Hallucinating the End of History

the karmic revolution

2010-10-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

This Wall Street Journal article does good job of framing recent political developments in a way that is regularly ignored by media (and academic) commentators. The moral dimension of politics (and everyday life) is far too complex to be divided into the "Liberal= compassionate, fair, egalitarian, and good" and "Conservative= greedy, racist, and bad" categories that have become the tedious currency of the intelligentsia of the western world.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575550243700895762.html

Nothing reveals the eschatological unraveling of our world more clearly than the train wreck that is our political life. I have a feeling that the cliff-plunge into novelty we will see next month will be directly related to the elections of 2010.

New blog, new site

2009-09-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

I seem to have inadvertently nuked my own blog by cutting and pasting something from an email.

If you want to keep following my eschatological musings, you can follow me here!

http://shockwavesofhistory.blogspot.com/

Some responses

2009-08-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've been away for a while, and I haven't had a chance to respond to some of these interesting posts. So, let me take them, in order of the most recent:
3bauer said this:
your concern for the right of people to be fat, smoke,to not wear helmets on motorcycles is disengenous when you then condemn those who consciously choose to end their own lives with the assistance of a doctor. You have no problem with people commiting suicide unconsciously via high risk behaviors. you prefer decisions made by unconcious "nature" to conscious "man". This is a false dichotomy. Humans are natural (with many levels of consciousness)and any human-made object is as natural as any beehive. evolution (the theory of which is, itself, still evolving) can not be stopped and it can not be predicted. there are too many moving parts. Lewis and your comments on his theory focus on projections of your own fears. This choice of focus is up to you.

My position would only be "disingenuous" if indulging in risky behavior (for whatever reason), were the moral equivalent of committing suicide. 3bauer, you assume this to be true without demonstrating it, and I don't think it can be demonstrated. It's also difficult to base an argument on what you call "unconscious suicide." Suicide is, by any understanding, a conscious decision to end one's life, at a certain time, by a certain means. There are those who "drink themselves to death," or die of obesity, but this is radically different from putting a razor to the wrist, or a bullet through the brain. Those who die from from the accumulated affects of risky behaviors may hate life, but they have not chosen to end it. The argument is complicated by the fact that many people indulge in risky behaviors precisely because they love life, and they think that drinking, smoking, and eating fatty foods are pleasurable acts. Lewis was among these, as was one of the jolliest people in history, G.K. Chesterton. The adage "eat, drink, and be merry" invites us to enjoy a life that we know to be of limited duration--not as a means to end it because it's so unbearable. So, unless a distinction can be made between downing a gallon of whiskey for express purpose of ending life as soon as possible, and having a few drinks with your friends, you really can't make a blanket statement that assumes risky behaviour equals suicide. To extend the logic of your argument, if we can admit that life itself involves risks, living itself is suicidal.
My philosophical standpoint has nothing to do with submitting to "decisions made by unconscious nature." It has everything to do with operating in accordance with what Lewis calls Tao, and what I would specify perhaps, as "God's will," as difficult as that may ever be to identify. According to this philosophical position, our lives are not our sovereign legal property, but rather a gift, and we are responsible to the gift giver (certainly not an unconscious nature) for the way we conduct them, and for the terms on which they end.
The theology I hold to would say nature is fallen, as is the human species--both are waiting for the fulfillment of a redemption whose chief act has already been accomplished. Death is a mistake, and its apparent victory is only temporary--this is why we can embrace the parodox (and embracing paradox is by no means the same thing as "being disingenuous") that the person who truly loves life is always willing to lose it, and that suffering can make us better. We have to hold onto life with all the resources at our disposal, yet also be willing to give it up. This is a far cry from saying, "I will avoid suffering by deliberately ending my life with a lethal injection," and it is galaxies away from having a State assume the role of god saying who gets to live. In other words, I am not God, and neither is the State. As for "my fears," I would say that I do have some anxieties about the possibilities of the State assuming the role of master over who gets to live and who doesn't, as well as anxieties about a culture of death that grooms us to accept this particular role of the State by encouraging us to think that we are accidents of some process of evolution that refuses to be defined.

Which brings us to 3bauer's next point when he or she responded to my comment"
"We're marching backward on the evolutionary scale of political economy."

By saying

This statement shows a lack of understanding of the theory of evolution. There is no backwards/forwards movement along a linear scale. evolution is just what happens. it does not have a goal.

I don't think this comment necessarily shows my knowledge of evolution to be deficient, and I don't think it is. I have not said that evolution (and there are many different kinds of evolutionary theories) has a "goal." It is a process, and there are informing determinants in any process of evolution (biological, economic, rational, spiritual) and evolving entities move from one state to another. Whether or not this movement is progressive and linear or horizontal and rhizomatic is largely a question of the historical context in which it is articulated. The grand theories of biological evolution that dominate our consciousness today are steeped in nineteenth century notions of material progress, and the attempts by modern imperialists, statebuilders, capitalists, and Innovating social engineers and eugenicists to link their own grand theories of social control to "progressive science" are unambiguously linear, as is the latest and greatest non-definition of history and evolution that NOW says--"oh, there is no goal, it's all random." If it's all random, how on earth do you define satisfaction? Why bother? Those of us who become conditioned to say "it's all just what happens" are especially easy prey, I think, for those who want to turn the world into an efficiency machine, because they have no arguments against such things as the takeover of human society by large corporation, large governments, or a large "health care" systems. If evolution is "just what happens," where is the freedom of the human subject? I should add that I was joking anyway--since I'm highly suspicious of the concept of material progress and I don't believe in randomness, I was actually being ironic when I made the above comment--here's the irony, lest it be missed twice: we are being run by people who believe in the enlightenment notion of progress--people who profess to want more jobs, more growth, more strength, better education, more material satisfaction. We are getting less and less of these things, and may be poised for a major economic catastrophe. What do you do when a civilization based on material progress is no longer materially progressing? You can either redefine progress as disaster, in which case our leaders will keep telling us, despite all evidence to the contrary, how wonderful we have it, or you can say "well, it was never really about linear progress--we're just living in a continuum of time and space in which a series of things just happen." In the latter case, you are at the whim of those in charge of the system, because in a disordered world, power is the only thing that will matter. Since one of these two philosophical scenarios are likely to dominate the future, it seems that a person better 1) be in power or be willing to scrounge for what power he or she can get or, 2) completely renounce all power and be ready for anything.

Another person asked what a single payer system is and why is it bad? In the context of the current debate on health care it refers to one institutional entity administering and funding the all of the nation's medical services and transactions--specifically, the government. It's relatively bad (if you disagree with it) because it represents the elimination of private health insurance providers, HMOs, and the ability of private hospitals, clinics, caregivers, etc., to manage their own services and financing agreements. If the government were to take over health care, IT, not your doctor, would establish what treatments are available, and whether or not you can avail yourselves of them. Those who are opposing the Health Care bill now are worried that the so-called "Public Option" for health care will either become mandatory for all Americans, or will destroy the ability of private insurance providers to compete for business--meaning that Primera Blue Cross, for example, which you may now have (and like), will not be able to get a contract for health care with your employer because your employer, in the interest of cutting its costs, will give its employees the public option. Then you'll belong to a government health plan that may be a whole lot cheaper, but could drastically limit your options and access to the health care you may want. Those people wealthy enough to buy their own health care (the happily uninsured) are also opposed, because as citizens, they will either be forced onto a government plan, or their favorite doctors will be driven out of practice, because they can no longer compete with doctors who are on the government system. Isn't it interesting that nobody is talking about Government Legal Care? The lawyers who run our country seem to have no problem turning doctors into civil servants, but I wonder how much traction a movement to nationalize legal services would gain in Congress!

LAST--somebody asked what I think about Ron Paul. I would say that he's the only politician in the country who seems to understand that the operations of the Federal Reserve Board, and the prison of public debt into which our banking system has forced all of us is this country's fundamental economic and political problem. I guess I'd vote for him if he were ever nominated--the best that can probably happen is that his ideas are coopted by the Republicans--I don't see this happening because I don't think Republicans are any better, as a party, than the Democrats. None of our public servants except Ron Paul, and possibly Dennis Kucinich seem to care about this problem.

Great Moments in Innovator Health Care

2009-08-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

According to this article, a woman from Oregon, that most progressive of states, has been told that the cancer drugs she needs aren't covered by the Oregon Health Plan. As an alternative, she has been offered choices ranging between hospice care or doctor-assisted suicide. Well, if that ain't a sweet deal, I don't know what is.
The critics of President Obama's healthcare plan are saying that it's ultimately going to provide limited options, poor treatment ,and rationed healthcare. The proponents of the plan are calling the critics of the plan Nazis and terrorists. Oh, okay. It's not like these Nazis and terrorists have any evidence of what the future might hold. Lousy fearmongers.
We can call it the YOOLDD option: "You're out of luck, drop dead."
In terms of Innovator policy-making, though, this is an excellent trial balloon. The statistics showing that most people use the vast majority of their health care in the last year or two of life are overwhelming. The new stars of the healthcare management profession will be those people who are able to use actuarial tables and nationalized health records to pinpoint that moment when citizens will become an enormous drain on the system--meaning that rather than wait until we have to tell a person that a specific treatment can't be covered, we just say--"you're 73 now--we can't afford your next two years of life." Instead of having retirement parties, we'll have assisted-suicide life celebration festivals. We could save billions.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12857

Wow, how dumb do they think we are??

2009-08-04T20:32:00.001-07:00

This is a response to the recent buzz over the discovery of old videos in which the president, as a candidate, disturbingly but not all suprisingly explains his long term plan to get rid of private health insurance. The videos appeared on Breitbart.com and the Drudge report, and something called naked emperor news. One of the videos is here

http://www.breitbart.tv/uncovered-video-obama-explains-how-his-health-care-plan-will-eliminate-private-insurance/

Here's another:
http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-in-03-id-like-to-see-a-single-payer-health-care-plan/

They are what they are--and he is what he is. The White House response was eerily condescending to people who understand this, but no doubt comforting to people who really think he doesn't want single-payer national health insurance. Here's what they released--suggesting that the people posting these videos are giving a false, one-sided view of the aims of this policy. The PR official suggests that maybe people haven't seen THESE videos (of the president promising not to eliminate private insurance). Well of COURSE we've seen him promise that it's not going to be a takeover of health care!--that's what's getting blabbed every night on the news for the last month, that's what that stupid "ABC from the White House" special was about, that's the pitch, that's the misinformation, and that's the one-sided view. The minute you catch these---humans---on public revelations of what their goals really are, they say they're being misrepresented. No--they are not being misrepresented. They are, for better or worse, socialists. The political formation of Obama and his lackeys is nothing but socialist. Can we deal with the facts? It would be far less of an insult to everybody to just say--"look we really think this country would be better off as a socialist republic." Let's have THAT debate. This ridiculous stealth attack is already infuriating people, and their only response is to cry "foul." Why don't they just address the charges? Here's the drivel they put out instead:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25779.html

Good grief.

Why do we love Big State?

2009-08-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Among the most baffling things of pre-eschatonic life on earth is the mad love affair that self-defined "liberals" have with the Big State. I know the argument goes like this: pure freedom in the hands of the wily, the dishonest, and the unethical can lead to widespread injustice, therefore the government has to play some regulatory role. OK, fine. We also live in something like a democracy, so we like to equate "the government" with "the people."
We don't seem to ponder what has happened. Wily, dishonest, and unethical people can easily take power in a government--indeed they have (and I'm not talking about since 2008, or 2000, or 1980--this is a common pattern of all governments, even the so-called democratic ones. Power brings power-seeking people to the surface, and people who seek power are never your friends).
We live in an age of such technology and educational potential that we absolutely do NOT need a humongous government in Washington telling us what to do. There is NO reason that a local community, in 2009, cannot regulate itself, "green" itself, police itself, educate itself, etc. The information is all there. Yet, what is the current regime seeking to do? It wants to send more politically empowered agents ("organizers") into the local communities to help enact top down policies; it puts out a dizzying number of top down policies on a weekly basis; it wants to set salary ceilings, take over car companies, take over health care--oh, sorry, provide a "public option"--dictate what light bulbs we buy---this is the worst of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rolled into one. The only thing a big government can do that a local community cannot do is win a war--yet defense is the only government function generally despised by progressives--I know why "the government" is not really trying to point out and enhance our true potential as free, locally operating citizens--it would undercut the power of the small number of people controlling it). What I don't get is why the intellectual community and the mass media think the Big State is so great. The Big State is passe. Large central states have done their historical duty--now they need to GO.
Real leadership, parenting, stewardship, mentorship and the healthy development that derives from it is based on real education and real emancipation. Modern progressives have coopted the vocabulary and created propaganda and social control, calling it education and emancipation. It's a lie--it's the opposite of what it's supposed to be, and yet, it could so easily be the real thing. We're marching backward on the evolutionary scale of political economy.

At our core

2009-07-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks Anonymous--I think you're right, and I would submit that the thing that ultimately makes us defy the Innovators (even if only by exercising care and compassion for others) will be that thing that the Innovators will target--and it's something not subject to human innovation. Remembering 1984, Winston's humanity is ultimately destroyed once "they" find out how to destroy it. The theological argument would be that what we possess at our very core is actually God given--it's part of Tao itself. I think Lewis would agree with you too--The Narnia Chronicles and the Space Trilogy each end with a triumph over the Innovator-types--but the triumph does not take place without supernatural intervention.
Abolition of Man is interesting because he takes great pains to keep religion out of the argument, although it certainly hovers about the periphery

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 3 The Abolition of Man: What Man's conquest over Nature really means

2009-07-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

The "last generation" [Lewis supposes it might be the 100th century A.D., I'll put my money on the 21st] will see Man's final "domination" over nature, and it will take place in a world in which "a few hundreds of men" will rule "billions upon billions of men." Continuing in his previous vein, he says that each new power won by Man over nature will bring new powers of Man over Man.

"The final stage is come when Man, by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man (59)."

At this point, Lewis says, the "battle will be won. . .(b)ut who, precisely, will have won it(59)?"

It will certainly appear that Innovators will have won.

". . . (T)he manmoulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please (60)."

I tend to agree that the political hijacking of science and education will create an irresistible means of conditioning the masses--the totalitarian states of the twentieth century have all attempted to do this. Arguably, the great theocracies of history have also done this--the Medieval Church and contemporary radical Islam , invested with political sovereignty in their various domains, set parameters around knowledge and take control of the way it is disseminated. Once you see the means in place, you have to take a careful look at the what the ends are--you also have to ask where the concept of Freedom fits in to the particular scheme--this is a topic that will take Lewis back to the Tao. For me, among the many red flags flying in any incipient totalitarianism, is the definition of personhood. I wonder if any cohort of Innovators, fully empowered, will allow the world to reach a population of "billions and billions of men."

