and their essence when it’s the very air we breathe? Seeing themselves as characters in a very old, very long story seems to help students engage more with how this affects them today. It seems to me that studying history, especially distant history, is a great way to get students to see their own modern assumptions in contrast to other eras. I do spend some time on Plato’s ideals, which younger students (these are mostly 9th graders) seem to think is funny and makes them feel smart, but it’s a way of getting them into the practice of thinking about what the essence of an idea is. I also do what I call role play dialogue. I give every student a part (some person or group of people in history) and then during the traditional lecture I will periodically stop and ask a particular student to explain how this was affecting their “character”. They seem to like that and it keeps them on their toes. It also seems to help them understand better that people weren’t just “stupid” but were reacting to events in a way consistent with their perspective, however right or wrong or helpful or harmful that perspective may have been. Then we can evaluate the effects of that response and get into how they can evaluate their own response to events or ideas. Because of what I see in culture today, and youth culture in particular, I am trying to get them to learn to question ideas that come at them - most of it is not in discussion format but in advertising or videos or slogans or songs, and it’s hard to argue with ideas that just move on to something else the second you ask of it a probing or “essence” question. I am grateful not to be a teenager right now!
I'm also a schoolteacher, and where I teach, cell phones are strictly forbidden -- it helps so much! And often my homework assignments -- even for eleventh graders -- are something like "Go outside -- no phone, no friends -- and just pay attention to what you see, hear, smell and feel for fifteen minutes." And it's staggering how liberating this is for my students -- and even overwhelming, in a positive way -- to be told by an adult to set the damn screen down and reinhabit their own senses on their own planet -- they are actually desperate for that, only they have no autonomy left to just decide to do that on their own anymore -- they need to be told. They need it to be an assignment.
Graham- Have you ever read John Senior? He was a traditionalist Catholic and what he did at University of Kansas was remarkable. He founded the Integrated Humanities program. Though he never proselytized, there were too many conversions to Catholicism, so the University shut him down. His whole intention, like you express here, was to reconnect students to reality via wonder.
Here is an overview of his work:
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/03/legacy-john-senior-joseph-pearce.html
Senior also wrote two books worth mentioning, "The Destruction of Christian Culture" and, "The Restoration of Christian Culture". Though he wrote in a Catholic context (he was a fairly late convert), I don't think it is a stretch to believe it wouldn't take much to reorient Senior's work to your own project, both as a teacher and a writer. These two books are surpassingly excellent either way.
I hope all is well with you in the New Siberian Underground.
For what it is worth. -Jack
p.s. It is also worth looking into Wyoming Catholic College which was founded largely on Senior's ideas. The freshman at WCC arrives earlier than the rest and are taken on a month long excursion into the wilderness. There they are taught how to survive and even to lead the group. How different than the "education" i.e., deep enstupification, that most of us ever got.
In our homeschool there are no screens. When I am asked for advice by people new to homeschooling I find that almost nothing we do will work for them if they take for granted that their kids will have cell phones or even abundant computer access. It is just so easy and natural for kids to read and do all sorts of projects when this stuff is out of the way! (put on plays, build rafts, play music, climb trees, carve and whittle, bike around town....) And conversely, it is so difficult with the distractions. I don't mean phone off during school time, I mean no internet most of the time so that kids begin to think of things they want to do in the physical present. It's a secret superpower. People will just be amazed with how my kids behave and the things they do... and I want to cry and tell them that my kids are not amazing they are fully human and quite ordinary. We are all being adjusted to a diseased state and normal looks like something unachievable.
Yes, we did the same. Then they left home and went to college and are just as attached to their devices as kids whi went to elementary and high school. Shrug. Still, they *are* aware of the societal sickness and they did have all those years without phones and the internet since smart phones were not allowed until "junior" year, and driving, so 16. I teach at a homeschooling co-op and have requested no phones in the area and the *parents* have balked. They want to be on their phones, taking pictures, listening to podcasts and scrolling social media while I teach their children history. It's shocking.
Clara- St Anthony of the Desert called it long ago:
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.”
I think we are pretty much there.
-Jack
I don't want to be paranoid. No one is attacking , really. Lots of people think it is really nice that we can homeschool and our kids can do these things but they don't go so far as to do it themselves. Being attacked for being different is not hard to imagine, and certainly with Covid rules there was no mercy for the outliers.
