From the Catacombs

Voice of Truth

2011-06-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Words often lie, but the voice is incapable of lying.

In the contemporary world, amidst the prevalence of government and media, it is actually more correct to say, "Words always lie," not "Words often lie."

The great fact, the great feat, of modernity is the separation of the words from the voice, the disembodiment, disincarnation, of the word. As a result we have faceless, anonymous voices speaking terrifying words: the combination of anonymity and brute force.

The human in man is taken down slowly, methodically, inch by inch, brick by brick: the rule of law. Responsibility for one's acts (i.e. one's words). Accountability.

If the voice cannot be held accountable for the words it utters (or in a different mode, for the words it writes) how can ideas be held accountable? How can ideas be weighed for their truth-content if words "do not matter" (i.e. have no weight, are disembodied from the voices that speak them?)

Hitler was perhaps the last tyrant of the voice. The tyrants who have followed him are the tyrants of the voiceless, or perhaps rather the "unvoiced." The American presidency is the institution par excellence that signifies voicelessness. Those few presidents who possessed a distinctive voice have, sometimes, been killed. Actually, this is true of leadership in America in general: those who have achieved it have often been killed.

It is impossible to distinguished a truth from a lie in the moment of its occurrence. Truth is digestible, it can be digested. A lie can only be excreted. "To excrete a lie." How to do this? I suppose we must first be conscious of it - isolate it, coat it with some preservative, as the spider coats its prey and stores it in its web.

Of course, most of the time, experience does this for us. Experience is the wavering ground between the lie and the truth. It is our arena of battle, it is for us to conquer or to be defeated: the reclamation of truth from our experience. This reclamation or redemption of experience is our task in life, the particular mission with which we have been entrusted.

The Lie: it keeps wanting to be quality, hence its perpetual envy, its restless self-inflation, unceasing self-manufacture... Certainly the voice is a quality - "vocal quality" is a reality that deals with resonance. Would it be accurate to say that the Lie deals with quantity whereas truth is a quality, is quality? I would have to meditate on this....

Words from Ago

2010-11-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

Some passages from my journal of 1996-98:

The ideological character can present an outward flexibility, complaisance, openness to change, which disguises his inner rigidity and inability to be open to persuasion by argument and evidence. The morally principled person may come across as strong, if not unyielding, fixed in his or her thoughts, unbending - all of which is but the outer shell of a mind continually in the process of becoming.

The quality of thinking is like quality of tone in singing. This is a big secret, one that can be meditated upon. Good quality thinking can reach the high note without shrillness.

Wit, or aphorism: that which is formed, like a waffle, when the two sides of the brain are heated up and pressed together.

Aphorism is the poor cousin of Parable. Aphorism is the daughter of Intellectual Reason - Parable is the daughter of Vital Reason. The former is rich, and clothed in all the finery of the world - the latter despised and driven from her home - always on a quest. Perhaps this tension is discernible in Pascal? - a great aphorist, though there is an underlying mood of unhappiness or dissatisfaction. "... the immense silences..." He could not go out into the night of Vital Reason - for being a Christian, he knew what would happen.

Jan. 1, 1998: The closest thing to civilizational theory we've had has been in the writings of men like Russell Kirk. But the identification was made with conservatism rather than civilization. This identification has strangled conservatism at his birth: for when you have lost civilization, what is there left to conserve?

One of the needs of the age: to find a new form of writing which can convey vital reason. Argument from principles rather than trying to prove a thesis. The trick is to find something that people care about. Most people are still interested to some extent in the history of their local communities.

Unprincipled minds fear chance, hence embrace determinism. For an unprincipled mind is easily swayed, and fears its own vulnerability. It experiences possibility as a form of attack... But possibly one of the hardest things to do is to define principles of the mind. Rather than something fixed and solid - the usual image conjured up by the word - a principled mind is alert to all possibilities. Indeed it has made a science, a knowing, of possibility. It is, therefore, a mind born of paradox, for how can we know anything but what has already happened? A principled mind is something of the impossible made possible - a paradox, like "Virgin Birth."

End the Fed

2010-04-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

END THE FED RALLY IN PHILADELPHIA TODAY

Some of the signs:

~Arm Yourself with Knowledge
~ Federal Reserve - World Bank - Unconstitutional
~The Fed is Fraud
~End the Fed - Barter
~ Can I (picture of "eye") Print M$ney too?
~Buy gold - Silver - Seeds
~Audit the Fed - Accountable to No One
~Welcome to the Machine
~The Fed Has Waged Economic Warfare on America
~"Google "The MoneyMasters!" (shouted)
~Yo Dawg the Fed Be Unconstitutional
~We are fed up with the Fed
~Show me the money
~What's the difference? (Picture of $1 and a collection of Monopoly money)
~Uphold the Constitution
~Support HR 1207 (Audit the Fed)
~Using My Taxes to Kill
~Where is the transparency we were promised
~Ron Paul was Right
~Main Stream Media: State Propaganda
~The Fed is the Mother of all Ponzi Schemes
~Legalize the Constitution
~The Fed is a banking cartel
~A fellow with a ball and chain - wearing a Federal Reserve tee-shirt
~The Symphony of Destruction: Federal Reserve, Military-industrial complex, Oil reserves
~Fiat Money
~End the Fed B4 USA = Weimar
~"We are bankrupt!" (called out)
~Repeal the inflation tax!
~We put the "con" in "economy"
~Grand Theft of America
~Most Wanted Financial Terrorists: [pictures of] Bernanke, Geithner, Greenspan, Paulsen
~"Dollar is dead/blame the Fed" (chanted on the march to the Constitution Center)

I think my favorite was a tee-shirt printed: "Tyranny Response Team"
Some people, at least, are beginning to get it.

The Tacit and the Explicit

2010-04-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

Illustration: Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)

Today I want to talk about language – the “tacit” and the “explicit.”

“Tacit” means “understood without being clearly expressed.” Other synonyms include -- unspoken, implied, unsaid, implicit, indicated, unvoiced. The dictionary says that we use the word in the sense of “implied or indicated, as by an act or by silence, but not actually expressed, as e.g. a ‘tacit consent’ or ‘tacit admission of guilt.’”

Tacit derives from the Latin tacitus, silent; Old High German, dagēn, to be silent. It is odd to think that the “tacit” forms a very large part of what we understand as speech – or at least it seems odd until we begin to realize that speaking (communicating or saying) is primarily gesture or usage. The cognitive act is, so to speak, post-gestural; it comes after the placement of the act in real space. [1]

This is Ortega y Gasset’s argument about the nature of language in his book, Man and People, where he says, “Silence constantly acts on language and is the cause of many of its forms.”

He points out that: “…in proportion as conversation treats of more important, more human, more ‘real’ subjects…its vagueness, clumsiness, and confusion steadily increase…The stupendous reality that is language cannot be understood unless we begin by observing that speech consists above all in silences.”

I was thinking of the word tacit in connection with a blog entry from the writer known as Xymphora. He was writing about the pedophile scandals in the church. It was only after I re-read the piece today that I realized that Xymphora did not actually use the word ‘tacit’ and that I had, as it were, interpolated it. Here is what he wrote yesterday: “It is obvious that the Catholic Church had a deal with World Jewry. The Jews would use their control of the media to help the Church cover up its kiddy diddling. In return the Vatican would completely abdicate its responsibility to look after the interests of Christians in the Holy Land. I don't know why the Jews reneged on the deal. Probably just arrogance, the realization that the Vatican can't do anything now having failed to do anything for so many years… I wonder if we will now see some faint bleatings from Catholic officials about the outrages being committed by Jews against others in Greater Palestine.”

True? How would we go about verifying it? Xymphora is arguing that the Church had a tacit understanding with the owners of the world media. And yet it is this very “tacit understanding” that makes it so difficult to prove wrongdoing, or even to discuss conspiracy theories. Perhaps in this sense conspiracy theories are an unnecessary distraction. Thus Ortega’s point, that a large part of language consists of silences. But what happens when, as Paul Craig Roberts has said in his final piece (linked in a post a few days ago) that there is nothing left but “propaganda”? How do lies and propaganda impact on language and silence, on tacit understandings? What if there came about a society so utterly impregnated with falsehood and lies that a truthful statement would just appear – as e.g., as mushrooms after a rain, and nobody would remark it?

This seems to me to be the category in which to place General Stanley McCrystal’s recent statement concerning the war in Afghanistan: "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

McCrystal’s statement signifies a new stage of history, one described by Baudrillard -- "... [Evil] … has become fluid, liquid, interstitial, viral… It … shows through in all things when they lose their image, their mirror, their reflection, their shadow, when they no longer offer any substance, distance or resistance, when they become both immanent and elusive … So long as Evil was opaque, obscene, oblique, obscure, there was still a transcendence of Evil and it could be held at a distance. It has now become immanent and interstitial….. a phase of definitive dissemination..”[2]

Maybe in losing the "silence," the invisible backing of language, we have lost the good itself, or at least the idea of the good -- that truth matters.

[1] From “The Power of Great Poetry to Shape the Character and Build the Nation: Dante, Humboldt, and Helen Keller,” by Muriel Murak Weissback, Fidelio, Summer, 1996: “Helen Keller wrote a little poem to describe how it was before she had the power of language. She wrote:
It was not night--it was not day,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness without a place;
There was no stars--no earth--no time--
No check--no change--no good--no crime.”

(Thanks to Lewis Smith for sending me this article.) I find the poem very interesting in its ‘geographic’ sense for language. It is quite possible that Helen Keller was able to read Milton’s Paradise Lost in later life, and captured some of the ‘darkness’ visible’ of Milton’s description of Hell in her poem about pre-linguistic state. Nevertheless, her poem does convey the idea that meaning is first of all a gesture, a sense of bearings - an incarnation, an idea of 'mattering.'

[2] Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End, Stanford, 1994.

The "fury against religion"

2010-04-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

”…Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. The one reliable force that forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. The one reliable force that restrains the hand of the man of power. In an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power…”
11 March 2010 1:52 PM
From: "How I found God and peace with my atheist brother" by Peter Hitchens, Mail Online

__________________________________________________

My comments: Peter Hitchens' article is very good. Well worth reading and thinking about. The differences between Peter and his brother Christopher on the subject of religion take on a sort of archetypal quality, a kind of revised Cain and Abel for this age of information, gossip, celebrity and instant "philosophizing." It was touching to read in Peter's article that when he married his wife in a church, it was the "first adult act he ever did." Why is that? Because consecration is the source of the dignity of objects, acts, and lives. Without the act of consecration we lose our grip on life and the sacred dimensions of our humanity. I believe that "losing this grip" is the real souce of the notion of Hell - the outer darkness, the garbage dump, the infernal [infer-ior] region. This banishment to the realm of the garbage dump, the smoking ruin, the "utter destruction" (and these words from Deuteronomy are significant) is what our politics has become today.

cf. Joseph de Maistre: "Human reason left to its own resources is completely incapable not only of creating but also of conserving any religious or political association, because it can only give rise to disputes and because, to conduct himself well, man needs beliefs, not problems." [For further reading, see my Book Notes on Joseph de Maistre in the Bookmanas website.]

Nevertheless, I would just add a couple of glosses to Peter Hitchens' article - and of course, no one can say everything. It was published just a few weeks shy of the the latest wave of pedophile scandals rocking the Church, the publication of which gives much glee and rejoicing no doubt to the enemies of the Church. The smell of blood is thick upon the waters. But it must also be said that the Church has brought these woes upon itself, upon herself -- and that every further pronouncement from the Vatican only makes matters go from bad to worse. It is utter nonsense - but also a tribute to how much the Judaic mindset has penetrated the thinking of even the elites in the Church -- to say that the attacks against the Pope are analogous to "antisemitism." This kind of hapless posturing is beneath contempt. Irresponsibility has poisoned the springs of all of our institutions today, and the fact that such a fad has now lodged within the Vatican is a symptom of decay at the top - in the sense in which a fish rots from the head. I say nothing against the ranks of the faithful Catholics, who are truly bewildered and upset by these developments. The leaders of the Catholic faithful appear to be running like heads with their chickens cut off - in S.J. Perelman's delicious phrase.

So, it is not enough to say, as Peter Hitchens says, that "...the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power." To a very great extent, as far as I can see, the Christian religion has become a tool of the Jews. First it was the Christian Zionists. Now the Catholics seem to be lining up to get a piece of the Jewish mindset, which has proven to be so effective in the political campaigns of our age. Convince everyone that you are a victim, and pouf! - you can bend them to your will like Silly Putty!

I was not impressed, for instance, when Pope Benedict XVI came to the United States and spent his time here apologizing left, right, and center. [1] I entered the Catholic Church at about the time Benedict became Pope, and at first I had great hopes for him. But his speech at Regensburg began his downward trajectory in my eyes. Despite the very good things he said about Reason and Logos, the speech seemed to me a gratuitous insult against the Islamic world. Anything that adds fuel to the flames of neoconservatism, the lust for empire and dominion, is to me ipso facto, an irremediable evil. I have believed for some time that the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy was a grievous misstep on behalf of the Catholic Church. It would have done better to cast off the baggage of Europe with its Judaic barnacles clinging to a shipwrecking craft, and start afresh with an African or South American Pope. However, the people in charge did not consult me!

Anyway, to return to the subject of Peter Hitchens: It is in actuality the Islamic religion which now forms "the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power." It should accordingly be no surprise to learn of the relentless attack against Muslims fomented in all of our so-called leading journals, nor of the incessant threats against Iran carried on for the past decade. The more the truths come out - as, for example, the recent revelations of our military's knowledge of how the Israeli Mossad orchestrated 9/11 - the more the anti-Islamic fervor increases in venom. Truly these are criminal dealings.

This is the thesis of Israel Shamir, a Russian Jewish convert to Orthodoxy who lives in Israel. He writes that Islam is the Last Katechon (a term of St. Paul's) holding against the Neo-Mammonist regime:

"... Islam is the last great reservoir of spirit, tradition and solidarity, and the Neo-Jews fight it with all firepower at their disposal. Islam has to be crushed if the Neo-Jewish Temple is to be erected on the site of al Aqsa. . . Thus the war on Islam is a stage of the last war, the War on Christ.. . On a deeper, metaphysical level, there is a struggle between two tendencies: a power that draws Heaven and Earth together and re-sacralises the world; and a power that tries to separate Heaven and Earth - to profane the world. The uniting power is represented as Christ in the arms of Our Lady. The dividing power, the Great Profaner, is greater than the Jews; but they eagerly support him for in their view the world outside Israel... should be profane and godless. Thus the actions of the Neo-Jews eventually lead to the profanation of the world..."

[1] I seem to be contradicting myself. The Pope was apologizing for a previous round of child abuse scandals. It was pitiful to see. The Catholic Church has a great tradition of social teachings on international law, finance, economy, just war theory, social justice - any one of which, if raised with seriousness and intent, would challenge the empire-mongers. Instead, he went skulking around as if he represented an organization with nothing to say and nothing to teach. This is what happens in the Outer Darkness - the failure of leaders to lead. A bit of balls - plain old fighting manly spirit, is what is needed! But have all the men been banished! And isn't this - irony of ironies! - what the scandal is all about!

Must Read

2010-03-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Paul Craig Roberts, "Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It."
I have no words.

What I'm Doing While Unemployed...

2010-03-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

... designs like the above. For some reason the yellow color did not come out in the scan.

Crossword Puzzles: Everyday, from Metro (a local free publication to be picked up in every Septa subway station).

Math Review: General practical math, algebra and geometry.

The Usual: Making yogurt, making granola. But not spending much time cleaning the apartment.

Trying to Network: This is difficult for a shy person like me. But I went to a Nikola Tesla Meet Up last week and am going to another one tonight. I figure the Tesla types will be (1) intelligent, and (2) unusual.

Beware Sitchins

2010-03-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

Talk by Secharia Sitchin on his book, The End of Days, at the Philadelphia Free Library, March 6, 2010:

Secharia Sitchin is the latest Israeli marketing venture directed at the alternative-science/ new paradigm crowd. I say "Israeli marketing venture" with some irony, because, in fact, Mr. Sitchin challenges some deeply-held notions about the Bible, and has done considerable research into ancient Sumerian mythology. He is learned in cuneiform script, zodiacal and modern sciences, Biblical archaeology, and ancient and Mesoamerican worldviews. Mr. Sitchin is obviously a force to be reckoned with - judging by the large and enthusiastic crowd that greeted him at the Free Library - and one can appreciate his scholarship while at the same time offering a word of caution.

Mr. Sitchin began his discourse - after a few preliminary self-laudations - by noting that when he was a student in school, he challenged the teacher to explained the Biblical passage "... And there were giants in the earth in those days..." (I do not have my Biblical concordance with me; the passage occurs in Genesis just before the story of Noah.) The word is "nephilim," giants, which Mr. Sitchin connected with a Hebrew word, naphor [?] meaning "to fall, to descend from heaven to earth." Who were the nephelim? he asks, the "Sons of the Elohim"? What is this doing in a Bible supposedly devoted to monotheism?

Mr. Sitchin's questions are highly relevant and important. They led him to the study of the Sumerians, who were, he says, the originators of all mythologies. He points out that, as if out of nowhere, the high Sumerian civilization suddenly appeared, possessing a calendar, timekeeping, division of circle to 360 degrees, metallurgy, bricks, law codes, religion, doctors, priests, writing and literature. Where did the Sumerians get all of their knowledge, and how is it that there is no evidence of a "training period"?

The same phenomenon confronts us with ancient Egypt: we see, all of a sudden, a highly advanced technology of pyramid construction incorporating calendrical and precessional facts seemingly out of nowhere. And in fact the most ancient structures are far more technologically skilled than the later ones - a fact with confounds all our notions about how history and evolution are supposed to happen.

These kinds of questions are now comprising the field of "New Paradigm" history, which is the history that Rudolf Steiner was referring to when he said that ancient mankind gained a vast and in-depth knowledge through "atavistic clairvoyance." That is to say, ancient humanity was spiritually or clairvoyantly attuned to the cosmic level. We have lost this attunement, whether due to the Fall into Sin (Old Testament), the need for a Redeemer (New Testament), inevitable entropy (Law of Thermodynamics) or the development of freedom (anthroposophical "evolution of consciousness") or some other complex combination of explanation or circumstances.

In any case -- (and I am not precisely able to recapitulate Mr. Sitchin's steps here) -- the research and evidence led Mr. Sitchin to the conclusion that ancient astronauts visited our planet. "Everything was taught to us by the Annunkaki" -- this is apparently what the Sumerians said. When Mr. Sitchin connected "annunkaki," meaning "those who from heaven to earth came," with the Hebrew word anakim, giants, the circle seemed to close and everything seemed to fit into a pattern.

So far, so good. Mr. Sitchin's research has made a great contribution to our understanding of early humanity and New Paradigm history. But when he ventured into "apocalyptic" territory and talked about the use of nuclear weapons in 2024 B.C. , I became aware of the much darker Zionist agenda. He described reading the Book of Ezekiel -- which mentioned Persia in its description of the final apocalyptic "War of God and Magog" -- and Mr. Sitchin confessed to feeling "a chill down his spine."

Yes, the Book of Ezekiel will do that to you - not Persia, which is being threatened and attacked by the Zionists and their American patsies almost daily. Mr. Sitchin should avoid Zionist agitprop and stick to scholarship. We need to get away from apocalypticism, Christian and Jewish, and affirm the truths of religion in its moral, not its hysterical, aspects.

Additional Notes to this Post

Re nephilim: Rudolf Steiner once mentioned that the Greek word nephele, cloud, is related, and refers to the 'cloud' or aura which could be beheld clairvoyantly by ancient man.

Concerning the Hebrew Bible: the Russian healer Nicolas Levashov has written extensively concerning the Genesis story of the Bible, which he says was written by the adversaries of the Slavonic-Aryan Vedas, which is the true account of human origins. See my account of Levashov in my "Bookmanas" website (Notes on my reading) here: http://bookmanas.blogspot.com/search/label/Levashov

Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods is an important milestone of New Paradigm history, and is primarily devoted to the Egyptian-Mesoamerican parallels.
Illustration: William Blake, "God Creating the World."

Conspiracy Theory and Symbolic Self-Immunity

2010-02-28T06:30:00.001-08:00

1. Prisoners of Illusion

"The Old Christian way taught that until man faced the fact of his evil nature, he would forever be a prisoner of illusion and of those magicians who would enslave his energies – ostensibly in pursuit of utopia – but actually to the furtherance of the inner executive power ideology of a secret elite." From the Preface to the 1995 edition to Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare by Michael A. Hoffmann II

Michael Hoffmann walks a strange and lonely path. At a glancing angle to what is called revisionist history on one hand and conspiracy theory on the other, he pursues a rugged zigzag of his own, unmasking more sinister illusions. His way is guaranteed not to win many friends in the circles that pass for intellectual culture today. Psycho-spiritual research provides a sharp alternative to official accounts of the age. Or should I say, official acts of forgetfulness? For one of the issues at contention is what kind of history will be written of this era – if, that is, there are people who will live in this world after we have gone, and if so, if they will seek a deeper understanding of life by studying history.

Neither of these is a sure thing. Michael Hoffmann raises the alarm about what is being done to the human mind in modern "advanced" societies – about what people are allowing themselves to become in societies where it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain accountability in business, politics, government, entertainment and the arts.

One has only to read the chapter in John Lukacs’ Historical Consciousness, about "the difficulties of history in democratic ages," to realize that the postwar conditions that Lukacs was writing about have multiplied exponentially since that book was first published in 1968. If the decomposition of democracy into bureaucracy makes the work of the historian more difficult, the decomposition of bureaucracies into "shadow governments" will make it impossible. The historian will become utterly reduced to being a mere chronicler of the Father of Lies. From committee to committee, individuality sinks into the indistinguishable mass, and no one can be held to anything. People in high office say one thing and do another, sell themselves to lobbyists, pit groups against each other, allow the country to be flooded with immigrants, pass laws undermining morality, tradition, families, and religion, and engage in unrelenting manipulation of financial instruments. The getting of money is shameless, votes no longer count for anything, and leaders or would-be leaders who attempt to bring fresh air and accountability to the system mysteriously disappear - often through assassinations. Somehow groups or religious organizations that show resistance are mocked, like the Catholic Church, or annihilated in a rain of hellfire courtesy the Federal Government, like the poor cultists in Waco. Public services continue to decline, and few people even mention the phrase "the public good" – as if for fear of committing treason against the "Free Market."

In the meantime be assured the CEO’s and masters of finance are always doing well, seeming not to notice while the country disappears into the black hole of debt. The leader of the "Free World" flashes the sign of Satan to the cheering crowds and the nation grovels to the tune of the Israeli National Anthem...

And these things keep happening, and they keep happening again and again while the so-called "free press" . . . but I need not linger on the despicable sycophantic and lying press.

As I say – with facts like these, some people may begin to interest themselves in "conspiracy theory." The reptile in man has awakened, and a few people even on this continent are starting to notice the glaringly obvious reptilian presence, along with the sudden disappearance of what used to be called "civilization." But how do a people, a nation, misplace civilization – lose it, throw it aside, forget it, fail to cultivate it?

Speaking of the sheer proliferation of "information" peddled by conspiracy buffs, Hoffmann remarks that "The cultivation of powers of discrimination and discernment are seldom the focus of the information-mongers. Yet if we acknowledge a war against the mind’s capacity for independent thinking, then the acquisition of wisdom and not data is what we ought to recognize as paramount… Indeed, when ‘expansion of the mind’ is substituted for the traditional vocation of cultivation of the mind, we find ourselves not on a ‘superhighway’… but in [a] cul-de-sac…"

It is this "loss of being" with which Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare is concerned. This "loss of being" manifests in many and often apparently contradictory ways. It may mean a fascination with sex, violence, Satanism, etc., or, contrariwise, an obsession to "expose" them. But both "fascination" and "exposure" alike belong to the "videodrome," the "sinister flattery of the occult imperium" that continually plays the tune that modern man is the most advanced, the most intelligent, the most progressive, the most free, on the planet. With all of these things accomplished, why bother with the humble precautionary work of preserving the fences, the limits, the standards and structures, of civilization? Why, we can just watch the latest videodrome horrors on MTV, keep the kids entertained with videogames, and go charging off to the mall in our SUV’s on the endless trails of asphalt so conveniently laid down as far as the eye can see, everywhere.

Nor need we be so concerned with the "quality" of our leaders and elected representatives – for after all, the American system, being "best in the world," can just as easily be run by drones. It's the ultimate "quality control"-- the utter disregard for human quality.

But it is what conspiracy theory indicates about the mind's awakening to symbolism that interests me. For instance, I have long been interested in the symbolism of oil – "black gold." Surely it is no accident that these energy deposits were laid down in the "Saurian Ages." Now, as we approach the end of the hydrocarbon era, and the oil resources are diminishing, human societies both East and West seem to be fostering a kind of "moral saurianism" - the disconnect of action from consequences, of thinking from empathy, of emotion from imagination and actual feeling.

Conspiracy theory takes account of both the literal and the symbolical dimensions of any given event. The inability of the modern mind to pay attention to both of these dimensions enables "mind control" – the hypnotic spell of the ‘spectacular, electronic videodrome’ that continues to crank out its spellbinding horrors. People can be manipulated and made subject to subliminal suggestion to the extent that they are not fully aware of these interpenetrating symbolic currents. Modern man’s uneducated imagination and lack of awareness of the symbolic dimensions leaves him open to this kind of mental manipulation.

Thus conspiracy theory can be seen as epistemological awakening -- an attempt to alert people to history's symbolic dimensions. But it is a dangerous teacher, for it is an unregulated market full of hidden agendas and deceptive practices. That modern man should need such a tool for his awakening is in itself a telling commentary on the inadequacies of modern education. An educated imagination does not need conspiracy theory. But then, an educated imagination is not putty in the hands of symbolic manipulators.

Indeed, as Hoffmann stresses, the ‘uncovering’ of a heinous crime marked with occult signifiers may be as much a part of the covert agenda as the commission of the crime itself. The manipulation and enslavement of the mind arises, Hoffmann believes, out of a prideful, Renaissance-era magic and science, which aims to substitute for natural creation a man-made, machine utopia. Such pride and hubris disdain the natural world and traditional forms of humane civilization and the acceptance of limits for the sake of power, conquest, and glory.

Hoffmann speaks as a true conservative when he defends the Old Church, whose hierarchy and dogma, he says, were out in the open – unlike the Thelemic Counter-Church, where rigidity, hierarchy, and authority are covert. True conservatives used to say such things, but in recent years they seem to have all disappeared. There are no "conservatives" in public any more. If they are in public they are not conservatives, because the "public" we now have is utterly contaminated. Such true conservatives as exist write on the Internet or small-circulation magazines, where they put forward views that are essentially antiwar and progressivist.

In the "public" of the United States today it is impossible to account for, or comprehend the meaning of, the rationale for going to war, the number of people killed in the Middle East, the real size of the public and private debt, the real agenda behind the projected theft of Social Security funds, the number of cars on the roads, the amount of oil consumed, the number of illegal immigrants flooding the country from the South, the number of corporate scandals and theft of funds in government operations, the number of incidents of war profiteering and the amounts involved, the number of people who have lost jobs due to "outsourcing," or the number of threats issued daily from the White House against some other country. The figures simply mushroom into meaningless millions. Sometimes you hear people commenting on the passivity of the American public with respect to its own national self-interest, not to mention self-respect, but the Philadelphia Inquirer’s headlines continue to blaze the news of the latest Eagles’ game as if there were nothing else of importance going on in the world.

Can knowledge of symbolism bring a new understanding of our benighted condition? Is humanity in this phase of history undergoing global occult initiation and if so, what can those who possess genuine knowledge of the occult do to exercise a beneficial influence?

This is why we need to study the symbol-wielding faculty in man.

2. Expressive Dynamic

For the most part we are so accustomed to the way things are in the world that we have stopped looking – or if we look, we do not see. For instance, rarely do we hear anyone express appreciation for the human or animal form. Nature lovers, horse people, and specialists of one species or another will share their delights of botany, horses, or ants, but usually such appreciative communications are reserved for glossy general-interest magazines, the Parade supplement to the Sunday papers, or nature programs suitable for children. The adults, the big important people, the scientists with their massive grants from government, are more prone to be heard declaiming about the faults and defects of some representative of the natural order, which they mean to fix with their genetic interferences, cloning techniques or hybridization technologies.

All of this is big business for advanced intellects, and the people who can be heard complaining about the dangers of such a head-on assault against the natural order, and of the human arrogance and folly it implies, are not considered worthy of the privilege of residing in the modern empire. A humble regard for the limits imposed by Nature has never perhaps characterized humankind, although the damage inflicted by this attitude was, in past times, limited compared with what is looming before us today. It seems to be too much to expect that great minds should acknowledge this potential for the exponential increase of human mischief occasioned by the advance of technical knowledge. Unfortunately, another behavior of which history affords few examples is that of powerful people voluntarily restraining themselves.

But I digress. I wish for a moment to point to the human form and body as a marvel in its own right – no, not in its own right. Most certainly not "in its own right" but as testified to have been created "in the image of God." I am not about to embark on theology but merely to point out that the statement regarding man’s creation "in the image of God" should immediately alert us to the fact that we are dealing with symbolism, that is, a transcendent concept relating to the unity of mankind. The concept of the unity of mankind as expressed in the creation of the human form "in the image of God" does not refer to any real or measurable entity in the world in the sense of empiricism, for in reality there are only particular men and women, in various tribes, races and groupings. The concept "mankind" is actually a gigantic conceptual leap into universality.

"Symbolic mankind" needs to be investigated like any other symbol: that is, to be approached in the spirit of seeing what it yields, what it represents. When what properly should be a symbolic concept (i.e., mankind) is made to fit into the sort of purely external and extrinsic phenomenon such as science typically investigates, the spiritual concept loses its symbolic form and interior dimension.

This "phenomenalization" of concepts is something going on all the time, almost like a process of cultural entropy. These phenomenalized concepts become "idols" -- they have no "within," like the "genes" that scientists furiously investigate as the last frontier of secrets holding the power to determine everything. Despite the many fashionable denials of human integrality or integrity that reign today as the result of fashionable genetic theories, there is no getting around the immediate sense that this integrality of the human form is what it "means," in fact, to be "human." Descartes seized upon the "objective" side of this integrality, despite the interiority of the cogito. And the "object" side of this equation has been the preoccupation of Western philosophy ever since.

The entrance of symbolic awareness through conspiracy theories and the events to which they refer obliges us to become reacquainted with interiority, the "within" of symbolism.To begin with, we might remind ourselves that to see a human being before us is to know that the physical appearance is in some integral fashion related to the vitalizing thought – or, where thinking is absent or poorly developed, at least to the "disposition" or animated leaning – and that both form and disposition comprise, roughly, what we mean by the term "character" or "personality." All of this, of course, is just sheer elementary common sense. But it is astonishing the degree to which such elementary notions have virtually passed out of our culture today. People – especially the ones you see on television – often have the bearing of livid masks. Newscasters, especially for some reason the female ones, seem like bones and nerves pulled along by wires, and the countenance appears almost ape-like, fixated in a permanent grimace. No doubt this flatness of modernized humanity has given rise to a welter of urban folklores of roboticized humans on the one hand, or monsters of perversity on the other. The former is bland, the latter is vile. The area occupied by normal human beings possessing blood, vital organs, viscera, muscles, smells, etc. seems to be shrinking day by day. But this is because our "viscera" no longer "speak" to us. Their symbolic dimensions have collapsed into the literal physicality which characterizes all of our "objects." Thus even our own viscera have become idols.

In the sense that we may contrast a "livid mask" to a face, we may note that the latter is both a physical appearance and a symbol: rather, it is a case of "matter" [flesh] being raised to individualized expressiveness. "Expressiveness" has to do with symbolism, with the uniting of inner tendency with outer form.

Everything we do or fail to do is expressive. If I were to write this piece with no capitals, punctuation, paragraph breaks and with misspellings and poor grammar, when it was apparent that I knew better, my action would be an expression of contempt for the reader by implying that I was beyond such petty considerations as grammar.

Likewise, a landscape is expressive – and one has only to drive through most of the landscapes of modernity in what euphemistically used to be called "the countryside" to behold how modern humanity expresses its contempt for the earth. The vomitoria of suburbanization stretches for miles, with shopping malls and detritus of the automobile age interspersed with housing developments constructed in fake English styles. Only the degraded and impotent subjects of an Empire of Idolatry could throw up such a hideous memorialization of itself. And these subjects are not only "dispossessed" in the political sense, that is, lacking the political power to shape their environments. The building patterns are the result of modernity’s idolization of matter – that is, the incapacity of modern phenomena to speak the language of symbolism, interiority or representation.