We live in an age in which abortion is politically defined only in terms of "freedom of choice" for the mother (which inevitably becomes largely a social determined definition--can I work, can I go to school, can I afford the lifestyle I want, etc.) The question of the personhood of the fetus, so important to the moral dimension of this debate is essentially ignored in the modern courts. We also are moving steadily in the direction of widening doctor-assisted suicide, and creating a rhetoric in which self-offing is, paradoxically, considered a heroic means of self-empowerment. We are moving in the direction of profiling the health characteristics of the unborn so that parents can abort a child if it turns out to be afflicted with potential mental handicaps, physical handicaps, brown eyes, or anything else defined as "icky" for excellence-seeking parents.

Lately we have begun seriously targeting fat people as we have already targeted smokers, and people who don't wear motorcycle helmets as enemies of decency who drive up the cost of health insurance (which will of course become a MAJOR problem once the government is paying for all of this).

We won't ever get to "billions of billions" of people. As awful as this is to say, I have no doubt that whatever gang of enlightened totalitarians is in charge of the world when the economy goes the way it must (and it won't be long from now), will begin offering such brilliant insights as this made public: "Gosh, the real problem with health care, and housing, and quality education, and clean water, and hunger, and joblessness (and all the other crap that we've decided to turn over to the goverment) is that there are just too many people!

This will cause the public to ponder carefully and soberly the idea that some of us are going to have to go. The private closed-door conversations (which have actually been happening since the 1970s, thank you Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller) will be like this: "The most aggressive one-child and no-child policies aren't going to fix this, and there aren't nearly enough self-absorbed old sick people who want to kill themselves. It's good to have enslaved masses and everything, but this is just ridiculous."

At this point, religious people will be the only ones screaming for the value of life as if they had a true moral obligation to do so--everybody else will see the pragmatic wisdom of making the "tough choices." I guess that means the religious people will be the ones to go! I mean, once all the fat people and smokers have been taken care of. Fat religious smokers would be in deep doo doo. Lewis himself would have been toast.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 3 The Abolition of Man: "Man has Nature whacked"

2009-07-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

Lewis takes up the question of Humanity's triumph over nature by looking at three examples of this conquest: the "wireless" (radio not internet, this is 1944, after all :)), the "aeroplane," and the contraceptive. Lewis questions whether these technologies represent triumphs over nature or actually capitulations to nature. In the case of the radio, he observes that the blessings of communication may be countered by the curse of propaganda; in the case of the plane, he observes that people may become the targets of bombs. These may seem to us like odd ways to refute the provisional good of radio or aircraft, but they make some sense in the context of London during WWII.

In the case of contraceptives, Lewis observes that many people are denied existence by the presence of the contraceptive, thus it is a hardly a blessing for the un-conceived. "From this point of view," Lewis notes, "what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (55)."

The point here is not to bash science, but to argue for a reinvigoration of moral value that cure the various potential problems of science. Even if there were "a world state" in which there were public control of science [a state in which science could be restored to its proper place ????] it would still mean the power of the state leaders over other people. Even in a democratic state, the majority [all 51 or 52% of them] would control the minority, and in the long term, the power of the present generation over future generations. This is an enormous point that modern Progressives almost always ignore. Despite believing that they are liberating people from the constraints of nature and tradition by enlarging human power, what a Progressive world view inevitably calls for is the enlargement of the power of some over many others.

"In reality, of course, if one age really attains, by eugenics [or its associated practice, abortion] and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger. . . ." The increase of power over future generations is always attended by an increase of power over past generations.

[This is something I find particularly interesting--especially considering that so many modern Progressives believe in evolution--how can we argue that a world that owes its qualities to random and unfettered evolution should be wrestled into total predictable order? How can we say that we are the ultimate products of a completely non-ordered and often dangerous process, and then seek to make it hyper-ordered and pain free, as we surely are doing with universal health care, and such odd novelties as choosing our babies' eye colors? Are we not destroying that which makes us "us?" The answer is YES, and that's if you DO believe in evolution. A colleague of mine was making fun of one of the recent presidential candidates because he believed (allegedly) that the known world was created, ex-nihilo, in exactly its present state, meaning that there had been no natural development whatsoever of such things as elephants. Knowing what we know about the natural record, it seems that it might be a transgression against sound thinking to assert this as true--BUT an equal, if not greater transgression takes place when you say that elephants (wherever they came from) will from this day forward stop being anything but what we engineer them to be, and the same goes for every social and political phenomenon in the world. Thanks evolution, but we don't need you anymore. How would we know? How do we know that it doesn't take a billion more babies to push us into a new evolutionary stage--if evolution is what you believe, why is the self-satisfied, smug modern human mind the last product of nature?? ]

Anyway---Lewis remarks that the closer we get to our extinction, the less power it will have over the future, because it will have so few subjects to control. The "last men" will be those who have been most subject to the power of the great Innovators in their own past.

What this suggests is that there will be one or two generations, acting in collusion, that may effectively destroy all future prospects of humanity and they will surely be wonderfully progressive Innovators trying to solve all the world's problems--even as they create the world-ending problems themselves.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way:" development of the Tao

2009-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

In anticipating the problem of whether the Tao, as an absolute, is also completely static, Lewis wonders if and how the Tao might change as a result of history, or in the face of any inherent contradictions. He tells us that there are "two very different kinds of criticism (45)."

One is the kind of change that works from within the paradigm, or the system, the other is a change imposed from the outside, or as he characterizes it "organic" change vs. "alteration." The Tao, Lewis says, is capable of change from within, because changes would actually build upon the preexisting true assumptions. As an example he gives the organic shift from Confucius' "do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you" to the Christian "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (He refers to this distinction in the Appendix as negative and positive statements of the law of general beneficence--both are of course part of the universal Tao). While the focus of these two statements, uttered several hundred years apart, is different, the spirit is the same, as is the essential truth it captures.

The Tao cannot be changed from outside the Tao. For example, Lewis refers to Nietzsche, whose ethics cannot be accepted unless "we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all (46)." As we know, Nietzsche often referred to the "inversion" of values, of turning values on their heads, saying that black is white, etc. This would not be an organic change to the Tao, but a revolutionary repudiation of it.

"You must not hold a pistol to the head of the Tao (49)." And yet that is what Innovators often do, and to justify their projects, they are forced, whether they admit this or not, to accept as necessary the abolition of Tao, the abolition of values, and the abolition of humanity itself.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way:" Tao vs. "instinct"

2009-07-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

Long time no post--I want to get pretty quickly to the end of Chapter Two so I can talk at more length about Chapter Three, the Abolition of Man, which is exactly what's happening in the world today.

In this section (pp 40-45) Lewis makes it clear that the distinction between the Tao that underlies the traditional values of common humanity and the biological "instinct" celebrated by the modern Innovator (he calls them Innovators, but maybe we can call them Progressives) is false. Even though the Innovator attempts to subvert traditional values (the Tao) with rational or biological values, he fails to recognize that rational and biological values also stem from the Tao.

He gives us the interesting example of posterity, pointing out Innovators are very concerned about the future (how much hot air is expended in this political culture talking about "our children," and "our children's children" while we are unashamedly destroying any prospect for their satisfaction!). After pointing out that our duties to posterity come to us not from instinct but from Tao, Lewis notes that the Tao, properly understood will show us that we owe as much to our past as to our future. Accordingly, we owe as much to our ancestors as to our children's children. How is it that we forget the one and celebrate the other? Is it because we've become too attached to our nations, our ideologies, our special interest groups? There is no way we can privilege our loyalties to any group without recognizing the network of traditional morality, justice, and obligation in which these loyalties lie. If "all men are our brothers," what gives is the right to pick and choose our associations?

The conclusion Lewis comes to is that Tao, or "Natural Law, or Traditional Morality, or First Principles of Practical Reason, or the First Platitudes" is the "sole source of value judgments (43)." There has never been a replacement value system for the Tao, and there will never be. Anything that seems to be new is only a reworking of an old theme, or an extraction of value from its original foundations. What this means is that if you accept any piece of the Tao, you have to accept all of it, because no value extracted from the Tao can stand alone. "If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity (44)."

In characterizing a rebellion against traditional values as a rebellion of the branches against the tree, Lewis asserts that if the rebels (i.e., Innovators, i.e., Progressives) succeed, they "would find that they had destroyed themselves (44)."

Novelty Report 15 July-22 July

2009-07-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

This week takes us from January of 1793 to April 1794. King Louis XVI was executed this morning, and the next seven days will be the heyday of the Reign of Terror. We will hit a new plunge into novelty next Wednesday, a day which will coincide with the execution of Georges Danton, the great revolutionary who was swallowed up by the excesses of revolution. The madness won't be over for a while, but at this point it is safe to say that the regime we once knew is over and done.

Was the software worth buying?

2009-06-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

Absolutely! I may not be very adept at interpreting these events, but I think resonance is taking place on all kinds of levels. I've been talking a lot about the French revolution lately, and last week, the "King" of pop died, the "King" of infomercials died--and Farah Fawcett died--can we say that she was the queen of pinup girls? The president of Honduras was sent packing--the cap and trade act was passed by the House--almost on the sly as everybody was worrying about healthcare reform, and then California says it's going to issue IOUs because it's out of money.
Bizarre things are happening faster than we can even account for them. If we're NOT embedded in a fractal of increasing novelty, I would like somebody to explain to me how all this stuff just cascades into being every week. How are the rational people interpreting this?

I can't imagine what's going to happen when the other shoe drops on North Korea and Iran. I have a hard time thinking that cooler heads will prevail, and everything will just fade into the woodwork.

Novelty Report, June 27-July 4th

2009-06-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last week we moved through a kind of plateau of novelty, resonating with the summer and fall of 1789 when the French Revolution was in its early “moderate phase.” Beginning today, we will see a plunge into novelty, ending on the 30th of June. This resonates with December 1789 to May 1790, the months when the French national Assembly issued new government notes (assignats) as national tender (China calling for a new world currency?) Feudalism and the aristocratic class was abolished by the National Assembly (the end of the old entrepreneurial middle class with Cap and Trade ???).
We will then see a U-turn on the 30th and very STEEP increase in habit/entropy until July 3rd. This corresponds to May 1790 until December 1790, which saw the National Assembly forcing priests to take an oath of loyalty to the state in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The government of France renounced “wars of aggression,” hmmm, only a year before sending conquering armies all over Europe. Well, our president has often compared himself to FDR and Lincoln—aside from other differences too numerous to mention, he hasn’t had a cataclysmic war yet; like cataclysmic wartime president Lincoln he opens his administration with high hopes for unity—like cataclysmic wartime presidents FDR and Woodrow Wilson, whom he actually does resemble, he opens his administration with lots of talk about peace.We'll see what happens.
On the 3rd of July, we’ll have a mini-dip into novelty, which will change directions on the 4th. This will take us into February 1791, which saw the “Night of Daggers." On this night the Marquis de Lafayette (an aristocrat) order the arrests of 400 aristocrats resisting the new regime. Great democratic hero or traitor to his class?
It's strange to see such a radical dip and then even more radical increase in novelty in such a short time--my non-prediction, but maybe-guess (based on the way these things tend to look in other years) is that there will be a significant rhetorical fallout to the recent cap and trade vote--which will strongly energize talk in this country of resistance, secession, etc., Meanwhile Iran will heat up again, and, heaven forbid, there will be a military attack or severe martial law imposed somewhere on the 30th of June. And then it will be a week later.

Feast Day of St. Thomas More (1478-1535)

2009-06-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

Another powerful Saint to take inspiration from in these strange days. St. Thomas More, patron of lawyers and EXEMPLAR of PUBLIC SERVICE. He was the Chancellor of England under Henry VIII, and wound up being beheaded for his failure to recognize the king as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

The following prayer was composed by More while he was in the Tower awaiting execution

A Meditation on Detachment, 1534

Give me the grace, Lord

To set the world at naught;

To set my mind upon Thee

And not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths

To be content to be solitary,

Not to long for worldly company,

Little by little, to utterly cast off the world,

And rid my mind of the business thereof

To think my greatest enemies my best friends;

For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.

These attitudes are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings,

Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together

All upon one heap

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way:" the source of values

2009-06-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

The practical basis for all values is not instinct, but is, rather, the eternal Tao. Concepts such as universal brotherly love, the Golden Rule, and the need to preserve life are objectively real and axiomatic. They are, as Lewis says "so obviously reasonable that they neither demand nor admit proof (40)." But the good scientific Innovator needs rational proof before he or she can believe anything. This is where the Innovator fools him or herself, not recognizing that all value is sentimental, and that some sentiments are objectively real--they have to be, or else there would be no values of any kind, and this, again is something that neither demands nor admits proof.

"If nothing is self-evident," writes Lewis, "nothing can be proved (40)." By that token, "if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all (40)."

Remembering St. Aloysius of Gonzaga

2009-06-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

June 21st, aside from being Father's Day was also the Feast of the great saint Aloysius (Luigi) of Gonzaga (1568-1591), the patron of youth, and my workplace, Gonzaga University. He was a young nobleman of heroic virtue who died while assisting plague victims in Rome while he was a Jesuit seminarian there. St. Aloysius, pray for us!

Novelty Report 22-29 June 2009

2009-06-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

This week in 2009 resonates with the entire, pivotal year of 1789 through the spring of 1790. I am provisionally willing to accept the demonstrations in Iran as "the" novel event of the 19th of June that the timewave tentatively "predicted," although I have no bets to make as to what it will lead to--but--the 22nd of June will experience a strong increase of novelty. This day resonates with the period of January to April 1789. On the 24th of January, 1789, the Estates General of France met for the first time since 1614--this was the event that would lead to the undoing of the Ancien Regime, politically. In April, the food riots in Paris took place--it was a tumultuous four months that could be a tumutuous day or two for us. A certain "flattening" of novelty occurs until the 26th of June, '09 at which point it rises until the 27th, then plunges deeper than ever between the 27th and the 30th.
In France, the flattening takes us from April 1789 until September 1789--a wild negotiation between novelty and "business as usual" in which the Third Estate attempted to assert its rights to a per capita vote (rather than by estate), and then simply declares itself a "National Assembly" only to have the king lock them out of their meeting place (June '89). This was followed by the revolutionary "oath of the Tennis Court" in which the Third Estate pledged not to disband until France had a constitution. Much of the Catholic clergy joined the Third estate with enthusiasm, the First (nobility) and remainder of the Second (Church) estates were then ordered by the King to join the National assembly too.
July saw Bastille Day, and the beginning of the Peasant revolt against the nobility, as well as urban rioting (the "Great Fear").
August brought the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
(Monday could be a busy day)
The "rise of habit" on the 27th (which takes us to December 1789) sees the National Assembly setting in as the government of France, beginning to nationalize Church property, and deciding who in France has the right to vote (it will be those who have money).
Finally, the radical plunge into novelty between the 27th and 30th (December 1789-May and June 1790 saw open conflict between the National Assembly and the Catholic Church, as well as the abolition of the nobility by the Assembly.
If resonance holds true, it's going to be a very, very eventful week that will bring class and religious division to......Iran?