It has been like that always; we’ve always been doing that as a species.
"Sometimes a man needs a holiday from his opinions: and Lord knows, you all do by now.”
Yes.
I am getting the Volkskrant every morning ( a sort of Dutch Guardian) and I am done with it quicker and quicker. So many opinions; even the facts are opiniated often. And most of them so well intended, but still .. opinions.
But is it not the same here in a way: a lot of high quality discussions and responses. But very philosophical.
I resist putting much time in it because I prefer action guided by vision.
I work with males because what I feel is sorely lacking is male leadership in the world and in relationship with the female. Leadership means that as male you can’t be passive or playing the rebel. A mature male has a sense of purpose, shares it with the female, initiates always intelligent cooperation (with her, his world), uses conflict for deeper clarity so that both can win and is really being committed to this, etc.
In my male groups it is always about making it practical in your life: and generally that always requires an action which we don’t like to begin with. Fear, laziness, pettiness/cowardness, self-image or just plain superficiality stand in the way. So it mostly starts with confronting ourselves. To begin with myself because as a leader I can take it easy, do it routinely, or putting myself on the line, enter the unknown and lead by example.
If it looks that I am here self-promoting and -congratulating, showing off, that is not what it is about. I am not even successful in terms of the number of people I attract. It’s a poor lot. But I put in the effort to reach out, on my websites etc. I give it my all whatever the response because of one thing: it has my heart.
What I mean to say is this: I think all of us here have something special to offer something which is vital, alive, contrary to the Machine. Do we give it our all to bring our special gift/talent whatever to the world. Paul does it in his way. But we have all different talents and have something else to bring and confront in our daily life. Looking at the Parable of the Talents is the question not: what do we do with it? Practically, daily. Why not share our struggles here?
I've found over the years a lot of variations on the notion that 'writing' or 'thinking' or 'philosophy' are opposed to 'action.' Usually the former are dismissed in favour of the latter. I understand the instinct - there certainly are a lot of useless waffly thoughts in the world, perhaps including mine.
But overall I reject the distinction. Firstly because, as I can testify, writing is an extremely active pursuit. It takes everything you have. Then, if you do it well and if you're lucky, it will be a great agent of change; if change is what you're after, which it may not be. But words change things, all the time.
It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless.
But also of course, what people say on little internet boards like this doesn't reflect their totality. I think the most useful thing I'll be doing today is collecting the eggs for my elderly neighbours and looking after their hens while their family is away. Also, sowing some grass. For most people, 'action' and 'philosophy' can't really be separated. Shouldn't be, anyway.
Action for me is doing your best according to your deepest wishes and your best knowledge. For you it is writing. I believe what you are doing is probably exactly the right thing for you. Only you can tell if there is still some escapism in it, but I don't see it. So no need to defend yourself.
"It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless."
Fully agree. It requires the willingness to learn from our follies, but generally we only really learn from experience. So act on the best of your knowledge and find out if it was folly after all or not.
"'action' and 'philosophy' can't really be separated. Shouldn't be, anyway."
Yes, it shouldn't, and that was the point of my post.
I wasn't so much defending myself as defending writing, an art/craft with which I have a deeply conflicted relationship ... but still, I think it is very much 'action.' In fact, like you then, I don't think there is anything that is not 'action.' But your post aside, the division between 'action' and other less 'useful' things (writing, prayer, meditation, relaxation) is so deep in Western culture and it never ceases to annoy me!
I agree. Basically because in normal usage their is no dicriminating between what constitutes an original act and a re-action. As long as you stretch yourself, taking a risk (proof: there is some fear) to respond authentically and new/fresh (you feel it) you act.
The danger is that we keep on perfecting what we already know. So how not to do that? For me fear is the door.
There is no such thing as "Being" separated from the "World." There is only "Being in the World." All of "me" responds to all of "It" all the time.
That is beautiful Jon. For me personally it is still relevant to discriminate where I re-act instead of respond. The last is from my 'heart', brings me in the unknown and there is always some fear as I don't know what will happen next.
Thank You. "there is always some fear as I don't know what will happen next."
IMO, One can learn to enjoy the feeling of not-knowing. And that can ease the strain of trying to control things. Granted, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). That's just me on a good day.
