Why Women Can't Write Poetry

 

Not the usual image, but thought to be perhaps a photo of Emily Dickenson.

I once belonged to a small poetry group. It is far from a valid sample, but… 

The only qualification for membership was interest in reading your poetry publicly. 

The group consisted loosely of four men, and four women. All four of the men were pretty good poets; and all of the women were dreadful.

Was that purely coincidental? 

There are indeed far more great male poets, than female poets in the canons of world literature.

Feminists will of course say this is because women’s voices were silenced. Only men’s voices counted.

Yet against this, in most or all societies, women have had more leisure time for the arts than men. It has been up to the man to earn sustenance for the family. Women, at least among the classes that could afford any leisure for anyone, were encouraged to pursue the arts. Book clubs were always primarily women; and still are. Magazines were mostly marketed to women. TV was mostly viewed by women. Why would they not have used this time to write?

Is it that female poets were discriminated against by publishers? A female poet of my acquaintance, who has done the research, insists this is not so; and any check of the Internet Archive or old newspapers appears to confirm this. At least by the 19th century, poetry by women seems actually to have been published more often than poetry by men. They did have the leisure time, and they did use it, and they did get it into print.

And yet, with few exceptions, it is the men’s poetry that is still read today, that has survived the test of time. The women’s poetry seems to have lacked any abiding message to mankind.

In her day, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a bigger literary star than her husband, Robert. But since, her reputation has faded, while his has grown.

 Other than Emily Dickenson, how many first-rank women poets can you think of from the 19th century? 

Of course, you can list many from more recent years. But you could have drawn up a similar list in 1850. How many will endure?

Could it simply be that men are deeper thinkers than women? Women can make words pretty, but men are better fit to plumb the depths of human experience?

Pauline Johnson was wildly popular in Canada in the 19th century. She was half-aboriginal, and would recite wearing buckskin. But her popularity faded. It has been revived recently, to some extent, for political reasons. But it is striking to me that there is really no content to her poems; they never really say anything.

If ever a literary career was built on superficial show, it was hers.

A feminist heresy, of course, to suggest that men are deeper thinkers than women. But surely plausible; we know women’s and men’s brains, after all, are physically different. Such a difference in deep thinking is implied in the Bible, if you take it seriously, when St. Paul advises wives to obey their husbands, and women to remain silent in church. 

But it is not even clear to me that women are better at the mechanics of verse, at making words pretty. Even though, if we are still talking about sex differences, tests show that women on average have better linguistic skills than men. Even though craftsmanship in verse would seem to follow.

In my local group, it is not just that the women lacked any message. They also seemed to have no sense of craftsmanship either. What they declaimed were not poems or verse at all in the technical sense. More expressions of emotion without grammar. It is the men who played with the sounds of words, with rhythm, assonance, repetition, and sometimes rhyme.

Even in the case of Emily Dickenson: the odd exception of a great female poet. She absolutely has depth. But she is not great technically. Her rhymes are loose; there is little rhythm. Her style is epigrammatic. Britannica cites a “lack of high polish.”

What then can explain this? Why aren’t women better at poetry?

I think it is precisely because women are more verbal than men. It was certainly obvious in my poetry group. In between readings, all conversation was dominated by the women, who expressed their opinions on religion, politics, and human relationships freely and forcefully. The men all stayed mostly silent, but perhaps for occasional muttered assent.

Dickenson perhps explains it, when she says of poetry: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” Poetry is for saying things you cannot say directly. It is the voice of the silenced. Contrary to the claims of feminism, women have always been freer to speak their minds publicly. They are accustomed to being listened to, as well. A woman can usually get what she wants by making her demands clearly known. 

Men, by contrast, learn to choose their words carefully. They must not make demands, emotional or otherwise. They must think before they speak, or risk a fight, or force of law. 

Consider the famous feminist complaint that men will never ask for directions. A women will do so immediately, even without consulting the map. 

Isn’t this actually an example of female privilege?

If Emily Dickenson is an exception to the rule, it interestingly corresponds with an unusual life experience. She lived her life in seclusion, with few to talk to; if only due to her own congenital shyness.

It is the pressure to shut up, or having something to say that nobody wants to listen to, that forces poetry.

An Honest Land Acknowlegement

Spanish and Portuguese possessions according to the Treaty of Tordesillas

In May of this year, Catherine Kronas, an elected member of the school council at Ancaster Secondary School in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB), was suspended from her position by the school board because she lodged a formal objection, following proper parliamentary procedure, to the board’s requirement to make a “land acknowledgement” at every council meeting. Her concern was that this was a political statement, and compelled speech.