Another thought on Iran

2009-06-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

It would be novel indeed if the protests in Iran would lead to anything like real democratic change there, although the impetus for that was strongly present in 1979. A lot of Liberal Iranians were stunned when the Ayatollah took control of the revolution after the shah's abdication.
If Iran were to have its version of the French Revolution, we would still see some of the features that the timewave suggests will happen--mainly the reduction of the power of religious elites. Just as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy hollowed out Church power in France, a civil Iranian constitution would surely reduce the power of the imams. It should then lead to a hostile reaction of some kind from other Muslim states against Iran, as in the War of the First Coalition, the end result of which would be a counter-reaction, followed by an exportation of Iranian "modernity" into Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.
It could be, then, that Iran's "revolution" may be a fractal piece of the French Revolution--if the direction of the gradient is to be believed at all, now is not a great time for the prospects of "powers that be."

Novelty addendum on Iran

2009-06-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

To all commenters, thanks for the interesting thread --I think what's happening in Iran plays a huge role here, and I'm trying to figure out exactly how Iran works in the historical resonance--my hunch is that Iran is working as a sort of emblem for Islam as it went through its own convulsions in the late 18th century. As we know the Ottoman empire (another great non-Arab Muslim state) would soon enter a period of radical decline, despite the efforts of some of the sultans to introduce modern reforms. We also know that the entire Muslim world would become picked clean by European imperialists throughout the nineteenth century, arguably beginning with the Napoleonic invasions, which are also embedded in the French revolution. In response to the corruption brought about by the decline of the early modern Islamic empires, the Wahabbi movement (beginning in Saudi Arabia) would begin to make its mark in the late 18th century as a kind of fundamentalist reform movement--this would ignite not only religious reform but nationalism all over the Muslim world--but would do little to stop European expansion.
All in all, this would suggest a (very counter-intuitive) coming trend in which Islam would lose, rather than gain world power, as new modes of European imperialism come into being. Potential outcomes(?): 1) Iran does experience a major structural political change, "aided and abetted" by new Euro-backed investment or military support? 2) The "King of France" often referred to by Nostradamus and traditional Catholic eschatologists, (perhaps a major lower resonance of Napoleon himself) will actually (although at this point almost unbelievably) emerge to rally Europe against a belligerent Iranian government that attempts to quell disorder the old fashioned way--by starting a war--most likely with Israel?
Fringe potentials: East Asia--A strong but starting-to-decline Qing empire continues to resist western economic pressure--a replaying of the Macartney mission of 1793, in which British traders were rebuffed by the Qing empire. China refuses to be cowed by innovations in western commerce (like being pressured to buy non-performing debt instruments :)).
All wild speculations, of course, but the events in Iran are surely rich in novelty.

Novelty Report, 17 June 2009

2009-06-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

We're still eerily smack in the middle of a major higher resonance with the unfolding of the French Revolution. June 20 to 23 resonates with September 1788 to March 1789. What we'll experience in the next week will be something like the calling of the Assembly of Notables, a last ditch effort by King Louis XVI to hold off revolution. We'll also "see" the dismissal of this assembly, which stubbornly refused to deal with the reality of bourgeois power. The Assembly refused to grant the middle class the representation it deserved. We'll see the convening of the Third Estate, an event which had not happened since 1614, and the beginnings of "moderate revolution," although it was attended in the early months (in our case days) by shortages and popular uprisings.
We are on the downward gradient that matches the opening of the first real modern revolution--the revolution that wiped out the pre-existing social order. Are we ready?

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way," ethics based on instinct

2009-06-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Lewis, in an attempt to understand the logic of modern ethical "innovators" who understand that all "oughts" are purely relative, yet must still validate their own attempts to endorse objective order through such things as education, looks to instinct. An innovator will not agree that there is any objective universal morality such as the Tao, but will say that humans share certain instincts to preserve themselves and their societies. Lewis points out that all laws, mores, cultural and religious sanctions can be, in the minds of the Innovators, "swept away" if they no longer serve to preserve the species.

But, in saying that instinct trumps culture "we have not advanced one step" toward achieving an understanding of "real" ethical values. The reason for this, Lewis tells us, is that instinct, if it "must" be obeyed as a kind of biological programming, cannot be changed by exhortation, or the writing of books about grammar. People who exercise good public citizenship, for example, can't be called virtuous if they are simply following their instincts--if people "do" what they "do," there is no reason for education. So even the Innovator [and in the present-day climate of political correctness I would say especially the Innovator], must say that we only obey instinct because we "ought" to obey it.

Why should we obey instinct? Don't some of our instincts work to the detriment of society and ourselves? Do we have an instinct to obey instincts--and another instinct to obey the instinct that tells us to obey instincts?

How can we really have an instinct to sacrifice ourselves for the community, or for posterity when it directly conflicts with an instinct to save our own skin? Do we really have any instincts to save posterity greater than our instincts to take care of our own children? To argue for this would be an uphill battle to say the least.

As Lewis writes, "As we pass from mother love to rational planning for the future, we are passing from the realm of instinct into that of choice and reflection: and if instinct is the source of value, planning for the future ought to be less respectable and less obligatory than the baby language and cuddling of the fondest mother or the most fatuous nursery anecdotes of a doting father (38)."

It is absurd, Lewis says, to argue that our "care for posterity finds its justification in instinction then flout at every turn the only instinct on which it could be said to rest, tearing hte child almost from the breast to creche and kindergarten in the interests of progress and the coming race (39)."

It would seem, actually, that our values have very little, if anything to do with instinct.

More on novelty for this month

2009-06-11T23:01:00.000-07:00

The month we're in also has a higher order major resonance with the time stretching from July 6 1784 to Dec 11 1789, a downward gradient leading to the French Revolution. The wild events of the summer of 1789 resonate with June 19th 2009. I suppose I could go out on a limb and say "let's expect some event of revolutionary novelty around the 19th of June." What could it be? A North Korean Nuke? An Israeli or Iranian strike? A terrorist attack? An outbreak of disease? If the resonance holds true it may very likely be in the political or social spheres.

This month also has a lower major resonance with Dec 1 2012, only a few weeks before the "zero date." This means that the novelty of the present month shares the quality with a day very close to the alleged eschaton--which would also suggest that something big is in the offing.

What do I know? I'm new at this.

Novelty Report 11 June 2009

2009-06-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Just trying this on for size. Before he died nearly a decade ago now (!) Terence McKenna would publish periodic novelty reports based on the Timewave resonance of a given day with similar days (which is to say, days of similar novelty value) throughout history. If you don't know what I mean by the Timewave, it's the model of history that McKenna intuited based on treating the Daoist classic I Ching as a fractal calendar of human events and phenomenology. A more thorough explanation can be found online, just googe "Timewave McKenna" or something with those terms and you'll get it. Working with McKenna, Peter Mayer came up with software into which he input the orders of difference of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching (all this is in the explanation) in order to generate the timewave, and allow users to isolate specific days and judge them according to their novelty value and their historical resonance. I purchased the software recently and am going to try to do some historical research with it--I thought I would also try to issue my own novelty reports. These are purely interpretive exercises, so take them as you will.

On June 11, 2009 we are moving steadily downward (which actually means downward in entropy--an increase in novelty) toward a mini-trough that will peak on the 19th. This day resonates with the two day period of February 26 and 27 in 1942 when the Japanese Imperial Navy pounded an Allied naval force in the Battle of the Java Sea. On this day the obsolete ships of the established imperial powers of the Pacific received a catastrophic wake-up call, leaving the Dutch East Indies and its oil resources wide open for Japanese invasion. Is the historical environment especially rich today with old, exhausted, under-prepared imperial powers getting overwhelmed by highly energized theocratic militarists seeking to dominate the world?

This day also resonates with October 20, 1975, the week Time magazine reported the bizarre news that the city of New York was bankrupt and needed a bailout from the Federal government. Is the historical environment rich with governments moving into "rescue" failed corporations.

In the case of the Java Sea and the New York collapse, time brought a reversal in fortunes for both "defeated" powers. Let's see what happens in the days and weeks to come.

Just a sampling here--I hope to get more adept at this as time goes on.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way," dying for the sake of others

2009-06-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

What happens when you strip sentiment away from "real" values? Lewis continues with the dulce et decorum est pro patria mori example to see how "death for a good cause" can be rationally justified--that is, stripped of mere sentiment and rendered rationally valid.

You have to establish the rational premise that some people may need to die for the good of the larger community, and thus some people will be asked to place their lives at risk for the community. To make an appeal to pride, or honor, or love of country is out of the question, because these are all sentiments, and there is no reason for anybody to overcome their desire for self-preservation in order to serve the greater good. On the other hand, Lewis observes, there is no "rational" reason to choose self-preservation over self-sacrifice. To embrace altruism and to reject altruism are equally rational choices, unless there is some underlying truth that the larger good, society, "ought" to be preserved--unfortunately that "ought" is also a sentiment.

What about Instinct? Can we make an appeal to an instinctive desire to preserve the species and society?

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way," the absolutism of the modern relativist

2009-06-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

In Chapter Two of The Abolition of Man, Lewis observes that even modern relativists (like Gaius and Titius of "The Green Book" fame) have their own areas of dogmatic absolutism. The irony, often unnoticed by secular modernists, is that belief in modern progress (especially now, for Heaven's sake) is its own form of sentimental devotion. Long before progress becomes religion, though, we have to remind ourselves that any progressive who wants to argue simply that progress has value is making an appeal to absolute value. Obviously if there were no absolute notions of quality, one could never make an argument "for" anything over anything else. Slavery is no worse than freedom unless you believe that freedom is "good." It also (should) go without saying that anybody who writes a book is attempting to persuade somebody of something. Why bother if all positions are OK? So even Gaius and Titius believe that their theories are categorically "better" than those based on sentimentalism.

"They write in order to produce certain states of mind in the rising generation, if not because they think those states of mind are intrisically just or good, yet certainly because they think them to be the means to some state of society which they regard as desirable (28)."

And what exactly is desirable to them? Progress? Efficiency? Rationalism?

"In actual fact Gaius and Titius will be found to hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of the professional classes during the period between the two wars (29)."

Basically, these men are good bourgeois secular modernists, "scientific" in their outlook (though not necessarily well-trained in science), progressive, rational, and eager to "debunk" the sentimental values of their antecedents. As Lewis will show, once the self-satisfied progressive begins to debunk the sentimental values of the woolly headed romanticist, they begin to destroy the foundation of modern progress itself. Some do so wittingly with calculation, others unwittingly with naivete. This reality, evident to Lewis in 1944 has come to a kind of Orwellian maturity in the early 21st century.

Inspiration for Artists

2009-06-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

The link below will take you to an inspiring essay written by the wonderful Catholic novelist Michael O'Brien. He gives us a great deal to think about in relation to recapturing holiness as the Way of the Artist--and for hallucinating the end of history, his Father Elijah: An Apocalypse is a must read too!

http://studiobrien.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=120&Itemid=1

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests," the death of just sentiments

2009-06-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

The problem with "The Green Book," and the ideology that inhabits it, is that it excludes all emotion as being irrational (and thus wrong), rather than making a proper distinction between well-formed and ill-formed emotions. The purpose of education (for those operating from within the Tao and not from within the "rational" mindset of The Green Book) is to "train in the pupil those [emotional] responses which are in themselves appropriate . . . ."

Lewis alludes to the Latin phrase dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (it is sweet and seemly to die for one's country) as an illustration. For Gaius andTitius (the authors of The Green Book) the statement has to be discarded because by their thinking it could only be a subjective judgement of the person thinking sweet and seemly thoughts about death--but--if it were important to inculcate in young men the belief that sacrificing oneself for the country is a good thing, if only for the sake of the state, then some new way to "condition" men to that reality would have to be introduced--through the intellect on perhaps "rational" or "biological" grounds. Lewis asserts that such conditioning would not be successful, because "without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism (24)."

"In battle," Lewis observes, " it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscle to their post in the third hour of bombardment (24)."

[Today of course, many educators would argue against the necessity of any military service, so it may be a less effective example now than in 1944, when Great Britain was in the middle of a war against Nazi Germany!]

"The head rules the belly through the chest--the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments (24)."

The great problem of The Green Book, finally, is that it contributes to the production of Men Without Chests, because it represents the core values of an educational system that seeks to increase intellect without a corresponding enhancement of noble sentiment in young people, a problem even more glaring today than it was in Lewis' day.

"In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful (26)."

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests," the Tao

2009-06-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

It's interesting that Lewis would use the Chinese term "Tao" (Dao, or the "Way") to describe the absolute that lies behind the truth, beauty, goodness, virtue, etc. that is supposed to be conveyed through the western educational tradition. He relates Tao to the Hindu satya (truth) and "Rta" ( ritual pattern of righteousness --see Lila by Robert Pirsig for an interesting discussion on the phoneme rta--right, rite, ritual, virtue, etc.). He also associates Tao to the Platonic Good, calling the Way the path "which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar (18)."

For Lewis, the Tao is a "doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are (18)." It follows, argues Lewis, that since Nature conforms to the Way, our emotional responses to things, being natural, can be in harmony with the absolute good, or out of harmony with the absolute good, destabilizing the idea that emotions are merely subjective, and can be valid even if they are irrational. A proper emotion will not be out of harmony with reason, or as Lewis says "the heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it (19)."

Happy April Fools Day!

2009-04-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

In a world growing more foolish by the week, let us pause to honor the only thing on the planet that seems to be flourishing--foolishness. Watch your step!

The Politics of the End of the World, Part III

2009-03-31T12:28:00.001-07:00

http://www.samhsa.gov/economy/

Check this out--the government offering advice on getting through "tough economic times." Unfortunately the government does not offer its own mass resignation as one of the remedies, so we are stuck with exhortations to "positive thinking" and "trying to keep things in perspective." Gee thanks, fellas!

George Washington must be spinning in his grave.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests:" real justice

2009-03-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

In discussing the matter of achieving better reality through debunking values, Lewis observes that "until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it--believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt."

This means that, yes, a waterfall can be objectively "sublime," and this judgment has nothing to do with the "feelings" of the observer.

St. Augustine, as Lewis observes, defined virtue as ordo amoris or, the giving to a thing the affection that is its due. The purpose of education, according to Aristotle, was to inculcate that ability to make sound judgments about the value of things, again according to their due. Education is not the cramming of knowledge into heads, but the cultivation of just sentiments, on the basis of objective reality about the inherent qualities of things. If primary education were correctly accomplished, then children would be trained to appreciate beauty and goodness, even before acquiring the capacity to reason, "so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her."