But it is not just the face that is symbolic of the human, but the entire form: the upright posture, the two legs and arms, bilaterality, symmetry, the intricacy of the organs, the incredible complexity of the nerves and senses. It is amazing that we spend so little time pondering what is natural and given. For good or for ill, the head rests upon all else. But whether this head is to be symbolic of mind or whether it is to be suffocated within its own "skullcap" – isn't this just the question? Whether we are members of a meaningful cosmos whose being and intelligence somehow transcends our own, and whose limits we disregard at our peril - or whether we just "make it up as we go along" - according to our own whims, appetites, and cruel passions?

Our views of life symbolize something. But a great abdication is occurring. The intellectuals and the scientists are seceding from the notion of the concept, mankind, and forming a new tribalism of intellectual power. The concept "mankind," having become an idol -- because the so-called "agent of change" is conceived to lie in some mystical realm of genetics or ‘evolutionary process’ apart from the ones doing the living, being, and developing – there must be found a class or type of person able to administer it, so to speak.

Idolatry moves the scene of action from the agent, man in history, to an elite of manipulators, while implicitly giving license to those who would tamper with human genetics, not to mention the laws, customs and habits of civilization. For it assumes that the genetic evolution, by having somehow gotten to the point at which many of its mechanics have been figured out, only needs the conscious direction of experts to work out the kinks. This view fosters ignorance and contempt for our distant ancestors by denying the role that will, consciousness and understanding must have played in their own development, while it increases the arrogance of modern science.

Thus, where the past or pre-history is concerned, the elite manipulators recite a creed of crude ignoramuses. As for the future, they are rehearsing for the part of God.

But there are worse implications. The symbolic unity and universality of mankind is an idea that we lose at our peril. This idea has been only able to maintain itself precariously within a human race whose overwhelming tendency is and has always been to tribalize. The emergence of an elite skilled in the art of symbolic manipulation thus represents, perhaps paradoxically, the emergence of a new kind of tribe. Those who understand this belong to a pharisaic cult - conscious or otherwise - which knows how to wield symbolism.

Those who do not grasp the symbolism principle will not be participating in this new phase of human evolution. Symbolism will be "done unto them" - that is, they will be subjected to the incessant visioning of degraded humanity. The people resulting from such propagandistic immersion will be merely literal – rather than fully human – persons. They will literally be ‘lost’ to any real attribution of humanity. The new ‘tribalism’ is thus the production of subhuman beings to serve the machine order of the neo-tribalistic elites.

3. Symbolic Participation

With the rise of the nation-state, the older medieval idea of ‘participation’ gave way to a more narrowly conceived notion involving citizenship. When we hear the word ‘participation’ today, we commonly only think of ‘political participation.’ But it is imperative for us to recover the symbolizing dimensions of the concept of participation. It is not only that political participation in advanced, complex technological and bureaucratic societies has been rendered almost meaningless. It is more pointedly the fact that without a sense for the larger dimensions of participation, people will be unable to oppose the saturnine entropy that threatens the existence of civilized man as well as the natural order.

Modern advanced societies are poised dangerously on the cusp of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The degradation of all forms of energy is relentless – the finitude of the oil resources being only the most obvious example. But everything from climate, food, and fertility to forms of social organization, arts, and concepts of public good, are affected by modern man’s impoverished capacity of participation. And the hour is late. There is no guarantee that an education in participation will arrest, much less reverse, these tendencies. But ultimately participation will be necessary to prevent chaos and inanity – as Owen Barfield puts it, in his book, Saving the Appearances -- "In the long run we shall not be able to save souls without saving the appearances, and it is an error fraught with the most terrible consequences to imagine that we shall."

Conspiracy theories are an indication that the field of symbolic awareness is pressing upon us. The factual claims of conspiracy theories should be investigated with the tools used to investigate any factual claims of the physical world. But to dismiss the claims made by conspiracy theorists because, well, they have been put forward by people who subscribe to conspiracy theories – this plays right into the hands of elite neo-tribalists.

It serves the interests of the neo-tribalists to keep the masses of the people in a state of dull literalism punctuated by symbolic threadless thrills that lead to to labyrinthine deceptions but nowhere to moral clarity and truth. The thesis of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare is that the subliminal manipulation of the public is being carried out through assassinations of important public figures, crimes and "exposes" of crimes, violent and pornographic movies, media events and video games by means of unidentified persons or groups who are either consciously working for the diabolic aims of Illuminism or unconsciously serving such persons or groups.

These groups shifted into high gear with the assassination of John F. Kennedy – an event "explained" to the American people by the "lone nut" theory of the Warren Commission – a theory successively trotted out for the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, and no doubt others.

The blogger who goes by name of "Xymphora" had the best summary of the "occult program." Commenting on the election of Nov. 2, 2004, he wrote: "The 2004 election is the culmination of forty years of American conspiracy starting with the murder of JFK, with the failure to investigate each conspiracy leading directly to the next one. When Earl Warren decided he had to lie to the American people about who was really responsible for the death of JFK, he set in motion a series of head-in-the-sand bad decisions that continue up to today.The consistent lack of courage in facing its demons has left the United States in a bit of a pickle, as it now faces an almost inconceivably bleak future of theocratic leadership, disastrous economic policies, and a never-ending series of wars." [Sunday, Jan. 23, 2005]

I believe this summation of the situation in contemporary America is powerful in its brevity. There can be nothing to add to it. For the decision of neo-tribalists to discredit investigation into these events speaks for itself. May the ruin of America be on their souls and conscience. For another word for the manipulation of symbolism and events by people in positions of public trust for selfish ends and covert goals is – treason.

[Originally posted on my "Sword in the Mouth" website in 2006. This website is no longer available.]

Quote and Figure from David Wilcock Website

2010-02-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

Magnetism and Electricity- A "conventionalized diagram of the electromagnetic wave form"

"5.4.1 E-FIELD AND B-FIELD
Magnetism and electricity are considered to be two components of the same force, namely electromagnetism. Magnetism is referred to as the "B-field" and electricity as the "E-field," and they are graphed out as a unified wave where the E-field is on the horizontal plane and the B-field is on the vertical plane, 90 degrees of rotation away from its counterpart.
This is based upon careful measurements of the properties of these fields themselves, and is considered to be a contemporary fact. The picture below shows us a "conventionalized diagram of an (electromagnetic) wave form..." that was reprinted by Enterprise Mission with permission from Ultra High Frequency Radio Engineering by WL Emory, The Macmillan Company.

.. it may be surprising to realize that magnetism and electricity, which certainly seem to be used as two separate forces in our technology, are always traveling together in this fixed 90-degree relationship where magnetism is dynamic and electricity is static..."

I have posted this tonight for future reference.

An Old-World Idea

2010-02-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

The website Lew Rockwell.com is one of the best sites on the web - well-organized, easy to read and locate articles, not too cluttered, and full of insightful articles by people who have outgrown the American habit of State-worship. Today I was struck by a passage from an interview with Mr. Rockwell from another publication. The interviewer asked Mr. Rockwell about the gold standard, and here is his reply:

"There are many ways to move to free-market money and non-inflationary banking. I would never want to close off any viable path. One problem with the Misesian plan for a gold standard is that it relies on the idea that the people in charge will do the right thing. This is a charming, old-world idea, but I don't think it holds true in our times. We need to be open to the possibility that reform will never come from the top."

This is a wise and mature realism speaking, and one that has learned the lessons of our age. Naivete concerning the good - that the people in top "will do the right thing" - is the fatal weakness of "white," "western," "European-Christian" societies - I use the terms in quotation marks. As Pope Benedict remarked, we must not lose our candor and openness - they are the very signs of educability, persuasion, of being amenable to reason, which is the very secret strength of Western history. Yet in today's world such "candor and openness," or belief that "the people in top will do the right thing" are simply no match for the organized and methodical forces comprising the New World Order. The problem with Talmudic instruction, which is, loosely speaking, the training manual of the New World Order, is that wrong-doing is a much surer ticket to success. Evil is shortcuts. Right action is going the long way about things, always maintaining respect for one's object. If it's a circle, doing the good is making the circumference. The bad is a diametrical cut through the heart: you'll get where you want to go, but you run the risk of splitting the circle in two.

I am sure there is more to say about this. There is some secret here. I will come back to this later, after I have thought about it some more.

Black Masks

2010-02-12T06:27:00.000-08:00

The uneven, but interesting, blogger Lord Stirling writes today:

"Former President Bill Clinton has heart procedure to place two stents in his coronary arteries ~ When Clinton had his heart attack he saw black masks circling around him. That is a really bad Near Death Experience. It is a serious warning from God. Somehow, I don't think that Slick Willie reformed himself. "

American Gender

2010-01-29T17:23:00.000-08:00

[Ransom wants to save his sex] "... from the most damnable feminization. I am so far from thinking...that there is not enough woman in our general life, that it has long been pressed home to me that there is a great deal too much. The whole generation is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitude and coddled sensibilities, which, if we don't look out, will usher in a reign of mediocrity of the feeblest and flattest, and the most pretentious, that has ever been..." Henry James, The Bostonians (p. 343)

Prophetic.

_____________________________________________________________

From Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full (1998):

"What the hell had happened to all those sons of the rich in Wally's generation, these well-brought-up boys who went off to the private schools? These damned schools were producing a new kind of scion of the elite: a boy utterly world-weary by the age of 16, cynical, phlegmatic, and apathetic around adults, although perfectly respectful and maddeningly polite, a boy inept at sports, averse to hunting and fishing and riding horses or handling animals in any way, a boy embarassed by his advantages, desperate to hide them, eager to dress in backward baseball caps and homey pants and other ghetto rags, terrified of being envied, a boy facing the world without any visible signs of the joy of living and without ... balls." (p. 149)

2012 and the Invention of time (Part 2)

2009-12-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

Illustration:
Courtesy web site "Mayan symbols"

Kevin Dann and Robert Powell, Christ and the Maya Calendar: 2012 and the Coming of the Antichrist. Lindisfarne books, 2009. $25.00
An Imprint of SteinerBooks/Anthroposophic Press, Great Barrington, MA 012

The end date of the Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012, exerts an apocalyptic fascination in our world today. The Mayans, who flourished in Central America for about six hundred years (circa 200-830 AD) belonged to a unique “chronovisual” civilization. According to Daniel Pinchbeck, they developed three different calendrical systems to record “...a vision of vast cycles of cosmic spirals of time, embodied and expressed by a seething pantheon of extravagant deities, hero-twins and cosmic monsters.” Pinchbeck quotes another Mayan scholar, C.J. Calleman, who believed that “understanding the spiral dynamics of evolution expressed through the Mayan calendar is in itself an aspect of the Divine Plan.”

José Argüelles, another Mayan researcher made famous by the 1987 “Harmonic Convergence” which he orchestrated, holds that the Mayans were- in some sense, not necessarily literal – visitors from another galactic location who came to earth to prepare a field of higher mind that would enable earthlings to enter the community of galactic intelligence. The Mayans established and codified their knowledge system through teaching the qualities of numbers and the cycles of time, developing the theory of resonance (tones and vibrational frequencies, etc.) and imprinting in earth's aura of the galactic “honor code.” This galactic honor code has to do with respect for individual integrity, in the sense that intelligent harmonization cannot come about through force and coercion, but has to be individually and socially acquired through learning and demonstration. Once the Mayans accomplished their mission, according to Argüelles, their civilization virtually disappeared - which remains a mystery to this day.

The “Mayan mystery” has given much for scholars, archeaologists and students of historical ethnology to ponder. Now Robert Powell and Kevin Dann have contributed their anthroposophical-Christian interpretation, the purpose of which is to bring Christian prophecy (specifically, from the Apocalypse of St. John, the last book of the Bible) to the Mayan calendar in order to solve the riddle of 2012. It's an unusual perspective, although José Argüelles – who certainly cannot be suspected of Christian bias – remarked in his book The Mayan Factor that “the number symbolism of the Book of Revelation possesses a profoundly Mayan overtone.”

Kevin Dann is a history teacher and Robert Powell is a well-known anthroposophical researcher in the field of Christian hermetic astrology, Sophiology, and movement therapy. While some New Age researchers have gone overboard in utopian imaginings about 2012 – that it will usher in an "Age of Light"-- Powell and Dann go to the opposite extreme. They argue that the “2012 Window” (the period 1980-2016) corresponds to the Temptation, when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. This is compelling, given the many apocalyptic developments in our time. But it becomes an increasingly dark vision, accentuated by the authors' speculations concerning the incarnation of Antichrist – or is it Ahriman?-- and their discussion of other demonic beings, things, and events-- Asuras, Sorath, Lucifer, the 666 factor, not to mention news flashes from the real world of today concerning Empire wars, torture, and the financial crisis. The end result is a promiscuous mix that says little about the civilization of the Mayans or their remarkable calendar.

The Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica of 1519 was one of the most stunning and amazing events in world history. In its sheer unexpectedness it can be compared with the collapse of the Soviet Union in our own day. Here is what Kevin Dann says about it: "In 1519, Montezuma... made a fatal mistake of recognition when Hernan Cortes appeared... From our perspective, we could say that Montezuma (and his subjects, up until the moment that they finally shook themselves loose from their collective illusion, and attacked the Spanish) mistook as good that which was evil. Mistaken as Quetzalcoatl, the god whom Aztec myth identified as a culture-inspirer, Cortes turned out to be a culture-destroyer." If I can attempt to disentangle the pretzel logic of this statement-- "collective illusion" is hardly an adequate description of what the Aztecs saw in the conquistadores, and secondly "mistaking for good that which is evil" is something all of us do, all the time. Of course the Aztecs saw the conquistadores as "good." Of course abortion is considered "good," and wars of extermination carried out against the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, etc., are considered "good." Rationalizing evil as good is too widespread a human failing to explain any unique historical circumstance.

Although the authors spend some time describing the black magical and ritual murder practices of the Aztecs (practices made vividly real in Mel Gibson's movie, "Apocalypto") an underlying dilemma that appears from time to time in the book is what to do about the Spanish conquerers. According to the notions of political correctness, the Spaniards were horrible exploiters and colonialists. On the other hand, the Aztecs were tearing the hearts out of tens of thousands of victims. Here is Kevin Dann damning by faint praise: "... the conquistadores... all saw the religious practices of the Aztecs as demonic, but our rightful indignation as the harsh measures of the Spanish has largely blinded us to the accuracy of this view." The Bringers of the Cross to Mexico come off as little better than the culture they were imposing themselves upon ("... the Spanish appear as superstitious as the Mexica..." p. 47). Such a lack of cultural conviction and of Christian loyalty is surprising in a book supposedly devoted to the temporal reverberations of the life of Christ in history.

The book is further marred by long quotations from Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the Mexican Mysteries about events in Mesoamerica 1,500 years before the Conquest and about the gods and deities of Mayans and Aztecs. Steiner in effect reverses the names of Mayan and Aztec deities, making the "good" Quetzalcoatl into an evil bloodthirsty demon. He says the purpose of the heart sacrifice was to create a civilization in which people would want to "flee the earth" - an explanation which apparently the authors accept without question. But why, if your heart is torn out, would you necessarily want to "flee the earth"? Might you not with equal probability want to return to earth for another incarnation and better chance at life? Neither Dann nor Powell makes much attempt to corroborate Steiner's statements - although Dann at least admits that Steiner's statements concerning the spiritual practices of Mesoamerica have no support in scholarship, that his lectures on the subject were "elliptical," and that in fact they left his audience so confused that he had to repeat them. The result of all this confusion piled upon an already complicated subject is to leave the reader completely in the dark as to the considerable differences between the Mayans and the Aztecs. [1]

The argument that "we are in the time of Antichrist" can hardly be disputed by any sensitive person today. Les Visible, who blogs under the name Visible Origami, writes in his posting today that "...most of us don't trust life and don't possess unshakeable faith in the cosmic will to good... This is the ground zero consideration, either the divine being is real or it is not." [2] This view is not so much that "God will save us" as it is in the saving power of faith itself - an idea which may be actually in alignment with genuine and uncorrupted religion, something along the lines of a Blakean Holy Imagination. Although Dann and Powell argue for the coming of Antichrist (or incarnation of Ahriman), there is some confusion when Powell remarks that "... the primary event of our time is not the coming of Antichrist" but the reappearance of Christ in the etheric realm. He says: "The coming of the Antichrist simply represents the shadow side of Christ's coming..." (The use of the word 'simply' in that passage is, in my opinion, unforgivable.) The deep confusions of this book are not bridged by vague nostrums about "turning evil into good" or woolly-minded generalities. [3] Powell at times seems obsessed by evil beings, to the point of Calvinism or predestinationism:

"...it is evident that the emergence of the two human beings who are the bearers of the suprasensory entities known as Sorath and Ahriman (Satan) is preordained in the divine plan," (p. 109);
"...just as the Mystery of Golgotha was preordained..."
"so the current enactment on the world stage of Rev. 13 is preordained"

and finally, perhaps most outrageous of all--

"In order for the Mystery of Golgotha to be accomplished, there had to be a highly evolved human being, Judas Iscariot, to betray Christ in order for the Crucifixion to happen."

These passages indicate not only a deficient education in moral theology, but also a trivialization of morality – as if people are justified in committing an evil deed for the sake of the good that can result from it. It is confusion at a juvenile level – highly embarrassing in one who claims to be doing spiritual research.

I know of the high quality of Robert Powell's and Kevin Dann's intentions, research and efforts. But this book is a disappointment. I don't think that Powell and Dann did justice to the Mayans – or to themselves.I believe that what motivated them was the growing disquiet with the condition of the United States and the desire to break the spell of illusion regarding our nation. I understand this motivation and am sympathetic with it. Our just and hopeful history has been taken from us. In the past few years we Americans have been given a dish of "serpents" to swallow – an odious and ugly history. We have become an empire, and in some ways we resemble the Aztecs – if abortion and empire wars can be likened to human sacrifice. I think they do. [4] Our shadow is very deep these days.

It is urgent that we develop the spiritualized intellect in order to reclaim the just and the true parts of our history and renew our culture. As Powell and Dann say – and this is the best thing they say in this entire book: "The evil coming from Ahriman needs to be bound so as to be overcome." There isn't much evidence of putting Ahriman in bounds in this book. A much more careful editing was needed. Nevertheless, I'd like to see them pursue their lines of thought in history and spirituality to a new level and really try to grapple with the crossroads of destiny that lie ahead for us all.

[1] Octavio Paz on the Aztecs: "[they] confiscated a singularly profound and complex vision of the universe to convert it into an instrument of domination." From The Labyrinth of Solitude; I am unable to find exact page of the quote on my copy. Quoted by Daniel Pinchbeck in his book, 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

[2] Visible Origami, "Dumber than dirt in a world of hurt," Wednesday, December 9, 2009.

[3] Powell on "turning evil into good": "The point is that Ahriman's influence usually extends into our thinking in such a way as to encourage thinking in a materialistic direction or in an egotistical way. The forces underlying this can be wrested from Ahriman if we consciously direct our thinking in a spiritual direction and in a non-egotistical way." (p.190) Well, duh, something like this has been the teaching of the Christian church for 2,000 years. How can Powell manage to write such drivel?

[4] E. Michael Jones reviewing Mel Gibon's movie, "Apocalypto" --http://www.culturewars.com/2007/Apocalypto.htm

2012 and the Invention of Time (Part 1)

2009-12-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

Mayan solar symbol, courtesy: whats-your-sign.com

Lately I have been reading and reviewing certain books relating to the Mayan calendar and its famous ending date, December 21, 2012. Here's a list of the books I've been reading:

Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012:The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin; 2006)

Jose Arguelles, The Mayan Factor: The Path Beyond Technology (Bear & Co., Rochester, VT; 1987 with 1996 addendum)

Barbara Hand Clow, The Mayan Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind (Bear & Co., 2007)

Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D.The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. (Bear & Co., 2004)

Robert Powell and Kevin Dann, Christ & the Maya Calendar: 2012 & The Coming of the Antichrist. (Lindisfarne Books, an imprint of SteinerBooks/Anthroposophic Press; Hudson, NY, 2009)

Finally the old standard classic, Lewis Spence Atlantis Discovered, first published in 1924, has quite a lot of material devoted to arguing for the Atlantean origins of the Mayans. He believes that the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl " can be equated with Atlas - a world-upholder. He is also "...the civilizer, the architect, the craftsman in jewellry and dyestuffs, the agriculturalist...A long line of priest-kings...were called by his name. He introduced a religion totally at variance with the sanguinary faith of Mexico..."

I mention this now because I will have quite a lot to say later about the Powell-Dann book, which subjects the identity of Quetzalcoatl to what could be called an anthroposophical spin-cycle, leaving the original in tatters. Is Quetzalcoatl the same being as the bloodthirsty Aztec god Huitzilopochtli? they wonder. "Would it not be helpful to know the true identity of that being the 15th and 16th century Mexica and their subject peoples called 'Huitzilopochtli?'" Here is how they answer this question: "The main reason that we cannot turn for the answer to the Mexica themselves is that, no matter how much they were still in a condition of consciousness that largely precluded rational, perspectival thought, they were no longer clairvoyantly beholding the spiritual world. . . by 1428...the only individuals capable of clairvoyant communication with the spiritual world were the tonalpuhque, the priests... the 'third eye' was closed for the Mexica people, just as it was for the Europeans." (pps. 47-8)

This rather begs the question, it seems to me, because all priestcraft is predicated upon the loss of clairvoyant communion with the spiritual world. It is still necessary to ask who is the identity of the being being worshipped through the veils of religion. For there are always the "veils." That is the condition of spiritual perception in historical times - or more precisely, the condition of historical reality.

First, a few general remarks. I would not have been open to learning about the Mayan calendar, or reading so many "New Age" books about it, if it had not been for Dann and Powell's book. I had agreed to review it for Lilipoh Magazine, a local magazine produced in Phoenixville, PA., mainly devoted to Waldorf education. I have known of Robert Powell for some time. He is a Catholic anthroposophist - like myself, possibly a convert -- and has been doing very interesting work in "hermetic astrology." He has been mapping the life-stages in the life of Jesus to succeeding phases in Western history. It's a unique and indeed very interesting approach which incorporates Rudolf Steiner's deeply Christ-centered teachings to a new recognition of the significance of historical time.

There's a strong line of division within the Anthroposophical Society between the Catholics and the anti-Catholics. Powell, and more recently Christopher Bamford, head of the Anthroposophic Press, have followed the example of the late Valentine Tomberg in creating an astonishingly deep "catholized anthroposophy" which somehow reconciles history and the institution of the church with Rudolf Steiner's spiritual teachings - which are sometimes unhistorical and anti-institutional. There has grown up within the anthroposophical movement a contingent of practicing Catholics - a development viewed with alarm and horror by the anti-Catholic wing of the Society. The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society currently reposes with Sergei Prokofieff, a nephew of the famous Russian composer. Prokofieff is violently anti-Catholic and has nothing good to say about the Church. [1] Prokofieff has written a number of books, another one of which (not on the subject of Catholicism) a dear friend of mine found so embarassing that she burned it in the fireplace. "I didn't want anybody becoming introduced to anthroposophy through this book," she explained to me.

Well - to continue. I have known about Robert Powell for some time, but this was the first book of his that I had ever actually read. I found it so awful - dear Reader, such a bad book! - that the "New Age" books I read -- silly as they were at times -- seemed inoffensive by contrast. I felt that Robert Powell was not really interested in learning anything from the Mayans (this was also true of his co-author, Kevin Dann, but to a much lesser extent) and that he was involved in his own "trip" -- a relentless hammering of anthroposophical demonology, with an occasional side "breather" into his pet projects of Sophiology (studies of the Divine Sophia), Jeane Dixon's prophecies, the Russian mystical author of the "Rose of the World," etc. His writing lacked, shall we say, "reader rapport." After a while I got giddy with the promiscuous mingling of Ahriman, Antichrist, Lucifer, the 666 being, Sorath, the Asuras. Powell seemed at times almost "enraptured" by evil beings, events, and things, and I began to resent what seemed to me to be both an obsession with evil as well as a trivialization of it.

I will have more to say about the Dann-Powell book in a continuation of this post. For now, just to make a few remarks about the New Age books, which I will not review in detail. The New Agers can get carried away by the idea that the planetary alignment with the galaxy in 2012 will usher in a spiritual awakening, a new Age of Light. But, at least their vision is hopeful.

The unrelieved bleakness of Powell and Dann's book seems to me symptomatic of a kind of inability of the anthroposophical movement to grow - aside from its Waldorf education wing. Those of us who have been involved with anthroposophy over the years have often wondered what a truly American anthroposophy would look like. For anthroposophy has a strong European heritage, specifically in the philosophical tradition known as German idealism.

It has seemed to me that a true "American anthroposophy" would take account of historical time in a way that was not necessary for the European mind. For Europe simply "was" -- or "is" -- history in a way that has never been true for us. North America was founded in a certain moment of historical time - the "Enlightenment" -- and South America... Well, there's a totally different history there, really remarkably different. The Mayans seemed to have had a sense for the creative forces of time, and this is the real interest of their calendar.

"Time is invention or it is nothing at all." This is a saying by Henri Bergson, from his book Creative Evolution. You could say it took Western mankind 2,000 years to get to Bergson - who lived in the early 20th century. But it's where the Mayans began. The creative forces of time, a template for the evolution of consciousness - as Carl Johan Calleman puts it. This is the real excitement of the Mayan calendar and a good reason to at least become acquainted with it. The New Agers are onto it, the anthroposophists have missed it.

[1] If I may take the liberty of citing my own work - this is a blog, after all! - the reader may want to know of my essay, "Crisis in Anthroposophy at the End of the Century," in which I discuss anti-Catholicism in anthroposophy. In: The Sword in the Mouth: Apocalyptic Essays, 1996-2006, available through http://www.lulu.com.

........to be continued....

What Historical Consciousness is NOT!

2009-11-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

From a Yale historian - complete nonsense: "...just as historical consciousness demands detachment from - or if you prefer, elevation above - the landscape that is the past, so it also requires a certain displacement: an ability to shift back and forth between humility and mastery."
From The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis (2002)

I find this nonsense for several reasons: (1) he compares writing history to map-making, which is a false (and scientistic) analogy. If history is a map, it's full of pitfalls - literally - not to mention swamps, sinkholes, and dry wells. The analogy substitutes accuracy for truth (even when there can be no accuracy) - in contrast to John Lukacs' humbling refreshing statement, that a historian's task is the "reduction of untruth." (2) Gaddis has gotten giddy from his all his shape-shifting and gadding about. I don't know of any historian who needs to switch on humility at one moment and mastery at the next, and still retain anything like sincerity. What a load of crap!
(3) It never ceases to amaze me what publishers will publish. Gaddis has swallowed all the new physics (well, John Lukacs does too, but he does it more modestly) and come up with the brilliant comment that "[we historians] have been doing a kind of physics all along." Names and words ought to mean something, and the condition of meaning is obedience to a certain form of limits. After reading a few pages of Gaddis...I gagged.

I'd appreciate hearing from any readers who likewise want to poke holes in the ridiculous quoted assertion above by analyzing it rhetorically, philosophically, historically, semantically and in any other way they see fit.

We need to start holding the professoriate to account!!

A Note on the Symbolized Cosmos

2009-11-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

Relevant to the discussion of of terms geocentrism or anthropocentrism, Seyyed Hossein Nasr employs the term "homocentric" in the following:

"A civilization may develop a science which turns its back upon the qualitative aspect of things revealed through symbols in order to concentrate upon the changes which can be measured quantitatively. But it cannot destroy the symbolic reality of things any more than can a qualitative and symbolic study of natural phenomena destroy their weight or size. Today, through the destruction of the 'symbolist' spirit in the West, men have lost the sense of penetrating into the inner meaning of phenomena, which symbols alone reveal. But this impotence does not mean that natural symbols have ceased to exist. The symbolic significance of the homocentric spheres of Ptolemaic astronomy, which the immediate appearance of the heavens reveals, remains valid whether in the theoretical Newtonian absolute space or the curved space of relativity the earth moves round the sun or the sun round the earth. The homocentric spheres symbolize states of being above the terrestrial state in which man is presently placed. The states of being remain real whether we understand and accept the natural symbolism which the heavens themselves reveal to us in our immediate and direct contact with them or whether in the name of other theoretical considerations this we disregard this immediate appearance and the symbol which this appearance conveys."

And:

"In fact, even new scientific theories, if they conform to any reality at all, possess their own symbolic meaning. To correspond to reality in any degree means to be symbolic..."[Italics mine.]From his Sufi Essays (1972).

Dr. Nasr is a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and is one of the most lucid writers today on metaphysics, the relationship of man and nature, the perennial philosophy and related topics. He is one of the founders of Sophia Journal, a journal of perennial philosophy and spirituality.

Thoughts on "Last Rites"

2009-11-13T17:45:00.000-08:00

John Lukacs, Last Rites. Yale University Press, 2009.

John Lukacs writes in this latest retrospective of his life that this book reverses the pattern of his earlier autobiography, Confessions of an Original Sinner (1990). The earlier work went from the personal to the impersonal - “from something like an autobiography to something like a personal philosophy.” In Last Rites, he begins by recapitulating many of the concerns and preoccupations that have formed his professional life as a historian, especially his great work Historical Consciousness, which he describes as “a historical philosophy of history.” In Last Rites these large preoccupations are distilled “from something like a philosophy to something like an autobiography.” The result is something like a work of art: structured, measured, almost classical in form, yet startling in its heartfelt feeling and surprising moments of self-confrontation and emotional honesty.

Different historical periods view history differently. In a recent talk in Philadelphia, Lukacs gave an overview of how people have viewed the enterprise of history. In the 18th century it was a branch of literature; in the 19th century it was acclaimed as a science; in the 20th century it fell to the province of a social science.There are problems with each of these identifications, and no one better than John Lukacs has exposed the fallacies and shortcomings of “history as a science.” In Historical Consciousness, or The Remembered Past, he attacked the scientism view through many angles, but mainly through the Cartesian idea of the bifurcation of reality into “subjective” and “objective.” These themes reappear in Last Rites: human knowledge is neither objective nor subjective, but personal and participant; the knower is involved with the known; the mind (ideas and what people think that they know) intrudes into “causality”; the evolution of consciousness is maybe the only “evolution” there is – for what goes by the name of “evolution” today is profoundly anti-historical; and people do not “have” ideas – they choose them – just as they often choose not to think. What masquerades as ignorance is more often an unwillingness; what is termed “cognition” is often the will – the tendency or leaning, of choice and decision.

And this- choosing, the will, the moral act -- is the central point. It is, in John Lukacs' attitude toward history, life and thought, essential- for “morality” has to do with the interpenetration of thoughts and things. The “mores” of any society are those habits and practices dealing with the relations with self, nature, God and others-- the inescapable four cardinal points of our life, of any human life. The centrality of the moral life in John Lukacs has led him to another central recognition, but one that will be bitterly resisted. It is that we – or rather, the earth – is at the center of the universe. Oh no, I can hear the groans resounding from the halls of fashionable academic opinion. “Wasn't that decided by Copernicus?”

But consider: history is not a science. Science deals with the physical world, and in its history (and yes, science too is a part of history) it progressed by means of a gradual (but relentless) stripping-away of all “metaphysical” qualities from the universe. With the rise of science, mankind began to live in an increasingly physical world – a mode of living that would have been considered very strange indeed to our distant ancestors – or even many of our not-so-distant ones. It is a very big step to move from representation of being to “mere being” - as anyone who has participated in the raising of a healthy child knows. For all things wear an aspect, carry a mood, symbolize something. If anything, this type of consciousness is more “natural” to mankind than the modern, reductive, anti-symbolical one. Science has, as it were, externalized the inner magic of things into manipulable forces and powers -- which may be a discussion for another day. But the rise of science – where does that leave history?

It was perhaps understandable that people, especially in the 19th century, but even also today, would want to make history into something like a “science.” But history cannot be externalized. It is not experimental. It is something we are immersed in and that we live, feel, know, and experience. We participate in it and remember it and our aspirations are involved with it – also our ideas, our philosophy, and our sense about the purpose and meaning of life. History involves interpretation and re-interpretation. It is a human art, a developing understanding. In essence history is metaphysical, if by “metaphysical” we mean something that is beyond the strict limits of the sensory, physical and measurable. History is “beyond physics” in this sense: for without history, there could be no physics. The atom contains several thousand years of human thought, to say the least that can be said. The atom, like history itself, has both a “physical” and a “metaphysical” aspect.

But why – earth at the center of the universe? It is perhaps not unlikely that life exists elsewhere in the universe – but does history? Here the discussion reaches a different dimension. For there is life – primitive life, plant life, even animal life – but historical life? In fact I think the question has hardly been dealt with at this level. But if that is the case, it is because, being immersed in history like fish in water, we don't “see” it. We fail to notice that our discussion about life, the universe, the development of life on earth, about science and geology and all the scientific notions and “facts” -- it's because we've had time to study and absorb them in history. The words and the notions have become familiar to us – but not the process by which they became discovered, thought about, and disseminated. We forget, or rather, we fail to remember, their beginnings, and because these beginnings comprise a gigantic but ignored presence of history in our minds and thoughts, there is something laughable in the way we think. We're puerile – maybe even sterile.