As a woman, every month I live through a series of days that I call moon-time winter. I know what action and inaction is because during these winters my body's energy is aligned only for one thing: total stillness of both mind and body. Through iteration after iteration of winters, I've come to learn that despite their relative lack of visible movement, writing is action, thinking is action, philosophizing is also action. I've had to let go of my attempts to "use" my winter time for at least mildly "productive" things such as thinking; as much as I tried, it always felt and feels at odds with what's at hand and it depletes me. We can reflect on and debate until the end of days what constitutes action and what doesn't. For me, the body decides. And if I apply a contrary will, then I pay the price.
On another note - "It's also the case that if we can't figure out what's actually going on, inside us and around us, then any 'active' efforts in the world can be worse than useless." This reminds me of one of Krishnamurti's teachings, something to the effect of "without understanding relationship, any course of action will only breed conflict." Yes to writing being a tool towards understanding, yes to listening and speaking being tools towards understanding, yes to curiosity and sharing and being willing to be changed by our interactions. Thank you Paul for your writing and the work you do.
"Help me see the world through your eyes, so that we may speak a common language. Sometimes being teachable is all I truly have to give."
Who knew their was so much wisdom in the cycles of the moon ;^D!
One of the founders of the internet (sorry, can't remember his name), back when it was still called the Arpanet worried that a ubiquitous internet would simply mean "garbage at the speed of light." When you look at how the internet is currently used, and the most popular web sites/moves (yep, if you guess "porn", you're right) well, I think he was prophetic. I'm beginning to feel that about opinions, too. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like I'm drowning in opinions. As I've thought about it, I suppose one of the reasons I feel that way is because like any human being, I'm hardwired to be an information gatherer. For most of human existence, the individual lived in a paucity of information: would it rain tomorrow? would the scratch on my hand kill me? are Roman legions marching towards my village. . . well, you get the idea. Acquiring information was an essential survival trait. If you knew the Mongols were heading your way, you could get your family and animals and head for the hills.
The availability of information began to change with Guttenberg, I suppose (or the earlier printing press invented by a Korean for those living there). Greater literacy certainly helped, and then there was Carnegie in the 1800s in the US and his gift of the public library. Fast forward to today, and the internet, supercharged the availability of information or data. Instead of having to seek out and find information, it is now being blasted at us 24/7 via all sorts of channels: smart devices, TVs, radio, elevator Muzak, video screens at the gas stations, and on and on . . . advertising is everywhere.
But I don't think humans have developed the skills to override our natural info gathering tendencies. And that's a crippling problem. We're just like ducks in a shooting gallery as a firehose of "stuff" is blasted at us. It's a struggle to filter the stuff that is being shoved in our faces, in our ears. How do we know what's worth paying attention to, or ignoring? Hard enough if you're an adult, but what about the kids tethered to their computers and smart devices? The addictive techniques that big corporations are using to keep our eyeballs on our screens makes all of this even harder to resist. For many, get rid of their device and the reassuring ping of a new text or email and they go a little nuts.
So, I get the points being made here by both Paul and Steven, but gosh sakes, I'm honestly sick of opinions (including the one I just made) as well as the ill-informed assertions that seem to be the typical discourse nowadays.
And I'm not sure how to deal with it. Any suggestion? I'm already trying to filter what's being sent my way. For example, I turn off my phone when I'm outside working (my wife hates that), I don't automatically flick on the radio or play music when I'm in my truck, I'm trying to limit my time connected to the internet and the amount of time I read anything on my smart phone in favor of reading actual paper books and magazines. And, at least for me, I'm trying to filter my opinions. Of course, I can't shut off my brain, but instead of tossing yet one more opinion into the fray, I'm trying to listen more and ask more questions.
in my exeperience the brain basically is a computer. it often tries to help, it thinks it knows it all, knows what is best. what helps me to change the focus is learning to listen to the heart: it always gives a real perspective, which often means: no opinion anymore. I just don't know. "I'm trying to listen more and ask more questions. : Yes, that helps me too.
Steven, groetjes! I used to read the Volkskrant in the morning, Het Parool in the evening, when I lived in Amsterdam back in the day when there was a morning paper and an evening paper. Both papers have gone completely “woke”, judging from their online editions.