Now, even Gaius and Titius are trying to train people to have certain responses toward things prior to thinking about them, but the kinds of responses are obviously very different, especially if they insist that beauty, truth, sublimity, prettiness, etc., is only in the eye of the beholder, and is thus merely a subjective opinion.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2009-03-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

The Deer's Cry

(St. Patrick's Breastplate)

I ARISE TODAY through a mighty strength, the invocation of theTrinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confessionof the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burialthrough the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.
I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubimin obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.
I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire, speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.
I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me:God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me,God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me,God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me,God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me,God's host to secure me:against snares of devils, against temptations of vices,against inclinations of nature, against everyone whoshall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):against every cruel and merciless power that may opposemy body and my soul,against incantations of false prophets,against black laws of heathenry,against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,against spells of women [any witch] and smiths and wizards,against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.Christ to protect me todayagainst poison, against burning, against drowning,against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of theTrinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.Salvation is of Christ.

May Thy Salvation,
O Lord, be ever with us.

Gullibility check: Recession to bottom out this year

2009-03-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke says that the present economic recession will bottom out in '09 "if (and this is a big if to say the very least) the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system." How on earth are we supposed to "bolster" a banking system whose chief "assets" consist of billions of dollars in non-performing mortgages? And we haven't even factored in the infamous credit default swaps yet. The accounts payable bill for derivatives generated in the last several years is estimated at over a quadrillion dollars. These are contracted payments that somebody is going to have to figure out how to redeem. Says the chairman: "But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year." If our economy is going to be stabilized, the banking system, such as it is, will necessarily have to be dismantled long before it can happen. Is that the plan?

Restoring Science to its Proper Place, part 2

2009-03-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

Behold an interesting piece from The American Thinker that summarizes the arguments of the thousands of scientists who disagree with the now-mainstream arguments concerning the phenomenon and dangers of global warming. Not being a scientist, but a historian and psychonaut, I find it odd that there could be so much wild disagreement over something so--um--scientific. Our president wants to restore science to its proper place, which is to say, to unpack it from "ideology." If only it were true that science isn't just as ideological as everything else under the sun of this politicized world. It's worth noting that The American Thinker is a pretty conservative magazine, so obviously its conclusions may be ideologically driven--unlike those of disinteresed Nobel Prize winning scientists like Albert Gore :)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_clear_and_cohesive_message_1.html

"Christianity loves a crumbling empire"

2009-03-15T21:42:00.001-07:00

The title is a nice quip from the following very interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor called "The Coming Evangelical Collapse" by Michael Spencer

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

It seems likely that some real ecumenical movement could take place if the Christian faith is ultimately pitted against the modern state as this author seems to think.

Restoring Science to its Proper Place, part 1

2009-03-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

From Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

"As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist [. . . ] and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow this scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love, or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large and the cosmos so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole a man can hide his head in."

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests:" irrigating deserts

2009-03-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

Lewis suspends judgment on whether or not teachers like Gaius and Titius are in fact trying to destroy traditional values, but contents himself for the time being with merely criticizing them for offering amateur philosophy when they are supposed to be offering professional grammar teaching. Why have they done this?

One reason, perhaps, is that literary criticism is difficult, and making fun of sentimentality is easy.

Another reason is that Gaius and Titius may have completely misunderstood "the most pressing educational need" of the day (remember this is 1944), by trying to "fortify the minds of young people against emotion." Lewis believes the problem is a very different one.

"My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility, there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments."

A final reason is that (getting back to the question of whether they are trying to make a clean sweep of values) Gaius and Titius, by debunking traditional sentiments, are attempting to establish a new historical relationship between reason and emotion, which will have the effect of redefining humanity.

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests:" trousered apes and urban blockheads

2009-03-11T21:23:00.000-07:00

Lewis continues in the vein of criticizing authors like Gaius and Titius for destroying sentiment under the masquerade of teaching grammar. He cites a certain grammarian Orbilius for giving a critique of a composition in which horses are called "the willing servants of the early colonists in Australia." The fault Orbilius finds is a literal one--there is no way, says Orbilius, that a horse could possibly care about colonial expansion--as for the quality of the prose he says nothing, prompting Lewis to complain that students really need to be taught that what makes bad writing bad is its aesthetic quality--not its literal accuracy. Composition writers need to teach students to recognize the aesthetic deficiencies in poor writing--to fail in this educational task is to run the risk of reducing all citizens to the level of the "trousered ape" or "urban blockhead" for whom fine sensibility in prose means nothing. To such people, all sentiments, whether noble or pedestrian, will become equally useless, if no distinction is made between the aesthetically good and the aesthetically bad.

"That is their day's lesson in English, though of English they have learned nothing. Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand."

Fr. Elijah's insights on the Apocalypse

2009-03-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

From Fr. Elijah: An Apocalypse, by Michael O'Brien

"The vision is prophecy, but more than prophecy in the sense of mere foretelling. It does not occupy itself with dates and lengths of time, except in an oblique way. Those believers who will one day find themselves living within the actual events predicted will see things laid out all round them, and then the times and places will become clear, like lenses coming into focus. Whether or not the revelation of John describes a period stretched out over three and a half years, or twenty five years, a century, or a millennium is as yet uncertain and remains the subject of debate among biblical scholars. Jesus Himself reminds us that no man knows the hour or the day of the return of the Son of Man. It would not be good for us to know. Most people would probably lapse into a kind of reverse legalism, indulging in all sorts of disorders, assuming that we can rehabilitate ourselves as the time draws near for His return. For the health of each individual soul, therefore, the Holy Spirit found it necessary to avoid overt prescriptions, precise details."

Abolition of Man, Ch 1, "Men Without Chests:" practical results of prosaic education

2009-03-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Lewis invites us to consider another piece from the Green Book. In the fourth chapter, the authors, Gaius and Titius run down an advertisement of a pleasure cruise that promises to take a voyager "across the Western ocean where Drake of Devon sailed," and give them the experience of "adventuring after treasures of the Indies." Lewis argues that G and T could have used the opportunity of such a "venal and bathetic" piece of ad copy to show its readers the difference between good and bad writing. Instead, Lewis tells us, the authors criticize the ad because it is literally incorrect--that the boat won't really go where Drake did, and that it really doesn't offer any true adventure. Lewis believes that the writers completely missed the point about what's wrong with the advertisement.

"From this passage the schoolboy will learn about literature precisely nothing. What he will learn quickly enough, and perhaps indelibly is that all emotions aroused by the local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible." The problem is that the schoolboy is not taught anything about the distinction between fine sentiment and schlocky sentiment, which he needs to know, but is instead only taught not to "fall" for anything that isn't literally true. This may make him practical, but it will also keep him from acquiring an appreciation for noble sentiments.

"Gaius and Titius, while teaching him nothing about letters, have cut out his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful, and humane."

The Politics of the End of the World Part II

2009-03-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

From the time of Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World in 1908, the template for the modern-day apocalypse has been set. It resonates through the "Omen" movies, the "Tribulation" movies, the "Omega Code" movies, and into those godawful "Left Behind" books and films. It goes like this: Some suave, charismatic international-type leader, acting in the name of humanity, begins to construct a world-government in response to some crisis. All the rational governments of the world fall over each other to ratify this person's power, because he is just too wonderful--exactly the right person for the times, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, stupid religious people (often Jews who have converted to Christianity) oppose his rule, and make the mistake of getting in his way. The world leader steps in to crush religion, usually succeeding in co-opting the major religions, because the leaders of those religions are rational enough to see that the world leader has the world's spiritual interests at heart. The world leader declares himself god, too late for the religious leaders to realize how dumb they were to trust him--then we have the ushering in of the whole end times scenario of the book of Revelation--the final holdout believers are pitted in combat against this oppressive order, and in the final battle, goodness prevails over evil.
I find it interesting that the aesthetics of modern totalitarianism match this scenario so well. If we compare Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, the Narnia Chronicles, That Hideous Strength, L'Engle's Time quartet, etc. to the "anti-christ" aesthetic, it's always the same. Some faction acting in the name of reason, laden with new rules, a glorious vision for humanity, and overlapping "inner circles" of elites begins to take over the existing order, systematically eliminating freedom in the name of reason (which curiously pits the two Truths of Enlightement Modernity against one another). The faction has one and only one interest, power, and they will do anything to keep it.
Why is life on earth starting to look like some cheesy antichrist movie screenplay? Where is our imagination for goodness' sake? It's almost like this myth really is scripted, and we will perform it until we wake up and choose to get out of it. It doesn't matter which party is in office. The Republicans and the Democrats each have their own version of the script. Modern civilization really has sown the seeds of its own destruction in the form of this endgame scenario--we can call it "The Love of Power triumphs over All."
If it continues like this, all the religious believers will eventually be on the same side--it will be weird to see Muslims and Southern Baptists fighting side-by-side to put an end to some "world government."

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests:"

2009-03-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

Update: Gaius and Titius assert that when we make statements of value we are really "only saying something about our feelings." The implication here is that there are no absolute value statements--so that good, bad, sublime, and pretty can exist only in the mind of the beholder.

Lewis observes that on the most superficial level this is an absurd idea, because if I were to say about a waterfall or anything else, "it is sublime," it would not be the case that I have sublime feelings, but rather humble feelings. If I say "you are contemptible," it surely does not mean "I have contemptible feelings." While Gaius and Titius are not expressly trying to destroy the idea that there may be absolute values of "good," "beautiful," or "sublime," the effect of their strategy (in teaching grammar, ironically, not aesthetics) is that they condition youngsters to think this very thing. As Lewis puts it:

"The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all."

A sense of normality

2009-03-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

This is a public response to the very good comment "Paul" made to the "slow down eschaton" entry--it's absolutely right that all of this "normalcy" is just the way it should be--we shouldn't expect anything dramatic, most likely. Here is an interesing piece from Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah: An Apocalypse. The protagonist, Fr. Elijah, who was sent to do spiritual battle with the President of the Federation of European States (the antichrist guy), is talking to his friend, Msgr. Stangsby. Fr. Elijah is surprised that his first conversation with the antichrist was so humdrum.
"It was a surprise. But I should have known it would be that way. The apocalypse is not melodrama. If it were, most people would wake up and see the danger they are in. That is our real peril. Our own times, no matter how troubled they may be, are our idea of what is real. It is almost impossible to step outside of it in order to see it for what it is . . . . The living apocalypse radiates a sense of normality. We are inside it."

The Politics of the End of the World Part I

2009-03-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

The video link below is not meant to be a defense of the Bush administration, and is certainly not a lamentation over the fact that McCain wasn't elected--but is posted only in the interest of increasing our awareness of kind of people to whom we have given the task of governing our nation in a time of great crisis--very arguably, these are the people who created the crisis, and as our new president's chief of staff is fond of saying, "never let a crisis go to waste."

Most of my left-leaning friends were convinced that the Bush administration was the resurrection of the Third Reich--that 9-11 was a contrived emergency, that the War in Iraq was pre-planned--event, etc. Even IF all that were true, and IF government lies and totalitarianism are what the Left fears most, why has the Left been so acquiescent to its own party's incipient totalitarianism? Why is the left-leaning media so unwilling to speak, as the saying goes, "truth to power?" Why are conservative news sources the only ones talking about these things?

This is no longer a "right vs. left" issue. Those terms don't even describe anything anymore. We are moving toward totalitarianism, of which the prior century has given us many examples, but two broad types: fasicsm and communism. Because fascism has been historically associated with the political right as an extreme form of conservatism, the left has always been invulnerable to charges of fascism--by definition, whatever the left does, even when it takes extreme measures against the moderate right, it is "protecting" us from fascism. We need to remember that the chief historical difference between totalitarian communism and totalitarian fascism lies in the way each side views private property. Communism abolishes it, fascism protects it--it taxes the bejeesus out of it, but protects it. This means that in time of crisis, in a country with a founding tradition of private property as the basis of freedom (read John Locke) Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to take us down the road to fascism. But wait, you say. Aren't fascists all racists? It depends. Fascists are scapegoatists--who, in contemporary American society would become the analog to the Jews in Germany of the 1930s? That's a very big question. All of us, on the left, right, and in between, have to be very careful about what we let the government in Washington, D.C. do, and very critical of what it says. The media did a wonderful job of turning George W. Bush into Primary Suspect No. 1 for eight years. Will it do the same to this president?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 1 "Men Without Chests," Sublime feelings

2009-03-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Lewis takes a somewhat circuitous route to the main point in the opening chapter of The Abolition of Man, but in true Lewis fashion, the prolonged buildup of logical foundation-laying is ultimately well worth the effort to read.

He begins by discussing a high school grammar book that he calls The Green Book, by two authors he calls "Gaius" and "Titius." In real life apparently, the authors were Alex King and Martin Ketley, and the book was really called The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing. Be a college professor type, I rarely encourage people to do research on Wikipedia, but the article on this book is very informative with very good links. Here 'tis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man

Anyway, Lewis discusses the Green Book's depiction of the famous story of Coleridge at the waterfall. As the story goes, Coleridge recalls seeing two tourists discussing a waterfall (let's take a moment and marvel at this "telephone" game--I'm talking about Lewis talking about Gaius and Titius talking about Coleridge talking about two tourists talking about a waterfall--sheesh). One tourist said the waterfall was "sublime," the other said it was "pretty." Coleridge apparently approved of the first judgment and disapproved of the second. According to Gaius and Titius, "When the man said this is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall . . . Actually . . . he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings." The authors conclude, "This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our feelings."

So this gives us a key to one of the central problems in the book. Are there things that are objectively "sublime" or "beautiful" or "good" or "true," or are all of these things subjective opinions. The more important problem, for Lewis, is that these modern educators, without reflection on the important issue contained in the first problem, have already rendered their verdict, taking as their premise that judgment of aesthetic value are "only" questions of personal feeling.

Francis Xavier Novena March 4-12

2009-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

Most amiable and most loving St. Francis Xavier, in union with thee I reverently adore the Divine Majesty. The remembrance of the favours with which God blessed thee during life,and of thy glory after death,fills me with joy.I implore thee to obtain for me,through thy powerful intercession,the inestimable blessing of living and dying in the state of grace. I also beseech thee to obtain the special favourI ask of this Novena. (Make your request here...) But, if what I ask is not for the glory of God,and the good of my soul, I pray and desire that which is the most conductive to both.Amen. Pray for us, St. Francis Xavier.

The Abolition of Man

2009-03-05T23:08:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, I'm going to start another book summary/reading guide, this time for a much shorter, much more accessible book that has to be one of the most important books written on the moral predicament of modernity. It's C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man, first published in 1944, and prophetic in its characterization of modern life.

Slow down eschaton!

2009-03-05T22:46:00.001-08:00

It's getting kind of hard to think of good postings these days. Every time I want to write some wry, punchy, perhaps sarcastic comment on world affairs that suggests the world is rushing headlong toward its end, some major media outlet has already released it as serious news. Like ever more bejillions of dollars being conjured into existence to be "spent" on agencies that are either non-profit ventures or simply proven failures--and nobody really complaining; a birth clinic that lets parents choose the eye and hair color of their babies; material objects whose shape can be changed by mere touch, a mad Italian doctor who claims to already be cloning babies, physicists casually talking about transhumanism, Israel getting ready to go to war with Iran--where do you begin??

I should start some wild whacky blog that persistently claims that everything is just fine, and that the historical process is chugging away like normal-the only problem is that I'm not a big enough risk-taker to even pretend I can buy into anything so outrageous. So I'll stick with the apocalyptic.