The new geocentrism is about recalling to ourselves this presence of history – to the significant realization of the historical dimension of our thinking. And perhaps to the sobering importance of our thoughts, words, acts, and choices. Wouldn't the anti-historical Darwinoids want to keep us in a state of infantile moral frivolity? That sure would suit the agenda of the corporatists to rape and plunder the planet-- and maybe the corporatists like having a few Darwinoids on their payroll. After all, if we just came here by chance and will disappear in a few million years without regret, why struggle for quality of life, beauty, wholesomeness, love and reconciliation? What moral virtues matter in such a view of life? John Lukacs is here to tell us about the next step we need to take – as thinking people and as a society. If we don't take it, we Americans are in danger of ossifying into puerility. I've never read in John Lukacs before something like this, that “I despair of this nation and of many of its people.” It was in a footnote – as several of his surprising or startling remarks are footnoted in this book. But yes, puerility may be worse than decadence-- for “...decadence is... full of dissolving maggots of maturity, of remnant memories that puerility does not possess.” That was in the context of “a puerile presidency may be but one symptom of the devolution of this republic into a military superstate.” The optimism about America so noticeable in many of John Lukacs's previous works has vanished. This is a sobering and sober-minded book.

And there are several other things. Keen-witted and clear-eyed observations come up in this book – about Lukacs' alienation from his profession, about Americans' alienation from one another, suburbanization, the carelessness with which we use our landscape, the fact that the Modern Age is over – and the establishment of the United States was a part of that Modern Age.
Have we quite digested this? Nor is the answer “postmodernism” either – Lukacs has a few well-chosen derisive comments about that – for “postmodernism” failed to grasp historical consciousness as well. No, the step we need to take – into a moral geocentrism, historical consciousness, the realization of an inescapable historical dimension in our thinking – these all signify not an “opposite,” nor even a “more” and certainly not a “same” - (all these being merely Hegelian moves and counter-moves of futile intellectualized wishing) -- but a break, almost like a “conversion” -- a qualitative change of consciousness, an interiorization of a dimension. This dimension is as intimate to us as memory – for history is the remembered past. There is history in what we remember - just as there is the dimension of memory in our thought.

We need this deepening dimension of historical consciousness, which is the true and unifying humanism to reconcile the warring factions of science and religion. On the last page of this book John Lukacs quotes Pope Leo XIII - “In a way all history cries aloud that God is.” The taking of the historical dimension into our minds is the new communion to which Christ calls us today.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

2009-06-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Well, mind and hold tight my shaggy coat, and then there's nothing to fear," said the Bear, so she rode a long, long way."
Illustration by Kay Nielsen for a beautiful edition. It seems appropriate as I make preparations to leave for Argentina next month.

The Daily Folly

2009-03-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

Gordon Brown, who holds some sort of leadership post in what used to be known as Great Britain, came panting to Washington to shake the new president's hand and retie the knot on the latest twist of the "Anglo-American Alliance." Things didn't go quite as well as expected, but he did address the pit of trained seals, the Congress of the United States, as described in the International Herald Tribune (Mar 5): "Despite the distractions, Brown came off well in a confident address to a joint meeting of Congress, an invitation reserved for America's closest allies. Brown projected optimism in the face of economic turmoil. He predicted that the global economy could double in size over the next 20 years as billions of people move from being producers to consumers..."

A vision and a life of consumers... No word for the effect of this catastrophic way of life upon the earth, no indication that a life of consumerism is not exactly consonant with human dignity. Western leadership has nothing to offer. All it can offer is satiation and surfeit. And in the face of obvious bankruptcy! Stupidity at this level takes real talent.

End of a Teaching Stint

2009-02-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

Ear - by Julian Horner

At the end of December, just before the Christmas break, I was hired as a temporary substitute librarian in an inner-city charter school. The job involved providing library classes and activities to 28 classes of elementary school students K-6th grade, each visiting the library for a period of 40 minutes. Does that sound easy? Hard? Impossible? I don't know what I thought when I arrived, but by the time I had been there a few days I had to ask myself: is this really as hard as it seems, or am I missing something? The teachers would drop their groups off for a much-needed break, and of course, the students had little incentive to "behave themselves" with a substitute. Not that they had much incentive in any case. The main activity of these children, in my class or any other, as far as I could tell, was talking to each other. The great imperative: socializing! But the great feature of the library, the student computers, did allow for some merciful (relative) quiet at times, although there were only 8 computers, and sometimes as many as 26 students... The students liked playing games and looking at fashion shows, when they could get away with not doing "Study Island."

I really liked the school, the staff, and I liked the students too - overwhelmingly African-American. It's just that no one was teaching them how to refrain from expressing impulses, or to keep still, or maintain quiet. The school was doing all these tests, tests, tests, and the students worked at something called SFA ("Success for All") which I gather was some sort of language arts program. The library was a large room, pleasant and well-stocked with juvenile literature; but the school had no playground (it was a reconstituted shopping mall) and the students had almost no recess or organized games. No wonder they'd rather play tag or hide-and-seek in the library than read print-outs of stupid little stories. I can't say I blamed them!

I suppose we spend our lives learning how to pay attention. Learning to listen, to hear, follow directions, obey - it comes from the ear, this "obedience," this learning-to-hear. In this respect the students I met were already severely disadvantaged. Only in America, where everything is the opposite that you would expect, a "disadvantaged" child is a child who expresses himself all the time. I did not meet any vicious children, and some I met were loving and affectionate. But they could not learn, or did not want to learn, or what they were being given to learn lacked relevance for their lives and consequently was dull. I grew weary, day after day, of shouting at them to be quiet. I was not a great teacher. Maybe I was not the worst. But I was glad when my stint ended - yesterday. I decided to leave; the administration decided to hire a man who had taught in a reform school. It seemed like the right conjunction of events, arrived at mutually and independently and simultaneously by both parties. So it was.

Remembrance of Ashes

2009-02-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

My letter to First Things of March, 2007, has been reproduced here. The letter was a
response to George Weigel's article on the Just War teachings of the Church.
I have also re-posted my article of August 23, 2006, "The Zionist Face of First Things."
Thanks to Andrew for suggesting I re-post my letter to the editor.

More Bad News from Pope Benedict

2009-02-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

On October 25, 2006, I posted in this space a reflection on Pope Benedict XVI's speech at Regensburg, in which I expressed misgivings at the Pope's choice of words and example with respect to the religion of Islam. Once again, I find myself expressing some disappointment with this undoubtedly intellectual and educated Pope, whose capitulation to the Jews in the matter of Bishop Williamson I regard as nothing less than presaging the end of a viable Catholic faith.

Bishop Williamson may be impolitic, but he is no fool. He has allowed himself to express doubts concerning the fairy tale narrative of 9/11. But he has really blundered into the stew by expressing skepticism on the issue of the Holocaust, which is now apparently the stick used by the Jews to beat the masses into line. Where the rubber meets the road is the issue in any religious faith, and lo! - Auschwitz has been substituted for Golgotha, and no one apparently notices that the dogmas of religion have been transformed by sleight-of-hand into secular articles of faith. And with the blood of the children of Gaza not yet dried upon the fangs of the Zionist priests, the good Pope had the temerity to address those same rabbis in this wise, on the occasion of their gathering at the Vatican yesterday:

"The Church draws its sustenance from the root of that good olive tree, the people of Israel, onto which have been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles (cf. Rom 11: 17-24). From the earliest days of Christianity, our identity and every aspect of our life and worship have been intimately bound up with the ancient religion of our fathers in faith."

But who, honored Pope, are our "fathers in faith?" Were they not those ancient Hebrews? These same ancient Hebrews who disappeared long ago into the sea of humanity? They elected to cast their lot with mankind, unlike those Pharisees and Zionists who claim, falsely, to be descended from them. Even the Enclyclopedia Britannica says that Judaism developed "long after the Israelites merged themselves with mankind, and that the true relationship of the two peoples is best expressed in the phrase, 'The Israelites were not Jews.'" But here is the very Pope of the Catholic Church conflating the two - in other words, proving himself a complete dupe.

The Jewish historian, Dr. Josef Kastein (himself a zealous Zionist) describes very clearly the difference between Israel and Judah:

"[After the death of Solomon, ~ 937 BC] the two states [Israel and Judah] had no more in common, for good or evil, than any two other countries with a common frontier. From time to time they waged war against each other or made treaties, but they were entirely separate. The Israelites ceased to believe that they had a destiny apart from their neighbors and King Jeroboam made separation from Judah as complete in the religious as in the political sense... [Then, the Judahites] ... decided that they were destined to develop as a race apart... they demanded an order of existence fundamentally different from that of the people about them. These were differences which allowed of no process of assimilation to others. They demanded separation, absolute differentiation."

The Catholic Church is a great charity and a great educational institution. But is it - still - a religion? Perhaps it was only a matter of time. With Holocaust memorials everywhere, most newspapers and media in Jewish hands, and undeniable Jewish influence in foreign policy and preponderance in the financial sector, how long could the Catholic Church have been reasonably expected to hold out? Now the Jews have entered the halls of the Vatican in triumph, bringing their burnt offering. But it would be more true to say they come bearing the ashes of the Christian West.

America

2009-01-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

I'm doing some research into African-American poetry. I found this poem, "America" - by Claude McKay [1889-1948]. I think it's quite powerful.

ALTHOUGH she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

This poem has a lot of resonance for me on the eve of the Inauguration.

American Gods - and Demons

2008-12-21T12:38:00.001-08:00

The All-Father (Odin)
Courtesy: home.earthlink.net/~norsemyths/norsemyths.html

Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) made the New York Times bestseller list in July of that year. The events of September 11 were like a fulfillment of the author's prophetic imagination.

In this novel, the characters frequently allude to "the coming storm." I picked out six of them - and only one was a reference to the weather. Some examples: "it's not a storm of our making," "it scares me - I would do anything to get away," "if I can get away before the storm hits, away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses," "the war had begun and nobody saw it. The storm was lowering and nobody knew it." The ostensible text is the coming battle between the Old Gods and the New. But the hidden text...? One is inclined to wonder: what did the author know and when did he know it? The imagination has its sources of perception and feeling, and its accuracy is far sharper and more deadly than mere news reporting. This author's imagination has tuned in to the new theory of government, stated a few years ago in a New York Times article by Ron Suskind, who was quoting one of the Bush people: "We're an empire now... we create our own reality. " The New Age has come to government. Welcome to literary theory as political creed.

Who are the Old Gods? Well, there's Mr. Wednesday - Odin - Wotan - Wotansday - Wednesday - the All-Father. Shadow, the ex-con who is the hero of our tale, runs into Mr. Wednesday after his release from prison a couple of days early because he learned that his wife was killed in a car crash. Mr. Wednesday offers him a job as an "errand boy," and Shadow, somewhat dubiously at first, accepts. Mr. Wednesday tells him, "I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die." It's not always crystal clear who the Old Gods are, or what they want, but it's clear who the New Gods are: credit cards, freeway, Internet, telephone, radio, hospital, television, plastic, cell phone, neon, bureaucracy - the gods of debt, servitude, rootlessness, Empire.

But there's this: the New Gods always give themselves away in the way they speak. Here's the Fat Kid, his eyes glinting "like an antique computer monitor," who tells Shadow: "You tell Wednesday this. You tell him he's history. He's forgotten. He's old. Tell him we are the future and we don't give a fuck about him or anyone like him. He has been consigned to the Dumpster of history while people like me ride our limos down the superhighway of tomorrow...Tell him we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religions are an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam... It's all about the dominant fucking paradigm, Shadow. Nothing else is important."

The Fat Kid, Media, Town, Mr. World - they all want a "clean world," they want to "own tomorrow," they want "to write the future in Letters of Fire." Shadow begins to notice "how they seem to like to speak in cliches." The New Gods sound like robots, ever reproducing the things they have already heard. In the end it's about the word - the ability to speak, and to take responsibility for one's beliefs. As one of the Old Gods explains, "This isn't about what is... It's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway... People only fight over imaginary things"-- because ... "People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen."

In this novel the magic of the Old Gods meets up with history and with the techno-magic of our era. There is love and wonder too, and the border between life and death opens to reveal the common story. Shadow's wife comes back - in a sort of half-life, and becomes Shadow's protectress. But she wants to be alive again, to feel the real blood in her veins - "Make it happen, hon. You'll figure it out." Shadow almost does -- but not as a new Christ figure, although he hangs for nine days in a vigil over Wednesday, on an ash tree in Virginia. He hangs there because the stories go on, and because the stories go on, the hero as bearer of imagination is willing to be moved, to act, to believe, to stand. Only such a decision, taken in the marrow, can lead to a real future, of truth - not the cliche-ridden nightmare foisted by illusion-mongers and manipulative fakes feeding off the chaos they have created.

Lost Souls

2008-12-11T05:04:00.001-08:00

[Note: This is a re-post from November, 2006]

Vox clamato in deserto . . .

The writings of the Christian ascetics of the Orthodox tradition comprise the collection of texts known as the Philokalia, and span the 4th to the 15th centuries. The first compilation of these writings was completed in the 18th century. In our time a four-volume set was compiled, translated and edited by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, and published in 1979 in Great Britain under the auspices of the Eling Trust.

It is a shock to encounter the Desert Fathers. Almost everything that comes to mind when we hear of them is wrong, and there are vast layers of assumption and prejudice that have to be peeled away before we can understand what they mean about the different energy levels in human nature - intellect, image, emotion, wishing, perception, thinking, voluntary and involuntary. Compared to their acuity of discernment, Western philosophy seems a dry husk, and the massive accumulations of psychology and social science following the post-philosophical age - that is, the harvest of modernity - seem like mere dust.

The shock of Christian ascesis consists in realizing how much the activity of thought depends upon or presupposes the existence of the soul. But it is precisely the existence of the soul that is at issue. As Jacob Needleman writes in Lost Christianity, referencing a modern practitioner of Christian ascesis, "... the soul is not a fixed entity. According to Father Sylvan, it is a movement that begins whenever man experiences the psychological pain of contradiction." [1]

It was a disaster for Christianity, according to Father Sylvan, when it accepted the existence of the soul already "in finished form" in human nature.

This "given-ness" of the soul in the Christian view of human nature passed out of active use several centuries ago - what modern discipline concerns itself with the soul in any meaningful way? -- and has been succeeded by the "given-ness" of reason or intellect -- the a priori assumption of reason. John McMurtry writes that the first rule of the "Group-Mind" is that it cannot adopt itself as an object of critical reflection:

"When the most self-evident line of thought has been blinkered out across a people, only an a priori thought system can account for it. As with other great problems of our era, the group-mind disconnects by stopping thought before it arises."

Christian ascesis is the practice of giving attention to thoughts as they first appear, thus it is a practice wholly at odds with a priorism and with all forms of mechanical, psychic or associative activity which masquerades as "thought." According to Father Sylvan, a hundred, a thousand times a day, thoughts that challenge or contradict assumptions and beliefs, thoughts that might provoke self-questioning or discomfort about some fact or emotion or received wisdom, thoughts that might force one to confront one's own laziness, anger, lack of love, lack of integrity -- such thoughts are continually circling the perimeter of the mind and sometimes even penetrate its arena. And yet they come to nothing, they are quickly repelled, conveniently forgotten, dispersed, and covered over by compulsive action, rationalization, explanation, or emotional reaction. Father Sylvan calls this incessant activity of covering over the Question the "First Dispersal of the Soul." It means that the force of attention is wasted, degraded by absorption into one part or another of the psycho-physical organism, and rendered useless for the growth of the soul. Man becomes trapped in an "automatism of non-redemptive experience," which he likens to St. Paul's "body of death."

The struggle of Christian ascesis is to contain the energy of the Question within oneself so that the Soul can come into being. Thus, the existence of the Soul is not a given, not an a priori assumption. It is an energy formed through the confrontation with question and contradiction, an energy that has to be sought, recognized, collected and accumulated - "pondered in the heart." This is why "God can only speak to the soul," according to Father Sylvan, "and only when the soul exists." How accurately this comment foreshadows the condition of modern man, exemplified in John Derbyshire's complaint concerning his loss of religious faith. When asked by an interviewer whether he had ever had a religious experience, Derbyshire replied, "No, and I'm miffed by this."

It is a relief to move from this world of the whining modern, who expects to be provided with spiritual experience in the full armory of modern comforts, to the writings of the Desert Fathers. St. Mark the Ascetic (5th century; sometimes known as Mark the Hermit) says "Never belittle the significance of your thoughts; for not one escapes God's notice."

Of course - for it is these very thoughts, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that must be attended to and carefully 'interrogated.' The process of interrogating the thoughts is likened in the New Testament to 'dividing the sheep from the goats.' It is an activity of continuous discernment and sifting of thoughts that can lead to the 'gathering' of what is vital in them, 'saving' them and 'saving in them' that which is possible for future development.

Then there is this astonishing passage from "No Righteousness by Works:"

"Involuntary thoughts arise from previous sin; voluntary ones from our free
will. Thus the latter are the cause of the former." [Italics mine.]

I emphasized this last sentence as underscoring the fact of 'Presence,' which is the aim of Christian ascesis - dwelling in the presence and present attention of the soul, which acts retroactively upon the 'past.' It is not the past that determines in the present, as in deterministic modern psychology; it is the present disposition of the soul that influences the kind of past that we even perceive. And again, emphasizing our responsibility for our thoughts, as for our experience, St. Mark the Hermit says: "Do not say, 'I don't want it, but it happens.' For even though you may not want the thing itself, yet you welcome what causes it."

And again, responsibility is presence: "It is the uneven quality of our thoughts that produces changes in our condition. For God assigns to our voluntary thoughts consequences which are appropriate but not necessarily of our choice."

The quality of attention: "When you find that some thought is disturbing you deeply in yourself and is breaking the stillness of your intellect with passion, you may sure it was your intellect which, taking the initiative, first activated the thought and placed it in your heart."

And finally: "He who does not choose to suffer for the sake of truth will be chastened more painfully by suffering he has not chosen."

There are many other sayings of this quality in St. Mark the Hermit's "On the Spiritual Law." And his comprise a small portion of this wonderful collection of texts. In reading these texts one can understand why the West underwent a tremendous historical development, and how the energy these Fathers discerned and elucidated in the soul later exploded into so many fields - fields seemingly quite diverse from their lucid gaze. And reading them today brings one into a renewed sense for the failures of modern Western intelligence, which now at the pinnacle of its power seems like a blind and destructive giant. The recovery of lucid intelligence in the West would be greatly assisted by a revival and study of these texts. Thinking and empathy can only arise in the soul, but if there is no basis in the soul for them to become active and conscious, these manifestations attest to the presence of energies, and these energies do not just cease to be or disappear. They must go somewhere. Instead of empathy and thinking, the energies fuel cancerous hatreds and controlling, rigidifying obsessions.

The Philokalia is our crying need -- in the twilight of our souls, it can be a lamp to hold up against our darkening minds.

[1] Simone Weil on contradiction: "God has entrusted all phenomena, without any exception, to the mechanism of this world... The contradictions which the mind is brought up against form the only realities, the only means of judging what is real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test on the part of necessity."

Compare also Richard Weaver, speaking of the liberalism in Western societies: "Its fundamental incapacity to think, arising from an inability to see contradictions, deprives it of the power to propagate." From his Ideas Have Consequences (1948).

A Shocking Event at the Kimmel Center

2008-11-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the Kimmel Center to hear a symphony concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Wagner (Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde), Beethoven (Piano Concerto No. 4), and an orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor by Shoenberg. An incredible experience that I had to enjoy - with my head lowered and my eyes closed.

The Kimmel Center is one of the jewels in Philadelphia's crown. For readers who may not have experienced its astonishing acoustical properties, it may be considered one of the wonders of the world, right up there with the Pyramids and Taj Mahal. Clarity and mellowness can only describe it. It is a splendid concert hall - a worthy monument to the Philadelphia Orchestra and to the city of Philadelphia - its people, its architecture, and its culture.

I had not attended a symphony concert for some years, and upon entering the hall, I was shocked - shocked, I tell you! - to find two screens mounted on either side of the upper walls behind the orchestra. They bore the mottos "Live Image Magnification." Now truly, is my shock at this innovation to be compared with the political and economic disasters that seem to pop up at every turn in our national life? No, and not exactly. It is a different kind of shock, shock on a different level - that even here, in this sacred space devoted to great music, we are to be subjected to the "Tyranny of the Eye."

My conversations with Kimmel personnel and fellow orchestra-goers left me with some uncertainty as to whether these gigantic TV screens are a permanent innovation or a temporary expedient. So now we can see the conductor's face and the pianist's hands. But this is an apocalyptic projection of image - 'apocalypse' being, in its meaning, an uncovering, and unveiling. The TV screens reveal what before was hidden. But I think it is wiser to preserve a mystery and a hiddenness. Something of this same conversation surfaced when the Catholic Church changed the direction of the Mass. Before, the priest faced the altar. In the new days the priest faces the people. I believe that the analogy, while not perhaps wholly accurate, is valid. What we gain in "seeing" we lose by distraction and the dissipation of attention. The deterioration of attention is the most serious spiritual problem of our time, and I was very sorrowful to see that the Kimmel Center had fallen for the cheap trick.

I like what architect Rafael Vinoly said in answer to a question:

"You encourage dissimilar programs to intersect; and you create their place of intersection in the most direct and transparent way. What are the implications, for you, of achieving complex, unpredictable uses through simplicity?

R.V.: To me, it's a colossal, illogical leap in thinking, the idea that to handle complexity, you have to represent it. The problem with representing complexity -- representing any interpretation -- is that you fix the scenario. I think it's better to pull back a little bit. It's an instance of elegance -- which has nothing to do with lack of engagement. You just don't attack the problem with the attitude that you alone can tell everyone how this thing should work."

"I think it's better to pull back a little bit." This is an attitude in short supply these days, as we confront the consequences of the overbuilding of our environment. Wisdom leaves an opening, it refuses the conquistadorial approach. There is nothing ascetic or understated about the Kimmel,mind you, yet it is a fullness without ostentation, a fullness for purpose. That purpose was stated by acoustical engineer Russell Johnson:

"From the beginning, they emphasized that they did not want their hall to change what they described as "the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra." This was their major concern: they wanted a hall that would support their sound as they now hear it, but not change it. A very, very challenging task..."

He goes on to say:

"As in any concert hall, the complete elimination of extraneous noise, including but not limited to exterior vehicular noise and sirens, boilers, transformers, escalators, elevators, fans pushing air into the room at too high a speed, drinking fountains, refrigerators nearby...There are literally hundreds of noises to be aware of and eliminate.... Under perfect conditions, the musicians and the conductor can hear, or sense, what the audience is hearing. There should be no distancing effect between the orchestra and the public, no harshness of sound, no echoes, no frequency imbalances. It should feel as if there is air around the music, as if the music is floating..."

I can attest that there was a "feeling of air" around the music, and that the experience was heavenly.

Why, then, the TV screens? Why the visual noise of these TV screens? Why this act of desecration to something already perfect? The ethic of contemporaneity is that of not knowing when to stop. The fact that we have TV screens that can project the motions of the music being performed is not a sufficient reason to instigate them. Technological capacity - "might" -- does not make right. I felt this capitulation to multimedia as a adulteration, a violation of something virginal and pure. I don't like it in science --cloning and mixing DNA to create new creatures -- and I don't like it in music.

How subtle is the transition from enhancement to adulteration, to a kind of idolatry. What is "appropriate," what is proper, what is fitting - these are the most difficult areas of life to define, subsisting in a kind of twilight realm of good sense and manners. It is perilous indeed to step out of this twilit realm for the sake of glaring day - perilous to forsake altogether the realms of night, of reticence and of the unseen. Let us rather not see, not know, everything. Let us preserve a corner of our minds for wild, reverent, unconquered being.

Kimmel - take the screens away! - please!

Peak Decline

2008-11-16T16:29:00.000-08:00

Are we living in an age of decline?

Czeslaw Milosz says that he detects "... a historical law, little known but of considerable moment: the process of decline affects people in ways unknown to them, beneath the threshold of their consciousness." (The Land of Ulro, 1984, p. 228) It is for this reason, he continues, that "the same law by which people are unknowingly affected complicates the task of recreating the past, because it is so hard to tell, in retrospect, what was experienced consciously and what unconsciously." All the same he finds in our age the "logic of precipitous decline," only retarded by those "minute particles of virtue residing in specific individuals, who affect the whole through a complex process whereby each particle or grain, is multiplied by others (on such a process, for example, is founded the ethics of well-executed work.)"

I had occasion to reflect on these words in light of the events of this weekend - spectacularly unremarkable, as they may be, but perhaps for that reason all the more revealing. It involved a fair amount of driving - to suburb and city respectively, the contrast between them indicative of the two-faced nature of decline.

The road to Phoenixville, formerly situated in lovely Chester County farmlands, is littered with suburban mini-mansions and housing developments. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the houses were smaller and less ostentatious, or if they had been built in clustered developments, leaving free large swaths of open land - or better, if they had not been built at all. But there they are - these immense twinkling carbon-devouring giant hulks in the dark landscape, connected by a few old roads built half a century ago, hardly adequate to the needs of their current traffic. One wonders at the heating costs, the driving costs, and the maintenance - now not so obvious, but what about the toll of another ten years on these flimsy materials and pseudo-Tudor (is that the design?) of the jilted-up pasteboard housing stock? I shudder. No surprise that one of the largest local development companies is called Toll Brothers, whose stock has plummeted in recent months. Names are omens. The bells have been tolling on this American way of doing business - it can hardly be called a way of life. It's a way of business too disconnected from sensible existence to be called a way of life. But maybe I exaggerate. Perhaps there is some form of life there - though one never sees people outside or walking around these big houses, and the connecting roads are too narrow to permit joggers, walkers or bicyclists. How much of these do the people living there see, how much is conscious and how much unconscious? Vexing to ask, vexing to wonder.

The other end of the road is North Philadelphia, with its miles upon miles, blocks upon blocks, of row houses - many of them gutted, burned, or crumbling. Lots of people about, at least - kids biking or playing, people hanging around a few stores. Not many stores, to tell the truth. This is not the region of shopping centers and urban malls. I don't think I recall seeing a grocery store anywhere. We asked directions at an auto parts store, where some very helpful people told us where to go. But where do the people buy food? Do they have access to books or magazines? There are libraries, to be sure (I didn't see one) though the Mayor says he's cutting back on them to save Philadelphia money.

Two extreme experiences - the antisociality of the suburbs and the forced sociality of the slum. Psychologically, the slum felt better in the sense of its compactness, though "compactness" is a polite way to talk about a suffocating lack of beauty, of perspective or of prospect. The only open places were the vacant lots, choked with weeds and trash. Yet it is possible to imagine beauty in these places - that they could be renewed, re-imagined, and restored to an urbane and civilized standard. But it is hard to imagine a civic renewal in the suburban developments, which are borrowed finery in a world of borrowed time. Their styles are fake, their premise is anti-civic from the beginning - isolated yet conformist.

How have we become such a people of such monstrous and unseeing obtuseness? How have we managed to deface our landscapes with such artificial imitations of human communities?

"Peak decline" is a paradox, even a diabolic paradox. It is an engorgement for its own sake, yet it is full of human pathos. But the pathos somehow failed to make it into the suburban story, and it became the all-consuming narrative for the slum-dwellers. It's a two-faced problem: either forsaking one's humanity, as in the suburbs, pretending to rise above it; or being devoured by it, wholly submerged as in the slums - being unable to spiritualize and transcend it. It's the lack of human scale. Slum and suburb each represent, in their different ways, material or spiritual impoverishment.

Landscape is the unconscious made visible. Choice and cognition are only the end products of a long gestation of style, habits and expectations. Habits are much harder to transform than ideas, and we are conscious only momentarily of the relationship between what we see and what we expect to see. To become fully conscious in this realm demands what is termed a new "skill set." It means becoming stewards first of all of our own minds. I think this is the chief task of our time.

National Disgrace

2008-10-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

"And yes, the congressional bail-out of the mortgage industry was a national disgrace and patently more damaging to our nation's remaining hopes of survival than 9/11....The public, highly controlled response, whether mock-analytical or trick-or-treat evanescent, is part of that endgame, descriptive of a culture that can no longer see or think straight. There's simply too much to write about these days, and too little reason to write about it." Read John Harris' blog, The True Conservator for the rest of "On the Road to National Meltdown" today.

The Senate vote for the bailout was followed in the evening by the vice-presidential "debate," in which both candidates swore fealty to Israel.

Earlier that evening I had attended a lecture by Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian at Duke University. I did not like his talk, but I got a lot out of it. What I learned about myself because of this talk is complicated and difficult to put into words, having to do with my obscure little book about the Creation story in Genesis, Consecrated Venom, published in 2000. What I tried to do, not very successfully, was to demonstrate the philosophical and epistemological implications of this sublime story, arguing that the Creation account can be viewed as the consequences following from "the metaphysical status of an original act." Everything follows from the beginning point. The story is about the act of thinking - and thinking is not "rationality." Thinking is about the spine - or maybe, having one.

I thought that Hauerwas slighted, ignored or belittled the role of the higher intellect in Christianity, and it was not accidental that he seemed to talk so much about the Jews. When a member of the audience questioned him about the people present at the original Pentecost, he replied they were "Jews of the Diaspora" - well, I walked out. I read his talk - fairly or not - as a collapse of Christianity into Judaism, omitting entirely the role of free choice, thought, and inner decision that must have been present in the souls of the early Christians. Certainly the first Christians were Jews. But somehow this fact obscures the whole argument. It ignores the place of the beginning, which is an act of thought.

Perhaps I was responding to Hauerwas as a Catholic irritated by a Protestant. I don't know. But it seemed to me that his talk slid seamlessly into the national disgrace and the "debate." Americans don't like to think, apparently. No one has the time or the intellectual energy to draw a line in the sand. No one wants to carefully consider the consequences of an action derived from an act of thought, because, obviously, actions are no longer related to thought.

None of our leaders, in fact, has a spine. Congress by voting for this Wall Street robbery has just severed the last thread of accountability in our system, the power of the purse. They have already handed over the prerogatives to declare war and numerous other privileges of the legislative branch. Is there anything left for them to do except play in their sandbox of governing while the house falls down?

America Declares Bankruptcy, Rejoins Human Race

2008-10-01T08:11:00.001-07:00

Special Bulletin from the Land Beyond Time, or, After the Crash Revisited:
Pundits, news media and assorted visitors from outer space are scratching their heads in wonder at the sudden transformation of America to a humane and responsible civilization. Henry Paulsen, afflicted with an act of conscience, has resigned, and is donating his millions to Catholic Charities. President Bush, lying in the Oval Office, woke up from a nap, and also resigned. He and his loyal minions have taken the offer of a waiting spaceship and are now heading for parts unknown. The 228 honorable members of the House of Representatives who voted against the Bailout-Blowout of '08 are being retained; all the rest have been pitchforked. The toxic sludge wrought by the financial class has been shoveled to the Mall, where Paul Stamets and his colleagues are due to arrive momentarily with crates of mycelium. They plan to inoculate the pile with toxin-destroying mushroom fungus. Wall Street has been fenced in, and it is currently being patrolled by soldiers returning from Iraq. Citizens have taken over the offices of the news media, and a new edition of the New York Times - "All The News We Failed to Print," is now being prepared.
We will keep you posted with updates.

Opposite Day

2008-09-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

I tuned in last night to the first presidential debate between Senators Obama and McCain, televised from Oxford, Mississippi. I was stopped in my tracks before it even began by the announcement of the Moderator (Jim Lehrer) that the audience had agreed not to respond to anything either candidate said – there would be no applause, catcalls, etc. And indeed for the small part of the debate I could bear to listen to, the audience might as well have been church-goers - that auditorium at the University of Mississippi was as quiet as a tomb.

This incident forcibly brought home to me the fact that for Americans, politics is a religion and religion is a politics. I was reminded of a game my children and I used to play when they were small, called “Opposite Day.” The rules of this game are easy – just say the opposite of what you mean. For example, “I hate you” really means the reverse. The funny thing about this game is that it actually gets harder and harder to play; lies and insincerity actually demand more energy to sustain than candor and truthfulness, and after a while one runs out of things to say. It becomes surprisingly difficult to keep finding something new to lie about.

To call the highly scripted-for-television exchanges between the two senators a “debate” is an Opposite-Day joke, just as it seems a stretch to call the dead silence of the audience anything remotely resembling attendance at a political event. Are there other examples of Opposite Day in America? Mr. Obama claims to want to run a campaign for transformation, but he appoints one of the most enduring Washington insiders as his running mate (Mr. Biden).