What should I do with my talents? To answer the question, I prayed a lot. Ask and you shall receive. I got an answer. Not like St. Paul, being thrown off his horse, but close, a supernatural event, a miracle you could say, which brought me back to the Catholic Church after 40 years away.
But it’s not been smooth sailing because this new life called for detachment from things I used to cling to. Afterwards of course, it was a relief and I realized those things were not important in view of eternity. You need a philosophy of life which rests on your belief in what your life is for. For me, it’s union with God. Everything in my life is directed to that end.
Well, let me give you a topic... about the Machine... more and more I see in these times that the Machine is directing us towards self-created happiness. To find peace and happiness we have yoga, mindfullness, meditation etc. etc. These days it seems to me that new methods to reach happiness are popping up like mushrooms. Even feelings of sadness and grief have all kinds of self-help methods to turn them back into peace and happiness... Here in The Netherlands one of the best selling magazines is called Happinez... full of all kinds of articles about how to be happy, how to reach inner peace etc. Like happiness is an ultimate lifestyle or life goal we should reach. I came from that path, never found that peace or happiness, I am very new on the Christian path that brought me everything I was looking for, and now... more and more I start to see in all of this the Machine that you write about. I even know many Christians who search for these forms of inner peace and happiness...
Thanks Lidy, that has made me think and start to form an idea. It's not a fully formed one so ideal for general conversation and refinement. While I think there is sometimes a danger thinking in terms of analogies (if you think about atoms as billiard balls, you become really clever at describing very small billiard balls for example I think...), the analogy of the Machine is nevertheless useful. So here is my tangled train of thought spurred by your words.
Machines usually produce fumes. Is unhappiness the equivalent of fumes from the machine? And does this then imply that defeat of unhappiness is ultimately a fools errand which the machine cannot or does not want to succeed as it ultimately runs on the fumes of its own production?
No answers to this as I pop away at my keyboard writing machine software.
Finally, it's really interesting to see the geographical distribution of the readers of this stack. So add a pin to the map for Estonia for me someone.
Stephen: I do think there is some kind of treadmill effect, like you describe the machine and the fumes. It does not lead upwards, but drives people around in circles...letting them think they proceed... just my opinion, viewing the world (and internet) around me.
Stepping off that treadmill which the world pushes us to endure is a “step” in the right direction. I am not adept at memorizing scripture but to paraphrase Jesus. “Do not worry for I have overcome the world”. That assertion gives me peace, “ a peace which surpasses all understanding.” I have found that being a Christian is a journey and a process of deepening my attachment to Jesus. For He is the vine, the source of life, and I am so happy to be a branch. I wish you well, Lidy, on your journey with Jesus! Melanie
Thank you so much, Melanie. Yes it is a process of deepening, indeed. Being a church minister's daughter the words of the bible were quite familiar to me. But knowing bible words and knowing God and Jesus (truly being caught by God's Spirit) are two completely different things, I discovered eight months ago ;-)
Not just popping up like mushrooms, actually ingesting mushrooms in search of happiness/peace/understanding!
Dana: True! We ingest everything that the internet, television and magazines vomit out over us and it seems as if we have to be happy and have to create happiness, and as if something is wrong if we don't. All kinds of positive vibes are being collected from buddhism, hinduism and God knows what other sources and put into media to teach us how to create our own peace and happiness... I think that is a big illusion qnd a great concern
Hmm, in Romans 14 the Kingdom of God is described as being “ righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. In 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to the “joy given by the Holy Spirit” and Jesus said, “fear not little flock for the Father is pleased to give you the kingdom” and “the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” and “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink and rivers of living water will flow from his inner being” Are we missing a simplicity of means?
I believe the only way to true and lasting inner peace is to be found in the Bible and in the immense love of Jesus for each and everyone of us. But not only outside Christianity; even among Christians, in particular in our Western society, I see everywhere that -next to belief in the great gift that Christ gave to humanity by His death and resurrection- inner peace is sought in yoga, meditation, sayings from buddhism etc. etc. No one seems to see the huge contrast between the Christian message and these self-help methods. All around me people are saying it's normal to mix these... I see this 'blending' of cultures and religions into recipes for inner peace and happiness happening all over the place, but nowhere is Christ to be found in that. What I do see is The Machine, trying to blend into the message of Christ and disprove it...