We seem to be somewhere near the point in Harry Potter when Professor Umbrage installs herself as the new sheriff at Hogwarts. Or maybe we're Rohan after the appearance of Wormtongue. The only people who seem to have even a chance for lasting success in this world are either dishonest or mediocre. Why are we heaping such power and praise on so many people whose talents and motives are suspect at best?

Some quirks in the first week of Lent

2009-03-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

The Eye of God:

Here's an interesting image--just as spectacular as the Eye of Mordor, and a whole lot more pleasant to look at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/4805889/Eye-of-God-pictured-in-space.html

Asteroid near miss:

It wouldn't be fair to have such a poorly announced world-ending catastrophe! A kill shot from outer space without pandemonium and rioting in the streets? It's a good thing this rock did miss us :)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,503164,00.html

Having a good old time on Mardis Gras!

2009-02-24T09:19:00.001-08:00

Heck, what's another $410 billion? It's only money. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/House-Democrats-propose-410B-apf-14450221.html

As if things weren't wierd enough: Atlantis found?

2009-02-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

It was reported yesterday that a giant rectangular criss-crossed grid the size of Wales, was detected 3 1/2 miles under the Atlantic ocean. The "discoverer" was Bernie Bamford, an aeronautical engineer who spotted the site while looking at Google ocean. It's location seems to match the location given by Plato in Timaeus, and seems big enough to hold the legendary civilization.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2255989.ece

Of course the source for this is The Sun, not one of those serious media outlets like The New York Times, Fox News, or MSNBC, so we should take the news with a grain of salt :)

[I'm reminded of that moment in Men in Black when Tommie Lee Jones's character says to Will Smith that the tabloids are the only papers in the country that actually report the real news--are we there yet? "Mom gives birth to octoplets" "Congress assures nation that spending a trillion dollars will stimulate the economy". . .]

Time to break out the Timaeus again. As I recall, Atlantis went down in catastrophe because its people were overly materialistic, arrogant, and in love with the splendor of their own knowledge and technology, ignoring the gods and natural morality. Well, thank goodness we have nothing to worry about!

The prophecy of St. Malachy

2009-02-20T14:44:00.001-08:00

Here's a link to one of the more interesting end-of-the-age prophecies out there.

http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp

Pedro Perpinan's take on Jesuit Education, 1555

2009-02-17T12:30:00.001-08:00

"Nothing would be more disastrous to our own ideals and to the expectations of our own patrons, if, forgetful of our very name and the dedication of ourselves to God, we should attempt to draw youth to us by means of teaching grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and philosophy, unless these were directed to that one end of all our endeavors, the inculcation of Christian virtue.
Many of you indeed perceive that learning is not by nature estranged from even the perfection of virtue; nay, more that in the instruction of youth it is of paramount importance that the two should go hand in hand. But in Christian republics there have ever been two sorts of individuals striving with noble effort to compass the perfection of learning.
The one sort, captivated by the very appeal of learning and its seeming self-sufficiency, strains every nerve to acquire subtlety in argument, power and fecundity in speech, and the inner secrets of science.
The other, dedicated to promoting the interests of the commonweal, seeks only to cultivate the useful arts, believing that hin so doing he will at once win the plaudits of glory and fulfill the highest call of integrity, but withal forgetting or obscuring the evident claims of Christian virtue. Both of these classes of individuals are in error.
Thus you see, I take it, the great necessity we have is to unite and harmonize knowledge and virtue; and you see as well the direful consequences of their dissension and disunion. Indeed, it learning is allied to virtue, it is potent to form the youthful mind, to recall it from sin and shame, to safeguard religion itself; but alone it is powerless to instruct or improve, and oftentimes it thus becomes the worst enemy of religion. This the Society of Jesus understands clearly, and understanding it seeks with all its strength and tenacity of purpose to direct its work of the classroom to the formation of learned men surely, but withal of men who have imbibed and made their own the virtues worthy of Christian gentleman (sic). This iw what the Society aspires to accomplish on your behalf, this is its whole aim and endeavor, that remembering your Christian faith and profession, you will never be content with the vain glory of science alone, but will bring into perfect alliance and harmony every highest virtue and the best of learning."

The End of the Present World and Mysteries of the Future Life

2009-02-16T20:49:00.000-08:00

The first English translation of one of St. Therese's favorite books had made a big splash in the U.S., at least among dedicated Catholic eschatologians. Apparently this book, written by a French priest, Fr. Charles Arminjon, was one of the reasons that the Little Flower decided to enter the convent.

The link below gives a brief history of the book and publication information, including the provocative opening sentence:

"It has seemed to us that one of the saddest fruits of rationalism, the fatal error and great plague of our century, the pestilential sources from which our revolutions and social disasters arise, is the absence of the sense of the supernatural and the profound neglect of the great truths of the future life."

http://www.spiritdaily.com/theend1.htm

Radical problems

2009-02-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

" Our problems today are more complex and more threatening than at any time in history. Sadly, we cannot even begin to solve those problems, because our reality orientations are lower than a snowman's blood pressure. We squint at existence through thick veils of personal and societal ignorance, overlaid with still more opaque sheets of disinformation, thoughtfully provided by the state, the church, and big business (often one and the same). The difference between us and Helen Keller, is that she knew she was deaf and blind.

Radical problems call for radical solutions. Conventional politicians are too softheaded to create radical solutions, and too fainthearted to implement them if they could, whereas political revolutionaries, no matter how well meaning, ultimately offer only bloodshed followed by another round of oppression.

To truly alter conditions, we must alter ourselves--philosophically, psychologically, and perhaps, biologically. The first step in those alterations will consist mainly of cutting away the veils in order that we might see ourselves for that transgalactic Other that we really are and always have been."

From Nightmare into Dream

2009-02-15T23:02:00.000-08:00

From "New Maps of Hyperspace" by Terence McKenna

"In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus tells us, 'History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.' I would turn around and say that history is what we are trying to escape from into dream. The dream is eschatological. The dream is zero time and outside of history. We wish to escape into dream."

The Howard Zinn paradigm

2009-02-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

Howard Zinn's famous quip "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism," is among the most influential bumper-sticker-sound-bites-passing-for-wisdom that American culture has ever embraced. It sounds so wonderfully paradoxical that it has to be true--but it isn't by any means true. It's debatable at best.

Dissent may be necessary from time to time, but it's not the highest form of patriotism. It's a form of resistance. I wouldn't presume to know what the highest form of patriotism is, but it's amazing how this kind of thinking--the paradox-as-truth has worked its way into all of our thinking.

What happens if we put two untrue but amusing quips together? For example, Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and Zinn says that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. If these things are true, then "Dissent is the highest form of the last refuge of a scoundrel."

It's going to be interesting seeing how patriotism will be redefined on bumper stickers now that the many, many dissenters against the Bush regime are now in charge of the country. Until we learn that "Loving President Obama is the highest form of patriotism" we should exploit the Zinn paradigm for all it's worth and live wild lives of paradox.

Screaming is the highest form of silence

Death is the highest form of life

Infidelity is the highest form of marriage

Theft is the highest form of protecting property

Lying is the highest form of truth. . .

I mention all of this because somebody sent me an interesting article from Cathnews USA. Some members of the faculty at Boston College have their knickers in a twist because this Jesuit university has had the gall to place crucifixes in the classrooms.

http://www.cathnewsusa.com/article.aspx?aeid=11731

The most interesting argument for why this is bad is because putting up these crosses is a "break from the Jesuit tradition of tolerance." I'm not sure why an expression of devotion would be interpreted as "intolerance," and I have no clue how anybody could think that any part of the Jesuit tradition would find the placing of crucifixes in classrooms offensive. Spreading the Catholic faith, with all of its symbols, is what Jesuits DO.

Could it be that "the suppression of Catholic symbols is the highest form of Jesuit tradition?"

Bishop Sheen's "Life of Christ," snippet two

2009-02-10T22:28:00.000-08:00

"Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.

The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colorless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.

The problem now is: Will the Cross, which Communism holds in its hands, find Christ before the sentimental Christ of the Western world finds the Cross? It is our belief that Russia will find the Christ before the Western world unites Christ with His Redemptive Cross."

Fulton Sheen's take on the moral difference between postwar communism and western democracy is very provocative, but a great deal has changed since the Bishop's death in 1979.

Maybe the problem now is: Will the Cross and Christ both be ditched by communists and western democrats, both of whom now seem to worship only money? Or better yet, will the western democrats just ditch Christ and join the communists in hanging the entire world on a Cross of Debt?

Some Snippets from Bishop Sheen's "Life of Christ"

2009-02-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

"The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ."

A Titanic Clash of Absolute Goods

2009-02-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

The chief reason, it seems to me, that political life in the modern world, especially in the United States, has become such a joke is that there are no real villains in the process, but in order to achieve success in the system, politicians and parties have to generate fear of some wicked Other. There is nothing particularly interesting or new in any of the policies they espouse, so no traction can really be gained talking about them--you have to add spice to your boring policy by accusing the enemy of wanting to destroy it, along with the very fabric of patriotism, humanity, or whatever, into which it is woven.
If you really think about it, though, both of our high modern political parties espouse the same things. They both say that America must be strong, prosperous, humane, people-serving, and just. Of the course the strategies for achieving these Goods-that-nobody-questions are what's in play. The left seems to favor the Good of Public Compassion, even at the expense of Personal Responsibility. The right seems to favor the Good of Personal Responsibility, even at the expense of Public Compassion. In days of good health, the entire body politic might move to emphasize one or the other of these two Goods for a while, then change its mind, and move in the other direction, as a healthy person might from time to time make alterations in diet, exercise regimens, reading, or entertainment, knowing that it all contributes to good health.
In days of great sickness, such as our own, we become fetishists--and like most exercise, diet or taste fetishists, we become very defensive about our chosen thing, and seek to demolish whatever value the rival idea might possess.
For a society to work, it must honor both Public Compassion and Personal Responsibility. The attempt to create a commonweal of compassion and justice without first clearly defining the responsibilities of citizens can only end in confusion and collapse. The attempt to create a commonweal based only on duty and obligation without clearly defining the rights of citizens can only end in misery and revolution. What's interesting to me is how many Good Leftist politicians are indeed self-made people who have never taken a dime from the system, and for some reason seem to think that the system is rigged against self-improvement, leading them to use the power of government to level the playing field. It's not populism, but the worst kind of elitism that says, "I made it, but you can't, so I'll help you."
Equally interesting is to note how many Good Rightist politicians have had their toast buttered from birth, have never done a lick of work or served in the military, yet still squawk about honor, patriotism, and hard work. It's not rugged leadership, but hypocrisy that says, "I know these ethics and moral values are true, but don't expect me to live by them."
The most interesting thing, though, is to see how all politicians turn their rivals into caricatures of the worst aspects of what their chosen political ideology can bring left unchecked. Thus Obama becomes a "communist," and GW Bush becomes a "fascist," all because 1) the media and intellectual community are not doing their job to evaluate the public sphere honestly and critically, and 2) we're largely too dumb or too lazy to care.
We'll never have a proper balance of these Goods as long as the political system continues to be a kind of burlesque show. It's not likely to change, but WE can opt to stop being people whose sole function is to show up at the theater with a basket of rotten tomatoes ready to throw at the villain we've been conditioned to hate. Until we decide to re-define and re-order ourselves as something other than voting board pieces in a colossal power game, this is what we're going to be stuck with, and History will go on and on, until we're nothing but a bunch of angry ghosts watching infotainment on cable.

History-ending dialectic in 2009: the synthesis of Marx and Smith

2009-02-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

The recent months have brought about an odd confluence of historical worldviews. When Francis Fukuyama declared the "End of History" after the fall of the Soviet Union, he was operating from the assumption that the USSR-US conflict was the last major historical conflict to be resolved. Not only did the escalation of terrorism in the wake of the superpower nuclear duel prove that he was premature in his judgements (which he admitted), it seems that nobody would have predicted that Socialists and Capitalists would hijack the historical process together.

The Great Synthesis of the third millennium is the confluence of socialist statism and "free market" capitalism. When Wall Street and the US government decided late last year that neither could survive without the other, they introduced a major piece of postmodern reality. They have the raw power and access to resources, military and financial that will allow them to guarantee each other's satisfaction, but any notion of popular sovereignty, in the grand old Enlightenment sense was killed.

The thing these two traditional rival ideologies in common is dialectical materialism, so we don't even want to speculate what this may do to religious life in the years to come. Apparently the final historical conflict is Spirit vs. Matter.

I wish they'd quit saying "printing money"

2009-02-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

It's getting a little irritating to hear critics of the bailout plan referring endlessly to "printing money" to solve the financial crisis. If all we were doing was "printing money" it would be bad enough. Unfortunately, what we're doing is "conjuring up" debt. Most of the "money" in this so-called stimulus package will never make it into print. It will never be so real as a little piece of green paper. We're borrowing non-material money, at interest, from a central banking system (read: debt-generating apparatus) that will stimulate the people of this country into serfdom.
The bailout plan absolutely needs to be criticized, but it has to be identified for what it is. It is a fail-safe means of impoverishing and then indenturing an entire nation.
I would like any politician, political scientist, or economist to explain to me how you borrow over 800 BILLION dollars--at interest--to stimulate the economy while simultaneosly gutting the coal power generating industry, refusing to drill for oil, increasing taxes on corporations, and publicly trumpeting the death of capitalism. I'm hardly a "free market fundamentalist" whatever that really means, but I do know that borrowing money without having a means to generate wealth leads to destitution.
If somebody gave you a multiple choice question that said:
"The leadership of Country A has decided to increase its already comically high debt by borrowing a trillion dollars. It has also declared unofficial war on its capitalists. What is Country A trying to do?"
Would you answer:
a) become free, prosperous and happy
b) enslave itself to the people who own its banks
c) it clearly has no idea what it's trying to do
d) what's on TV?

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Appendix Two

2009-02-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

The Second Appendix to POF was meant to be a preface to the first edition of the book. In this short appendix, Steiner discusses the importance of self-knowledge as something better than simple belief, and more satisfying than academic formulation. In what is a common theme throughout the book, Steiner asserts that unreflective belief in the teachings of established religions, or the acquisition of knowledge through a funnel from the education system is less valuable than knowledge acquired through the free moral activity of thinking.

In a ringing endorsement of the intellectual life, Steiner promotes his book as one that "leads at first into more abstract regions," yet finishes in the domain of "concrete life." Moreover, concrete life is made better through free mental activity.

"I am altogether of the view that one must lift oneself also into the ethereal realm of concepts if one wants to experience life in all directions. Whoever knows only how to enjoy with his senses does not know the real delicacies of life (258)."

Ignoring the false split modern split between "science" and "art," Steiner calls for scientific endeavors to lead back to art. Philosophy, Steiner claims, is an art, and philosophers are "artists in concepts." It is not enough to know things, but to let ideas become "powers in life," transforming ourselves and our relationships to the world.