Mr. McCain’s Opposite Day coup de main with Ms. Palin is actually more complicated. The Opposite-Day significance here is the manipulation and exchange between Public and Private. For Sarah Palin, motherhood and Family Values are a political stance, elevated to humorless display and dogmatism at every opportunity. The fact that she is the governor of Alaska is merely incidental; the fact that she governs Alaska like a family is also incidental; the fact that she is virtually incoherent on public, social and historical issues (see her interview with Katie Couric on “foreign policy”) is also incidental. Nothing of these things actually matter, you see. What matters is that she is a Mom, and Mommyness now merits public office.

That Mr. Obama is black and Sarah Palin is female have put the Opposite-Day metaphor right at the center of American political life. In this case the “opposites” do actually express an authentic reality. But the authentic reality has little to do with politics and governance. The candidates are virtually indistinguishable in their views and they are likewise equally irrelevant because there no longer exists any meaningful framework in which to gauge the exercise of political power. That framework, the correspondence between language and reality, has been blasted out from beneath both candidates. The real holders of power are the financiers in an economy that no longer has anything to do with production. The news media also wields real influence because it has become indistinguishable from propaganda and the shaping of cultural narrative.

No wonder Mr. Putin and Mr. Ahmadinejad are continually demonized as Public Enemies One and Two. They say what they think. That is their crime; that is why they are relentlessly belittled; that is why the Opposite-Day West has been reduced to a caricature of Caligula. It is told that this insane Roman emperor rode his horse “Incitatus” into the Roman Senate, perhaps as a way of expressing his contempt for it. All that the Western “leaders” can do today is incite. They cannot rule, and above all, they cannot create.

America's Hadron Collider Eats the World

2008-09-25T05:49:00.001-07:00

Given the trajectory of human history, the nature of mankind, the discovery of oil, etc., something like America was inevitable - that is, the unleashing of an avalanche of prodigious appetite and destruction, along with a few precious and genuine ideals regarding human life and its purposes. Alas, the gems seem to have been devoured in the Mighty Moloch which has been building over the past few decades with the embrace of the American government and Wall Street. Not that the government didn't embrace the rich before. Only back then the embrace was more like a legal marriage -- the government's embrace at least attempted to make an honest woman out of sleazy finance. But the financial dealings of the past couple of decades resemble nothing so much as concubinage or maybe, to invert the metaphor, "gay marriage" - that is, something made-up, counterfeit and infertile.

Any decent person feels these past few days a kind of sickening dread in the pit of the stomach at the silly and degrading spectacle of American politics and finance. This nation is quite literally drowning in lies, and if not lies then pretence and if not pretence then self-deception. It seems that candidate McCain has "suspended his campaign" due to the "financial crisis" -- an indication, if one needed it, that even the pretence of politics has been abandoned. Quite evidently the Masters of the Nation feel no further need to disguise their coup d'etat. Barack Obama does not appear to be despicable and vicious in the way that McCain and Palin do, but he does not carry the conviction of political transformation that he preaches. How could he? The totalizing, totalitarian tendency of central government and finance carries all before it, a one-party state that pretends to offer choices. In today's climate it is all but impossible for anyone working in the center of that rising flood to act in a manner appropriate to adulthood, to give thought and consideration to what is happening - even to think before speaking. How can a
nation sustain itself when its polity is based upon endless flattery, reckless aggrandizement and the abandonment of of any notion of the need for truth?

Here is Herbert Butterfield, writing in what seems to be a better age - 1950:

"A civilization may be wrecked without any spectacular crimes or criminals but by constant petty breaches of faith and minor complicities on the part of men generally considered very nice people...If all men had only what we consider a reasonable degree of cupidity, politics would still be driven into dialectical jams-- into predicaments and dilemmas which the intellect has never mastered." (From "The Universal Element of Cupidity," from his book Christianity and History.)

The nation is not a community, and it is fractured - whether mortally I don't know. One of these severe deep fissures, carefully tended by the masters of destruction, is the fissure between the pro-life and anti-war movements. How carefully, how surely, it has been seen that these two movements will never join, never connect! The saddest result of all these doings is the destruction of Christianity itself -- for of all the death-agents loosed upon the American landscape, the so-called "Christians" have become among the most loathsome. The last time Christianity shone in America was during the black civil rights movement of the 1960's - and there was, of course, quite a bit of false glitter in that shine. But what it did was to teach the disinherited white Christian evangelicals a lesson about going into politics - a lesson by which they were able, later, to be harnessed by the neoconservatives. The way had been prepared before - perhaps as long ago as the Kennedy Assassination. That moment marked the beginning of the penetration of a new morality or ethic, a kind of calculated lunge from saturnine depths. Even Kennedy, the victim of it, unconsciously expressed this new ethic in a casual comment I recall that he once made - "Don't get mad, get even." That saying epitomizes the contempt powerful people feel for those who have honor and expose themselves by expressing righteous anger. On the contrary, the power-brokers like to remain invulnerable, working behind the scenes where they can manipulate people and events. Manipulation, calculation, revenge - these qualities are essentially and inherently opposed to Christian ethics - although, of course, many "Christians" practice them. But actually to espouse them, to find in them the recipe for worldly wisdom, to tout and promote them -- this is the character of the people who have been working the levers of American government and finance for half a century. Modern evangelicals had no idea of the real risks to which they were subjecting themselves, their nation and their religion, when they opened their arms to embrace the cause of power over truth.

Elementary Causation

2008-08-02T06:16:00.001-07:00

A couple of brief thoughts. I checked out the book "Fall of Frost" by Brian Hall, purported to be a fictional rendition of the life of the poet, Robert Frost. It is interesting to see what gets published these days - interesting, when I can take a break from being depressed. It was one of these vignette type books, with vignettes dating from widely different periods of the poet's life, skipping around. Which led to the melancholy reflection: what happened to narrative? I could not and did not want to read this book, but only skimmed it - an act appropriate, it seems, to this kind of "literature."

It seems to me that if a writer intends to abandon structural narrative, he better have something pretty darn good to put in its place, otherwise he comes across as a postmodernist sneer machine. I was also irritated by the usual bookjacket blurbs "confirming Hall's status as one of the most talented novelists at work today."

An effective use of the time-shift is Russell Kirk's story, "An Encounter at Mortstone Pond" - the delineation of character is strong and the emotional linkage is prepared well in advance. But "one of our most talented novelists at work today" cannot be bothered with emotional and character delineation.

A good fiction writer has the duty of strengthening the reader's grip on reality. Life is not lived in skipped-across incidents. How can this author get away with the pretence of writing a writer's life?

Conjugal Love in Soloyvev

2008-06-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

With due respect to friend Andrew, I will have to register some mild dissent to his comment to the previous post. While I believe that children are the blessing of a marriage, a childless marriage may also be a blessing. Solovyev in The Meaning of Love devotes some pages to this issue, saying that "Ordinarily the significance of sex love is supposed to lie in the increase of the race, to which it serves as a means. I consider this view unsound..." It is unsound because individuality possesses an independent spiritual significance in mankind, the individual being the absolute form (image) of rational consciousness. But, he continues, (I paraphrase) Each individual can become a living reflection of the absolute whole, a conscious and independent organ of the universal life. But to do this it must be in the truth. Normal man - "original and immediate" - is not in the truth. "So long as the living force of egoism in man does not encounter another living force opposed to it, knowledge of the truth is only an external illumination... The truth, as a living force, taking possession of the inward essence of the man, and effectively rescuing him from false self-assertion, is termed love. Love, the abrogator of egotism, is the justification and salvation of individuality. Which is to say that in man, individuality and egotism are not absolutely coincident, or fated to coincide - this indeed being the drama of life and love. ..
"...The meaning of human love, speaking generally, is the justification and deliverance of individuality through the sacrifice of egotism."

It is a mistake, says Soloyvev, to treat love as a merely natural process: "Such significance as speech possesses for the organization of human society and culture, love also possesses in a still greater degree, for the creation of true human individuality...As the true significance of speech consists not in the process of uttering in itself,...so the true significance of love consists not in the simple experience of this feeling, but in what is accomplished by means of it, in the work of love...

...the separation between the male and female elements of the human creature is already a state of disintegration and the beginning of death. Only the human being in his entirety can be immortal. But what does the true union of the sexes consist of? Ordinary sexual relations may be described as a kind of "carrion-worship," for a part (i.e. the body) is put in place of the whole. Purely physiological union does not deliver from death. Man as a social animal finds it natural to restrict the physiological function with claims of the social and moral law, which curbs and conceals the animal function and allows for the maintenance of the family. But this remedy does not really address man's divided state. "Only by actions which are the result of conscious faith do we enter into real correspondence with the realm of the truly-existent, and through it into real correlation with our 'other.' ... This is the spiritually regenerative part of the sex relation - or rather its spiritual essence, of which its material aspect is but the symbol or type. The mystery of regeneration is bound up with the mystery of the universe and the spiritualization of matter. ..

This is a very brief summary of certain portions of Soloyvev's treatise on love, a treatise almost unknown in the West. To be sure the practice of contraception was the first technological wedge separating marriage from its procreative aspect. But this technological wedge was in itself the result of decades, even centuries, of materialistic thinking. But traces of the moral understanding of male-female bond lingered much longer in literature - indeed Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a nearly perfect expression of it. The heroine has to find her way not to love but to the truth in love - and the hero, for his part, is likewise chastened by his encounter with the force of the truth in love. Both hero and heroine unleash a kind of maelstrom of moral development whose final fruit is the symbolic unity of marriage - a pinnacle earned, not merely gained.

There is something of the raw exchange of electric energy in true male-female encounter, the proving-ground of human moral life. I think it would be better to think of marriage in terms of these "electric energies," the exchange and interchange of positive and negative, than in the begetting of children. For this exchange and interchange are moral forces, and it seems to me apparent today that humanity is gravely lacking in the capacity to undergo this kind of moral training.[1] Nor do I believe that modern humanity should complacently assume that it will always have the power to procreate. [2] The materialism and coarsening of human relations are proceeding apace, and at some point - perhaps in the none too distant future - the spiritual world will call a halt to unconscious procreation and demand from humanity a grateful participation, a spiritualized understanding, a will to affirm the continuance of human life, and a humble opening to the grace that comes from above.

[1] A whole essay needs to be written on the abdication of modern womanhood from the tasks of moral guardianship. Modern men are as a result lost and society is profoundly unbalanced. The cancerous growth of the State, which now openly practices torture, violates international standards with impunity, and so forth, are the result of the profound loss of moral energy in society brought on by the levelling of the two sexes into some kind of "uni-mass." The Sexual Revolution serves one entity, and one entity only: the Mammonist State.
[2] And I mean something quite different here from the resort to technology as a means to propagate. This is but a further symptom of disintegrative materialism. Besides, human beings do not "propagate" and only an animalization of man can proceed under this false notion. Human beings "procreate" - that is, open themselves to the emergence of new human life in partnership with the Divine. "As husband I have gained Jehovah," said Eve on the birth of Cain - or in more standard translation, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." (Gen 4:1) The procreative and the "thinking" function (i.e. the opening to the channel of grace by means of intellectual subtilization and moral practice) are in essence one.

Considering Marriage

2008-05-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

The gay marriage issue has surfaced once again with the recent decision of the California Supreme Court. I am thinking of initiating a series of posts considering marriage, womanhood, and related issues. Whether I actually do so, given my sporadic posts lately, is a question, but I thought to initiate this series with some reflections I had made about ten years ago on a related topic. I am writing and revising from a draft of an article I never completed:

It is 1987 and I have returned to Birmingham. On a visit to my aunt I chanced to pick up an old issue of the New York Review of Books, a periodical to which my aunt subscribed. I was glancing through the "personals" in the back section, where people advertise in search of romantic partners of one kind or another through cleverly-phrased ads. My eye happened to fall on one of these ads.
I was struck, for this particular ad was written by an acquaintance of mine. She had told me of it at the time, and I knew as well what happened as a result of her placing the ad.
I had met Susan, as I will call her, in the Berkshires, where I lived for about a decade. Shortly before I left, in the mid-1980's, I ran into her by chance one afternoon. She had her two-year-old daughter with her, a child who, at that moment at least, seemed unusually fretful and whining.
This child was the result of the relationship that had come about through Susan's ad. Susan refused to marry the father of the child - I will call him Bill - not through any personal dislike for him - or at least, so she said - but because of her long-standing opposition to the institution of marriage. She was absolutely opposed to it, and had been for as long as I had known her. Bill, I had heard, was devoted to the child and was having a very hard time with Susan's refusal to marry him.
Somewhat obliquely, I asked Susan what had become of him. "Oh, he moved back to Boston," she said. She indicated that her anti-marriage stand had upset him, and that he had tried to change her mind.
It was one of those warm, clear, late-summer Berkshire days, and I do not know with what sudden, direct conviction of my own that I said to her, "You used him." She protested that she had not - that "she had made it clear to him from the beginning what she intended in the relationship," and that she had no intention to marry, ever. But it seemed to me to be true, that a cause is not necessarily made right through being made honest. I felt something forming, in the aura of the unseen; I felt something of Bill's bitter thoughts, that he had been made not only an object, but a fool.
Who is to be blamed, if anyone, for this situation? If Susan was adhering to a piece of folk wisdom, "Honesty is the best policy," Bill might have benefited from another - "Look before you leap." Susan's honesty led Bill to make a very human mistake. He assumed that because she possessed the virtue of honesty, it was likely that she possessed other virtues as well, such as openness to being persuaded of an alternate course and consideration for the needs and rights of others. Had this been the case, honesty would have merited first place in the series of virtues, for it presupposes the existence of others by the very nature of one's policy in dealing with them. Yet this presupposition of the existence of others stopped curiously short of the actual granting to them of legitimate rights and needs in conflict with one's assumed honesty. Others exist - but their existence has no claims; the others have no rights. Their existence is somehow truncated or shadowy or unreal. And in fact, honesty became for Susan a way to win motherhood at low moral cost to herself.
As for Bill, he could have elected to remain in the same town just for the sake of being near his daughter. He would have had to swallow his pride and a large chunk of parental rights, but at least his daughter would have known him. Susan would have been obliged, by the very terms of her self-professed honesty, to acknowledge his role in co-parenting, and Bill, through continuing involvement, would have had some of the sting removed from the bitterness of the whole situation.
As it was, all three persons in this drama seems to have been losers. That fretful little girl already at age two was showing signs of having to negotiate a life so precariously launched on the seas of egotism and disillusion.

Alas, poor Yorick!

2008-04-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

God Is Not Great. Christopher Hitchens. Hachette (!) Press, N.Y. 2007.
The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. Houghton-Mifflin, 2007.
And, in rebuttal: The Devil's Delusion. David Berlinski. Crown Forum, 2008.

I've been dipping into the atheists recently, and I must say, it's quite an experience. In the old days our forebears meditated on how everything passes by contemplating a skull - Alas, poor Yorick! But today the image of the skull is appropriate in a new way. It is for us to contemplate the passing of reason, the death of reason in a long whine of offended pride: God, how dare you!

Mr. Christopher Hitchens' book, a hatchet job published by a press suitably titled (names are omens) subtitled, "How religion poisons everything," is certainly not worth reading. I predict, in fact, that in the not too distant future, Mr. Hitchens will go mad, although the disease may be diagnosed as premature senility and the once-famous author will be retired to some expensive nursing home, there to dribble away his miserable hours in fretful complaint.

After disposing of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides and Newman, e.g., "These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow... We shall have no more prophets and sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes racheted up to the screaming point to ward off the terrible emptiness."

That was only on page seven, after which I felt little inclination to continue to read every word of this treatise. It is odd the way he frames this little paragraph: did these thinkers write evil and foolish things or did they not? The construction, "may have," is most confusing, and leads the reader to expect that the author might put in a good word for them in the end. This little grammatical point may seem to be a minor issue, but it puts me in mind of those words -"Qui verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis" -- They that despise the Word of God, then shall the word of man also be taken away -- words flung out by the departing Merlin in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength. Recall this was the last moment of coherent speech in that room, the prelude to incoherent babble.

Mr. Hitchens' hatred is indeed impossible to distinguish from incoherence. His main beef against religion is that it is "man-made." How is it possible to analyze this complaint? There is simply no analytical tool in his repertoire; it is the cry of a man outraged to find himself forced to live in history, along with so many undesirable and gullible people. Does he expect God to reveal himself to him? - a point brought up by the more civilized John Derbyshire, who once complained that he had had no personal attestation as to the validity of religion, and it might be nice if God would condescend to speak with him.

Modern men expect God to do everything for them, including being saved without effort. That this is a perversion of a Christian theology that was already corrupted, I will agree. And if Christopher Hitchens had written about this corruption of theology, he might have written something of a valuable book. On the contrary, he revels in the very corruption he thinks he is exposing.

God Is Not Great in this sense doesn't have anything to do with religion. What it exposes is modern man's touching faith that to revel in corruption is to reveal it.

____________________________________

Mr. Richard Dawkins presents a more highly polished facade, a more educated, at least stylistically competent surface, along with an impenetrable glassy and gassy self-belief in his own righteousness. (To jump ahead, Berlinski comments somewhere that Dawkins has as much openness to criticism as a black hole.) Like Hitchens, he is a cultural Marxist, in that he has an implacable hatred for history and the human past, although Dawkins at least tries to discuss Thomas Aquinas, whereas Hitchens is too busy sneering to bother with discussing anything. Dawkins, while attempting to dismiss the various Thomist arguments for the existence of God, manages to miss the supreme achievement. The demarcation of the spheres of Faith and Reason as elucidated by Aquinas was inherently non-totalitarian. It left a free space for society and liberty to unfold - unlike our modern scientistic overlords, for whom Science (as they define it) is the Only Way to Be. One Ring to Bind them all...

I got a little farther in The God Delusion (p. 31) than God Is Not Great (p.7) before being stumped. Mr. Dawkins writes on page 31 that there could not be a Creator God because "any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. ... [These words are italicized to make sure we get it.] Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it."

I imagine to myself what pride Mr. Dawkins felt when he came up with this stellar piece of question-begging (petitio principii). I can just feel the gloating in those italicized words, the shimmers of heat lifting from the page. What a marvelous idea, and to think that nobody before Richard Dawkins had ever thought it before! One may note a somewhat anthropomorposizing tendency to equate the creative intelligence of mankind with the creative intelligence of godkind - however, we will let this pass, although both Dawkins and Hitchens are vehement on the anthropomorphosing tendencies of religion. Likewise, although fulsome in their praise for Modern Science ("the germ theory of disease," etc.) it has apparently never occurred to either of them that religion might be an antidote to the chief infection of human beings, the tendency toward pride. Like any antidote, it can be over-used, mis-used, or not used at all. But I doubt that either Dawkins or Hitchens has ever worked himself up to a pondering of human nature sufficient to weigh in the factor of pride. I suppose Darwinian evolution has rendered thoughts of pride superfluous, along with every other term in the moral or intellectual vocabulary of man.
The impoverishment of human thinking is certainly evident in these two books. It used to be that the rules, forms, and evidences applied to the cognitive process carried some constraints to the expression of human egotism, some brake upon sweeping generalizations, logical fallacies, historical errors, and the like. In our day even that fragile barrier has been swept away. For us, the melancholy replacement to contemplation of thoughts of mortality is the shrill babble of Egotism Unbound.

P.S. There was a touching footnote in Dawkins' book on p.215: "I was mortified to read in the Guardian ('Animal Instincts,' 27 May 2006) that The Selfish Gene is the favorite book of Jeff Skilling, CEO of the infamous Enron Corporation, and that he derived inspiration of a Social Darwinist character from it...I have tried to forestall similar misunderstandings in my new preface to the thirtieth-anniversary edition..." It's certainly amazing that it took twenty-nine editions for Dawkins to get an inkling of the idea of intellectual responsibility.

For the record, I also want to recount a little story in Dawkins (p. 367) about Wittgenstein. Dawkins has just been making an extended paean to Darwinism, how it "let in a flood of understanding, whose dazzling novelty, and power to uplift the human spirit, perhaps had no precedent - unless it was the Copernican realization that the Earth was not the centre of the universe." Then he writes: "'Tell me,' the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, 'why do people always say it was natural to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?' His friend replied, 'Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth.' Wittgenstein responded, 'Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?' " Dawkins comments: "I sometimes quote this remark of Wittgenstein in lectures, expecting the audience to laugh. Instead, they seem stunned into silence." I find this anecdote, and Dawkins' comment on it, very revealing. Wittgenstein was a real thinker. The audience, at least, in their reaction of "stunned silence," showed an appropriate reaction to a genuine thought. Dawkins, whose complacent self-assurance is as apparently immobile as the formerly immobile Earth of classical astronomy, was surprised. Which leads one to suspect that Mr. Dawkins has never encountered a genuine thought, but only reflections of himself.

______________________________________________________

David Berlinski's book is a very witty account of "atheism and its scientific pretensions" (the subtitle). He is quite right to chide the atheists Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett et al (why do these names all sound like the names of butlers?) for remaining stuck in the materialism of the 19th century. "The advantages of materialism as a doctrine is that it sanctions an easy argument for atheism...[But] whatever the merits of this argument, the world of matter revealed by the physical sciences does not serve to endow materialism with a familiar face...Depending on how things are counted, matter has as its fundamental constituents twenty-four elementary particles, together with a great many fields, symmetries, strange geometrical spaces, and forces that are disconnected at one level of energy and fused at another, together with at least a dozen forms of energy, all of them active." (p. 54) And this is only to start. The two greatest scientific achievements of the 20th century, general gravitation and quantum mechanics, are irreconciliable -- "They invoke different languages, different ideas, and different techniques of calculation." (p. 115)

Mr. Berlinski does a great job in demolishing the "scientific pretensions" of atheism. Remarking on the promiscuous nature of modern theory - megauniverses, string theory, Anthropic Principle, etc., he comments suggestively that "The willingness of physical scientists to explore such strategies in thought might suggest to a perceptive psychoanalyst a desire not so much to discover a new idea as to avoid an old one." That old idea - In the beginning God created heaven and earth -- is utterly distasteful to the modern bunch, although they can propose with a straight face that the appearance of life on earth - a "near miracle," as one of them admitted, might be due to Aliens (I believe Dr. Watson, of Watson & Crick, once proposed this idea), and that the world we know, being hospitable to life, has every appearance of being a "put-up job."

At the end of the day it is the triviality of the moral ideas of the modern scientists that has cast a long shadow over science and which ultimately threatens it. Mr. Berlinski does not go into this with the penetration that he has or with the force that he should - or could. He only remarks that "The long Galilean moment in the history of thought is coming to an end." The irony is that the suffocation of genuine religion, a sense of humility in face of the wonders of the universe, seems to be suffocating genuine thought as well. The real defense of religion against atheism has yet to be made.

Thoughts - Old and New

2008-03-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

[January 12, 2002] ... re-read The Brothers Karamazov again, after many years. I had forgotten what a great, amazing book it is -- an epic! It also seemed to me not so long or tedious, and, being older now, I saw his characters in a much clearer way than I had before. Alyosha is crystal-clear and good, and actually occupies much more of the book than I had remembered. The passionate unclarity of Mitya is set against the deliberate and malicious unclarity of Smerdyakov. Actually Mitya's is not so much unclarity as complications wound upon spools of honor - complications of honor so thick he can barely know himself as himself. Ivan - what to say about this character, who in many ways is the least appealing of the Karamazovs? The man in the middle in every sense of the word, torn between his brothers and particularly susceptible to the malice of Smerdyakov and suggesions of the Devil. Yes - it was moving to me to read this book in the light of biblical epistemology - to see so much in it interpreted in terms of religious faith - God and immortality - and yet to realize there is so much in it apart from faith. That is, so much that has to do with one's relation to Ideas, to the Tree of Knowledge. It is Ivan, the man of ideas who meets the Devil, or the Anti-Christ, who tells him -- "What I dream of is becoming incarnate once and for all irrevocably..." For the Devil "stays with" Ivan "from time to time" and in that way "gains a kind of reality." Otherwise, "I am X in an indeterminate equation, I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name." The Devil even knows his philosophy - he can quote Descartes, Je pense, donc je suis - but it is Mitya who suffers the consequences of ideas: "You seem" he tells his brother Alyosha, "I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to fight and drink and rage. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them."

Another big theme is that of responsibility and the power of wishes. The saying of Christ, "If any man looketh upon a woman and lusteth after her, he is an adulterer," is taken to be a case of strenuous morality - over-strenuous perhaps, for after all it is one thing to look and another to act. Yet Ivan "looked on" as the plots of Smerdyakov - deliberately guileful and obfuscating as they were - swirled about him. So that it is in a way correct to hold the blame for the parricide upon Ivan. And it is this strenuous morality that informs this novel. For one is responsible, indeed, for one's own soul - for each is in all, and all are in each.

From Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Writer's Life by Geir Kjetsaa: [quote] Dostoevsky's novels are about what questions are worth asking...[He] wrote, in his younger days: "You know that the artist in the moment of inspiration comprehends God. It follows then that poetic inspiration is in reality a philosophical inspiration; and philosophy is in reality nothing but poetry, a peculiar, higher form of poetry!"

[quote or paraphrase] Dostoevsky's chief interest - the individual's attitude toward his neighbor. Action is of less significance than attitude - sinful actions are more forgivable than sinful states of mind. This is to get away from a formalistic concept of sin (transgression) to one in which sin is viewed as the absence of compassion - the refusal to affirm suffering.

"Freud's essay on Dostoevsky and its emphasis on patricide have given nourishment to innumerable attacks on the writer... and the source of the most hopelessly mistaken biographical interpretation of the author's work...[quote or paraphrase continuing] some biographers speculated that D's father was murdered by his serfs (despite the fact that the doctor's certificate existed testifying that Dostoevsky's father died of natural causes) -- "The traditional portrayal [of Dostoevsky's father] as a cruel, punishing father, with the murder, and finally of his self-inflicted punishment in the form of an epileptic attack -- all of this fits perfectly within a psychoanalytic hypothesis. But the biographical foundation for this theory is more than questionable." Indeed - it is outrageous. This is not the first time that a cavalier attitude toward the facts and dimensions of a story is discernible in that Founder of Psychoanalysis.

Sometime, I think, when the real history of the 20th century is ever written, it will be seen that psychoanalysis was a trap sprung by the Devil to strangle historical consciousness in its cradle. A kind of spiritual infanticide. I base this judgment on three things: the interpretation of Oedipus; the interpretation of Dostoevsky; and the "false-memory" craze which swept through this country, causing unparalleled woe and destruction. It was an attitude which fostered a licentious
attitude toward the truth, toward what happened -- hence a disparaging attitude toward history. [Close of journal passage]
____________________________________________________________

Speaking of Freud, the writer Anthony Daniels (whose real name is Theodore Dalrymple) writes in the March, 2008, issue of The New Criterion an article, "At the forest's edge," linking Freud and Ortega y Gasset. A more inappropriate linkage can hardly be imagined. He does it because Ortega's Revolt of the Masses and Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, happened to appear in the same year (1930). But mere conjunction in time or proximity in space does not for kinship make - though it is owing to the insufferable materialism of the modern mind that such kinships are gleefully proclaimed from the intellectual gutter press with all due orotund profundity. But I think Mr. Daniels has defamed Ortega by calling him an atheist: "...because Ortega, like Freud, was an atheist, he could not suggest a religious solution to the problem..."

I ask you, dear Reader, does a thinker have to propose a religious solution to a problem in order to be exempt from the charge of atheism? This is neither logical nor true. What the truth of this matter is, is that Mr. Dalrymple himself is an atheist - he has admitted as much, and somewhere, in the bowels of this website, I have addressed the issue of Mr. Dalrymple's atheism ("Atheism Lite" Nov. 30, 2007- See From the Catacombs-Archives). So that the writer, being an atheist, finds atheism wherever he looks -- there is a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas about how everything is received according to the mode of the receiver - unfortunately, I cannot dig it up the Latin out of my haphazard pile of notebooks-- but in the case of Ortega y Gasset, I consider the charge unconscionable. And this too is characteristic of materialism, taking religious belief for a matter of verbal professions only, and ignoring the soul.

As a final note, Russell Seitz also discovered the article on Ortega y Gasset, and posted a squib on Taki's Top Drawer, "Hunting for Jose" (March 28). For some reason the Taki editors are censoring my comments. I therefore reproduce it below. I should also add that I was formerly slightly acquainted with Mr. Seitz, having met him in Cambridge in the early 70's. He, as my father had been before him, was a member of the Fly Club of Harvard; Mr. Seitz was evidently eager to meet ladies descended from such impeccable lines. Our acquaintance was no particular success, and I hastened to introduce the gentleman to a friend of mine, who likewise reported a similar dismal outcome. Perhaps Mr. Seitz has improved with time, as I hope I have; although I have to confess that I find his writings on Taki's Top Drawer difficult to decipher, if not bordering on incoherence.

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

I thought it a disappointing article on Ortega y Gasset in several respects - also surprising, as Theodore Dalyrymple is in general a very fine writer. First of all, he linked Ortega to Freud, which I thought extremely unfortunate. And was it quite correct to call the Jesuit-trained Ortega an atheist? I have my doubts.
It seems to me that Ortega and Freud had diametrically opposing views about the nature of the instincts. Ortega wrote in "The Sportive Origins of the State" that "... in every vital process the first impulse is given by an energy of supremely free and exuberant character..." Ortega could write in that fashion because he possessed in his soul the animating ideas of Catholic civilization - which Freud loathed and did everything he could to destroy.
Anthony Daniels was right to assert that Ortega's idea of a European Union was mistaken. Yet he missed noting Ortega's real error in The Revolt of the Masses - which was, he thought that science would disappear because mass man would no longer apply himself to such a discipline. Alas, the situation is quite otherwise - as John Lukacs has pointed out with his phrase, techno-barbarism: "We know something that people at the beginning of the 20th century could not even imagine: that the advance of technology and barbarism are no longer irreconciliable." From "The End of the Twentieth Century and the and of the Modern Age." I believe that John Lukacs may have had Ortega in mind with that statement.

Outrage of the Day

2008-03-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Since I cannot begin to apologize for my long silence, I will only report the outrage of the day: in a report in today's New York Times on Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama, James Carville was led to opine that it was significant that this endorsement occurred during Holy Week, when Judas betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. The Messianic pretensions of Hillary Clinton have long been noted, but this remark is sheer blasphemy.

We simply live in an environment here in the USA where thinking in any sense of the term has become impossible. Political correctness forms one sort of straitjacket; the other phenomenon to be noted is the total absence of constraint of any kind, when people will say anything they like about anything at any time with no sense of propriety and, of course, no sense of shame. Here is a perfect example of "diabolism" at work: rigidity versus self-indulgence, Satan vs. Lucifer. The devil is the "split-into-two" (dia+ballein) and if people think I am being mighty fundamentalist here, seeming to believe in the Devil, I'll tell them that the Devil is no more (and no less) than an equation for symbolic and real facts. And science uses equations all the time. So there!

In other news: my post-peak-oil novel, After the Crash, is being reissued and can be ordered for $14.95 through Lulu.com. Anyone in the Philadelphia area is invited to attend the book signing event at Henry George Institute (413 S. 10th Street) on Friday, April 25, at 6:30 PM.

Islam Re: Social and Biological Quality

2007-12-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

Answering a question of Lawrence Auster; Pirsig on Islam.
Posted today.

Call Off the Dogs of War

2007-12-07T17:10:00.000-08:00

The criminalization of American foreign policy has received an unexpected setback in the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate report regarding the non-existence of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. William Pfaff writes from Paris that the publication of this report did more to restore American credibility in the eyes of the world than any other event in the past eight years. Melvin Goodman, writing in the Baltimore Sun, says that the intelligence community appears to have learned something from the fiasco of the WMD propaganda on Iraq- "The willingness to confront Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney with intelligence that does not support their policy prescriptions for Iran suggests that the community's new leadership is willing to tell truth to power."

Let us hope so, and let us hope that this event marks a turning point in the maturation of the American political class. For make no bones about it: this event is a signal challenge to the power of the Israel Lobby, which has led our nation deeper and deeper into fanaticism. It is the Israelite contingent which has been calling for war with Iran - that contingent and their judaizing supporters in the so-called Christian ranks. Military higher-ups, on the other hand, like Admiral Fallon, have been calling for reason and restraint. An invasion of Iran, he said, would "not happen on his watch."

Maybe things will become so insane in the USA that it will take an actual military revolt to restore the governance of America to America and to pry it out of the hands of the dual-loyalists who have taken over foreign policy. The Israelis left that charade in Annapolis with everything they wanted, yet one of their journalists recently cried that the NIE report was a hit "below the belt." Below the belt? Translated from propagandaspeak I suppose that means that a rational American foreign policy is against the interests of Israel.

I wonder why nobody mentions poor Ariel Sharon any more. Is he still alive? - living in some comatose state in an Israeli hospital? Unfortunately the state of Israel has more and more come to resemble the state of the comatose Ariel Sharon. The world will have no peace until the Israelis make the decision to join the human race and reconcile themselves with mankind and their neighbors. We Americans have many of those tendencies as well, perhaps not quite as pronounced. But this NIE report shows that there are signs of life yet in American government-- signs of a tentative rapprochement with humanity stirring in even the citadels of Mordor.

Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari

2007-11-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Today I thought of Samsam Bakhtiari, the head of the Iranian National Oil Company. He has been a notable voice in the Peak Oil movement, and I corresponded with him briefly a few years ago. I had the thought that I would like to send him an e-mail to wish him well, and to express my consternation and dismay at the aggressive stance of my country toward his.

I cannot recall what I first wrote to him about - perhaps it was that his writings and thoughts on Peak Oil seemed to possess those marks of spirituality and refinement, and a deep sense of history, culture, and roots, that are so rare to find today. I had posted an essay on my former website called "The Prophetic Literature of Oil Depletion," in which I had quoted from him, and perhaps I was inviting him to respond to it. I recall receiving a gracious reply. I cannot remember the sequence of communication, but I offered to send him a copy of my book of short stories, Earthly Nurturance -- which I duly did, in a little package bound for Tehran. Again I received a gracious reply, in which he said he particularly enjoyed the story "Two Sisters" -- a nonfiction story in a collection of fiction. It was a story about my mother's Aunt Jennie, from Rome, Georgia, who ended up as a Principessa Ruspoli in Rome, Italy. Somehow I thought that fit - he would like the story about the aristocratic princess.

Well, in order to find his e-mail, I tried to bring up his website, which it seemed, was no longer operative. I googled his name and found a bulletin from www. peakoil.com dated November 23, saying that Mr. Bakhtiari had passed away. Several persons wrote in to express their feelings, memories and regrets - and some, surprise. "Was he that old?" someone wrote.

I cannot explain how, after these several years, I would have had the thought to write to Mr. Bakhtiari again - nor why, just now. I would like to believe that the e-mail I thought to send has somehow made it into another dimension - not through the clumsy medium of computers, but through the medium of thought itself - touched with thanks and blessing.

Thanksgiving Day

2007-11-22T11:34:00.000-08:00

I give thanks today to those of my friends and acquaintances who have written to say that they read this blog and appreciate it. My computer is undergoing various agonies of dissolution and it may be that it will not last much longer. If I decide to change computers and get a new internet host I may not be posting for a while.

The boys and I are not eating a Thanksgiving feast today. It is about 70 degrees outside, here in Pennsylvania in November, and that is but the mild and fairly innocuous front of a storm of news lurking in all the corners of this land. I extend my sympathy and concern to the people in the South who seem to be facing a major water crisis. Having grown up in Birmingham, the idea that the Southeast would be turning dry is just about unthinkable to me. But so it is. A few weeks ago I read that the governor of Georgia said something to the effect that we need to better manage our water resources for our own use and for the other creatures who share in this life with us. It struck me, because how rarely do I hear anyone voice a concern for the plants and animals who share life with us, indeed make it even possible.

I extend my thanks to true farmers and to those who are attempting to sustain good practices of stewardship in agriculture, arts, churches, politics, families, relationships and professions. We need to have faith that there are such people. For perhaps never in history has there been such open and flagrant contempt for "the idea of sustaining life." Never in history has the exploitation if not destruction of words, land, people, and traditions and restraints of civility, been so intense -- indeed, lifted up as the greatest success and aspiration. As a headline of an article in USA Today put it, "Why give thanks when you can shop?" I saw it over the shoulder of a fellow-passenger on my train commute yesterday. I hope that it was being ironic. I fear that maybe it was not.

As I say, we are not indulging in a Thanksgiving feast today. Somehow, I just couldn't face the usual shopping frenzy, and the thought of going into a supermarket to get the stuff was just too overwhelming. And do we really need to eat?

That's the question addressed in a book I read recently - called Life from Light: Is It Possible to Live Without Food? A scientist reports on his experiences (Clairview Books, 2007) It tells the story of a Michael Werner, a managing director of a cancer research institute in Switzerland. He admits that he has long been fascinated by the possibility of receiving nourishment without food - from the reports of yogis and saints and the famous story of Theresa Neumann, who only received the daily Host at Communion, with 3 cubic centimeters of water, and living on that for 35 years.

Michael Werner came across a book that had been published in Australia by a "New Age" writer, Ellen Greve, a.k.a. "Jasmuheen," about the "21-day process." Called Living on Light: The Source of Nourishment for the New Millennium, the book describes the process of weaning oneself from food and living solely on light - becoming, in effect, a human plant. Werner decided to try it, and since January, 2001, has been living virtually without food and for periods also without liquid intake.

Describing himself as "Mr. Ordinary," Werner continues to manage his business, play tennis, live and socialize much as he did formerly. His co-author, Thomas Stockli, remarks that "The bewildering thing about him is that apart from having no need to eat, and practicing this with total consistency, he is an 'entirely normal person'...As a scientist for whom life also holds a spiritual dimension, however, he feels it is important to share in bringing about the paradigm change which he feels is imminent.

Once at a lecture Werner gave, he expanded on this in answer to a question of whether there was a Christian basis to living on light. Werner remarked:

"As far as I know the path for humanity at large which is provided by the 21-day
process is relatively new. I can only speculate about its origins and the
reasons why it should appear just now. . . The possibility has appeared suddenly
and could not necessarily have been foreseen. It is evident that a critical
situation has come about in the evolution of the earth. The spiritual world, I
mean the good and positive spiritual beings and leaders of humanity, are
watching planet earth and humanity with anxiety and despair because they see
that the great majority of human beings are unable to break out of a materialism
that is destructive and also no longer suitable for our time..."

Later, in a follow-up question, he also added that during his 21-day "conversion" process (from living on food to living on light) "... I did experience a strong flow of forces from the realm which I, personally, see as being linked to the forces of Christ, and this filled me with joy. I wanted to perceive it more strongly and directly, but instead I slept soundly during the night and only realized in the morning that a definite change had come about. I felt clearly that I was being nourished, and this persists to the present day."

I do not feel called to make the 21-day "conversion" - lest my readers have any anxiety on that score. Nevertheless I do find these reports full of interest, full of spiritual matters to think about and digest. Perhaps it is this spiritual activity of thinking and deepening appreciation that "we are being nourished" that seems important for me to say on this Thanksgiving Day.

Boxed Up

2007-11-18T12:04:00.000-08:00

The New Museum of Contemporary Art in the Bowery, New York City. Photo by R. Polidori; courtesy the New Yorker, November 19, 2007

Today we are going to talk about the new architecture, called the Box. A box, as you may recall, has four sides, and it can be of any size, as the above photograph indicates. For example, a very small box could hold a wedding ring. A somewhat larger box is useful for containing cereal, e.g. Post Toasties or Wheaties. And of course we know of boxes of all sizes and shapes for sending things through the mail, for example, computers or compost tumblers, or a set of wineglasses, or ammunition, or most anything, in fact.

Boxes in the modern period made a real step foward as housing design, for example in the art of Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Le Corbusier. Farnsworth House, for example, designed by Mies van der Rohe, looks "like an alien spaceship whose retro thrusters destroyed with their heat everything below it upon landing; but, at the same time, it remains perched above the ground as if ready to blast off at a moment's notice." (E. Michael Jones, Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture As Sexual Ideology.) To say that this house resembles a box is somewhat generous to the truth, as it in fact remarkably flat. But certainly the form or archetype of box must have "inspired" it.

Unfortunately in human evolution the box has always had to play second fiddle to the Wheel. It is not known what genius invented the wheel, although this immortal not only invented the wheel but a common expression to go along with it, e.g. "reinventing the wheel," which means, (oddly enough, considering the importance of his invention) something utterly repetitive, futile, inane, and wasteful.

We have now a new metamorphosis of the Box as an art museum, which could perhaps give rise to a creative tweak of language. Perhaps "reinventing the box" will come to mean something so egregiously ugly that it will come to be seen as the signature of space aliens rather than human beings. Or perhaps some clever person will come up with another application of the old standby, "thinking outside the box" as an ironic comment on an architecture that does everything in its power to destroy the notions of beauty, shelter, home and place.

Paul Goldberger, the usually sane architecture critic of the New Yorker, remarks, in what must be the world's finest example of understatement, that "The visual signals this building sends... seem deliberately ambiguous." The Japanese architects who designed it were perhaps known for their design school in Essen, Germany, which is "a concrete cube, a hundred feet high, punctuated seemingly at random with windows of assorted sizes." With further understatement, Goldberger remarks that their architecture's "refined (!) style might seem odd on the Bowery, one of the grittiest streets in New York."

It would be hard to find a flatter and more understated piece of writing than Goldberger's "Bowery Dreams," to accompany the photograph of this new architectural variant of the Box. Flattery, I suppose, will get you everything, and Goldberger is evidently out to flatter the modernists who funded this eyesore -- "the decision to move to the Bowery was perhaps a clever way of assuring its supporters that its agenda remains radical."

Modernism has certainly been taking many strides backward since 1913, and we have this example of it to reassure us of its intention to go all the way - maybe back to that original genius who gave us the wheel.

For Further Reading

2007-11-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite quotes: "The man who, knowing the right, fails to do it, loses the power to know what is right; and the man who, having the power to do right, is unwilling, loses the power to do what he wills." St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio

Also, Lila Rajiva posted a fine quote from Lord Acton: "Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought."

Lila posted an essay of mine on Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances -- read at http://mindbodypolitic.com/?p=562

The essay on Barfield is one I have worked on and revised over several years. I have always felt it was important to get a grasp of the ideas of this challenging thinker and that really knowing what he says would make a difference to one's life, deeply, inwardly. Every time I work on the piece it gets a little better.

The Return

2007-10-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Walter de la Mare [1873-1956]-- from a letter to Edward Wagenknecht: '…the Christian and Catholic idea of Man and the Universe is the richest, profoundest, most imaginative and creative, beautiful and reasonable conception of any I have knowledge of… Therefore…it is…the most likely to be true.'

Imagine the following: a somewhat flaccid, complacent, conformist gentleman, who lives at some unspecified time between 1870-1910, and whose thoughts never strayed beyond the confines of his English village and the perimeter set by his formidably conventional wife, falls ill for a number of days, possibly weeks, with Influenza. One afternoon – perhaps Sheila, his wife, has left the house – he undertakes to leave his sick room and wander outside for a little walk. His path takes him down to the old churchyard where, on a mossy gravestone, after pondering the fate of the denizen within whose memorial he traces out in the broken lettering, he falls asleep.

Upon waking, he feels somewhat refreshed, and saunters – no, strides, – "with [a] vivid exaltation in this huge dark night in his heart, and Sheila merely a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcely perceptible horizon" -- back to his house. He returns to his bedroom, sits in knitted thought upon his bed for a few moments, feeling unusually alert -- "it seemed as if a heavy and dull dream had withdrawn out of his mind." He lights the candle, takes out his razors and prepares to shave himself. He looks at himself in the glass.

Shock: the face that confronts him is not his own – at least it was not the Arthur Lawford that seemed to have existed formerly, the Arthur Lawford of history, appearance, and self-belief. It is another face, lean, hungry, wolf-like and saturnine. After a pause of terror, horror, tears, he hears a rustle of skirts mounting the stairs. Sheila knocks at the door. Husband and wife engage in a little colloquy across the locked door. There are pauses, strategems, little maneuevers of postponement – dinner is kept waiting, what will the servants think? – finally Sheila returns again, is allowed to enter, and confronts her changed husband. "Who would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange and awful and yet how simple mask, lay himself?" Would Sheila believe it? Would she "keep the faith"? Who, indeed, is Arthur Lawford? -- "flesh" or "spirit?"

This is the question addressed in Walter de la Mare’s novel, The Return, published in 1922 (American edition). Modern folk may be inclined to chuckle at the high importance given to respectability in the novel. The world of Sheila is, so to speak, deadly serious, and to opt out of the warm waters of socially sustaining beliefs is the equivalent nowadays of a "Terror Alert."

For, as Sheila puts it,

"…Who, in the whole of the parish—I ask you—and you must have the sense
left to see that—who will believe that a respectable man, a gentleman, a
Churchman, would deliberately go out to seek an afternoon’s amusement
in a poky little country churchyard? Why, apart from everything else, that was
absolutely mad to start with. Can you really wonder at the result?"

Let us see if we really get this. A married gentleman has left the house one afternoon to commune with his thoughts in a poky little country churchyard, and the fact that he returns home with a different countenance is somehow less outrageous, less bewildering, than that he would wish to separate himself, and merely be alone with his own intrinsicality, in the first place. For, to paraphrase Hamlet, what dreams may come, when we are alone? What is the social consensus, the net of expectations, the choir of self-affirming beliefs, that hem us and hedge us and shape us to a neat level of being, so that we may nod and agree with our fellows, and not dare to put forth a dissenting branch in the way of the shears?

Alas, dear Reader, these questions are no less consuming now than they were in Walter de la Mare’s sleepy village, though perhaps we have fewer people in our immediate circle – if indeed we even have something resembling an "immediate circle" – who are sufficiently awake, or even loyal to us, to ask the questions. The vicar, Mr. Bethany, remains loyal to Arthur Lawford despite his perplexing change of state. The question is raised if Arthur has been possessed by the Hugenot pirate, Nicolas Sabathier, who died by his own hand in 1739, and whose bones rest in the unconsecrated ground of the churchyard of Arthur’s musings. "Possession" raises the thoughts of devils, and devils, according to the vicar, are real -–"I believe in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless – in the long run. They—what shall we say?—have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side too. A loathsome process too."

And Nicolas Sabathier, though he may have deposited his countenance upon Arthur, also leaves behind, in Arthur’s experience, a new word for the language, a neologism – "to sabathier," which will mean, in a couple of hundred years, "To deal with histrionically…" but which for now, may mean, "To act under the influence of subliminalization; to perplex, or bemuse, or estrange with otherness."

I believe that some wit deepened the pool of human thought with the observation that wherever there is a tumult, you can be sure that pride and folly are at work. The things that serve life and the true history of mankind are the quiet things, the unnoticeable and unremarked. Our world today resembles that English village without "Mrs. Grundy" – without the respectable ladies to keep their eyes upon us. "Mrs. Grundy" at least helped to keep the peace, but nowadays even "Mrs Grundy" herself has been sabathiered. Everything is histrionic, theatrical, bloated with crazed self-belief.

Start your ramble to the nearest churchyard and begin asking yourself how steel towers could have collapsed through burnout, when it has never happened before, or whether the Jews are the perpetual victims they paint themselves as being, or whether the Muslims are the demons that our newspapers continually cry out that they are, or why gambling casinos are being built in every nook and cranny of what was once America, or why the reservoir of the world’s poor keeps growing deeper and deeper, or why the people you see on television appear merely as livid masks, incapable of making sense… Start asking yourself a few questions, you with your intrinsicality, and what remains of your dignity and common sense, and sooner or later the Sheilas of this world will come to scream into the ruins of your face – "What, what have I done to deserve all this?"

A Visit with Linda Sussman

2007-10-07T14:30:00.001-07:00

Pictures: Caryl and Linda at Crater Lake, Oregon

In the third week of September I flew to Oregon for six days to visit my friend Linda Sussman, author of The Speech of the Grail: A Journey Toward Speaking that Heals and Transforms (Lindisfarne, 1995). As Sussman said of Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic, Parsifal, "I know of no other story of such length, complexity, and historical importance in which the essential heroic deed is an act of speech."

The trip West was amazing - the landscape of Salt Lake City, where I changed planes, was unlike any I had ever seen before - a desert and a barren plain, yet colored in such exquisite tones of earthen red, orange and yellow, and in the embrace of mountains all around. It is truly astonishing to fly from Philadelphia clear across the country - and I am glad to report the journey was pleasant. I could not stop looking out the window as we crossed into the "flat states," so unlike the East Coast -- with miles and miles of circular fields that, someone later explained to me, had to do with the irrigation systems. I looked and looked until my neck ached, and still I could not have enough with the wonder of it all.

Linda lives in a pastoral neighborhood. People have gardens, ride horses. The sides of the roads were filled with blackberry bushes bursting with the ripe sweet fruit. The afternoons were hot; the evenings and the mornings cool - colder than normal, I was told. Linda cares for an ailing horse and three goats, leads book groups, gives lectures and workshops on spiritual psychology, storytelling, mythology, and nurtures friendships locally and around the world. She reads and thinks. She always has something interesting to say. It was an honor to be in her company. It was a rest, renewal, and inspiration.

Since my return I have felt emboldened to put my poetry out in publishable form. I have revised one them, called Indulge Me Once, to send to Booksurge.com - going, once again, the self-publishing route. The second, The Blue Watch and Other Poems, I will submit to a couple of literary contests. And that too is another attempt, following upon many such attempts. I have tried these things before. I seem to be always going round and round my own Castle of the Grail, and the kind of "act of speech" my poems aim at seems hardly to be the fashion. Yet perhaps they should be taken out of their drawer. Maybe, just maybe, I will arrive at the Castle of the wounded King and I will be ready to speak.

In honor of Linda I am reproducing the following poem, from Indulge Me Once:

114. The Banquet

This is the time of all times,
This is the banquet of all banquets.
I was in the feasting-hall of Arthur, when he smashed his glass to the floor
And watched the blood-red wine trickle through the cracks of the stone,
And glanced at his wife, and saw that her thoughts rested elsewhere.
And I came to the hall of the wounded king,
Where there was feasting, and much to drink, where the king was sitting.
But I could not ask him the question, I did not say,
"Why do you suffer? What ails thee?" And so the castle
And the feast and the hall were taken from me, and I wandered
Many years in the waste, not knowing myself or what I did.
And I was with you at your feast
When you passed the cup to your friends,
Saying, By this you will remember me—
And you said one of them would betray you, and one did betray you,
But you returned.
And I feasted in the banqueting hall of the symposium,
Where that rascal Alcibiades whispered passion into the ear
Of Socrates, and all the young men lay on their couches
Getting drunk on divine philosophy.
And I went deep into the well of the past with Joseph
And his brothers, the twelve sons of Jacob,
Who feasted in the banqueting hall of the prince of Egypt,
And the eleven did not know their host was the brother
They had cast into the pit so many years ago,
To whom now all the power of Egypt was entrusted.
And to begin at the beginning: I feasted
With Adam and Eve in the garden. But we know what fruit
They feasted on – it was bitter, and its taste is lingering.
But we who live still tell of these things,
Remembering the great stories as we rejoice among friends.

2007-09-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

Thoughts and Things – Reviving Liber Naturalis
http://mindbodypolitic.com/?p=562
Posted November 15, 2007

Owen Barfield is remembered today mainly as the friend of C.S. Lewis – who called him ‘the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.’ Barfield’s own contributions to the understanding of the history of Western thought have not been as widely recognized. A solicitor by profession, Owen Barfield was a sometime member of the ‘Inklings,’ along with others including J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. Lewis, Tolkien and Williams all labored in the vineyard of the Christianized imagination. For Charles Williams, only those who possess imagination can really grip the action in the drama of life. In viewing imagination as a form of ‘Power’ or ‘Realization,’ Williams’ esoteric-occult novels veer into a moral ambiguity which is contained in the exalted tension of his amorous and subtle Christianity. But the idea of ‘justification by imagination’ has forcibly entered our cultural nexus without this Christian tension, where, as a purely secularized theory of art – or even nowadays, of government – it has been destructive.

Barfield’s work in the imagination was of more philosophical kind. As he once put it – “Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good.” The truths he quested for in language, philosophy, philology, history, and science were framed in short, dense argumentative books of philosophical meditation. His first, Poetic Diction, published in 1928, was dedicated to Lewis with the motto ‘Opposition is true friendship.’ The two friends argued at length over the role of the imagination, which Barfield believed could lead to truth, but Lewis said should be viewed as a way of meaning.

Barfield’s preoccupations with the imagination arose out of his experience with poetry which, he says, can lead to ‘a felt change of consciousness’ and to ‘the making of meaning which makes true knowledge possible.’ The most detailed part of Poetic Diction comprises the historical study of the uses of particular words by particular poets. “Today,” he remarks, “a man cannot utter a dozen words without wielding the creations of a hundred named and nameless poets.” The emphasis on historical study attracted the attention of the historian John Lukacs, who called Barfield “the most important philosopher of the 20th century” and whose concept of historical consciousness is consonant with Barfield’s historical-evolutionary perspective.

Barfield’s most important book is Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, which appeared in the US in 1965. Whereas previously he had before devoted his attention to the historical study of language and of poetry, in Saving the Appearances he argues on the basis of the historical study of science. But once again he was met the fate of being overshadowed, this time because of Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which had taken the intellectual world by storm in 1962. This book made an important contribution to the historical study of science by addressing the role of the larger community in fostering or providing hospitality to certain ideas. Unfortunately it was adopted by people who wanted to dethrone the idea of the objectivity of standards of truth. Adherents of cultural studies and social constructivism used this first shoot of the participatory idea as a battering-ram against science and scholarship. As James Franklin put it in the New Criterion (2000) “… the worst effect of Kuhn … has been the frivolous discarding of the way things are as a constraint on the theory about the way things are.”

I doubt there are many thinkers in the history of this world whose followers have all been beyond reproach. There are an infinite number of ways in which ideas may be misused. Liberals err when they downgrade standards in favor of participation, and conservatives likewise err when they exalt objectivity in order to deride participation. In such a situation one is apt to echo the biblical saying – the very stones cry out! What can reconcile objectivity and participation? Has anyone tried? If so, who? And how is it to be done? And why is it important?

The term ‘saving the appearances’ has its historical genesis in astronomy. The ‘appearances’ of classical astronomy accounted for the celestial movements; the question of whether these theories or conjectures were literally true was not so much at issue. This question had to wait for the Scientific Revolution – indeed it was that revolution, and much of Barfield’s exposition is devoted to the explication of the mental background both before and after this salient “transposition of the mind.”

Saving the Appearances examines the development of science primarily as the story of man’s changing relationship to Nature, especially with respect to man’s awareness of participation. Which is to say, Barfield is an evolutionist but not a Darwinian, and his view of evolution is closer to what some might call “religion,” although it is very far in certain respects from what most people think about when they think about religion. Barfield’s evolutionary change-agent is the Logos, which has an “objective” side (the phenomena) and an interior or subjective one (consciousness) with both sides correlative one to the other.

Science emphasizes the fact that the world it investigates – the atomic physical structure of matter – is not the same as the familiar world we are accustomed to. In fact this investigated world is radically other. “It depends upon what ‘is’ is,” said our former President Clinton, in one epigrammatic mouthful summarizing the gulf that has widened between the received world and the investigated world. This widening gulf has brought the whole area of predication into question—of saying that something ‘is.’ For if the real world is only energy or matter in motion, all that appears in the received or commonly experienced world is chance, happenstance, disconnected spectacle or the result of force. It doesn’t have any necessary logic to it. It’s not inherent to the circumstances nor necessary to the outcome. Nothing participates in anything else; nothing participates in Being. Thus to make the statement, “A horse is an animal,” is suspect. For how can a horse participate in animal-hood, indeed what is animal-hood but a mental construction or imposition of ours?

On the other hand, modern philosophy since Kant has attempted to come to the rescue of the realness of the world by stressing the participation of human beings in the creation, or rather evocation, of the phenomena. It is a way of saying that what we think is there is not really there, but we can do nothing otherwise than suppose it to be there. It’s a big supposition, and our cultural heritage was not built upon so fragile a basis. Nor may it be able to persist with such meager provender for long. As Barfield once observed, “In the long run, we shall not be able to save souls without saving the appearances, and it is an error fraught with the most terrible consequences to imagine that we shall.”

Barfield states that his purpose in writing Saving the Appearances was to draw attention to the consequences arising from “the hastily expanded sciences” of the 19th and 20th centuries. The more we go back into the past, the more human utterance and testimony about the world has a mythological character. We believe that the received world is not real; our ancestors believed in the super-reality of the received. Nevertheless, it is obvious with our ancestors no less than with us that people everywhere engage with and participate in transforming sensations into ‘things,’ and this transforming activity is taught, imitated, and passed on through language and culture in a multitude of ways, whether as mythology, storytelling, science, or philosophy, etc.

This is the participatory premise, and it is basically the common sense theory of perception. But it raises problems. There are several options for an honest dealing with these problems – the multitude of way for dishonest dealing with it we will not explore at the moment. Let us review some of these options:

(1) We can acknowledge that the relation between man and nature has undergone vast changes, and that what ancient people testified about the world was indeed true, not just of their perception and thought, but what they perceived and thought about, that is, of the world itself. Therefore, what they say in regards to the creation of the world by God and the actions of angels and spiritual beings in the world, etc., should be seriously taken into account. In order to gain a true picture of the world, the modern picture of evolution would have to be counterbalanced by the testimony of the ancients regarding Creation. That is to say, we would have to take not only their words but also their phenomena into account when embarking on any description of the world prior to the entrance on the scene of ‘our’ phenomena, that is, circa the 1600’s. This is the fullest accounting, and it would demand a radical revisioning of our view of human history and of almost all of our ordinary opinions.

(2) We can deny that there has been any change in the relation of man and world, or consciousness and phenomena, and that things have always been more or less what they are today. It follows, therefore, that our way of viewing things is the only right way. However, denial at this highly conscious level (it happens all the time subconsciously and dishonestly) would be pretty strenuous, since it would involve throwing out almost our entire culture heritage, or at least certainly any deeper relation to it or participation in it (e.g. religious worship.) This is the de facto position taken by Richard Dawkins and others popularizers of atheism. This strategy basically says that our ancestors were crazy. Thus Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, who wrote that “the gods were amalgams of admonitory experiences, made of meldings of whatever commands had been given to the individual.” In other words, the ancients were possessed – insane!

(3) Maybe it is we ourselves – post-Scientific Revolution, post-Cartesian men – who are crazy. (And which of us has never had this thought?) But this is also difficult, for it would involve dispensing with the real gains of modern science. No many people would volunteer for this option, and it has never really been an option in the Modern Age.

(4) If we acknowledge the reality of our phenomena, and deny that either we or our ancestors are insane, how did our perceptions arise? Did they evolve out of the perceptions of earlier human beings or were they just invented? This whole area of differing cultural perceptions and value judgments (or not) has become a huge area of contemporary discourse, and it certainly relates to the issues in the evolution of consciousness pioneered by Barfield.

Thus we find questions and riddles at whatever end we try to grab the stick, and somehow we get the feeling that the stick is shaking us—and that we are in its grip, not the reverse.

Modern physics tells us that the normal, familiar world that we take for granted is comprised of atoms, particles, waves, or just ‘energy.’ To be sure, even these words are cumbersome; they are just ways we have of trying to picture something that cannot be pictured. They comprise the ‘unrepresented’ background of our perceptions. But, if this ‘unrepresented’ background is all that is believed to exist independently of our perceptions, what is the foreground, what is the ‘represented’ or the ‘appearances’ of the world? Trees, houses, cars, faces of people, the singing of birds, this paper – in other words, the received or familiar world. If the phenomena of the world are ‘energetic’ in essence, but this essence is nonpicturable and nonrepresentational, then the world we picture, live in, talk about is, in fact, what he calls “a system of collective representations.” These ‘collective representations’ are the result of our activity, however far back in the past the process may have gotten started and however long the time involved in the transmission of learning about these things is that we call society or culture.

Barfield uses the term figuration to mean the activity that converts sensations into things, that is, as the work of the percipient mind in constructing the world of recognizable and nameable objects, the ‘familiar world.’ It should be said at the outset that Barfield is not going with this where the post-modernists have been going with it – e.g. that “The world is a huge collection of communally-evolved customs of interpretation” (Don Cupitt) or like President Clinton’s statement about the ‘is,’ quoted earlier. Such views are symptomatic of the fact that, for people today, the first glimmerings of participation are apt to be accompanied by confused thinking. Indeed, Barfield comments, “It is characteristic of our phenomena… that our participation in them, and therefore their representational nature, is excluded from our immediate awareness.”
When we gain the first dawning awareness of participation, we are apt to forget our long learning and mutual living with them. It was through the labor of being – our own, and theirs. Our own awareness of them is the testament to their real existence, as their existence is the testament of ours. The world is more than communally-evolved customs because we are dependent upon it for our very being. It is easy to forget the water of life when you are not thirsty. Forgetfulness slides over into habits, habits into taking for granted, taking for granted into not noticing how perceptions and thoughts arise, and sooner or later you end up with real epistemological consequences.

Some years ago I stumbled across a quote which perfectly expresses the alienated character of our appearances, and of how much has been forgotten of the “labor of being.” From Memory’s Ghost by Philip J. Hilts, the passage is a quote from the psychologist Robert Ornstein:

"...There is no color in nature, no sounds, no tastes. It is a
cold, quiet, colorless affair outside us…It is we who transform molecules… these
things are dimensions of human experience, not dimensions of the world
outside…We don’t actually experience the outside world—we grab at only a very
refined portion of it, a portion selected for the purposes of
survival...."

To preface this remarkable passage with the words “There is…” for the purpose of declaring a magisterial “There is not…” to everything we experience in the world is certainly an act of philosophic contortionism. It does not follow that because I am aware that the human contribution to that trilling sound I hear tells me bird — which by the way is only a way of saying this is its name — that this ‘bird’ is merely a “dimension of human experience.” This is a picture of joyless and unbridgeable subjectivism. It is further remarkable for a psychologist to have written it. Apparently he accepts the existence of a self without argument while omitting to mention that learning the names of things and experiencing them is how we acquire a self in the first place.

It is probably true that we do not pay attention to our figuration, which most of the time has receded into mere habit. And for that matter even a molecule is the result of an historical development, and is therefore ‘participated’ to some extent, so that calling a bird a molecule just postpones the reckoning with participation and only adds a whole new layer of obfuscation. But this is a very silly example of the tricks that are resorted to in the name of a science that has not decided whether its mission is to eliminate participation or to understand the natural world. That we have reached such a point of absurdity is in large part the purpose of Saving the Appearances to show and, if possible, begin to disentangle.

Barfield emphasizes that the major difference between our phenomena and those of our forebears was that primitive or ancient man was aware of participation, whereas we are not aware of it – or at least, if we are aware of it we tend to disown it – just as in the example above. It is characteristic of our phenomena that they are seen as being wholly independent of us, wholly extrinsic – “clothed with the independence and extrinsicality of the unrepresented itself. But a representation, which is collectively mistaken for an ultimate—ought not to be called a representation. It is an idol. Thus the phenomena themselves are idols, when they are imagined as enjoying that independence of human perception which can in fact only pertain to the unrepresented.”

These are strong words, but they are not too strong when you recollect the nature of the modern landscape that we have created in America and are in the process of creating all over the world. Especially is this the case over the suburbanized landscape which more and more resembles a hideous excrescence of disjoint parts strung out into an extensionless void. If we do not cultivate the sustainable quality of care in our thinking, how can we expect to see it in our buildings and landscapes? The degradation of the modern landscape is the witness of the degraded quality of our inner lives and the alienated and ‘extrinsic’ character of our appearances.

Darwinistic evolutionary science arose in the 19th century, when the older medieval participatory consciousness had faded. It took for granted the purely extrinsic nature of the appearances and then attempted to treat these appearances much as astronomy treated the celestial objects, thus giving birth to a mechanistic picture of evolution. Barfield remarks that had such a science developed earlier, or even perhaps later, after 20th century physics did much to undermine materialism, we might have had a science of evolution worthy of the name –”man might have read there the story of his coming into being… of his world and his own consciousness.”

Participation is whatever in perception that is more than just sensation — ‘the extra-sensory link between man and the phenomena.’ The participatory element is supplied by our thinking and figuration and whatever elements of cultural and individual memory, language, imagination and symbolical faculty comprise our passage through the world. Many errors and much silliness might be avoided if we were to consider thinking in relation to some other of these elements, particularly two of its close etymological relatives: thanking and ‘thinging.’ Thanking, thinking, and ‘thinging’ (the making of ‘things, i.e., what Barfield calls figuration) derive from a common root. Let us look at each of these:

Under THANKS we have religion, the concept and action of grace. The heritage of thanking, gratitude, appreciation, the saying of grace, the murmur of prayer, form the foundations of the soul and build the act of thinking, and indeed, make it even possible. Before there is thinking there is a catechism, and a catechism is the art of building a structure for the soul so as to enable an opening. Thanking presupposes a structure; one has to learn how to become open. For no one can think who does open himself, and the paradigm of the opening is the communion made possible between God and man through religion. This is the sacred heritage of humanity, and precedes the appearance of individualized, and later abstract thought by many generations – by thousands of years, in fact.

It may be asked, and many are asking now, whether religion is still needed today. Who has need of a paradigm of opening when the modern world, its science, its art, its media, is so obviously self-sufficient, so obviously advanced in technique, so brilliant in its aspirations and achievements, and there is so much money to be made? Maybe a paradigm of opening would be a retarding force… religion as opiate of the masses, the consolation of weak intellects, the sleeping-pill of the feel-goods and the do-goods and the pretend-to-be-goods. Criticism of religion is often made and is sometimes justified, but on the other hand secular modernity has not reached the end of its lease, and there are peculiar signs of historical stagnation, of spiritual barrenness or intellectual decadence, behind all the glitter of our civilization. So perhaps the paradigm of the opening is not so antiquated after all. It may perhaps be related to a mysterious faculty for creativity in history.