Our culture has been fascinated with measurement and quantity for millennia now. We've been on a quest to reduce all of reality to measurements. We are then told that we can reconstruct all of reality from these measurements via algorithms and computation.
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics shows us, once and for all, however, that there is no measurement without a measurer. Science would have us believe that the measurer will eventually be replaced by the measured - once our computers are sufficiently advanced.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The measurer cannot be measured. The wave-function collapse does not happen "in time." It is not just "very fast." It is in fact perpendicular to time.
In our quest to endlessly measure and quantify, we have denied an entire dimension of our own existence. We must now reclaim it.
I never thought that my choice of which supermarket to shop for groceries would provoke a metaphysical reflection. But it did. Sterile, over priced Whole Foods, now owned by Amazon with rows of shiny new self check out kiosks. No human interaction; by oneself, for one self with one’s trove of consumables. Contrast with family-owned Market Basket with lanes of human cashiers, from different cultures, maybe even refugees wanting to get a start in this country, and also grocery baggers with intellectual disabilities like Down syndrome able to do work and derive meaning and satisfaction. Efficient - no. Human - yes!
P.S. There is no such thing as "transhumanism." It's just another modern neo-gnostic fiction that seeks in vain to displace the supernatural.
Fascinated with the Christian conversion of Martin Shaw and wondering what God's up to over there in the British Isles.
Maybe John Moriarty's hope for a Hedge School will become reality after all.
Hold that thought.
What’s a Hedge School?
A place for beliefs no longer held in high regard to be taught and lived.
Where would you go to learn more about John Moriarty? I've got Martin Shaw's new book (A Hut at the End of the Village) but I find it is bewildering.
Thanks
I think YouTube is a great place to start only because watching him and listening is such an amazing experience. It definitely helped me ride the waves of thought in Hut at the Edge of the Village. The book feels more alive when you can hear his voice across the pages. John Moriarty's speech is lyrical to say the least. Honestly it feels like someone enchanting their words before giving them out to the wider world. He is bewildering. You want to be bewildered with John Moriarty.
He is a beautiful, sensitive, vulnerable man and this comes across in his overwhelming spoken voice. I found this a good place to start:
https://youtu.be/CmB-G-16qNQ
I have been working on a collaborative writing project with a couple of friends looking to produce a market friendly product. We have discovered a certain underlying conflict which seems to pop up over and over again. Stated simply, they are devoted to "the formula", which is the formalization of the underlying archetypes. In my view, the archetypes exist, and the formula is just a facsimile of these archetypes.
I'm inclined to follow the characters we have developed and let them take a greater role in telling the story, letting them manifest the archetypes. They are inclined to move them as pawns until the plot fits the formula and then try to reanimate the characters. This is a very difficult way for me to work, though I am doing my best to be helpful and not sulk despite the fact that with every rewrite the story and characters seems to get less and less vibrant and more and more formulaic.
I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the roles of archetypes, formula, and characters in crafting a story. Anyone's thoughts about collaborative story telling too.
I can definitely sympathize with the feeling of wanting to be a helpful team player in collaborative narratives (film, in my experience).
Formulaic storytelling is certainly market-friendly, but your use of archetypes could be a remedy to the story feeling unoriginal or (much worse) unsurprising. If you work from the archetypes into the characters (generalized to personalized), then you'll have a better shot at telling a story that makes sense according to the characters. Even if it's a Hero's Journey-type narrative structure, personalized characters could keep it from feeling formulaic.
Does that make sense? And what are the archetypes y'all are working with?
Yes, I think that makes sense. We are working with the Hero's Journey-type narrative structure, but our hero in particular has been reduced to a cardboard cutout in my opinion.
I have tried to suggest that we give ourselves a little wiggle room with the formula and don't feel the need to hit every point along the Hero's Journey with such force--let our character tell the story--but I know my refrain is becoming a bit confrontational despite my best efforts.
How would you explain the difference between the archetype and the formula? I'd love to find a way to suggest and communicate this kind of compromise, and learn everything I can from this process, even if we don't end up working together in the future.
Makes sense. Plot vs. character is a tricky balance, especially if you're working with more of a environment-first story than a character-first story.