"All science would only be the satisfying of idle curiosity if it did not strive toward raising the value of existence of the human personality (author's italics, 260)." Science does its work when it leads not only to the "ennobling" of soul faculties but the "development of all the abilities that slumber within us (260)."

Although this book was written long before Steiner became a full time "spiritual scientist," and stands apart from his more esoteric anthroposophic works, it is obviously (as he contended) a necessary starting point for apprehending the deep assumptions of anthroposophy. We are free, we have access to the ethereal realms of concepts, and we are empowered to apprehend God in the deep recesses of our soul. The trick is to live up to these enormous human potentials.

One last piece: The Translator's Appendix deals with the matter of how the book was translated into English--some topics here were addressed before. It was apparently Steiner's wish that his book Philosophie der Freiheit NOT be called Philosophy of Freedom in English, because the English word "freedom" did not express the fullness of "freiheit." In my opinion, I think he was concerned about the Enlightenment baggage that words like "freedom" carried in English, and he is not talking about social or political freedom in any way. "Free-ness" might have been a better word, because "free-hood" the direct German translation, doesn't mean much to the Anglophone ear. The book I am working from is called The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, which we can imply only contextually, but "Freiheit" does not equal "Spiritual Activity." Since the book has come to be called Philosophy of Freedom by many anthroposophy readers, I'm using it, and I think if we consider freedom in any Christian sense, it works all right.

It's been a fun chore summarizing this important book, but now I'm on to more interesting eschatological entries.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom: Appendix One

2009-02-02T22:23:00.000-08:00

The first appendix to the Philosophy of Freedom is an addendum Steiner made to the revised edition published in 1918. While he calls the addendum "a superfluous, remote, and abstract spinning out of concepts," it offers a nice reinforcement of some of the distinctions that were made earlier in the book. I think it's worth going over here.

The central question of the appendix is that of how one can "grasp" the soul life of another person. Given the fact that for most people, the world and its inhabitants are merely representations of some unknowable ideal quality, to claim knowledge of the soul life of another person is to engage in self-delusion.

For Steiner though, it is indeed possible to know the soul life of another, because when we perceive another person, we begin the process of thinking, and thus enter into something beyond the person's "physical manifestation."

This brings him back to Eduard von Hartmann, whom he takes on again, this time in rebuttal to an article Hartmann had written after the publication of POF that criticized Steiner's work.

In the article, Hartmann criticized Steiner's "epistemological monism" as unsound, and proposed that there were only three possible positions on the question of knowledge. These are (says Hartmann):

1) naive realism (the world is what it appears, no more, no less). This is a flawed position because in holding it, one never really leaves one's own consciousness--no knowledge of the object world on its own merits is possible.

2) transcendental idealist (the world represents something ideal "thing-in-itself"). This is a flawed position because the "thing-in-itself" is unknowable to the observing consciousness, and so the observing consciousness is not able to make any judgments concerning it

3) transcendental realist (there exist "things-in-themselves" but they lie outside human consciousness, although they are somehow the origin of material things that we can observe). This, for Hartmann, is the most satisfactory position.

Hartmann goes on to say that the folly of the "epistemological monist" can be exposed by asking him the three following questions:

1) Are things "continuous" or "intermittent" in their existence?

2) If three people are sitting at a table, how many "specimens" of the table are present?

3) If two people are alone in a room, how many specimens of the people are present?

Hartmann gives three possible answers to these questions, all of which, he believes, would exclude the possibility of monism. For example, to question 1, Hartmann gives: the naive realist says "continuous," the transcendental realist says "intermittent," and the transcendental realist says "both." But Steiner says, the monist would say that there is a difference between perceiving and thinking. Things are intermittent to perception, but continuous to thinking experience, suggesting that the question itself is flawed.

To question 2 Hartmann gives: the naive realist says "one," the transcendental idealist says "three," and the transcendental realist says "four," meaning three perceptions, plus one table identity. Steiner says that the monist would move beyond perception to thinking, and all the people in the room would realize that there is only one reality to the table.

To question 3, Hartmann gives: the naive realist says "two," the transcendental idealist says "four," meaning each person has an ego and a perceived other, and the transcendental realist says six, meaning two egos, two others, and two "thing-in-itself" people. Steiner, though, says "only two." Once the two people move past their superficial impressions of one another, they realize that there are only two authentic selves in the room.

In all these cases, Steiner shows that the difference between his monism and Hartmann's kind of transcendental realism is the degree to which real thinking activity is applied in order to break through simple object perception. Steiner also rejects the term "epistemological monism" in favor of "thought monism," which ultimately may be the best way to characterize the Monism that he refers to throughout the book.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Final Questions: The Consequences of Monism, free at last!

2009-02-01T22:30:00.000-08:00

The final pages of the text of the Philosophy of Freedom bring Steiner to his conclusions on the nature of human freedom. He has been arguing that monism allows us to apprehend a world in which Spirit is not radically remote, but rather with the world and working through the world at all times. The activity of thinking gives humanity the possibility of sharing in the thought world of the spirit beings, and now we see that thinking gives humanity the possibility of choosing the "content of our actions."

"The human being looses from the one world of ideas the idea which is to be realized through some action, and lays it as the basis for his willing. In his actions, therefore, it is not the commandments instilled from the 'beyond' into the 'here' which express themselves, but rather human intutions belonging to the world here (240)."

What this means is that when we seek our purpose, our goals, our reason for living, we must look to our "own moral imagination." If we choose to let others give us our goals, our ideals, or our purposes, we also give up our moral freedom.

"In order for an idea to become an action, man first must want and will before it can happen. This kind of willing has its basis therefore only within man himself. Man is the the one ultimately determining his action. He is free (241)."

First Addendum:

a restatement of the key point that the only actions that can be called free are those that spring from individual intuitive thinking.

Second Addendum:

a restatement of the key point that "intuitively experienced thinking" places a person in contact with the spiritual world.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Final Questions: The Consequences of Monism, how thinking leads to spirit

2009-01-31T22:52:00.001-08:00

In this next, provocative section, Steiner argues that the monistic worldview implies that the ideal can be apprehended in the same way by all people, regardless of their viewpoints. This argues against the kind of relativism that says that reality is based on subject positions.

"The ideal content of another person is also my own, and I see a different one only so long as I perceive; but no longer, however, as soon as I think (238)."

This suggests that mere perception is an incomplete mental activity compared to fully developed thinking, which leads us to a plane that not only includes the thoughts of all people, but the thought life of God as well. The implication of this is that God, the absolute, the ideal reality, is "here," not "out there," but we can only get to the absolute by cultivation of our thought life. The religious God whose existence can be logically deduced, the Will of Schopenhauer, the primordial being of Hartmann, are all descriptions of a God that exists "out there," but is in fact "here" existing in the reality we inhabit. In order to come to a correct understanding of the divine, says Steiner, we need to stop searching for it outside the world we live in.

We can come to full participation in the life of the spirit, and the activities of spirit beings by really thinking our way into them, not by making up thoughts about the spirit world that correspond to our fantasies.

Ultimately, a rational science that fails to think through to the spirit behind material phenomena, and a spirituality not rooted in reality are both examples of half-knowledges.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Final Questions: The Consequences of Monism, the Absolute is found in the world not outside it

2009-01-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

In this section Steiner argues that the "absolutely real" is not located outside the world in some metaphysical realm but exists in the very foundations of the world. In making this claim he seems to be arguing against the position of the "scientific" deductive idealist who uses the evidence of the object world as proof that there must be something real beyond the world. So, rather than logically concluding that there must be some absolute reality from our own "abstract conceptual hypotheses," we can use our thinking to access the real in the world we inhabit.

"Monism calls forth within man the conviction . . . that he lives in the world of reality, and does not have to seek outside his world some unexperienceable higher reality. He refrains from seeking the absolutely real anywhere other than in experience, because he recognizes the content of experience itself as the real. And he is satisfied with this reality, because he knows thinking has the power to guarantee it (237)."

Among the interesting implications of this idea is that in our thinking, we can grasp an objective reality, not merely a subjective interpretation of reality. The somewhat stunning claim that Steiner makes is that there is one ideal concept of (the example he gives of) "lion," and not as many individual ideas of lion as there are individuals. While there may be many people who think "lion," there is only one concept that they can share.

"Thinking leads all perceiving subjects to the common ideal oneness of manifoldness (238)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Final Questions: The Consequences of Monism, how thinking leads to unity

2009-01-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Continuing to argue for a "monistic" world, Steiner writes:

"Thinking gives us reality in its true form, as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of our perceptions is only an illusion due to our organization (234)."

While observing that thinking has always been the way that human beings acquire a more complete knowledge of the world, Steiner maintains that the usual understanding of thinking has been as a subjective activity. In other words, it has generally been believed that if we apply our powers of thought to the object world, we can, by our own perception, become more knowledgeable about it. A more correct view, though, would be one that sees thinking as the activity that joins subject and object together in a unified whole. The content of a concept, which is taken from reality is as important to the activity of thinking as the thinking activity of the subject, and this content is not merely something we create in our minds, but something real inhering in the object. To go back to Steiner's earliest constructions of percept and concept, "the perception is the part of reality that is given objectively; the concept is the part given subjectively (through intuition)(236)."

"Only the union of both," Steiner writes, "is full reality (236)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Final Questions: The Consequences of Monism, what does he mean by "monism?"

2009-01-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

In this epilogue (there are two appendices coming too), Steiner takes up again the question of Monism, or rather, his argument for Monism, elaborating on some of the assumptions of Chapter Ten. Monism in general refers to a belief in unity--a oneness that describes a world that appears to be diverse. Traditional Christianity rejects a monistic worldview because it teaches that the universe we know was created by God out of nothing, meaning that it is not merely the expression of God's mind, or inhabited by God, but actually "made" as a separate object. There seem to be different kinds of monism depending on the context. Because Steiner believes that there are creative powers in the universe, and that there is a reigning Father (I'm referring to the Foundation Stone Prayer, but not trying to oversimplify) , I don't think he is referring to a classic metaphysical monism. I believe (and I may be wrong--I would welcome the inputs of Anthroposophist readers) that his monism is offered as a contrast to the modern dualistic subject-object view of reality. He wants to show (I believe) that the thinking self is not a detached subject viewing an object world but rather an individual joined to the world spiritually through the activity of thinking.

"For monism, the unity which experienceable thinking observation brings to the varied multiplicity of perceptions is at the same time the unity which our human need for knowledge demands (233)."

Accordingly, we have to locate the foundations of the world in the world itself, even if we do that on a "spiritual plane," connecting ourselves to the world's foundation through thinking.

"The single human individual is not really separated off from the world. He is part of the world, and there exists in reality a connection--between this part of the totality of the cosmos--which is broken only for our perception (234)."

Ultimately then, this monism that Steiner introduces is a unity of reality held together by thinking--it seems to say nothing whatsoever about What or Who created the universe.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Fourteen: Individuality and Genus

2009-01-27T21:59:00.001-08:00

In this last (and relatively short) formal chapter of the Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner takes up the issue of individuality and genus in the human being, and explains the degree to which humans are truly individual, or embedded in their generic identities.

By genus, Steiner is referring to race, gender, family lineage, "folk," religion, and nationality. Steiner maintains that people bear "the general characteristics" of the various groups to which belong, and that genus identity can answer the question of why people "appear in the forms" in which they appear. The collective qualities of genus function as a "medium" through which people express their particular being.

On the question of individuality, Steiner argues that the cultivation of intuition (including thinking, matters that are discussed in more detail in earlier chapters) allows a person to break free of the limitations of genus identity (whichever genus identity it happens to be) and to define him or herself as a true individual.

Taking note of the tyranny that social and gender identities can exercise on a person--in particular the case of women, who are constrained by constructed generic expectations--he asserts that "they must be allowed to determine for themselves what is in accordance with their nature (226)."

It is the task of each individual to break through the boundaries of their defining groups, and attain that intuition that enables them to become truly free, and truly unique. In turn, we must learn to understand the individuality of others, and not assess them according to their generic qualities. If we learn to do this, by entering into the individuality of the other, we increase our own ability to break free of the constraints of the generic. As Steiner puts it:

"People who immediately mix their own concepts into every judgment about another person can never arrive at an understanding of individuality (228)."

The degree to which a person can become individuated is, to Steiner, the degree to which he or she can become "a free spirit in the human community," and, by implication, a moral person living ethically for the sake of the human community.

"All moral activity of mankind springs from individual ethical intuitions and from their being taken up into human communities (229)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism),

2009-01-26T21:53:00.000-08:00

Steiner finishes this chapter with a very nice return to the question of morality and freedom, concluding ultimately that a pessimist philosophy would negate moral freedom.

"Whoever wants to eradicate the pleasure of satisfying human desires must first make the human being into a slave who does not act because he wants to, but only because he ought (220)."

With this statement, Steiner seems to deflate Hartmann's notion that we must stop striving in order to live morally, thereby easing divine pain. To do so, Steiner implies, would be a capitulation to necessity rather than a free act.

"The ethics which builds upon pessimism springs from a disregard of moral imagination (220)."

A fully developed person, Steiner believes, will not spend his or her life merely seeking pleasure, and will endure pain freely (not under compulsion or out of failure) for the sake of pursuing a higher, self-generated ideal. In the final analysis, a mature developed person will acquire the moral qualities capable of determining what the "value of life" is, and doesn't need to be concerned with the fruitless task of measuring pleasure against pain.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism), the failure of pessimism to understand moral striving

2009-01-22T22:23:00.000-08:00

In the remainder of Chapter thirteen, Steiner demonstrates that pessimist philosophy does not properly treat the problem of ethics and moral striving, and says, again, that the reason for this failure is the false attempt to come up with a "balance sheet" for pleasure and pain.

We don't merely strive for "pleasure" or "happiness" as ends in themselves. We enjoy the pleasure and happiness that comes as a by-product from willfully acting on our desire to attain appropriate goods. Accordingly, the pessimist idea that we take up the duties of life only after we learn that life is futile, and thus stoically resign ourselves to the task of alleviating divine pain, is all wrong.

We seek the good for its sake, and gain pleasure thereby.

"Morality lies in striving for a goal that one recognizes as justified; it lies in man's being to pursue this goal, as long as the pain connected with it does not lame the desire for it. . . this is the nature of all real willing (219)."

Moral greatness is also linked to the function of willing.