Under THINKING there is no need to repeat the history of philosophy, poetry, and culture. Everyone has his or her own story, his or her own way of connecting to it, adding on to it, or escaping from it. But it cannot be an abstract story, not if it is to have any life in it, and that life is the THINGING, the realm of the phenomena, the ‘things’ that we say that are. Our thinking, ultimately and eventually, becomes thinging – the circumstances, the look and feel of things, the history. Yet we do not really perceive the entire picture, because it happens over a long period of time. Our thinking is a sort of vacuuming — roaring around the world re-ordering, classifying, using, calculating, strategizing, building, conquering… Maybe our thinking is actually this noise, and we are not really very much aware of the THANKS feeding it or the THINGS issuing from it – or of the ‘thanks’ and the ‘things’ feeding and issuing from past and previous interchanges with thinking over a long period of history, with which we are also in a perpetual exchange.

So from the hysterical rants of the modern atheists to the unreal mathematized abstractions of economists and cosmologists, our modern cognition has become the counter-image of ancient participation. Whereas the ancient gesture was the opening, the modern gesture is the clenched fist, the frown, the circumscribed problem – carefully defined, carefully delineated so that extraneous considerations need not apply. It lacks grace but makes up in accuracy. Only there is something wrong with the way this equation is stated, for grace and accuracy belong to the world equally – the true living world, the human world, the given world of mankind and living nature as well as to the divine world.

So that perhaps the phrase “a gain in accuracy” is not quite the right formulation. But there has been an increase of individual self-consciousness, as well as of social power and control, that has come about through the gradual usurpation of Logos and its degradation into mere “intellectualism.” To the extent that this development in time of self-consciousness – which Barfield terms the “evolution of consciousness” — is to the good, it has supported attainment of greater freedom, more independence and self-knowledge. Everything has its place, purpose and power. But the other hand, where this decline of Logos to intellect and depletion of participation to selfhood has issued into a glorification of power for its own sake, then there is something that may be judged, there is something that must be warned against. It can be called an occult transgression, or wrong use of a natural development. It steals from Nature unlawfully – it steals and it does not sustain or restore or reintegrate. This stealing or “theft of Logos” is the great sinful secret of the Modern Age, and lies at the root of almost all its manifestations. As, for example, Simone Weil once put it, the idea of the dignity of labor is the only idea we have not borrowed from the ancient Greeks. But it is from such an idea that we can begin again to construct a notion of the labor of being and of a new form of participation.

But in the meantime, it is only the sheer weight of the so-called masses that provides the countervailing force against the giddy spin of this occult transgression of the mental elites. Whether the masses will in time gain the ability to think, and I mean along the lines that I am suggesting – thinking accompanied with thanking and ‘thinging’ — a new whole and fully participated thinking – on that the future of the world depends.

And this kind of thinking is a participated thinking, concerning which Barfield remarks: “The plain fact is, that all the unity and coherence of nature depends on participation of one kind or another. If therefore man succeeds in eliminating all original participation, without substituting any other, he will have done nothing less than to eliminate all meaning and coherence from the cosmos.” So it is quite right to speak of the world’s future in the context of the development of human thought. Knowledge of this correlation of consciousness and phenomena, the mutual coexistence of thoughts and things, is an urgently needed course-correction for today. We urgently need a new “saving the appearances” – not for the heavens but for the earth.

Posted by Caryl at 9:53 AM

Who Do You Trust?

2007-09-12T09:02:00.001-07:00

Illustration: from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/20031028.powerspectrum.html

"To realize or be aware of something without counting on it is the most characteristic form of an idea; to count on something without realizing it, is the most characteristic form of a belief." Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason (p. 21).

"Human reason left to its own resources is completely incapable not only of creating but also of conserving any religious or political association, because it can only give rise to disputes and because, to conduct himself well, man needs beliefs, not problems." Joseph de Maistre, Study on Sovereignty

"... the production of belief is the sole function of thought." Charles Sanders Pierce, from "How To Make Our Ideas Clear."

It is a truism that our perceptions are influenced, or even in some sense conditioned, by our beliefs. According to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey press release, the picture shows galaxies lying near the plane of the Earth's equator in a 2-billion lightyears deep 3D map. Somehow evidence and measurement "bolster" the case for Dark Energy and Dark Matter - the heading of the press release. By combining these measurements with those from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), the SDSS team "measured the cosmic matter to consist of 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter and five percent ordinary matter." These findings appear to confirm the leading cosmological model, that is, a "rapid expansion of space known as inflation that stretched microscopic quantum fluctuations in the fiery aftermath of the Big Bang to enormous scales. After inflation ended, gravity caused these seed fluctuations to grow into the galaxies and the galaxy clustering patterns observed in the SDSS."

Dark Energy and Dark Matter are hypothesized to exist (their existence has never been proved) because of the complicated mathematical formulations of Relativity and Big Bang theories. That is to say, the theories dictate the existence of entities which are thus, in this sense, purely faith-based. Perhaps modern cosmology is a good illustration of Pierce's formulation, that the sole function of thought is to produce belief. I doubt that this is the way that scientists like to think of themselves. Also one has to ask, which comes first, the cart or the horse? Does the belief give rise to a system of thought, or does the system of thought give rise to the belief? Where, in this game of tag, is the "objective referent," i.e., reality itself, or as the positivists like to say, the "empirical verification"?

My attention was drawn to this particular illustration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey through Robert Sungenis magisterial work on geocentrism, which pretty much says that modern cosmology is the emperor with no clothes. Make that a ditto for Copernicanism, Einsteinism and Big Bangism too. It's all a cart with no horse, because the uncomfortable fact is, the motion of the earth has never been proved, and even the very tenets of Relativity state that there is a functional equivalence between a stationary sun with rotating earth and a stationary earth with a rotating sun.

According to Sungenis, "The pictorial provided by SDSS shows Earth in the center of two wedge-shaped galaxy segments that also show galaxy density decreases as the distance from Earth increases. Only from the vantage point of Earth do these stunning proportions become significant. In other words, if one were to view them from another part of the universe the concentric proportions would not appear. The centrality of Earth provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is thus consistent with the quantization of redshift values that have been accumulated for four decades prior. Once again, the 'Copernican Principle' is violated. The evidence shows that Earth is the hub of the universe." (Galileo Was Wrong, p. 191)

The Copernican Principle, also sometimes called the Principle of Mediocrity, states that there is no center in the universe, and that no position is 'privileged,' to use the postmodern jargon. Quantized redshifts refer to the discovery that the redshift of various galaxies are all distributed at specific periodic or specific distances from the Earth (multiples of 72 km/sec and smaller ones at 36 km/sec). The magazine Sky and Telescope wrote, "Quantized redshifts just don't fit into this view of the cosmos [i.e. the Big Bang], for they imply concentric shells of galaxies expanding away from a central point, Earth."

Ultimately, our age will have much to answer for in the realm of beliefs. In my novel, After the Crash (available through the self-publishing venue, http://www.lulu.com/) I take up this question in the context of a whimsical tour of the world after the virtual disappearance of petroleum. In the chapter, "Belief Systems Seminars," I write:

"In the early days of the Crash, when there was still electricity, though intermittent, Belief System Seminars were all the rage.

"Belief System Seminars were fantasy-renewing social engagements and exercises. Someone in a Seminar would begin by saying, 'I can't believe this is happening,' and then four or five people would chime in, adding their four or five alternate lack-of-belief narratives to the original one. By the end of the day... you would have heard twelve or fifteen people recount their
lack of belief stories in excruciating detail.

"By the time the Crash had ceased to be an event separable and distinguishable from what was happening in general -- when living without oil, gas, much electricity or abundance of food and water had become the fact of the day, most people found that they had no further use for their lack of belief... At least the people who were sharing their lacks of belief, or lack of beliefs, were engaging in a kind of collective mourning, a group consolation exercise for the past age. In that light, even lack of belief had a certain currency. It was backed up by the good faith and credit of belief itself, the idea or ideal of believability. . . In any case, the collapse of the hydrocarbon cognitive habits combined with the destruction of belief was the double blow that caused so many people to wander in the suburbs of insanity. The era was booming with psychic breakdown. Millions capitulated under the accumulated woes of low food, having to walk everywhere, not believing in what was happening before their eyes, and having to rely on their own powers of perception and reason instead of television. . . "

The repertory of beliefs in our age is a very long asphyxiating list: Progress. Democracy. The Press. The Free Market. Globalization. Efficiency. Technology. Multiculturalism. Equality. The Vote. The Market. The Economy. Freedom. Autonomy. Secularism. Evolution. Genes (either Selfish or Altruistic). Add to this the idols of science, which Simone Weil already noted half a century ago, was beginning to acquire the worst features of religion - dogma and mystique. One begins to long for the day when the salvation of your soul depended on a central belief enunciated with the clarity of a beam of light -
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen. we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

... and left the rest of the world and the soul aglow in freedom - for by means of the light, everything else was open.

________________________________________________________

I am travelling to Oregon for a few days and will not post again probably for a couple of weeks. Thanks again to my readers who have written of their appreciation for this blog.

God: The Improbable

2007-09-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

Drawing: by Paul C. Johnston, circa 1955
[Correction 9/15/07: The drawing was made by Eleanor a.k.a. London Bridges, Paul's art teacher at the time.]

"It is perhaps true in a sense that God is a God of beginnings; the ends are up to us, and to work in the fruitfulness of God is to be renewed in the promise of the beginning." From a journal entry, April 24, 2005

I was browsing in an old journal and came across the above. It occurred to me that only a "modern" would write that "... the ends are up to us." Most historic societies have had or continue to have a concept of Providence, which would translate into the concept that "the ends are up to God." Nevertheless, with some reservations, I endorse the modern idea, at least in the context of its sentence.

The real bugaboo for the "modern" is the concept of the "Beginning." Almost all of our science, and certainly our common life, is ruled by a notion of a beginningless - and therefore a godless - universe. I don't consider the "Big Bang" an adequate substitute for the concept of a beginning, which must always include the notion of a definite starting point, a structure of some kind. The notion of the "Big Bang" has too much of the merely random for my taste - as e.g. astrophysicist Alan Guth once put it, a universe is just something that happens from time to time. But even modern science uncovers almost daily new strange facts of all the things that "had to happen" and just in the right amount (and to the tenth or twentieth decimal place) and in the right sequence, for this world to have come into being at all. This precision of event and sequence presents a strange contrast to the nebulous concept of how it all happened in the first place. We live in a strange world, where large and incoherent ideas about origins and metaphysics trip over facts of stringent limits and precision.

On my walk to work the other day, I had the idea for a book someone should write on the "Improbable God." There would be a science section - full of the just-barely "coincidences" that had to happen. In a way this part might be the easiest to write. At least there would be an abundance of material. And there would be a theology section, which also might not be too difficult to write, in the sense that there is much material accumulated over two millenia, so that there would be no shortage of sources and ideas. The improbabilities of Catholic theology, say, would present a living complement to the improbabilities of science, but instead of powers to the 20th decimal place we are examining levels of reality. The particular difficulty is that for the most part we have no very exact notion of other "levels of reality." Even our science on this point is confused - it claims to tell us the truth about the world, but on the other hand it deals with entities inaccessible to ordinary consciousness, hence it has culminated with a new mystique.

The aim of theological improbability would be to restore the world to us - that is, restore the act of knowledge as the encounter of the mind with things. Oddly enough, theological improbability culminates with something very much like "common sense," though perhaps that is an odd way of putting it. It is common sense to acknowledge that this world is very improbable. Theological improbability aims at the restoration of "common sense" - which, we should remember, is already a concept which is not as easy and innocent as it appears. It is bristling with philosophical history. "The history of this one single expression contains in miniature the entire history of the western world," writes Peter Kingsley, in his book Reality - an exploration of the pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles. We assume, rather than in fact know, that human beings always possessed the capacity to coordinate their senses - to see, hear, taste, touch and smell at the same time. Did they? Perhaps they had to undergo a coordination through exercise - through meditation. Peter Kingsley thinks so- "for Empedocles, the training in how to perceive oneself perceiving was provided as part of an esoteric transmission from teacher to disciple." He believes that the teaching of the awareness of being aware was degraded as it took the journey through philosophy. "Reason" pre-empted the activity of watching the perceptive process itself. Hence, being "aware" became something we already have rather than something we have to achieve.

So from theological improbability we take a leap into history - perhaps the hardest part of the book to write. History has the odd combination of being both obvious and improbable. Because it is our medium, because we are immersed in it, we cannot see it - yet when we begin to "see" it we begin to perceive how improbable it is. Much more would need to be written about this, or more accurately, thought. But in essence the improbability which is this universe, world, life and history is at odds with the smooth, dull hum of Evolutionism which has so enthralled the modern mind.

In the tangle of improbabilities which is everything, an improbable God "makes sense" in a new way. Perhaps improbability is a new way to talk about grace. For in the theology of St. Thomas, grace presupposes nature. But in the new schema of understanding, we can also come to perceive that nature presupposes improbability - and this is grace.

Song of the Little Drone

2007-07-21T16:07:00.001-07:00

"The fecundation of the bee is indeed a very special affair; there is nothing like a marriage-bed to which one retires, it all takes an entirely different course. It takes place openly, in the full sunlight, and though this may seem very strange at first, as high as possible in the air. The Queen-bee flies as far as possible towards the Sun to which she belongs...and that drone which can overcome the earthly forces – for the drones have united themselves with the earthly forces - only that drone which can fly the highest is able to fecundate the Queen up there in the air."
Rudolf Steiner, Nine Lectures on Bees (1923)

SONG OF THE LITTLE DRONE

You know, my job’s "Nuptial Flight,"
& I’m married to it, right!
The Eternal Feminine – upward and on!
People call me just a little drone.
Little do they understand the honeycomb.

Just wait, my flying time will come –
When I ascend with my queen – to the Sun!
To the highest flyer is given – "the seal" –
That all being aspires to commonweal.
These are words - I make it real.
________________

Today I attended a beekeeping seminar at Harriton House, a historic property and public park not far from where I live. I have been developing an interest in beekeeping and thought that this morning's occasion would provide a handy introduction to the subject. It was a time well spent, most enjoyable in the glorious July day.

Well - it was mostly well spent, although I had to cringe for the better part of a lecture by one of the educational staff. It is perhaps unfortunate that the organization of the bees provides such convenient fodder for a feminist projection onto Nature. The Queen, of course, is the mainstay of the colony; her attendants and the worker bees all likewise female. Little girls were duly summoned from the audience (mainly comprised of the under-7 age group, although there was a fair sprinkling of old people like myself) to represent these important characters. The poor drones were given short shrift of the matter, for are they not all sacrificed in the end? Thus the males in the audience were treated to a piece of covert propaganda that bespoke their unimportance.

It was understandable, given the age group of the audience, that the educator would not wish to dwell upon the delicate matter of fertilization. And yet the "nuptial flight" of the drones and the Queen, and the reward of fecundation accorded to the highest flyer - does this not present a picture of the spiritualization, it could be said, of the common life when it achieves civilization? In civilization as we have known it so far, it is primarily the males who have been the "high flyers" - only feminists and ideologues can pretend otherwise, or rationalize it as due to the perpetual injustice inflicted upon womankind. Where's the female Shakespeare, Tycho de Brahe, or Bach? I am saying it can't happen? No. I am just not pretending that it has happened.

This pretence goes very deep in American life at present. Larry Summers was tarred and feathered out of Harvard for questioning the pretence, and there are probably thousands of more examples. And now Harvard has its woman president, as indeed, according to the recent issue of the Wilson Quarterly, women how hold half of all management jobs in America. Perhaps ironically, women are becoming the drones of the New World Order. Less imaginative, and less apt to take risks than men, women are the ideal servants of the new regime.

Society is becoming a counterfeit bee colony. And as far as I am concerned, this is bad news for a real culture which, to begin with, cannot even go about being real until it throws off a few layers of pretence. For those of us who are outside the paradigm, pushing toward the frontiers of Quality and of Challenge and Response, the real bee colony is an object of deepest admiration and reverence. Its translation into a human counterfeit is cause for deep, deep concern.

___________________

Update, Sunday July 22: The "feminization of society" has a new dimension in the poisoning of the nation's waters by estrogens and steroid hormones from birth control pills excreted into sewage systems and then into the waterways. According to a front-page article in the National Catholic Register, July 15-21, "Contracepting the Environment," researchers found strange "intersex" trout in a supposedly "pristine" Colorado mountain stream. Said one of these researchers, scientists "are finding [in frogs, river otters, and fish] the presence of female hormones making the male species less male."

Perhaps not surprisingly, environmentalists are notably mute on the subject of hormone pollution of rivers. To deal with the problem would mean tackling the "choice" ideology of today's sexual mores.

The Archbishop of Philadelphia, in a pastoral letter "The Word Became Flesh - Married Love and the Gift of Life" (Feb. 8, 2007) reminds us that "contraception" means "against the beginning." In our society, which has become addicted to equality rather than quality, and security rather than initiative and risk, it should come as no surprise that the male sex is being continually belittled and devalued [while, of course, the real citadel of male power as it is expressed in economic doctrines, is never questioned or restrained.] Only a restoration of the spiritual truth of initiation can restore "the Beginning" and ultimately a sense of freedom, hope and progress.

The Road to Recess

2007-06-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

"Recess" is the name of an estate in Virginia to which the young John Hartwell Cocke moved, with his bride, in about the year 1807. He left the Tidewater region of Virginia and moved to the ancestral lands in Fluvanna County, deeded to his ancestors in 1725.

I have told Cocke's story in my book, Stewards of History: The Covenant of Generations in a Southern Family, a book which I have made several unsuccessful attempts to publish. This book was an effort to propose a model of American spirituality that would be neither Puritan nor Transcendentalist (the two poles of American spirituality, according to a history professor I once had in college) but embracing the concept of stewardship. Cocke was an outstanding agriculturalist, and the stewardship of the land is easy to understand in his case. But there is more than that - it was particularly a stewardship of history that I was attempting to discover, enunciate, and describe.

Upon the loss of his wife in 1816, Cocke became a devoted Christian. He was active in the antislavery cause, even to the point of establishing a plantation in the deep South on which some of his slaves could work toward their own emancipation. It was a 20-year project only brought to an end by the onset of the Civil War. But some of his emancipated slaves became founding members of the new colony in Liberia, and the letters written by them to their former master are compiled in Randall Miller's book, Dear Master.

There is perhaps nothing quite like this story anywhere elsewhere in America. Sadly, it seems, publishers today only want to hear the politically correct versions of history. It doesn't fit their notions that Cocke, a white slave owner, was honored during Black History month a few years ago in Norfolk, Va. Nor why he became so deeply Christian after the loss of his wife - this too goes against expectations. It breaks the pattern. Many people, when they lose a beloved person, turn against God - like William Styron, the novelist, who used material on Cocke as the prototype of Samuel Turner, the slave master of his novel on the Nat Turner rebellion. Maybe that is why there is little religion in that book.

Cocke broke the stereotypes all the way. A younger contemporary of Jefferson (who thought highly of Cocke, once remarking that he is "rich, liberal, patriotic, judicious and persevering") Cocke esteemed the elder statesman but was quite aware of older man's irreligion. Cocke wrote to his son - "I would rather know that you were a disciple of the meek and lowly Jesus, and destined to pass your life in virtuous obscurity, than to have the assurance of your rising to the Presidency of the United States... and die an infidel."

I am in the process of changing my views on my life, and perhaps that "virtuous obscurity" is beginning to offer an appeal to me. Call it my own version of going to Recess, my own sense that I have arrived at a parting of the ways with the "intellectual life." Not that I will stop writing or thinking. It is an ingrained habit with me. But I also feel that the intellectual life needs to become grafted to a structure, what could be called a paradigm of stewardship. And if I feel opposition to intellectualism today, it is because I sense that "it doesn't matter" - it is unfolding in an abysm of void, it has lost accountability... it's in freefall, or worse, a Satanic plunge. Intellect unhinged from life becomes toxic. It is decreating the world.

What is the next stage of the journey? I am looking for the road.

Are Sex-Change Operations Worthwhile?

2007-06-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to install the most absurd title for this post, which (in contrast to several previous) will be short, spontaneous, and unrehearsed. The title arises from a recent incident in which some members of my son's generation were discussing the preparations then being undergone by one of their cohorts who was planning to get a sex-change operation. Robert (my amicable ex-husband, and ever philosophically willing to raise the temperature of any debate) happened to find himself in the midst of this, and he turned to one of the young women present (possibly a college student at Bryn Mawr College) and asked her, "What do you think about this?"

As he reported to me later, "She gave me this utterly blank look." As he put it, it seemed obvious that she had never been asked to think about what a sex-change operation means in terms of what is happening, instead it was as if whatever is happening is simply determinate - without dimensions of thought or urgency, and lacking any provocation that might entail a response or reaction, much less a judgment, on her part.

This incident seems to illustrate John McMurtry's "first rule of any group-mind" - that it cannot adopt itself as an object of critical reflection. The group-mind of today's Bryn Mawr and Haverford College students seems to be in the process of swallowing sex-change operations with no sign of discomfort or choking. But swallowings like this are going on all the time. For instance, the Philadelphia City Council recently passed a resolution declaring Philadelphia a "pro-choice" city. Certain people protested - notably, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, and a few political candidates. The City Council member, apparently deaf to such protests, said "this is a democracy," which in this tortured logic must mean that only people who believe in killing unborn children belong to democracy.

To believe that passing such a City Council resolution is an exercise of "democracy" falls somewhere under the heading of "intellectual catastrophe," while abortion and sex-change change operations fall somewhere between "biological and social catastrophes." I want to talk later about what these headings signify in terms of Robert Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality."
I wish to pursue this theme in later posts this month. Next weekend I will be visiting in Atlanta for a family wedding, and may not post anything for a couple of weeks.

Shipwreck

2007-06-03T11:25:00.001-07:00

It seems to be one of the long-standing self-beliefs of our Western culture that reason as we come to know it has been inherited from Greek philosophy, and revelation has been inherited from the Bible, and that the particular genius of the West in its creative periods was that it was able to take account of both of these sources and to a degree, reconcile them.

Like any long-standing belief, this viewpoint carries a great deal of truth. One of the people who made this viewpoint something of a catchword or perhaps even something of an educated cliché, was Leo Strauss, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism. My post today aims to discuss what I think are some of the problems with this viewpoint. It is not solely motivated by my animus against neoconservatism and all of its works, but certainly I admit to having this animus – for I consider neoconservatism a bad tree that has produced rotten fruit. But before neoconservatism there was St. Thomas Aquinas, who labored mightily to define the respective spheres of reason and revelation.

So, my point being that the reason-revelation divide goes a long way back into Western history, and there could be little debate in asserting that the pillar of reason exemplified in the Dialogues of Plato and the works of Aristotle – and the pillar of revelation of the Bible, form the major signposts through which Western thinking has always navigated.

Yet there may also be a sense in which signposts can become blockades that squeeze the unwary navigator, asphyxiate and choke, prevent movement, subvert development, and sink the vessel. The image of shipwreck has long formed a sober reminder of the perils of the voyage, and I have always been fond of quoting Ortega y Gasset about this, where he said, "I am only interested in the thoughts of shipwrecked men."

Perhaps every culture has thrown up reminders in its own way – Ortega y Gasset, the Spaniard, was alarmed by the decline of Spain, and thus chose to unfold his reasoning powers to the revitalization of the Spanish – and ultimately European – intellect. Herman Melville, the American, on the other hand, wrote an epic about a shipwreck, at the end of which his hero-martyr and witness, Ishmael, floats to safety by clinging to a coffin. At its depths this profoundly Christian image of life-through-death is borne by the narrator, Ishmael. Ishmael in the Bible was the first son of Abraham who was cast out, and who became the progenitor of the Arabian peoples. To take a leap: one could say that true Christian revelation in America is "Ishmaelitic" – that is, "cast out" by the Puritanic, and later Judaic, image of the "chosen people" or "favored land."

Perhaps Melville had a deep sense for the "Ishmaelitic" character of true Christianity in America – something quite other than its public doctrines. For genuine Christianized thinking has barely been able to establish itself in America, and to the extent that it has, it has always had the character of a "dispossession" or "unbelonging." Southerners at their heart know this, as well as Catholics. The thought was epitomized in the title of Albert J. Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man – the "visionary intellect" is, in America, "superfluous," super-added, super-natural, not in line with the American pragmatic vision and craving for efficiency.

Well, perhaps I stray from my subject, and must needs return to the matter at hand – the polarization of intellect into a ‘reason’ and a ‘revelation’ component. In a certain sense I believe this idea is a myth that has outlived its usefulness. In my view, reason and revelation exist on a continuum which can be, as Coleridge put it, distinguished but not divided. Revelation comes from higher plane of inspiration, but it is nevertheless the source of all intellectual understanding. There is no case of people learning to reason spontaneously, just as there is no case of "spontaneous language." Both faculties of speech and reason imply imitation, instruction and teaching.

Likewise with "natural reason" or "unassisted human reason." In acknowledging the Greek source of this kind of reason, we tend to overlook how Greek reason was born and developed out of the Mystery tradition. It developed from the "revelatory" tradition.

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) emphasizes this qualitative or revelatory aspect of reason. And yes, I think that Pirsig was one of those "dispossessed Ishmaelites" who challenges the American hostility to metaphysical thought. It is not so essential that such a challenger call himself a Christian. What matters is that one develop the capacity to perceive the christianizing impulse in thinking. Anyhow, Pirsig was in hot pursuit of the trail of the ancient Sophists, who, he thought, had received a bad press in Plato’s dialogues. According to Plato, the Sophists claimed to "teach virtue," or to claim that "virtue can be taught" and they were dismissed - in centuries forever after - as "ethical relativists." But what, Pirsig asks, if this is not the case, and that in fact the Sophists were in pursuit of the Good? The Sophists were concerned with quality – and quality has to do with man’s primordial response to the cosmos.

Thus, the Sophist aimed to teach awareness of the "quality-event," the encounter with quality, that underlies the act of cognition. Arete, virtue or excellence, is the prerogative or privilege of man, who is thus dignified by virtue of his response to quality.

There is a sense in which "quality" may be understood as the "revealed cosmos" – and here I am building on Pirsig, not quoting or paraphrasing him. But in any case, subject and object are the results of the encounter with "Quality." Here we see the outline of a basic threefold dynamic, which is the idea in which Christianity was born, which it developed and elaborated – the threefold being the indispensable concept which enables us to navigate between the pillars of reason and revelation. In one sense the quality-event may be viewed as the ground of the Father, that is, ultimate Reality. In another sense it may be seen in the work of the Holy Spirit, that which enables human beings to respond to one another, the "quality of responsiveness." And in still another sense, "Quality" may be seen as Christ, the "I Am" as the cognitive principle.

There may be such a thing as "natural reason" or "unassisted human reason" (i.e. not revelation-dependent) but insofar as it is "natural" it is not reason, or not much to get excited about, and to the extent that it is reason it must participate in the quality-event – which is to say, it must be based upon something originally disclosed or revealed to us.

Perhaps the divergence between reason and revelation has outlived its natural life. Modern reason is apparitional. Having been free for so many centuries to develop itself apart from the last Platonic resonances of the Good and the Beautiful, modern reason has become a demonstration of the deterioration of standards. And this, in essence, is my critique of neoconservatism: it subverted Reason to become an enabler of Human Power instead of faithfully adhering to reason’s historic vocation as limit and check to Human Power. Or, as Chesterton put the logical case against fascism, “...that it appeals to an appetite for authority without very clearly giving the authority for the appetite.”

For there is a great difference between Divine and Human Power. Divine power creates by renunciation, leaves an opening for the future. Human power refuses to renounce anything, and moreover seeks to add to its domain by sheer accretion. But ultimately nothing grows by accretion, which is why modern reasoning (and its correlates in art, manners, buildings, statecraft, education, landscape, etc.) is a garrulous, garish, structureless monumentalism – as if by sheer will power men could obliterate within themselves that tiny infinity, that infinitely small opening, granted by the Creator, that enables them to reason.

Hysterics

2007-05-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Let us continue in our exposition of one Greek word, usteresantos, which has been elucidated in connection with the womb and with ‘lacking in something,’ which I believed to be connected to true metaphysics. Before I begin with this post, I want to take note of Andrew’s comment to me in an e-mail of May 20 regarding the previous post:

"I really enjoyed your latest post. Your remarks about the Modern age's idolization of self-sufficiency are right on target. I think this idea could also go a long way towards explaining the dismal state of education in our country. Education that has as its goal mere self-sufficiency has by that fact become something less than education. Instead of fostering a feeling of lacking in students which may arouse their metaphysical curiosity, it promises to furnish them with all they need to know to get on in the world. And so, if something can be known but won't help you get on in the world, it's not really worth knowing.
But my reason for writing is rather to ask you whether this prolonged period of stagnation may not be coming to an end. Do you think, perhaps, that the next generation, looking back at the last century and a half of prolonged paralysis, will begin to discover the insufficiency of self-sufficiency? The end of your post suggests you have some hope for the future - if we survive the present - but I wonder if there aren't any signs now of better things to come. It seems to me that the rantings of the chief proponents of self-sufficiency have become more desperate recently, and that just maybe the sober wisdom of those attuned to the Mysteries will gain a wider appreciation by the contrast. "

I believe that we will begin to discover the "insufficiency of self-sufficiency" as we become aware of the "initiatic tradition." What is this? What is "the Tradition"? What is initiation? How can we even begin to think about "the meaning of the initiatic tradition" when we have no language or experience in which to formulate our thoughts, and even to deal with such an "objective concept" already represents a "problem," so to speak, in terms of modernity? Where, indeed, even to begin – to initiate the discussion, which means, "to begin" it?

Just as a prelude, let me suggest that "initiation" is a concept which is opposed to evolutionism, which is the idea that, in a sense, nothing has a "beginning," but that everything develops or evolves according to the unfolding possibilities in Nature. Of course, it is not strictly true that "initiation" is opposed to "evolution," no more than the poetic inspiration of a sonnet is "opposed" to the form of the sonnet, or that the "meaning" of a sentence takes place in opposition to the grammatical rules of the language in which it is written or uttered.

Nevertheless, in terms of modern thinking, it is roughly true that the initiatic idea, which in the Latin Bible is expressed by the term in principio –"In the beginning" - that this principle of the Beginning is swallowed up by the idea of continuity of natural development.

But more precisely, the concept of initiation cannot be seen as being opposed to what unfolds in time, in the sense that this "unfolding in time" is what is meant by "The Tradition." It is thus "the Tradition" which guards the beginning, that is, the principle of initiation. And this beginning-point is always and only the confirmation of the correspondence of the human and divine world, the natural and the cosmic order. "Initiation" is the experience by which human beings receive this knowledge and certitude.

With this as necessary background, I want to proceed into the matter of this post – which may be something of a long one, as I have much material to cover. I want to discuss the concept of initiation, and I also want to lead back to our original starting point with the idea of the usteron, the womb, the feeling of being in lack of something. But I want to conclude by showing how, when this feeling of ‘lacking something’ is denied, or sidetracked into a materialist rather than a spiritualized understanding, we can arrive at the situation of hysterics – which is yet another word derived from our original usteron, the womb.

I realize I am making many demands on my readers, and I hope they will have the patience and fortitude to follow along as best they can – given my defects as a writer.

Lately I have been reading in the works of René Guénon [1886-1951] the French philosopher and expositor of the ‘Tradition’ – most notably his book, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. Guénon was a Catholic who, later in his life, moved to Cairo, Egypt, and converted to the Sufi faith. In the West, only Catholic Christianity still continues to bear the initiatic tradition, which was once universal to all peoples and all cultures. In the West, however, the tradition has become ‘deviated’ - that is to say, the impersonal pure intellectual intuition needed to apprehend it has sunk to the level of the ordinary personal intellectualized Reason with its accompanying material evidences, or empiricism. More and more the emphasis in Western thinking has been quantity rather than quality, how things can be measured and utilized rather than how they can be deepened, beautified, or elaborated.