Here's my stab at the difference: The "formula" (if you mean the narrative structure) is something that is "market-ready," i.e. recognizable to many people who would likely buy the narrative as a product. I'd argue that the formula is deadening because it depends so much on familiarity and is measured as an investment. The formula is the cage.
The archetype, while still recognizable (the prophet, the cowboy, the good-hearted prostitute, the smothering mother, etc.), is more flexible because it's character-based and so can be personalized. This room for personalization is where characters start to breathe and perhaps become "memorable" if not iconic. The archetype is the canary in the cage, with the chance to be let out with the right personalization.
To communicate a compromise, you could recommend a character-first story because a character that audiences will love and remember is the one that influences the plot, rather than one being marched through its structure.
Hope I haven't lost the thread in this long-winded response.
Not at all. Some very useful ways of conceptualizing there. Thanks for your help.
Currently I’m being inspired by and making copious notes on
Thomas Paine, enlightenment , revolution and the birth of modern nations by Craig Nelson.
The conditions and tumult of the 18th century in England and the America’s etc. has been an eye opener and a broadening point of reference for our own problems. Reading it I keep thinking that reaffirming and renewing the 18th centuries Enlightenment impulse might be a help to us now.
I can’t even imagine what good use they would have made of the Internet.
Below are a few quotes from the book and a related one from Bertrand Russel.
“In time, a global avant-garde of highly educated progressives dedicated to making the most of their lives through a program of self-improvement , education, communication, invention, pragmatism, natural philosophy and virtue gathered in communities of correspondence as each in turn underwent a great awakening an Enlightenment. As their intellectual and spiritual Renaissance ancestors had done, these 18th century moderns traveled across continents and oceans to meet and debate: turned conversation into an art form: strove to tolerate if not assimilate contrary opinion in a universal search for truth among cosmopolitan gentlemen “( and women)
"Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without guidance of another. Sapere Aude! (dare to know) Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of enlightenment"
Immanuel Kant
“It is only through a rational outlook, through a revival of liberal tentativeness and tolerance, that the world can survive.”
Bertrand Russell
I would say we never can use our intelligence without the guidance of another. We always have premises and assumptions, often unexamined, that inform and guide our “rationality”. A paraphrase of Martin Luther - reason and logic are whores for they will serve any master. My premise - looking at reality it seems that in the end death is king, except with the possible exception of Jesus, for me probable, no, certain because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. So I trust in him as the way, truth, and life and the door into the One in whom I live and move in and have my being.
I abhor the modern “rationalists” who are nothing but reductionists.
But to the enlightenment thinkers reason , I think , was not separate from common sense, virtue, tolerance , humility regarding their own thinking or even spiritual faith.
It was Luther’s teaching that people did not need authoritarian intermediaries between themselves and God , the Bible and basically the truth which naturally led to a faith in their ability to think for themselves that was the pre revolutionary spark that helped ignite the enlightenment and the American revolution. Without Luther the printing press never would have been put to use and most of us would still be illiterate, relying on priests for all our information and still the private property of Kings.. The Enlightenment thinkers were though great opponents of any fanaticism, extremism and dogmatism which they considered abuses of god given reason.
When B.H Liddell Hart was asked what one axiom had he learned from his lifetime of studying war he replied, "Bad Means never lead to Good Ends." I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
Indeed, the result is by necessity a reflection of the method. This is a central theme in anarchist critique of marxism, its whole 'temporary prole dictatorship' phase (can of course also be applied to any ideologi/religion/plan). The tactic where means mirrors ends they call prefigurative politics, and it seems an effective antidote to authoritarian tendencies among revolutionaries.
The conflation of identity with behaviors and lifestyles is the cornerstone of all demands for LGBTQ+ rights. First, it is claimed that these identities are as immutable as pigmentation in organs of the body, and therefore require legal protection.
Furthermore it is claimed that to prohibit or discriminate against actions which inevitably emerge from LGBTQ+ identities would deny members of these groups of their right to pursue happiness.
Therefore prohibitions of, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ activities must be outlawed in all domains of the public realm: government, business, education, sports, recreation, and so on.
I believe it is essential to directly refute these claims, along the following lines:
We are not obligated to approve of the attitudes, values, behaviors, and lifestyles of people who identify as LGBTQ+.