"Whoever strives after ideals of noble greatness," Steiner writes, "does so because they are the content of their being, and realizing them will be an enjoyment for him compared to which the pleasure that pettiness draws from satisfying commonplace things is trifling (220)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism), more on willing and desire

2009-01-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

Steiner elaborates on the assertion that desire, rather than mere pleasure is the proper "yardstick" for measuring the value of life. Satisfaction can be considered attained when desire felt and pleasure experienced are evenly matched. If pleasure falls short of the quantity of desire, we are still left wanting, and when pleasure exceeds desire, that pleasure becomes pain--as in the case of a hangover, or stomach-ache. The very presence of desire suggests that the pessimist's assessment of life as value-less is misconceived from the start. We desire specific things, which gives us pleasure in anticipation, pleasure in pursuit, and pleasure in attainment. Even the failure to attain the desire cannot diminish the pleasure that was felt in desires attained in the past. Moreover the presence of pain that must be overcome can add to the pleasure of attainment. There is no thing we can call general pleasure--pleasure is specific to the desire to which it adheres, thus to try to come up with an abstract balance sheet of pleasure and pain makes no sense--or, as Steiner would say, it doesn't conform to life as it is experienced. The pleasure gained from taking a walk is not the same as the pleasure of eating a meal.

Steiner concludes that willing, based on desire, is so fundamental to human experience that humans will strive to attain their desires in defiance of suffering and pain. We accept the bad parts of life as long as there is value in life to be had.

"Even if pessimism were right in its assertion that more pain than pleasure is present in the world, this would have no influence on our willing, for in spite of this, living creatures strive for whatever pleasure is left (216)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism), desire as the yardstick

2009-01-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

Eduard von Hartmann's argument, Steiner tells us, depends on thinking that moral ideals somehow emerge in the void where pessimism realizes that striving for satisfaction is useless. After we realize that striving for pleasure will bring only pain, we submit heroically to the task of helping to alleviate the cosmic suffering of God. As noted earlier, Steiner has a difficult time with this logic, using the example of a merchant who continues to stay in business even after his bookkeeper has shown him that he is operating at a deficit--in other words, if the human being operates at constant deficit of pleasure (one way of stating the pessimist's argument that pain outweighs pleasure), then the human being is living a kind of philosophically bankrupt life. A rational person is supposed to value pleasure over pain, but realizes that pain is the only reality--what then brings pleasure? If we take pleasure in absorbing divine pain, then it can't really be pain. It would seem that the only really rational thing to do is commit suicide, because the rational conclusion is that pleasure is either a) illusory, or b) simply impossible to attain. But if we commit suicide, we would not be fulfilling the purpose for which we are created, which is to bear God's pain. The whole argument, as Steiner points out, has several holes in it.

The problem, Steiner suggests, comes from using pleasure as "yardstick" of the value of life. As long as we evaluate life experience in terms of "units" of pleasure, we're not understanding the value of life properly.

Desire, not pleasure, Steiner says, is a better yardstick for measuring the value of life.

"Pleasure is measured against the needs of life. Our desires are the yardstick; pleasure is what is measured (211)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism), Pleasure and Pain

2009-01-15T21:47:00.000-08:00

Steiner calls attention to the conventional philosophical arguments (in particular those of Eduard von Hartmann) that treat the positions of optimism and pessimism as being dependent on some kind of measurement of the quantity of pain or pleasure that exists in the world. The pessimistic philosopher believes that a sober look at reality will yield that there is more pain than pleasure. As Hartmann observes, this can only be a subjective judgment, based on experience, and never really an "algebraic" equation. A clear thinker, then, should make an attempt to bracket out his or her "feelings" in order to arrive at an objective assessment of the value of life. We need (says Hartmann) to 1) admit that our will distorts our ability to analyze the quality of feeling--we also have to 2) recognize that the things about which we have feelings of pleasure are only illusions--our rational intellect, properly functioning will help us see through these illusions, because rationally, we have to admit (says Hartmann) that all pleasure leads ultimately to suffering. (Recall that Hartmann espoused a kind of heroic pessimism in which human beings were the vessels of God's own pain).

Steiner challenges von Hartmann's position, saying that feelings of pleasure are not based upon illusory objects. The feelings themselves are the objects of pleasure--to try to rationally assess whether or not a feeling can be a valid form of pleasure creates room for philosophical error. If for example, we rationally conclude that there is a surplus of pain in the world, and yet somehow we experience pleasure (however illusory), and don't decide to commit suicide to escape the world of pain, we need to question our own conclusions. If the goal of helping to expiate God's pain is a noble one--a good reason for living--then shouldn't the pursuit of that goal be a source of pleasure?

"The pessimism of Eduard von Hartmann comes in a very peculiar manner to the point of declaring life worthless, because pain predominates in it, but of maintaining, nevertheless the necessity of undergoing it (206)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism), Striving for Gratification

2008-12-24T00:22:00.000-08:00

According to Steiner, striving is integral to the human experience. Striving after a desire is not the source of pain, but a great source of pleasure. Failure to attain the thing we strive for may cause pain, but not the pursuit. Thus, Steiner says, Schopenhauer is wrong to equate human desire with pain. Should a person be devoid of of desire, (and thus "liberated" in the Buddhist sense) he or she will suffer boredom, which is a greater source of misery than striving. This is a very important consideration when it comes to figuring out what the balance of pleasure and pain may be in any life.

Ponzi Schemes

2008-12-14T11:38:00.001-08:00

So everybody's up in arms with the latest news about Bernard Madoff and the "Ponzi Scheme" he's been running for several years. The Ponzi Scheme is named for Carlo Ponzi, the Italian-American---um---opportunity broker who got people to invest in his holding company for big dividends. The dividend payments, which were indeed big, simply came from the deposits of other investors. So the fund manager is merely a traffic director, taking in big deposits, using that money to pay out dividends, while the principal isn't really invested anywhere in any money-making enterprise. The manager takes ownership of the value-holding asset (money) and gives out nothing but dividend payments. It's ridiculously simple and utterly dishonest.

It isn't much different from the Federal Reserve Board and the central banking system. The proof that our credit system is itself a giant Ponzi scheme lies in the fact that nobody can identify the real value-holding assets in the economy--it's all paper backing up paper backing up paper. Those things that have value, real estate, factories, inventories, etc., have been so corrupted by the false expansion of an economy based on fiat debt money that nobody has any sense of what the real price of these things might be. The only thing backing up the massive credit expansion now taking place is the productivity of future generations of taxpayers. To take ownership of the freedom and labor of another party is called enslavement. To voluntarily give up one's freedom and labor to another party is apparently called "hope for change." Since we're long past the "wake up!!" moment, it seems that the only change we can really hope for is a miracle. Is God willing to spend a miracle on people who can't even balance their checkbooks?

Free will and motives

2008-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

This is in response to idwb's comment, and it seems like an important enough question to post an answer to. The question relates to whether Steiner embraces 1 or 2 of the following options

1. We are free when we are able to DO what we want
2. We are free when we are able to WANT what we want

Rather than say Steiner embraces either of these, it seems better to say, positively, that he believes we are free when, through rigorous thinking, we create those mental images through intuition that raise us to free moral action. Morality is objectively real, but we can't be really free or really ethically moral if our compulsion to act is conditioned by external rules or commandments.

In this sense, he critiques Hamerling, who says that the key to freedom is having the ability to do what we want (position 1). Hamerling thinks its impossible to "want what we want" because our wants are linked to "motives," which according to Hamerling are instinctive or programmed. Steiner, then would seem to adhere to position 2, i.e., that we are free when we can indeed will some action above and beyond our instinctive motives.
Sometimes we act by instinct, other times we act by conditioning, and I think Steiner accuses Hamerling of conflating the two.

"The main point," Steiner writes, "is not whether I can carry out a decision made, but rather how the decision arises in me (11)." Neither instinct nor conditioning are free. Our freedom lies in the ability to choose the good independently and pursue it.

I have to admit that I don't really get the fine print on Harry Frankfurt, because he poses situations in which a person is not free to act in a certain way, but I don't know if its because a person is under coercion, or possibly mentally ill. So his free person is only free if the possibility existed of him doing otherwise. Does this mean, that I can commit an unethical act freely because the option of acting ethically exists, but I ignored it? I think Steiner would say that this impossible, and a more orthodox religious ethics would agree--that a person acting "sinfully" is under bondage to sin. Steiner would say that just because I act ethically from an objective moral standpoint I am not necessarily free if the moral decision was really not my own. So Steiner's freedom has the strong "volitional" component, but it seems more rooted in the production of thought.

I think this right :) but if I'm off the mark, I'd love to hear it. The problem with Philosophy of Freedom is that it presents a kind of uber-individualism of the free spirit that doesn't necessarily conform to later writings in which he unambiguously declares the existence of external spirits who have the ability to guide our evolution. I guess attaining this absolute freedom of thought and will is the means by which we take charge of our own spiritual development and not fall prey to dark spirits or unhealthy influences, but if you don't read it carefully, you could form the conclusion that external systems of morals are merely constraining, and thus unhealthy themselves. I don't think that's what he intends us to conclude.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Thirteen: The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism)

2008-12-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

In this chapter, Steiner reflects on the philosophical debate between optimism, summed up as the belief that "the world is the best imaginable (193), "and pessimism, summed up as the belief that "life is full of agony and misery, that pain everywhere outweighs pleasure, and suffering everywhere joy (193)."

He distinquishes between the pessimistic philosophies of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, both of whom had large followings in the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer, argued that existence was dominated by an impersonal Will, striving for unattainable satisfaction in a world full of suffering. The thinking person, accepting this chooses not to waste energy striving for fleeting satisfaction and will work to suppress that desire which only leads to pain.

Hartmann's pessimism, on the other hand, is rooted in the supposition that the pain and suffering of the world is the pain and suffering of God, and that God seeks relief from cosmic suffering through the creation of the world and humanity. On the cosmic pain-pleasure "balance sheet," pain always outweighs pleasure. The goal of God, thus, is the eradication of divine pain--human beings can assist in bringing this about by accepting the reality that life is suffering, and opt not to seek personal satisfaction, but take up the ethical project of delivering the world (and God) from its pain. All pleasure is ultimately an illusion, says Hartmann, so the mature person, ethically chooses to renounce selfish desire for the sake of the universal good.

Steiner had big problems with both of these pessimisms, and forcefully validated the correctness of human striving. Arguing that striving for satisfaction, honor, and high ideals was a source of joy, he repudiated both Schopenhauer's call for "universal laziness," and Hartmann's call to act ethically in a world in which there were no real rewards for doing so. Neither of these pessimistic schools, Steiner argued, were rooted in real human experience.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Twelve: Moral Imagination: back to the original question!

2008-11-30T15:57:00.000-08:00

So, are our actions free or determined?

Steiner revisits proposals made earlier in the book

1) "we are free when we are able to do what we want" and

2) "we are free when we are able to want what we want"

He reminds us that the poet-philosopher Hamerling (Robert, 1830-89) believed the first of these statements and thought the second to be an absurdity. Yet, Hamerling, who believed that the will is determined by stimuli to actions, is essentially admitting the validity of the second statement.

Steiner argues that true freedom lies in the ability to determine for ourselves the ground of our willing, which means that we are free when we are able to will the conditions of the ideal to which we then direct our actions. Here he makes a distinction between a) the organism and its processes, and b) the will and its ideals, and relates the latter to spirit and soul activity.

"Man is free to the extent that he is able in his willing to realize the same mood of soul which lives in him when he is conscious of giving shape to purely ideal (spiritual) intuitions (192)."

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Twelve: Moral Imagination: ethical individualism and evolution

2008-11-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

"Ethical individualism does not . . . stand at odds with a rightly understood theory of evolution, but rather follows directly from it (186)."

Moral ideas that spring from the imagination of any individual may derive from those held by his or her ancestors, Steiner maintains, but they are not valid unless the individual arrives at them independently. It is possible for entirely new moral ideas to emerge from the moral imagination of an "evolved" being, but, if we are consistent in our view of evolution, we should not think that these are introduced from outside by some external agent. "(T)his theory . . . should reject any influence from the beyond, any (metaphysical) influence which is merely inferred and not experienced in idea (187)." (Italics mine)

Steiner is arguing here that just as the causes of material evolution are found inside, not outside, material reality, so must the causes of moral evolution be found inside, not outside, mankind, which is the species that bears morality in the world. Thus, even an external moral code is not moral if it is not freely apprehended (and indeed, originally grasped) by each person.

While Steiner's logic seems to limit the scope of the supernatural by "slaving" morality to humanity and to a material process of evolution that produces the human, if we look at it closer, it actually does the opposite. It assigns to humanity the status of divine image that makes it the bearer of morality, and opens the possibility that there is much more to evolution than merely natural selection. Morality, spirit, and the human organism, are for Steiner all bound together in the idea of evolution.

As he puts it, the evolutionary theorist maintains "only that humans have evolved out of ancestors that were not yet human. How human beings are constituted must be determined through observation of humans themselves (189)." Which is to say, not through observation of their ancestors or of moral codes that exist in history. What all of this seems to lead to is the idea that human freedom, on an individual-by-individual basis is the true ground of moral ethics. Human beings are, in the exercise of authentic moral freedom, in touch with something authentically spiritual and ideal.

The day of the dead

2008-10-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

This is in response to recent comments--thanks for the great remarks everybody--thinking about Irony Connoisseur's comments (is an irony connoisseur like a quality broker? or a truth lender? :))
I think that on the day we finally cut interest rates to zero, or when the banks/governments actually start paying people to take out loans we will see ghosts appear in profusion, laughing their wispy butts off.

I've always been more afraid of real people than ghosts.

Is anybody nervous like me about what happens to the idea of bankruptcy when the government owns all the banks? The high Enlightenment government of the United States wanted to encourage entrepreneurial risk-taking by allowing people to become detached from their corporations, and to not be utterly destroyed if failure hit. So if a person goes bust now in debts to private banks, the court of resort is the government. Given the tender mercy with which the government goes after IRS defrauders, what's going to happen when the government is the Great Creditor of all loans public and private? Will we see the return of debtor's prisons? What's this going to do to entrepreneurship?

When Eisenhower warned of the military-corporate establishment he was serious, and I think the nation took it seriously. We have always been cautious of military-industrial power, even if we haven't always been diligent in curbing it. Will any president ever even mention the dangers of government-finance power?

Warm embrace of insanity:)

2008-10-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

As a general response to two interesting comments on a recent post. Yes, it seems like a rough ride, or some soft dark age could easily be on its way, but I'm very optimistic, at least on some meta-levels. All of our myths, prophecies, religious traditions etc., tell us that something like this is supposed to happen and the ending is ultimately transformative and happy. As TM says, there is a happy ending but we'll have to slog through a lot of poop on the way there. I'm still amazed at how many people think that a vote well cast this fall is going to really change anything. It seems we'll wind up getting one of two different forms of catastrophe based on misinterpretation of the deeper forces of history. So, as "End of Times," the parrot in Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates says, "People of zee wurl, relax!"

McKenna: Turning the body inside out

2008-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

". . . I take the flying saucer to be an image of the future state of humanity. It is a kind of millenarian transformation of the human where the soul is exteriorized as the apotheosis of technology. It is that eschatological even that is casting enormous shadows backward through time over the historical landscape. That is the siren singing at the end of time, calling all humanity across the last hundred millennia toward it. Calling us out of the trees and into history, and through this series of multileveled cultural transitions to the point where the thing within the monkeys--the creature of pure language and pure imagination whose aspirations are entirely titanic in terms of self-transformation--that thing is now emerging, and it will emerge as humanity leaves the planet. It's not something quantized and clearly defined. Nevertheless, it is what the next fifty years or so will be about. At the end of it, the species will be off-planet and transformed and fully wired from the depths to the heights."