He summarizes as follows: "As soon as it has lost all effective communication with the supra-individual intellect, reason cannot but tend more and more toward the lowest level, toward the inferior pole of existence, plunging ever more deeply into ‘materiality’: as this tendency grows, it gradually loses hold of the very idea of truth, and arrives at the point of seeking no goal other than that of making things as easy as possible for its own limited comprehension, and in this it finds an immediate satisfaction in the very fact that its own downward tendency leads it in the direction of the simplification and uniformization of all things; it submits all the more readily and speedily to this tendency because the results of this submission conform to its desires, and its ever more rapid descent cannot fail to lead at least to what has been called the ‘reign of quantity.’" (94-5)

There are certain characteristics of the state of mind to which we may affix the character of "the reign of quantity:"

Insolence and presumption of knowledge concerning religious or spiritual matters, and by extension in all matters of courtesy, intellectual and social. Take, for example, the recent book by Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, and other books of that ilk, now appearing in profusion; a new kind of militant atheism which argues that people would be nicer to each other if they had no religion. The fallacy of this belief is the idea that man created religion. But the truth is more likely that religion created mankind. We do not in fact know how prehistoric human beings stepped forth from the nexus of mere animal sociality into human language, action, reason and culture. This is precisely why the concept of initiation is needed. For initiation concerns the "striving for humanity" at whatever level it occurs, and it would be contradictory, if not nonsensical, to suppose that this "striving" could take place without the participation of man. Thus the naturalist fallacy begins and ends with the notion that no effort is needed, or that we need not bring distinctions, or distinguish qualities, of efforts. Thus the "reign of quantity" ends with the destruction of culture – i.e., utter complacency, which is the "moral" side of the doctrine of self-sufficiency.
A "horror of mystery" which arises from the notion that "reality" is only what can been seen, measured, quantified, and rationalized.
Lack of manners, reticence, reserve, humility, receptivity, patience and an aggressive utilitarianism. If there are no "qualities," why bother?
An inability to understand or appreciate symbolic or imaginative discourse -- a "one size fits all" approach which derives from "uniformization" and of seeing all things on the same level.
Emotional autism, of being encased or solidified in one’s own ‘individuality,’ with a corresponding lack of empathy or interest in others .
Manic activity and restlessness, especially in the economic but in other realms as well, which "… is why the period can be said to be using up everything that had been set aside in earlier periods;" (p. 177; italics mine). This is called entropy; it means dispersal or the exploitation of natural and cultural resources without limit, leaving nothing for future generations.
And finally, the inability to give sustained attention and even to think. For thinking presupposes at least two things: the correspondence of words and things, and the ability to order concepts hierarchically. The first of these is the last echo of the correspondence of the human and cosmic order, and the second of these is the last echo of the sense of quality. Both of these presuppositions, in the "Reign of Quantity," have virtually collapsed.

The ‘deviated’ course of Western history which René Guénon traces from Renaissance Humanism, through Protestantism, to mechanism, rationalism, materialism, positivism, pragmatism, etc. to the purely ‘quantitative’ outlook of today, is not enough, in and of itself, to bring about the final ‘dissolution,’ which he regards as the consummation of this phase of manifestation. Dissolution demands an actual work of ‘subversion’ – through the erection of a counterfeit spirituality, a counterfeit hierarchy, a counter-initiation. Thus:

"This is the moment at which the second kind of work, which had at first only been carried out in a more or less hidden manner by way of preparation, and in any case on a restricted scale, had to come into the open and in its turn to cover an increasingly wide field…" (p. 195)

He continues:

"’Anti-tradition’ found its most complete expression in the kind of materialism that could be called ‘integral,’ such as that which prevailed toward the end of the last century: as for the ‘counter-tradition,’ we can still only see the preliminary signs of it, in the form of all the things that are striving to become counterfeits in one way or another of the traditional idea itself…" (p. 260)

It is important to distinguish what is still a kind of ‘innocent’ or ‘naïve’ materialism from the work of subversion, which can only proceed from a Spiritual Being:

"… after having worked always in the shadows to inspire and direct invisibly all modern movements, it will in the end contrive to ‘exteriorize,’ if that is the right word, something that will be as it were the counterpart of a true tradition… Just as initiation is… the thing that effectively represents the spirit of a tradition, so will the ‘counter-initiation’ play a comparable part with respect to the ‘counter-tradition’: but obviously it would be quite wrong and improper to speak of the spirit in the second case, since it concerns that from which the spirit is most completely absent… nevertheless opposition is undoubtedly attempted, and is accompanied by imitation in the manner of the inverted shadow… However that may be, the thing that makes it possible for affairs to reach such a point is that the ‘counter-initiation’… cannot be regarded as a purely human invention… the ‘counter-initiation’ proceeds from that source (i.e. the spirit, from when comes all manifestation) by a degeneration carried to its extreme limit, and that limit is represented by the ‘inversion’ that constitutes ‘satanism’ properly so called…(pps.261-2)

* * * * * * * * *
It may seem paradoxical that human life under the "Reign of Quantity" should more and more take on the character of the ‘hysterical.’ And so we return to this word once again, the root of which, usteron, is the womb. The ‘hysterical’ aspect is a counter-image of the metaphysical depths we explored in our previous post. "Hysterics" is womb-without-mind – without the ordering principles of the higher Logos, without intellectual intuition, without receptivity to truth. In the physical body, this receptivity characterizes the womb; in the spiritual organism it is, or should be, characterized by the mind. A "concept" is a mental birth, as the conceptus is of the physical.

Lately there has been an even more radical step into the purely quantitative realm – or even beyond the mere quantitative into the dissolutional. Consider the Large Hadron Collider, an underground science lab in Switzerland that will shoot particles through a 27-kilometer tunnel and analyze the resulting collisions (in a four-million-megabyte –per-hour stream of data," as Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker put it). She quotes one scientist, "What we want is to reduce the world to objects that have no structure, that are points, that are as simple as we can imagine. And then build it up from there again." Here is the best possible summary of Guénon’s thesis: how the quantitative becomes the dissolutive and finally achieves a total reversal, that is, a counter-image of the hierarchy of Nature.

Yet I would like to suggest an additional feature as well. In the supposedly emotionless calculative agenda of this science it is easy to miss the fantastic element in this scientist’s remark. The idea that scientists can "build it up from there again" is pure fantasy, a complete delusion. But is it not also a kind of ‘hysteria’ ? Here is evidence of how the human imagination has become unmoored from Nature, and in so doing, has become self-inflated – with the idea that a scientist can "rebuild the world" again from a mass of shattered particles.

At the very least, this scientist sees no contradiction in the fact that a science intent upon the dissolution of matter can hardly possess the requisite skills for rebuilding. One might say that the skills in the resume are vastly different – poles apart, indeed. But this is merely "Reign of Quantity" thinking all over again – that somehow there is no difference between the work of destruction and the work of construction. Kolbert reports that a few people have ventured to suggest that the Large Hadron Collider will "destroy the world." Perhaps they express more of the truth than they know. Only, it is not a physical destruction that is the portent here. With a science poised between calculated dissolution on the one hand, and hysterical delusions on the other, there is a sense in which any mere physical destruction would be an anticlimax – a mere postscript that never could be written in words - this being the ultimate 'counter-image' to the inexpressibility of spiritual truth itself.

We have come a long way from usteron of the path of the Logos to usteron as a type of receptable or even breeding-ground of demonic beings of pride. For remember, usteron is that in us which must have metaphysics – and that is why we are historical beings. For History is the daughter of Metaphysics.

The Metaphysics of Creation are the truths of initiation, the story of First Principles. It is not wrong to have fables – even the fable of evolution – but it is deadly to have fables without counteracting First Principles. The hour is late. The time is now. For the abyss has no bottom – no, not even for us, favored and forgiven by God numberless times throughout the course of our laborious centuries of striving to become human.

Metaphysics and 'Lacking in Something'

2007-05-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

And taking up the matter where we left off: “usteresantos,” meaning “they were wanting, they were lacking in,” (as in 'they were wanting wine') is related to the word usteron, meaning the womb – from whence we get the words ‘hysterectomy,’ ‘hysterical,’ etc.

It is apparent that the idea of the womb is related to a lack or of a wanting of something. There are several trains of thought that we can derive from this observation.

First: it shows the valuation for womanhood, marriage, matrimony, and childbearing in ancient societies – unlike the popular modern condemnation of all historical societies for their ‘patriarchalism.’ That they were patriarchalist may have been true; but it does not equally follow that they may not have also been matriarchalist as well. That the womb was experienced as a ‘lack’ gives meaning and savor to the idea of fruitfulness, fulfillment, and progeny. True fertility is a response to emptiness, hunger, and need, and the having of children is a ‘fulfillment’ not solely on the human plane. It is also a partnership with the divine cosmic order.

This idea of fruitfulness as fulfilling a need takes account of the fact that ‘Being’ itself is a need. Human existence itself is lacking in something. This is why we have history, this is the root of our metaphysical drives, our quest to experience the presence of God. Beings who have no ‘metaphysical’ inquietude cannot have history. The animals are 'fulfilled' in a way that we are not; it is our very ‘lacking’ that gives us the historical impulse. In this sense history is ‘womb-driven;’ it is the feminine of mankind (i.e., of all men and women) expressed, drawn out, lived out, upon the plane of temporalization.

In the Modern Age, by contrast, the metaphysical quest has been disregarded and disrespected. Like a structure, it has been pulled down from its role of providing a bridge to the realm of the sacred. Its parts have been ‘scattered’ into a multitude of fields: intellectual accomplishment, science and technology, social engineering, and politics. metaphysics hardly even merits the name any longer. Modernity frowns upon metaphysics although it loves its substitutes: such is one of the keys to our age.

Modernity begins with the discovery of self-sufficiency – or perhaps more precisely with idolizing ‘Self-Sufficient Being’ - or Reason, or Will, or Substance. The terms are not important. For the idea of self-sufficiency is profoundly false to life in whatever sphere it is elaborated. It does have the advantage, however, of allowing itself to be artificially self-contained and therefore exposed to detailed examination. Modern science owes probably more to the idea of self-sufficiency than it does to the idea of truth or the correspondence of reason and the world. At least, the idea of self-sufficiency explains in my mind why modern science has gone so far off track - but that could be a subject for another post.

But anyway, the idea of self-sufficiency is the opposite of the idea of metaphysics, which implies a quest for fulfillment, a wanting to get to the bottom of something (or to the heights of something), a desire for reality – which must mean the wholeness of it. It could not by that definition mean a portion of the world cut off and self-enclosed; it must mean the whole world, the cosmic and the human, the historical and the symbolical, the flesh and the spirit. Self-sufficiency says “there’s nothing outside the system” (i.e., it’s only nature, society, genes, class, gender, race, etc.); while the metaphysician of the womb which is history says it is the world and God, the laws of the spiritual as well as the natural order, the cosmic cycles, the Great Year, the Above and the Below, heights and depths, all in all.

We have come a long way from ‘usteresantos,’ – but is not this the truth of a biblical image – that to throw it into the water leaves multiple reverberations afterwards? Thus Mary becomes the true ‘Woman-Mother’ of history. And perhaps ‘Marianism’ is the very condition of the continuing existence of history.

For never has it happened that so many people have been so ‘lacking’…. in the feeling of ‘lacking.’ That is to say, history now unfolds on the plane of self-sufficiency, amidst the hordes of the self-sufficient, those who are barren in the womb.

And never before has there been such a period of prolonged stagnation as the Modern Age. Things haven't changed in essentials in decades, half a century, a century, a century and a half... Western mankind, stunting its growth with materialism, is paralyzing its capacity for creative development...

Never before has humanity possessed weapons of mass destruction such as the United States – primarily – possesses – and such a collection of insouciant and shallow politicians who might be tempted to unleash them upon the world – quite possibly to strike a fatal blow against the life-bearing capacities of this planet.

Some day – if humanity survives this period – we will better understand these things in the light of the Mysteries – which is the only way we will be able to understand them...

For nowadays we can only understand the Mysteries through living them... The ancients, when when initiated, could understand them intuitively...

But our initiation... is history... which is why we seek to understand the Mysteries intellectually and imaginatively through experience...

Holy Mother

2007-05-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today at Mass Father Sherlock gave a little homily for Mother's Day based on reflections from the letters of the word M-O-T-H-E-R. After the Mass there was a touching ceremony in honor of the Blessed Virgin and a recital of the Litany. As usual during the singing of the "Ave Maria" my eyes began to fill with tears, and once again, upon leaving the Church, I felt a sense of gratitude. These simple and oft-repeated acts of worship had given me, however briefly, an experience of being in communion with the Divine.

There were a few things I thought of during the homily - not that Father Sherlock should have said them, for his discourse was simple and unintellectual, though full of feeling and sincerity. The question of Jesus with his Mother is indeed a Mystery. Father Sherlock mentioned the incident of the Wedding in Cana (John, Chapter 2) and said that by honoring the feast with the "best wine" Jesus so honored his mother. But there are many levels of Mystery in connection with the "miracle" at Cana - changing the water into wine - and from this point of view the homily left many things unsaid.

In the King James translation of the Holy Bible, it is said that "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine." Jesus then replied, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come," which is certainly an awkward translation and maybe even an odious one. It certainly does not convey the feeling of affection from son to mother. Nor is the Catholic Bible significantly better: "When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' [And] Jesus said to her, 'Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour is not yet come.' "

The relevant Greek passage reads: "...kai usteresantos oinou legei he meter tou Iesou pros auton-oinon oux exousin. kai legei aute o Iesous- ti emoi kai soi, gynai; oupo ekei he ora mou." (Unfortunately this program does not write Greek letters.) The important words are "ti emoi kai soi," literally something like: "What to me and thee?"

In The Three Years, Emil Bock comments: "Rudolf Steiner has indicated that the changing of water into wine... grows out of a mystery that operated between the soul of Jesus and His mother. The way Jesus answers His mother points to this mystery. It is not only a misunderstanding, but a complete misrepresentation to translate the words as, 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?' The Greek words (ti emoi kai soi) are not a rude rebuff. As a formula from the Mysteries they point emphatically to a positive connection, and can be translated, 'What is it that works and weaves here between me and thee?' The same formula occurs again in the Gospels. Luke relates how Jesus at the beginning of His ministry... was addressed in these words by the demon who troubled the souls of those who were possessed ...(ti hemin kai soi), 'What is it that works here between [us] and Thee?' The demons speak like this because they are already aware of the superior spiritual power that is making itself felt in their sphere."

The "formula from the Mysteries" points to the realm of connection between human beings that is for the most part not fully conscious. It is significant that the wedding occurred in Galilee, which was a part of Palestine in which intermarriage (that is, marriages between people of different tribes) could occur. In Judea intermarriage was forbidden; one could say that the life-forces gained through marriage were severely back-channelled into the tribe. Such a curtailment of life force fuelled the tribal impulse, one has to admit to the point of fostering an unrelenting tribal nationalism. By contrast, the Galilean story is about the liberation of these life-forces, made into an analogy of the Sun that ripens the grapes and the changing of the water into wine.

If it is anything, Christianity is about the freeing of life forces and how human beings, living in the spirit and love of Christ, can work with the powers of growth and procreation that, analogously with the plant world, seek the warmth and light of the sun. For the most part in human history these "procreative forces," having to do not just with marriage but more especially with how souls exert influence upon one another, have been hidden and kept back from the realm of consciousness. But the rationalist dispensation has brought forward an enormous challenge in this sphere - one with which we have yet to fully understand.

Rationalism denies the sphere of supersensible influence and has the tendency to compress the soul into an individualist and self-sufficient mode. Contrary to this tendency, there has been the spectacular development of what Vance Packard called the "hidden persuaders." Every person on earth today is subject to the influence of these "hidden persuaders," the media with its incessant mastication of the day's events. Contrary to the spiritual operation of Christ, these "persuaders" are anti-spiritual and subliminal and often aim at activating the realm of drives, impulses and appetites. The production of influence (which is what the "information age" really is) is an important aspect of the "procreative forces," which, through this strange metamorphosis through rationalism, has become, essentially, modern politics.

This strange development through a rationalism that denies influence to a persuasion that denies intelligence is an anti-Cana and anti-Christian image. Instead, it is the other example of the 'formula from the Mysteries' that concerns us here: that is, to the Satan-possessed indiscipline of the "herd" and the precipice to which the swine of Gadarene are hurtling. It is urgent that we begin to understand, through a christianized higher intelligence, what these 'formulae from the Mysteries' really mean in terms of the history that we are living out - otherwise, we will swing from the precipice into an illimitable abyss.

The River of Nonchalance

2007-04-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is a symptom of advancing age, but I find I have less and less to say. Or perhaps I am only too aware of the shortcomings of my prose, arguments, facts, and mind. Or perhaps it is just that I am weary of it all - from neoconservative wars to school shootings - and feel I have little to add to the spate of words thrown up against our windshields and spattering our view of the passing terrain.

But may I mention that 'weary' derives from an older English word meaning "to trample over wet ground." Word studies and derivations pack morsels of history. If nothing else, the word reveals that our forebears didn't have cars - not for them any easy rolling over the landscape, bored, dulled, abstract, and indifferent.

Today I just want to make a slight observation, so common and ordinary as to be almost without interest. First let me mention that in a footnote in Volume I of A Study of History (and yes, this week, let me mention that I managed to acquire the entire set plus the Atlas - at a pretty penny, mind you, but such are the advantages of having a job) Arnold J. Toynbee considers the word "proletariat," which he says means "any social element or group which in some way is 'in' but not 'of' any given society... That is, it is used in the sense of the Latin word proletarius from which it is derived. In Roman legal terminology... proletarii were citizens who had no entry against the names in the census except their progeny (proles)... In other words, a 'proletariat' is an element or group in a community which has no 'stake' in that community beyond the fact of its physical existence."

My observation is simply this: in walking through Center City, Philadelphia, as is my daily custom going to and from work, I habitually observe that the overwhelming style of dress for both males and females is blue jeans. Now of course there is a "professional" element of the population that dresses professionally (though not necessarily smartly) and then... and then, well, there is everybody else. And almost without exception this everybody else looks just like "everybody else." They all wear the same thing and dress the same way.

Twice I caught a glance of a young woman dressed in a dress - one 'smart' and one 'hippie' - and almost felt like going up to them to congratulate them on being different.

Not that I dress that well myself. I do wear black jeans in inclement weather - and the blackness of the jeans seems to me slightly less egregiously proletarian than the standard blue. Nevertheless, I am your basic skirt and blouse (or gaucho and blouse) sensible-shoes type of woman, and no one, seeing me walk down the sidewalk, would ever look twice. Nevertheless, I feel keenly the absence of what used to be called style and the presence of what can only be called proletarian conformity in dress and appearance.

In thinking about this preponderance of proletarian style, I seem to see a people that is in the process of being eroded from citizenship to peasantry. Whatever these crowds may be, they do not give the impression of being stakeholders in society, nor do they appear to have given much thought to the 'public' as a state, condition or stage of life that elicits a particular form of response. But of course the 'public' as a particular facet of American life was eroded even before the pernicious cell phone arrived on the scene to finish the job. Our streets are now filled with hoboes of high tech - their ears wired, their mouths jabbering.

Perhaps I am too harsh. As I admit, I am hardly the model of successful wardrobe. But it seems to me that indistinguishability or lack of differentiation is another name for entropy. Human spiritual and moral life, developed through an awakened conscience, the effort to think, and the practice of some art or religion, is the only thing we have to counteract the entropy which is ever-present in human life but which seem to be pressing down upon American society with particular force at this time. And if I am too harsh about dress, it is because I sense that American society is being swept down the river of nonchalance - and so few seem even to be aware that they are drowning.

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Web activities this week: A good read is Lawrence Auster's "The Political Religion of Modernity," published on his "View from the Right" website. I wrote Mr. Auster encouraging him to read my brother's essay, Urbino, which approaches this topic from a different angle. He wrote back to say that he would "check it out." Link to Urbino in previous post.

I posted a series of comments to a post on the "Suicide of the West" website, raising a few hackles and managing to get called, by different posters, a multiculturalist, a reactionary, insane and deluded. The proletarianization of American life is nowhere more in evidence than here - that is, the "shooting oneself in the foot" syndrome. Instead of addressing the impersonal or 'public' form of the message, such people can only attack the 'personal'-- that is, the messenger. It attests to the decomposition of community -- the result of a decline of training and confidence in argument, reason, and persuasion. These abilities are the 'public' face of the intellectual mind, and they are in a condition analogous to the blue-jeaned mobs that throng our streets. That is, slovenly, self-indulgent, complacent, and smug.

Against the Republic of Swine

2007-04-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

Republic of Swine - a reference to a passage in Plato's Republic, where he refers to a city where people have all their physical needs met - the implication being they have no will or energy for developing their higher capacities of thought. The reference raises the question why limits are necessary - which is somewhat the subject of this post.

These past few weeks of containment and silence have not been without their little fruit – I would not claim anything so great as a watermelon or as exotic as a mango – perhaps something more along the lines of a kumquat – or perhaps a single grape.

The use of the blog and more generally the giving and exchanging of e-mails with various people, both related and unrelated to the blog, give me a little insight into the kind of thing which I aspire to do with the aid of the computer. It is, simply, to have a conversation, and to be able to say to my correspondents, in one fashion or another, that the having of conversation and exchange of thoughts is a value in itself. In fact, the humble and unobtrusive e-mail – a medium so often abused, and one so seemingly spontaneous and demanding little thought (or worse- so purely utilitarian) – may be the last channel in our day of the old Socratic and Christian dialogue – Socratic in the exchanges, Christian in the awareness of what is at stake. I mean that the greatness, or even the existence, of the soul hinges upon tiny moments, and that the awareness of its momentous fate can be assisted by this throwing of tiny digital pebbles against the opacity of human self-consciousness. We want to make glass. Or as a Dostoevsky commentator puts it:

"…In this welter of passions, deceit and sin, Dostoevsky’s saints, Prince Myshkin, Alyosha, and Father Zossima evoke our special interest. At first their innocence seems to deprive them of the dramatic attributes which Dostoevsky’s great sinners possess to an extraordinary degree. Our eyes, trained to look for shadows, search in vain for clearly defined contours. The characters are transparent; nothing is hidden; nothing needs to remain secret… Their inward center is not in themselves or in their society but is part of the Divine. There is something supernatural about them, and as soon as their friends feel this, they love them."

[From William Hubben, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka, 1952. Macmillan Publishing (paperback) p. 67.]

I believe that most of my dialogues occur with those for whom the inward center is in the self and those for whom the inward center is in society. But the mere fact of engaging in dialogue seems to me to indicate that the inward center has been quickened and mobilized, and rests in the Self, the Society and even momentarily in the Divine, in a kind of restless uncertainty and going back-and-forth. The Decision of which one of these in which to remain has not yet been fully and consciously made, yet the willingness to converse leaves an opening, and we can talk about what is going on as if, in fact, what is going on is what is going on. To me what is really going on is this mobilization or process of quickening; but life needs to provide us with subject matter and tools, so we talk about that. But the process, as far as I am concerned, is to help quicken that inward center, and so fortify the soul for that time of Decision, whenever it is to come.

Several people, seeing the sudden temporary cessation of my blog, wrote and gave me courage:
Tom from England wrote:

"One of the things I appreciate in your writings is your attempt to articulate a 'conservative' point of view in a thoughtful and well argued way. The media-dominated world we live in can make it seem that someone who swims against the tide is just thoughtlessly reactionary or plain silly. Right now my wife is seriously ill and I don't have the energy to engage in a detailed debate with you about any of your postings but I shall keep looking and reading, glad to know you are 'out there', trying to hold to the truth, and fighting (with the word) for the good."

Chris - (location unknown) wrote -- "... Personally, I've found your posts to have been consistenly more and more thoughtful of late. Naturally, reflectiveness and insight don't always find a wide audience, and may make no sense at all for some readers. They're an entirely different enterprise from the search for effectiveness, are they not?"

And Bill, from Baltimore -
"…[Things] are dissolving our country in a very intentional and pernicious way. I have come to see elements of your point of view as having been really prescient…"

I have also had a few e-mail conversations with some members of the Lyndon LaRouche following, upon the occasion of LaRouche’s violent attack upon Al Gore and the global warming issue. I had given a little support to the LaRouche movement when it was opposing the neocons and their wars. But this attack on Gore seemed to me utterly malicious. As I wrote to one of these individuals, protesting that I should give some credit to LaRouche for being smart, I wrote:

"I know LaRouche is smart, but I don't think his attack on Gore and global warming is an intelligent move. Bush and the neocons stole the election from Gore, who, whatever his failings may be, would have been a far more decent president than the one we have now, and one who would not have led this country into a self-righteous crusade against the Muslim world.The hate-filled rhetoric of the neocons is bad enough, but when basically decent individuals like LaRouche attack other basically decent individuals, you know the nation is in a state of self-devouring destruction, and that all possibility of constructive leadership is finished."

My correspondent has yet to answer that particular charge. He had sent me a copy of LaRouche’s book, There Are No Limits to Growth, written back in the 1980’s, where LaRouche shows an appalling ignorance of energy reality and gives voice to the utopian belief that we will establish domed colonies on Mars – "the forests and cities of Mars." My correspondent wrote back inviting me to watch a LaRouche video called "The Woman on Mars," and said:

"It's a delightful program - and well worth the watching. Think about it, Caryl - if the human race can expand without limit into the universe, bringing our environment with us, what does that do to the idea that we have a problem with "overpopulation"? Meanwhile, here's a beautiful thought from Helen Keller: "No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

Sorry, friend, allow me pause to throw up at this sentimental tripe from Helen Keller, who, if anything, is a living testament to my idea of the value of limits. For certainly Helen Keller had to overcome severe limits, but apparently my correspondent failed to see in Helen Keller's triumph over limits the obvious refutation of his idea. I discussed this incident with my sage brother, who said that the LaRouche people are simply "insane." They are still living in 1740, the Age of the Enlightenment, and believe in universal values, progress, science, technology, and in having no limits – all theories that humanity has left behind in the wreckage of history. Paul defines the Enlightenment project as this: it consists of believing we have the power (right, duty or prerogative) to "make the world the way it ought-to-be" – and Paul’s vigorous dissection and destruction of this theory is to be found in his essay, Urbino – on which he is about to finish a new and revised edition.

The original "Urbino" is published on one of my companion sites -- it is an essay which merits the close attention of thoughtful minds.

That there are so few "thoughtful minds" today is the condition of our grievous peril, and it is against the "republic of swine" that America has become that this site – as poor and flawed as it is – is dedicated. For it seems to me that while there may be individuals in various institutions – business, universities, and even government – who may have the inclination and good will to engage in exchanges and conversation, the overwhelming reality of our situation seems to me to be the fact that institutions, as such, no longer possess either this goodwill or this inclination. Thus the sclerosis and rigidity of our policies – the counterpart of our flailing, failed, and shipwrecked community. This is barbarism – which, by definition, is the condition in which the only remaining institution in society is the army. Rigidification and senescence [1] is the price we pay for our self-indulgence in the idea that moral consensus, international law, and standards of right and wrong -- in other words, all sense of limits -- can be insouciantly and flagrantly dismissed.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that America, in its public persona, has become a society dedicated to the destruction of life and civilization. That there are so many people of good will and reason lifting their voices in protest against this state of affairs on the Internet – one of the last remaining venues where real conversations can occur – is one of the more poignant symptoms of the impotence to which we have been reduced.

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Some good reads this week: "Beyond Good and Evil," by Gilad Atzmon, an outspoken Jewish jazz musician who opposes Zionism - can be found on the Information Clearing House website.

And everyone needs to read Kari Konkola's great and long overdue April 13 piece, "A Christian Administration? Hardly" on Taki's Top Drawer.

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[1] Senescence: A good essay on this is in the "Tantrum of the Powerful," by Lawrence J. Dickson in the April, 2007, issue of Culture Wars. "It is a terrific and accelerating change, a rushing wave, a collapse. It is the collapse of constraints on the powerful. This is the story, so far, of the new millennium...And the power group is aging and going insane. Who but the insane would make life unlivable for their own children-- make prospects so bad they can't even marry? This is what I call the seniling of power and law. At its worst... it reaches the point (stem cell research and forcible organ transplants) of eating the young."

Letter to Editor of First Things

2007-03-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

Country Club Catholics like George Weigel have often criticized "cafeteria Catholics" for their attitudes regarding the Church's teaching on sexual conduct. But the Country-Clubbers are merely insouciant over different issues. Weigel's essay on the Just War teachings of the Church is a case in point. (FT, April 2007)

First, one looks in vain for an acknowledgement that both Pope Benedict XVI and his illustrious predecessor condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq. JPII worked tirelessly to convince leaders on the UN Security Council to oppose the Bush war resolution on Iraq - earning worldwide admiration. But in Weigel's [piece, the Catholic dissent is merely glossed in a reference to the "Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America."

Second, Weigel blurs the intellectual rigor of Catholic Just War teachings in his long preamble about James Turner Johnson's "right intention." Besides paving the road to hell, "right intention" undermines the entire purpose of Just War theory. It removes the focus from submission to objective criteria to the realm of subjective wishes.

Weigel's piece continues this declension from rationality to rationalization. His paragraphs are loaded with slogans - "democracy, freedom and prosperity" (out side) or "wrath, victimization and false pretenders" (their side). Weigel, after pausing to acknowledge the strategic, military and bureaucratic blunders of the United States in Iraq, launches into the real heart of his piece: that is, blame Iraq and the Middle East. Thus he condemns the region for its unstable, corrupt and unresponsible governments, while at the same time comparing it to the "ideological enemy with global ambitions" of the 1940's.

It's called having it both ways. Weigel's toadying to Caesarism is a livid reminder of why the Gospel is important (cf esp Matt 6:24 and 7:4) and why Just War teaching is necessary. This Gospel and this Just War teaching - along with the constraints of international law which American aggression has done so much to undermine - are truly the 'Last Things.'

Now must the 'Last Things' be raised against 'First Things' - in witness against the terrible deterioration of reason and empathy exhibited by this piece, and against the Trojan Horse of neoconservatism which Pastor Neuhaus and George Weigel have brought into the Catholic Church.

The Tears of Things

2007-03-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

This post is a continuation of the dialogue that began on this site and has continued, at a tangent, on Henry's blog in reference to what could be called “the general will to life among Western Euro people.” The dialogue was sparked by Henry’s post “The Seeking of Asylum,” in which he writes: “I wish to speak about the propensity of the brightest and most capable young people of my generation to seek their place overseas and in other cultures.” He concludes:

“Perhaps the distant cultures are a refuge from the guilt-mongering, anti-vitality, anti-masculine, anti-culture nature of our present country. After all, we live in the most unnatural of conditions right now, where men are disparaged or simply poked fun at (have you seen how almost every single television commercial depicts men?), where white people are under a self-inflicted, suicidal attack from their own treasonous elite. It is perhaps the only culture where we are told to feel guilt at the circumstances surrounding the very founding of our country. Our folklore is scorned or forgotten. It seems that in the context of this homogenization/demoralization, we are being compelled to do what no human can ever do; namely live without a history, community, or sense or strength. And it is from this most unnatural circumstance that our youth flee. In a strange irony of the modern world, the adoption of an utterly alien culture is the only way to have an identity which we can be proud of, and communities that are not denigrated.”

Paul (my brother and Henry’s Dad) responded by picking up a thread in reference to Toynbee:

“There is so much in it to comment upon that I hardly know where to start. I’m tempted to drag out yet again Ortega’s comment about Arnold Toynbee ---- ‘It seems as if in the heart of this man doubts have started to ferment about whether or not it makes sense to keep on being English......’ and further on ‘... we have to approach and understand with great respect this hidden spiritual state, ... because in it lies nothing less than a great secret about the future for all of us.’ I asked Caryl about this, and she replied: ‘I was aware of Ortega's judgment on Toynbee, and I discussed it with no less an authority than John Lukacs - who himself does not seem to be altogether pro-Toynbee. However, he said he thought Ortega's statements about Toynbee were ‘unfair.’”

While I do not agree with Ortega’s specific charge, I do think that there are currents in the Toynbee phenomenon taken as a whole – the life and the work - which raise questions about being Western and modern – and what being Western and modern means in relation to Christianity. These questions may be subtle, but I think they are also important, and perhaps by addressing them we can get another handle on the questions raised by Henry’s post.

The first thing to note is how frequently in his letters, and also in The Study of History, Toynbee alludes to the First World War and the fact that half of his classmates and school fellows lost their lives in that conflagration. Toynbee’s own exemption from military service was owing to an episode of dysentery he had contracted while travelling abroad. There was in Toynbee a strain of “survivor’s guilt,” of which he seemed to be aware, and which was later exacerbated during his divorce from Rosalind Murray. In a bad moment, she had accused him, on another issue, of “cowardice” – but it seemed to touch upon this former one.

Toynbee had been much in love with the aristocratic Rosalind, the daughter of Gilbert Murray, the classicist. Perhaps he had indeed treated her too much as a “goddess” – as his father-in-law once told him. Three sons were born of their union – Tony, Philip and Lawrence. Toynbee was not a “hands-on” father – if not absent, he was frequently absorbed by his work. His son Philip later wrote in a memoir: “[He] simply had no understanding of children and young people, and no great interest in them either. My two brothers and I attracted his attention largely as nuisances. How clearly, even today, I can see his head poking out of the window of his study, his face a mask of nervous irritation, as he sternly reproved us for making too much noise.” The oldest son, Tony, shot himself “in a fit of pique,” and died a few days later on 15 March 1939. Philip was devastated and considered putting an end to his own life as well. But after a youthful fling with Communism he settled down eventually into a writing career. Both sons married and produced, between the two of them, eleven grandchildren – all girls with the exception of one male grandchild.

Lawrence, the youngest, had always been Rosalind’s favorite. When she converted to Catholicism in 1932, she brought Lawrence with her into the fold. Lawrence was educated at Ampleforth Abbey, a Benedictine establishment. While visiting Ampleforth in 1936, Toynbee met Fr. Columba Cary-Elwes, a monk with whom he carried on a correspondence lasting for 39 years. These letters, gathered into the volume An Historian’s Conscience: The Correspondence of Arnold J. Toynbee and Columba Cary-Elwes, Monk of Ampleforth, (Beacon Press, 1986) form an illuminating commentary on the time – full of upheavals both historical and spiritual. And by no means are all the “illuminations” solely those of Toynbee himself. Fr. Columba’s side of the correspondence addresses weaknesses in Toynbee’s philosophy as well. This loyal son of the Church was unable to convert Toynbee to Catholic Christianity but his penetrating comments helped to ensure a strong Catholic “presence” in The Study of History.

In 1937 Toynbee stated his mission: “I am trying to digest a large lump of modern knowledge and understanding of the material world which has grown up (so vigorously but yet so lopsidedly and without deep roots) during the last 250 years, and to re-place it in the Christian setting from which it has broken out.”

Fr. Columba was a great admirer of The Study of History, comparing it both to the Civitate Dei of St. Augustine and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. But, he wrote – “You have not yet made the deepest synthesis of all – that between faith and reason, and the message will be blurred.” He believed that modern humanity was “too smug” in not baptizing science as St. Thomas baptized Aristotle. He disagreed with Toynbee on the matter of “assertiveness.” Toynbee had written that “Wherever one sees self-assertiveness, one can be sure one is not in God’s presence.” Fr. Columba pointed out that “a Truth may be asserted for its own sake, or because it is your Truth. In the latter case you have pride, in the former not.” Not to assert Truth, in fact, is to “fail in charity” – for “good diffuses itself.”

Fr. Columba’s learned to appreciate Toynbee’s “ecumenical” approach to religion, but he also noted: “You are trying to be fair to all religions. One tends on those occasions to be unfair to one’s own (family) (religion).” Toynbee acknowledged the justice of this remark – “What you say about leaning over backwards from one’s own religion in trying to be fair to the others is very true.” In 1959 Toynbee confessed that the “uniqueness” of Christianity was, for him, the stumbling-block. He later wrote that “Our spiritual vocabulary is entirely analogical (e.g. spirit = breath). This is why I believe the different descriptions refer to identical experiences.” But this is just what it cannot be.

Toynbee's remark puts me in mind of something Owen Barfield once said about language - in connection with translation, what is of interest is the slightly different thing that is said. For example, tree, arbre, Baum, all refer to the same thing, but are they really the same? Where the Englishman sees primarily the trunk, the Frenchman emphasizes the boughs and the German sees the root. It is the same with spiritual language, only in this case there can be no “identical experiences” if spiritual reality concerns spiritual Being.

Fr. Columba replied along these lines, when he pointed out that the language used to describe spiritual reality refers to different “levels.” The question of the different “levels of Being” may essentially demarcate the Protestant from the Catholic sensibility. Rosalind Toynbee, in her book about her agnostic father, written after her conversion, The Good Pagan’s Failure, “… attributed the triumph of barbarism and egalitarianism in the late 1930’s to the abandonment of the Catholic view of the human and celestial hierarchy.”

Toynbee occupied a middle ground – or perhaps a no-man’s land – between a secular-academic world that criticized him for his view of faith and religious imagery [1] and a Catholic sensibility which may have felt at times that Toynbee’s religion amounted to no more than “an eradicable belief in his own religiousness.” [2]

Perhaps it is owing to the fact that The Study of History lived in this middle or no-man's land area, committed neither to one side or the other, that Toynbee himself finally saw his work as “really a myth about the meaning of history.” Yet it is just in the sense of “mythology” that I find Toynbee’s History so appealing. For what kind of mythology will become possible for mankind in the modern, modernist, and postmodern dispensation? What kind of zest for life or raison d’être is possible for us, who have lost all of our “naïve beliefs” and unself-conscious hopes and strivings? [3]

In this respect, Toynbee’s encounter with Henry Luce is revealing. Toynbee’s work was initially highly favored by Luce and Time Magazine. But the two men had their differences. Luce said: “Toynbee regarded America as simply a peripheral part of European civilization. I regarded America as a special dispensation – under Providence – and I said so. My spiritual pastors shake their heads about this view of mine. They say it tends to idolatry – to idolatry of a nation. I knew well the dangers of that sin. But I say we must have courage to face objective facts under Providence.”

So I want to conclude with two remarks. I think that Toynbee did have conflicts about being a man, a father, a Christian, and about rationalism, science, and maybe even “being English.” But believing in being what one is – English or American – is a danger when this self-belief is disconnected from the whole - which it is the task of “pastoral counsel,” of the kind to which Henry Luce alluded, to teach. I think that Ortega criticized Toynbee’s weakening of self-belief without seeing how The Study of History was an attempt to counterbalance and to overcome it. For individual self-belief cannot be sustained without the sense for the whole of which it is a part. Thus The Study of History is “pastoral counsel” in this sense. The "whole" is the sweep of history itself, in which Western man is to be reminded of his origins and also to be reminded about the nature of the historical enterprise itself. The mythos comprises the poetic language – and scholarly bulk – of the work itself. But the lesson is lacrimae rerum - the “tears of things.” It is this lesson which we Americans, in our reckless march to Empire, seem to be unable or incapable of hearing.

[1] Pieter Geyl, the Dutch historian, wrote: “God became man in Christ is to him the veritable sense of history.” The views of Hugh Trevor-Roper have been previously described in an earlier post. Toynbee said of the latter: "I was told that he [Trevor-Roper] has an almost physical horror of my attitude to life."

[2] The quote is from George Gissing’s description of an Englishman’s religion; cited by Maurice Samuels in his book, The Professor and the Fossil(1956). Toynbee’s views did not win many friends among the Jewish community because he believed that Judaism was a “fossilized” religion. Thus Samuels: "We [Jews] are here, it seems, and we have been here these two thousand years, not because we know how to live, but because we do not know how to die; or rather because, dead without knowing it, we cannot perform the act of self-burial."

[3] I suspect that Toynbee must have read Joseph de Maistre [1753-1821], who wrote: "Human reason left to its own resources is completely incapable not only of creating but also of conserving any religious or political association, because it can only give rise to disputes and because, to conduct himself well, man needs beliefs, not problems." My contention is that Toynbee attempted to transcend particularist beliefs, e.g. about being English or being Catholic, with a belief in "universal history" because he saw that in the modern age particularist beliefs could not sustain without a larger spiritual vision. The question of particularism vs. universality is an interesting one and I hope that people will take up this thread in discussion.

Para - doxa

2007-03-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

My nephew, Henry Johnston, a senior at Grove City College, has posted an interesting reflection on "The New Physics" (March 1, 2007) on his new blog, Reroute To Remain a.k.a. Wings Are Burning.

"I have been thinking recently about the implications of the New Physics (that which has come about in the 20th century) in the realm of philosophy. Of course physics and philosophy are really just two sides of the same coin, and have no business being separated. In a recent discussion over a certain theological point with an acquaintance of mine, I invoked the findings of modern physics in countering his argument. He stared at me blankly. For him, theological Truth sits in one little box and scientific Truth sits in another, and never the two shall meet. Modern physics, however, is confirming the cliché that 'it's all connected.' I am finding that this new paradigm is guiding my thought more and more…"

Henry brings up the point that the findings in quantum physics, that the position and momentum of a subparticle cannot be determined simultaneously was, from the standpoint of classical Newtonian physics, nonsensical or paradoxical. It would seem to undermine the most cherished claim of science, which is to discover and confirm predictable patterns in nature. Unpredictability in nature confronts science with the terrifying possibility that perhaps its methodology is not the infallible key to control that it is cracked up to be.

My purpose in this post is not to explore this particular issue, but rather to zigzag to a larger question relating to the nature of paradoxes. Skeat’s Etymological dictionary defines paradox as "that which is contrary to received opinion; strange, but true." From the Greek, para, beside + doxa, opinion or notion, from dokein, to seem. We may contrast "paradox" to "orthodox," that is, "of the right faith," from orthos, upright, right, true. Skeat’s links the Greek orthos to a cognate in Latin, arduus, meaning "high," from whence we must get arduous.

Orthodoxy is indeed an arduous path for many, especially when it concerns religion. But paradoxy is also difficult, perhaps for different reasons. Orthodoxy appears to be inherently more "sociable," having to do with our membership in a believing community. Paradoxy, on the other hand, suggests that kind of uncertainty inheres to existence itself through our thinking. Paradoxy prods us not to think too much of our own thinking; orthodoxy relieves us – not from thinking – but from thinking that thinking will bring salvation.

Perhaps I have just tricked myself – or you, dear reader. I have just said that, in effect, there is not much difference between the paradox and the orthodox. This is not exactly what I intended to say. What I intend to argue is that the orthodox, -- "rightly understood" – is the true home, haven, and goal of the paradox. The purpose of the orthodox is to free us for the paradox. The purpose of the paradox is to enable us to understand the orthodox.

What a muddle! I assure you, dear reader, that despite this inauspicious beginning, that I have a goal in mind, and a purpose for this post, which goal and purpose will ultimately have a bearing on both science and religion – perhaps even to E=mc2, the Uncertainty Principle, and the Virgin Birth. Well, maybe not E=mc2 . That may be more even I can manage! But at least to the other two. But let us start with the third of these propositions, the Virgin Birth.

Readers of this site should know by now of my fervent admiration of the work of Arnold J. Toynbee, historian, and of my desire to do all that I can to further his work, elevate his reputation, and encourage people to undertake reading his unabridged Study of History –
a massive work of 12 volumes which in my opinion is the most spiritually prescient work of the 20th century and the true flower of the modern Western consciousness. Indeed, the eclipse if not sinking of Toynbee’s reputation is symptomatic of a West that has lost its bearings, its heroes, and sense of purpose. In A Study of History, the threads of all of human history and civilization were joined together into a coherent view of what constitutes human purpose and destiny. But joined-up threads do not yet make the fabric. Threads have to be pulled through the needle’s eye – the ever-difficult task of focussing vision to argument. The task involves the soul as well as the intellect, and that is what we experience as "depth." "Depth" is both personal and universal, particular and historical – the large understanding reflected in the glance of a detail.

Depth is what we are missing today in the life of Western societies. Our life today is merely intellectual – which is to say, shallow and propagandistic. But not even Toynbee was able to maintain this quality of depth in everything that he wrote. In his autobiographical book, Experiences (1969) Toynbee wrote an essay on Religion – "What I Believe and What I Disbelieve." It was for him a way of setting the record straight – that he was, despite his high estimation of religion all through A Study of History – a modern Western "agnostic." He writes – "When I was an undergraduate an Oxford I became an agnostic, and at first I concluded, from my loss of traditional Christian orthodox belief, that religion itself was an unimportant illusion. Now, more than half a century later, I am still an agnostic, as the sequel will show, but I have come to hold that religion is concerned with a reality, and that this reality is supremely important."

This essay is interesting from many points of view, but the section "My inability to pass the tests of religious orthodoxy," is curiously static – although perhaps the same could be said of some of the tenets of orthodoxy that Toynbee was unable to accept. Consider what he says of the Virgin Birth – "I reject[ed] the doctrine of the Virgin Birth because I could not reconcile it with an already established belief of mine in ‘the uniformity of Nature.’"

Given the purely physical facts of purely physical reproduction and a purely physical Nature, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth sounds absurd. It is, at the very least, a paradox – Virgin Birth, Virgin Mother.

I would like to suggest that the doctrine of Virgin Birth is a type of formulaic paradox – which, just because it was so paradoxical, had to find a home within orthodoxy if orthodoxy was to remain dynamic. Christianity, in fact, may be a religion of "formulaic paradoxes" precisely because of the momentous nature of its teaching: that is, the spiritual or the symbolical becoming actually historical. Christianity as a whole is a "Virgin Birth" in this sense.

But to begin to understand the precise doctrine of the "Virgin Birth" it is necessary to take yet another step.

We live on the physical plane; we speak and think on the symbolical plane. These two realities are so intertwined that we do not give them much thought, and the tendency of modern society for the past several hundred years has been increasingly to "collapse" the awareness of the symbolical plane into the literal dimension. We forget that, in every examination of the facts of the physical world, we are wielding symbolic concepts, judgments, living or dead metaphors, habits, assumptions and presuppositions.

The awareness of the symbolic dimension in which we think, speak, and understand, was certainly present to a much greater degree among the medieval and earlier societies. The human participation factor was part of the game. Yet it was not called the "human participation factor" – in the dry language of modern abstract thought. Rather, the world was a dynamically interconnected enterprise of spiritual agency or agencies, and human beings participated in this dynamic nexus by virtue of their cognizing consciousness. It was a world "within and without" – as the Book of Revelation puts it – and the withinness and withoutness were not so clearly marked as they are in post-Cartesian times. Thus, in the New Testament, pneuma means both "wind" (without) and "breath" (within). The dynamic principle was perceived – but it took form in both the outer as well as the inner world. The "spirit," which is yet a third meaning of this word, encompasses both the inner and outer meanings – "it goes where it wills." The Holy Spirit moves in the heart as in the world - in the inwardness of man and in the outwardness of events.

But to return to the Virgin Birth: I think that this doctrine can be accepted as "literally true" only in the symbolic, participated sense of reality. Whereas, if one sees the world in purely literal and physical terms, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth could not be understood except in a symbolic sense.

This gloss on the doctrine of the Virgin Birth may not be exactly orthodox in the strictly Catholic sense of the word – or it may be slightly to the paradoxical side of that orthodoxy. For I too understand in some sense the "agnosticism" which Toynbee confesses to be his default position. I was raised in anything but a religious environment, and the conversion to Catholicism would not have been predicted – to use that word – for one of my background. Yet, for me, accepting the truth of the Virgin Birth in its literal meaning has not been an obstacle for me – because my understanding of the world is highly charged with symbolism and participation. I have always been highly aware of words, and of the uses and senses we put to them, as well of their histories and connotations and the social and intellectual circumstances in which they came to birth, and thus I never could glide over the significance of using words to "get to" the literal truth of anything. "Literal truth" in that sense becomes a mere superstition, which is being entangled up in words without being aware of it – that is, without being aware of our own participation in them. Superstition, after all, is only the most enduring form of determinism – the view of the world with no freedom.

Science will devolve into mere superstition in the end unless scientists return to a sober study of philosophy and perhaps as well to the use of real, as distinguished from mathematical, language. There are already many dangerous signs that this regression into fatalism is occurring. The "Uncertainty Principle" may have been an early sign that modern science sensed this danger of fatalism – but in characteristically modern (i.e. nonparticipated) terms this insight was confined to the behavior of particles in the "outer" world. But of itself I do not think this is enough. The retreat into a mathematized, as distinguished from a real and participated, world, is a luxury we can no longer afford, because the effects of the mathematized science on the real and participated world have become acute, destructive and deleterious. But it only the real and participated world, and all of us who live in it, who can put some limits to the "will to power" which has become the trademark of modern science. The relationship between the will-to-power and the regression to fatalism have not been sufficiently explored – Lord Acton’s famous saying, "Power tends to corrupt" notwithstanding.

It was Toynbee’s great purpose in A Study of History to remind Western man of his religion and thus renew the possibility for new beginnings from within. It was thus he hoped to forestall what he saw as signs of sclerosis and fatalism in Western society. True, in his autobiographical essay he missed seeing the participatory-dynamic hidden within religious orthodoxy-paradoxy. But Toynbee’s failure in this instance should not cause us to allow his achievements to sink into oblivion. If anything, it should spur us to attempt to complete what even in twelve volumes he was unable to say.

We need to re-dynamize ourselves – by remembering the paradoxy in orthodoxy.

Universal Churches

2007-03-01T18:11:00.000-08:00

A Study of History. Vol. VII Oxford, 1954.Chapter Seven: Universal ChurchesI have been reading in Arnold J. Toynbee’s magisterial A Study of History and wish to share some thoughts from his Chapter Seven, on “Universal Churches.” He argues that the four higher religions in the world today – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Mayahana Buddhism – were able to preserve the germ of life from a parent civilization in the process of collapse to the arising of a new one. He notes that in the time of his writing (~1952) all eight extant civilizations had in their background some universal church through which they were affiliated to a civilization of an older generation. After the stage of “Primitive Societies,” he names the “Primary Civilizations” (all derived from primitive societies) as the Egyptiac, Andean, Mayan, Sumeric, Indus Culture, Minoan, and Shang Culture. Secondary civilizations deriving from these are named as the Yucatec, Babylonic, Mexic, First Syriac, Hittite, Indic, Syriac-Hellenic, and Sinic.The Higher Religions created, adapted, or adopted from the "internal proletariats” (abbreviated “i.p.”; about which more later) of the Secondary Civilizations are the following:Judaism, Zoroastrianism (i.p. of the Babylonic) Hinduism (i.p. Indus)Islam (i.p. Syriac)Isis-worship, Cybele-worship, Mithraism, Christianity, Manichaeism (all of these from the i.p. of Hellenic Civilization),Neoplatonism (adapted by i.p. from philosophies of Hellenic dominant minority),Mayahana (through Hellenic i.p. via philosophy of Indus dominant minority and adopted by Sinic i.p.),Neo-Taoism (adapted by Sinic i.p. from one of the philosophies of Sinic dominant minority)The third-generation or Tertiary Civilizations derived from the chrysalis churches constructed by their internal proletariats are primarily:Hindu (derived from Indic through Hinduism)Iranic~Arabic (derived from Syriac through Islam)Western ChristianOrthodox ChristianOrthodox Russian Christian: all these derived from Hellenic through ChristianityFar Eastern, Korea, Japan: derived through Sinic through the Mayahana

Modern Manliness

2007-02-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

Friend Andrew wrote concerning the previous post:

“Please do not stop making "careless sweeping statements" (as if you really needed encouragement); I had a professor at Hillsdale who once said that scholars generally shy away from making generalizations; they have encyclopaedic knowledge of all the trivial and obscure points of their particular discipline, but rarely venture any sweeping statements. In my own brief experience with professional academics, I found this to be true. You've certainly given me far more to think about than any of my professors at Bryn Mawr ever did.

"Regarding your reply, I have one further question (some prodding so that you continue this thread). You write that "the civilization that gives way to feminism will decline in excellence and in the appreciation and estimation for character". I agree, but I wonder if the opposite isn't also true: a civilization which has declined in excellence and appreciation for character gives way to feminism - or at least to the brand of feminism we have today. Indeed, perhaps this has to do with the difference between earlier and later forms of feminism. Well, a few more thoughts, and keep up the high quality work on your blog.”

I agree with Andrew’s point. But whether we see feminism as the cause or the result of a decline in appreciation for excellence seems to me less important than asking – what is excellence, what is quality, and why should we care about it? Harvey Mansfield is making the attempt to frame the debate in these terms. He spoke the other night at Bryn Mawr College under the auspices of the Wynnewood Institute. He is one of the few conservatives – perhaps “The Last Conservative Standing” – at Harvard, and has recently published a book by the title, Manliness.

Even to ask the questions -- about excellence, quality, virtue, courage, etc., and how these relate to “manliness” – is to move beyond the dead zones of complacency. I recall reading some years ago – back in the 1990’s, I think – that some conservative writer stated that American political institutions were so durable and effective that we really didn’t need to worry about producing people of quality. I felt utter contempt for this remark, and of the smug mind-set that inspired it. What me worry!! Our elites are actually worse than those of any previous age, for they are not only arrogant and impervious, they are also betrayers of culture. [1]

Since the time I encountered that remark, American politics has seemingly descended only ever more deeply and hopelessly into a messianic sanctimoniousness. American political life abounds with multicultural slogans and paeans to equality, but our foreign policy is spurred by a profound contempt for other people and other cultures. One may well ask if we have lost the ability to see ourselves as others see us, and further, might there be a connection to feminism in this loss of capacity for objectivity?

There are many kinds of feminism, but in its most dogmatic form feminism asserts that there are no inherent differences between the sexes, or that such differences that exist are culturally rather than biologically determined. The distinctions between the male and female destiny, being thus viewed as a mere accident of history, are therefore considered to be rectifiable, and that for all practical purposes a woman can do everything a man can do (and vice versa – although this point tends to get downplayed).

This is a partial truth. But even if one were to take the most charitable attitude toward it, it seems to me undeniable that it suppresses distinction for the sake of monotony, and difference for the sake of sameness. The net result is that the creative conflict which inheres in the encounter between the sexes is denied, and thus the capacity for objectivity and empathy is stunted or dampened. For men and women no longer have access to that “school of life” which teaches true tolerance: that is, being able to accept one’s sexuality, accept opposite-sexedness as a fact of nature, and in fact make use of the energies it provides for the creation of culture. [2]

Add to this stunted capacity to see ourselves as others see us the messianic tendencies of the post-Protestant politically-corrected feminist – e.g. the Hillary Clinton syndrome [3] – and you have a powerful engine for the status quo. The apostles of the New World Order love it when women aspire to men and men aspire to be nothing. In fact for leaders of nation-states to spout feminism is a way of gelding them, and this suits the transnational money-regime perfectly. Thus John McMurtry: “At an unseen level, the world has been usurped by a pattern familiar in the microcosm, but not yet decoded at the macro level – a revolt against human society itself… Its meaning is primeval. It is the atavistic return of society to an unaccountable male gang seeking to dominate the world.” [See his Value Wars: The Global Market and the Life Economy, p. 79; reviewed in an earlier post on this website.]

The book, Manliness, may be taken as a sign that there is a subterranean audience beginning to revolt. Harvey Mansfield has started the debate. He bases some of his argument on biology, yet at the same time cautions against over-reliance on it. Biological explanations are not adequate to the full range of human expression, for they are too reductionistic. Instead of male “aggression,” we need to talk about assertion, protectiveness, confidence, courage – the Greek thymos. Thus Mansfield is developing a cultural argument for manliness – that is, manliness as a sign of cultural creativity. This is a much-needed new beginning. Many Americans have decried for many years the stultifying effects of mass culture [4] . But it is only in recent years, with the ascent of neoconservatism, that a vastly greater number of Americans have begun to feel also dispossessed from politics.

Certainly the repossession of American culture and politics and a return to true American ideals will depend greatly on whether men and women can unite in a common cause. Paradoxically, perhaps, this "uniting in a common cause" will involve the reaffirmation of differences between the sexes. The transforming agent which is manliness needs to be betrothed once again to the agent of responsibility- that is, to the values of civilization which it was the historic role of women to guard. This will mean overcoming one of the worst effects of feminism, which has been the promulgation of the view that men and women have opposing interests. The promotion of this nihilistic and destructive view only benefitted the growth of the State -- “Uncle Sam” found it a handy way to thrust himself between “Mr. and Mrs.” The result has been Behemoth, Bureaucracy, a lot of orphans, and an American State that has run off the rails of reason, law and mercy.

Notes:
[1] Julien Benda, La Trahison des Clercs (1946): "Thanks to them [i.e. intellectuals or intellectual elites] one can say that, for two thousand years, humanity did evil but honored the good. This contradiction was to the honor of the human species and constituted the fissure by which civilization was enabled to come into being." Already by 1946, Benda saw clearly that modern elites no longer "honored the good."

[2] cf. Ferdinand Mount reviewing a book on Tocqueville: “He was amorous, too, nearly fought a duel, wrote love letters in invisible ink made out of lemon juice, married for love Marie Mottley, an English girl with no money, and never stopped loving her despite his numerous strayings. In middle age he lamented “how could I manage to stop that sort of boiling of the blood that meeting a woman, whatever she may be, still causes me as it did twenty years ago?” Harvey Mansfield has also written on Tocqueville.
cf. also Roger Scruton: "...in epochs of high civilization the effort of gender construction is enhanced... in the intuitive recognition that the nervous energy of society-- its ability to sustain elaborate artifice-- is dependent upon the excitement created between the sexes in their coming together." From: Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic, 1986; p. 270. This is very good, but I would add that there is more to the erotic than sustaining the "nervous energy" of society and its "elaborate artifice." I think there is a more fundamental keynote of creativity and thinking that such a bracing view of eros makes possible - namely, simplicity, sincerity, disinterestedness, and ardor.

[3] See Murray Rothbard's "Saint Hillary and the Religious Left"--
arguing that Hillary's feminism is a racheted-up version of messianic Methodism.

[4] Louis Menand, I think, wrote a few years ago something to the effect: "what is worrisome is not that so much American popular culture is bad, but that so little of it is good."

See also my "Metaphysical Womanhood" -

Additional Note: Posted today on "Sober Passion" website, the poem "Storyteller at Times Square." It was sparked by having met Linda Sussman, in New York City, about a year after 9/11. Linda Sussman is the author of a fine book about the legends of the Holy Grail, Speech of the Grail: A Journey Towards Speaking that Heals and Transforms. She is an educator, scholar and storyteller; her capacity for empathy and ability to find the story in every life inspired this poem, in which little touches of her own story appear. The poem is my response to the 9/11 event, and contains reflections about America, our nation and destiny.

Against Feminism

2007-02-16T18:50:00.000-08:00

"The fixed stars signify the angel in man. That is why man orients himself by them; and that is why women have no appreciation for the starry sky; because they have no sense of the angel in man."

~Otto Weininger

The news is enough to drive one to become a disciple of Otto Weininger [1880-1903], the Viennese author of Sex and Character who took his own life at age 23.

I have not written on feminism in this blog, first because I despise it, and second because I have not wanted to devote attention to a social phenomenon I regard as silly, conformist and pernicious. Yet now, with the election of Drew Gilpin Faust to the presidency of Harvard, it seems that the time has come for me to devote a few thoughts to it.

In 1963 I was shipped off to boarding school in Massachusetts to complete my junior and senior years of high school. In retrospect I regret leaving Birmingham at that critical time in its history. Yet being at Concord Academy was, of course, an opportunity of a different kind, although I was not much of a go-getter and Concord Academy did not prove to be the indispensable stepping-stone to Radcliffe – given my abysmal grades in math – which my father (Harvard, 1930) probably hoped would be the case.

That first fall semester I was one of the two roommates of Drewdie Gilpin, who was only a month older than me but in the year ahead. I remember Drewdie as large – tall and large-boned rather than fat – genial, outgoing, and friendly. She liked to sit on her bed with books piled high around her listening to Haydn’s trumpet concerto while doing her homework. I don’t believe we had much in common, and in later years, in what little I heard of her, I was surprised to learn of her interest and success in the field of Southern history. It was rather strange, I thought, that this refugee from the South and its history – namely myself – should have roomed with this person who was later to direct her prodigious energy to the very field which I knew in an intimate, though haphazard and non-academic, fashion.

Cut to 1990. I am living in Philadelphia, and I have been invited to a luncheon at Lucy Durr Hackney’s to honor her mother, the redoubtable Virginia Durr, who was visiting her daughter. Virginia Durr was known to me from my youth in Alabama – one of the strong influences on my life, and about whom I wrote extensively in my unpublished book, Stewards of History. Lucy had told me that Drew Faust would be attending the luncheon. I cannot remember how it came about, but when a slender (almost anorexic) woman came up to me to introduce herself, I chuckled and said something to the effect – "Don’t you remember me?" But in truth I could not fault her for not recognizing me, for if Lucy had not told me beforehand, I would not have recognized Drewdie – or Drew, as she then called herself. By then Drew was a professor of history at Penn. The only thing I remember of our conversation was Drew telling me her daughter had been a student at Friends’ Central for five or six years and was now only in second grade.

It’s a few years later, and I am in the process of writing my book, Stewards of History: The Covenant of Generations in a Southern Family, which was first called The Thoroughbred Colt: Identity and Moral Will in a Southern Family, when it enjoyed a first brief life in an Internet edition. For some reason or another I bethought myself to read something that Drew Faust had written about the South, and I chose for my task her 1982 book, John Henry Hammond: A Design for Mastery. I thought her portrait of this ambitious slave-apologist from South Carolina was a well-written and competently researched history, with certain portions of it of real philosophical interest. [1] But what brought me up short was her view of the Southern code of honor: "…the power of South Carolina’s master class depended to a great extent on symbols and display.. . A symbolism of violence made clear to all how quickly selective force would be invoked to reinforce the structure of power." It was then I realized that this author had no understanding of the human past, much less the Southern one, and that the entire edifice of competent academics represented by this book was hollow at the core.

Thus Weininger’s quote, that the woman has no understanding of the angel in man, seems to me appropriate in this context. I contradicted Faust's view of honor in my book, writing that "Honor is the mutual recognition of transcendent human possibility and worth – transcendent, that is, to merely utilitarian considerations of life. This code of honor indicated a willingness to fight (as with the duel) or to sacrifice oneself in the labor to bestow a boon, as Cocke put it. [John Hartwell Cocke, my anti-slavery ancestor, was the primary subject of my book.] That displays of violence could go to absurd lengths – in Faust’s example, two students fought a duel over a dish of trout – does not necessarily mean that violence was being used to maintain power. Rather, it indicates that the supreme principle of non-utilitarianism, of transcendent possibility, even of self-sacrifice, must be continually renewed."

Drew Faust, after leaving Penn, went on to become the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute, which, according to Heather MacDonald (City Journal, 9 February 2007) " is one of the most powerful incubators of feminist complaint and nonsensical academic theory in the country." In early May, 2005, I sent a letter to the president of Bryn Mawr College, Nancy Vickers, referencing a sadistic and pornographic play that had been produced on the Bryn Mawr College campus- "Conquest of the Universe: When Queens Collide." Drew Faust, an alumnae of that College, received a copy of my letter. I made some pointed comments about feminism – e.g.

"Bryn Mawr College certainly seems to promote alternative sexuality. I have had to ask myself whether the College offers a liberal education or if it is in actual fact a feminist indoctrination training camp."

Mentioning Gloria Steinem's visit to the campus:

"MS. Magazine, which Steinem edited for many years, was indirectly
funded by the CIA, as a part of its agenda of cultural warfare against the
citizens, institutions and values of the United States on behalf of an
international banking elite and New World Order global control."

"More than any other single factor, feminism infantilizes women by arresting their moral development and teaching a false view of Western society.
Indeed, the accusation of ‘patriarchal dominance’ is far more characteristic
of Judaism than of the society we inherited from Western Christianity, and
it is no accident that a high proportion of radical feminists have been Jewish."

Those are some of the choice bits of my letter, which is reproduced in full here.

Need I add that I never received any acknowledgement of my letter from Drew Faust, the priestess of political correctness who is now Harvard’s president; and Nancy Vickers was only prodded with great difficulty to respond to it in a one-sentence e-mail. [2]

Of all the baneful ideas which the American erstwhile Republic has fallen for, feminism seems to me among the worst. Feminism is a social catastrophe which is responsible in large measure for the degradation of civilized values in Western society and for its turn to aggressive and predatory wars. I consider feminism to be the true partner of New World Order brutality, which John McMurtry calls the "male gang" mentality. Feminists, having opted out of the human race -- seeing themselves either victimized or superior, but in any case apart-- have given us over to thugs.

Notes

[1] "John Henry Hammond's ambition was unquenchable. It consumed his life, directed almost his every move, and ultimately, in its titanic calculation and rigidity, destroyed the man confined within it." From the description of the book by the publisher, University of Louisiana Press. Names are omens, and that a "Dr. Faust" would find in Hammond a fit subject for meditation upon the Southern Way of Life is in itself a subject for a type of historical meditation quickened by spiritual "dread."

[2] Priestess of political correctness: Two things in particular stand out in Sheldon Hackney's "Conversation with Drew Gilpin Faust," published in the National Endowment for the Humanities website. First, there was Faust's comment about the Southern women she studied - "I'm not meaning either to condemn or celebrate them but rather to show how difficult the circumstances they faced were and how the kinds of expectations they'd been led to have of themselves made their lives difficult." Dear Miss Faust, we are all thrown into circumstances not of our choosing, and we are all raised in an atmosphere of expectations of one kind or another. The point is, what do we do with it? Thus Faust's view seems to me both deterministic and sentimental: at one level missing the poignancy of the human situation, and at the other expecting too much of it. The second remark that caught my attention was this: "I've been studying unpleasant people or politically incorrect people for my whole academic career. " True, history and life are mostly comprised of people who are disappointing in one way or another. Unlike the ancients, we do not cast admiring glances behind us. But we might also ask ourselves whether our inability to esteem is so much the fault of our ancestors as of ourselves. As an expression of Puritan-Protestant self-righteous judgmentalism, Faust's comment is truly astonishing.