Well that's reassuring

2008-10-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

It's always nice when scientists confirm that the world is not going to end in 2012.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/10/03/2012-no-geomagnetic-reversal/

Didn't certain members of the House Banking committee recently tell us that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were failsafe?

It's pretty bad when you know you can't trust anything that any body with official authority tells you--that leaves you with entirely too many options as to what might be true.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom Chapter Twelve: What's evolution?

2008-10-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

Steiner observes that his view of self-created moral life seems to stand in opposition to the theory of Evolution, but it does so only superficially.

"By evolution is understood the real emerging of the later out of the earlier in ways corresponding to natural laws (184)."

In other words, (assuming that evolution can be thought of as progress), more perfect material forms descend from less perfect material forms. In order to make these judgments the evolutionary theorist has only the finished material product to work with. The only way the evolutionary connection between "amniotes" and "reptiles" can be applied is for the theorist to have already assigned categories of "lesser" and "greater" perfection to them.

In terms of non-material concepts though, we can't "draw" the moral concepts of a later age out of the moral concepts of an earlier one. Ideas do not operate in nature the way that matter operates in nature.

Moral life vs. biological life

2008-10-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

"Generally, people are in fact better able to find the concepts for the already existing world, than productively, out of their imagination, to determine not yet existing future actions (182)."

With this statement Steiner again draws a distinction between the person who is able to create a moral life for him or herself and the person who merely adopts or borrows established laws and norms, presumably from others who have, at some time in the past created them for themselves.

While it is probably better to adopt a good pre-existing moral code than to manufacture a false personal one, the truly evolved, morally free person cannot continue to live on a borrowed morality.

"Moral imagination and the capacity for moral ideas can become the object of knowing only after they have been produced by the individual (183)."

Any attempt to compare moral laws with natural laws will run into trouble (despite the best efforts of present day materialists to attribute moral behavior to natural selection). A biological organism operates in accordance with the natural laws of its species--the moral laws of the mind inhabiting, or perhaps, sharing space with the biological organism are created by the individual mind.

Transition

2008-10-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

"We are certainly in a state of transition; we have arrived at nothing less than the end of history. However, it is not something to be alarmed about. I imagine it's simply the normal situation that prevails when a species is preparing to depart for the stars."

Terence McKenna The Archaic Revival, 157

Enough is enough

2008-09-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

I usually check out of political discussions, for many reasons, one of which is that nobody is really ever going to be persuaded to change their political views by discussion or argument. Everybody has his or her own history, and reasons for thinking the way they do. Also because politics, the secular religion of America, is often a question of emotional belief rather than intellectual discrimination, and people will ignore intellectual holes in their own position because they see them as less gaping than the holes in the positions of their rivals.

Another, more important reason is that I think politics is only a cheap side-show to what's really going on in the unraveling of history. It's a symptom of the thing, not the thing itself. I truly believe that we have surrendered to the process of cosmic novelty, and that no vote for either candidate is going to arrest the eschatological juggernaut that we're on.

What we'll see between now and November, I think, is a series of shocking surprises, followed within hours by returns to stability, followed by another shocking surprise, etc., etc., and this isn't even taking China, Russia, Iran, Israel, the climate, and all those other wild variables into account.

That having been said, I was really upset by Speaker Pelosi's comments preceding the bailout hearings. I hate the idea of a bailout, but I think the Democrats, holding power, should have just voted as they saw fit last week when they were being urged by the President, whom they despise, to do exactly what they want to do. The theater of drawing the Republicans into the debate for consensus purposes, then blaming them for derailing the debate is an insult to everybody, right and left, observing this whole thing.

Then, after getting enough Republicans to buy in so that it would pass, and proceding to attribute harsh public blame for the mortgage meltdown to the "failed policies" of Bush---this exceeded even my own high appreciation for absurdity.

If you want to say that greedy Republican bankers profited from mortgage catastrophe, fine. If you want to say Bush made false political hay by crowing about how many Americans owned homes, fine--but this is a Democrat gig through and through, and, if in the spirit of national cooperation, which both Obama and McCain are calling for, the Speaker won't even acknowledge even a shred of Democrat culpability in all of this--a simple love for honest debate compels me to enter the fray here.

Vote for anybody you want--but at least check these out.

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200809302090/editorial/burning-down-the-house-what-caused-our-economic-crisis.html

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/09/29/who-caused-the-biggest-financial-crisis-since-the-great-depression/

C.S. Lewis on Money

2008-09-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

"There is one bit of advice given to us the the ancient heathen Greeks and by the Jews in the Old Terstament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest--what we call investment--is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong. Some people say theat when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed in forbidding interest (or "usury" as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore , we need not bother about what they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. This is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had no told you that three great civilizations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life."

Here's another one: Isaac Newton and the 2013 eschaton

2008-09-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

I'm a little confused about the designation of the birth of the "spiritual Rome" as 753 AD, but hey, why quibble?

Check this out

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75434

Who's this whacko eschatologist Isaac Newton, anyway?

I was a little worried last week about a finance, insurance, and mortgage banking collapse, but fortunately everything's just great now! Just one trillion buck bailout and we're back on easy street.

I'm having a tough time not believing in McKenna's fractal model, though, where we recapitulate everything in the world over and over, faster and faster, until the anti-big bang hits. I think we relived the whole 1930s last Thursday morning.

Midnight Fiction Reviews Chaotique

2008-09-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

The very cool Midnight Fiction Comix has reviewed Chaotique, the obliterary journal edited and published by Dreyer Press. Contact Dreyer press to purchase your own first edition numbered copy of what will surely be an artifact of great historical importance. Yes.

Kudos again to artist, writer, and obliterary printer extraordinaire Chris Dreyer

http://www.midnightfiction.com/reviews/reviews_comix_13.htm#chaotique1

Creative Detour

2008-09-18T21:46:00.001-07:00

I'm enjoying making these summaries of Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, but it's taking up more time than I thought it would--and there are a lot of other cool end-of-history phenomena to talk about, so I'm going to toss more in here.

Between the resumption of the Cold War, the apparent imminent collapse of the nation's banking, finance, and insurance infrastructures, a presidential campaign looking more and more like bad comedy, I am becoming more emboldened in my predictions that the modern historical world is on the brink of creative non-existence. I am also more and more puzzled by people who don't share my view. I'm willing to be convinced that this stuff is all in a day's work, but I know (as does everybody) that it's a catastrophe in the making that nobody's even pretending to manage. Why on earth do people think that a presidential campaign, or a federal bailout, or a strong words in defiance of Russian aggression, etc., etc., etc., are going to do anything to stop the deep structural movements that are bringing the historical world to its finale? This is beyond re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. How do we imagine we are going to "fix" this, what is "this," and why do we want to fix it anyway? This week's world news events remind me of the scene in Deep Impact when Morgan Freeman, the U.S. president is standing on the steps of a ruined capitol pledging to his people to rebuild, restart, and recreate all that was lost from the big slam. Are you kidding??? Is this the best idea we can come up with? Even when it's collossally failing all we can do is talk about how to fix it. Fix what how to look like what? Being invested in western civilization here at the end of history is like owning a Fiat. It's never going to be better until you get a new car.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Twelve: Moral Imagination: moral technique

2008-09-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

In this section, Steiner discusses the "technique" of realizing the mental pictures that can be produced through the proper activity of the moral imagination. "Man's action," Steiner asserts, "does not create any perceptions, but rather reshapes the perceptions which are already present, imparts to them a new form (181)." What can this mean, other than that our mental images (which Steiner has earlier called "an intermediary between concept and perception") are actually the fruits of a creative activity, and have more authentic "realness" than even perceptions (which are in a sense predetermined according to sense function?--I don't know!)

It makes sense though, when we consider Steiner's next point, which is to say that the moral activity of making mental pictures demands a knowledge of natural law (scientific, not ethical). We can only influence the world of perceptions lawfully--i.e., "impart" a new form to them by understanding the natural laws that govern the world of perceptions. This knowledge is the basis of "moral technique," which can be learned.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Twelve: Moral Imagination: the need for moral imagination

2008-09-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

As Steiner has indicated repeatedly throughout this book, the difference between a free spirit and an unfree spirit is the degree to which the spirit either authentically performs free moral actions, or merely performs actions according to existing moral laws and commandments. To state this in another way, the free spirit acts according to an ideal concept that will have a yet-unknown or unrealized perceptible outcome. The unfree spirit acts according to the image of a mental picture already in place. As an illustration, Steiner refers to the way Christians use Christ as a model, or an exemplar of moral conduct. Unfree spirits do better at following the concrete deeds of Christ than they do at acting upon the less concrete, conceptual teachings of Christ. It is also easier for the unfree spirit to avoid certain actions when the mental picture of punishment is vivid. In situations where positive action is to be encouraged (as opposed to the discouragement of negative actions in the form "thou shalt nots"), a mental picture has to be created of the concept that impels the positive action.

Thus, to act in a truly free, morally free manner, it is necessary to possess moral imagination, so that ideal concepts can become perceptual content (ie, so a high ideal can be realized in the world). A person with moral imagination is a "morally productive" person, as opposed to a mere "preacher of morality."

Introducing Cranky Yellow

2008-09-15T00:26:00.000-07:00

As a proud contributor to the obliterary 'zine Chaotique, I was very pleased to see Chris Dreyer's superb editorial debut (and all of our cool stuff) getting some nice props from some highly creative and interesting people in St. Louis, who go collectively by the name of Cranky Yellow. Please check out (and help replicate) their fine and worthwhile community and self-building projects. See the link below
http://www.crankyyellow.com/about.php

CrankyYellow is an organization that builds its financial basis on the selling of art, music, and literature. However, as most companies and organizations stop at the bottom-line CrankyYellow uses this black-ink to fulfill community and political endeavors that it supports. We are not, we will never be money-grubbing penny-pinchers looking to fill our wallets. We want food, clothing, shelter, and a few video-games and dvds here and there; otherwise what we want the most is to enrich the community around us (Currently St. Louis) as well as the world as a whole.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Eleven: World Purpose and Life Purpose (The Vocation of Man):

2008-09-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

In this short, but interesting chapter Steiner discusses the issue of purpose and purposefulness. First, he destabilizes the idea of purpose as a matter of causality, arguing against the commonly held supposition that the purpose of outcome "X" is the thing that determines "X." He will argue, rather, that the outcome "X" (at least in human action) is the thing that determines that which appears to be the purpose.

In the realm of nature, no "purpose" exists, says Steiner, adding that only in the realm of human action do we find anything like purpose. Thus, the blossom of a flowering plant is not the purpose of the root--the flower is governed by the laws (not purposes) of nature. But, a concept formed by a human being indicating the texture of a potential future reality (not yet achieved) is the something, indeed the only thing that we can call purpose.

Based on the earlier section on Monism, we can quickly conclude that Steiner would see this human purpose as springing from the inner freedom of the person, and not imposed by any external power.

"My mission in the world is no predetermined one, but rather it is, at any given moment, the one I choose for myself. I do not enter upon my life's path with fixed marching orders (174)."

Steiner then goes on to "bash" the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling (1830-89) who argued that the great purpose and plan of nature is revealed in nature's laws. What Hamerling called "purpose," says Steiner, is merely a series of perceptions about nature "harmonized" into a whole by an observer of nature. The perceptions of the phenomena of nature have nothing to do with purposes, Steiner maintains, instead saying that the objects of nature are but "lawfully formed." There is no thing "out there" giving purpose to the objects of nature--they are merely doing what they are, in a sense, programmed to do.

Human actions are different, because their "causes" are the concepts of "effects," and, as suggested earlier, the purposefulness of human life can be seen as anti-causal.

"For monism," Steiner writes, "with the falling away of the absolute world being who cannot be experienced but is only hypothetically inferred, there also falls away any reason for ascribing purposes to the world and to nature (177)."

So what does this mean? Is Steiner arguing that we live in an orderless universe?" No--nature may be "purposeless" but it is not "orderless," and nature is not the absolute. In the addendum to this chapter, Steiner cautions (or reassures) his readers that the search for external purpose is yet another example of naive realism looking for a transcendent, non-real thing acting behind the material world. What really exists "out there" is far more complex than the transcendent thing our dualistic minds attempts to imagine, and it operates at a level even higher than human purposefulness.

Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter Ten: Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Monism: Monism, Morality and freedom

2008-09-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

The final section in Chapter TEn recapitulates Steiner's argument that no imposed or coerced code of morality can be truly free. "The moral commandments," he writes, "which the merely inference-drawing metaphysician has to regard as flowing from a higher power, are, for the believer in monism, thoughts of men (166)." Our mission in life is not, Steiner says, to satisfy the will or intentions of a higher power, but to achieve the purposes of the the free spiritual self as it unfolds.

"Each of us is called upon to become free spirit, just as each rose seed is called upon to become a rose (167)."

Monism is thus a "philosophy of inner freedom," and understands the human being to be constantly "self-developing."

The thing that seems difficult to nail down in this chapter is the reconciling what appears to be a precise kind radical subjectivity, i.e., the inherent freedom of the self, with a very ambiguous definition of monism, which in this case is merely a reality in which there is no distinction between subject and object. The difficulty comes from the fact that in Steiner's hundreds of later writings and lectures, he states quite clearly that we are constantly under the influence of external spirit beings, spirit impulses, thoughts, passions, etc., all of which have an objective identity of their own. This reality, which Steiner's own work proves clearly that he believes, seems to undermine his own definition in this work of a monistic nature in which the human is capable of acting freely without external influence.

Indeed, his reference to "nature" is interesting and if not contradictory, is at least a bit conflicted. "Monism knows that nature does not release man from her arms already complete as a free spirit, but rather she leads him to a certain stage from which, still as an unfree being, he develops himself until he comes to the point where he finds himself (167)."

Does this mean that man is under compulsion from a nature that apparently has the power to "release" him, "lead" him, etc.? Where is man's freedom in this relationship with nature?

While the argument for a purely spiritual, intuitive freedom is elegant and compelling, Steiner's logic seems to either break down here, or suffer from a lack of clear explanation of what "monism" is really supposed to mean. If man is at once free and unfree, a monism that permits unqualified freedom can't really exist, right?

In the addenda to this chapter, Steiner fails to address this question, and instead rushes back to the idea of "thinking" being the bridge between the self and the object world. In the first addendum, he says that thinking about the contradiction between the universal (ideas) and the concrete (individual morality) is itself a "living concept." I can't help but see this as a kind of dodge. The second addendum jumps up to a more transcendent level, and places the life of ideas in contradistinction to materialism. This is ground on which Steiner is much more comfortable, talking about spiritual realms as a more authentic mode of reality than material phenomena. The chapter would have been much more satisfying if he had been a little more rigorous in defining monism.