This was equivalent to a coup by the bureaucracy overthrowing the elected government. The school board is supposed to be subject to the elected parents’ councils, not the other way around. It is also an extreme violation of human rights: of freedom of speech, of the right to petition the government, of parental rights over their children’s education.

Why would the school board act in such a dictatorial fashion over this particular issue?

In part, this is a sign of desperation. The various bureaucracies are aware they are losing control. The natural reaction is to lash out in narcissistic rage; just as Islamic terrorism is a symptom of the collapse of Muslim confidence. We have seen blatant attempts by the “deep state” to subvert democracy in the US, in France, in the UK, in Germany, recently. Canada is probably no worse.

The reason the school board is enforcing this “land acknowledgement” in the first place is, of course, that it is a lie. Forcing people to repeat a lie is an exercise in control for its own sake.

Nobody feels the need to enforce a truth. Truth can look after itself.

The various “land acknowledgements” are also violations of the principle of human equality; they imply that some citizens have, by birth, some claim to the land above that of other citizens. 

One might counter that they are meant merely as a matter of historical interest. However, if so, they are still discriminatory in mentioning only approved “First Nations” groups who fought over this land, and not also historic claims to the land by the French, the British, and, by Treaty of Tordesillas, the  Spanish.

Especially obnoxious is the common claims that some part of Canada is “the unceded territory” of this or that tribe. This is a plain lie. Sovereignty was expressly ceded by treaty across the Prairies and the north, throughout Ontario, and in the Peace and Friendship treaties in the Atlantic Provinces. Note, for example, this text from the “Articles of Submission,” 1725: “We, the … delegates from the … tribes inhabiting within His Majesty's said territories of Nova Scotia or Acadia and New England, do, in the name and behalf of the said tribes we represent, acknowledge His said Majesty King George's jurisdiction and dominion over the territories of the said Province of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and make our submission to His said Majesty in as ample a manner as we have formerly done to the Most Christian King.” 

This is a clear surrender of sovereignty. Their land was ceded, in the same sense the French Acadian lands were ceded to Britain in 1713, or the North-West Territories were ceded to Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870. This does not, of course, directly address the matter of individual ownership of given plots of land. That would be subject to the laws of England: “We Submitting ourselves to be ruled and governed by His Majesty's Laws and desiring to have the benefit of the same.”

Interestingly, by contrast, Spain actually never has formally ceded sovereignty over North America. So that “land acknowledgement” is the only one that might be vaguely legitimate. For what it might be worth.

Conclave

My feeling after watching “Conclave” is that it is not truly anti-Catholic. After all, it shows the cardinals genuinely, in the end, electing the candidate they believe to be the holiest among them. Despite the temptations to simony and lust and ambition, they are on the whole sincere—a realistic, even an optimistic, appraisal. And there is an interesting question in the end. Spoiler alert. Stop reading now if you have not seen the film. 

Given that Cardinal Benitez’s medical condition is just barely possible, what are the moral issues it involves? What should Benitez or Lawrence, in good conscience, do or have do?

For what it is worth, I think the conclusion the movie offers is correct. At this point, it is an irrelevant technicality. 

My sense is more that the screenwriters have been lazy. They show a shocking lack of knowledge of the Catholic faith, and have not taken the trouble to get it right. Having spent so much, and such care, on the cinematography, it is shameful that they did not put in the effort to get the theology right. Even had the intent been to criticize the Catholic church, they have been mostly punching at straw men. I feel as though my intelligence, as audience, has been insulted.

It is not a legitimate criticism of Catholic, or any, traditionalism, for example, to associate it with racism, as they do by having Cardinal Tedesco worry about one of “those people” (sub-Saharan Africans) becoming pope. Even outside the Church, there is no reason to associate traditionalism with racism. But certainly not inside the church, where the most traditionalist cardinals are usually found in Africa and Asia. If the screenwriters want to object to traditionalism, they have to offer some genuine reason it is bad.

Part of the problem is that, in typical Hollywood fashion, they have to portray one character as an absolute villain. They even use the tired and obvious trope of introducing Tedesco by immediately showing him being rude to an underling. Sophomoric.

Far better to give each character depth and motive. But they did not bother.

More cringeworthy is Cardinal Lawrence’s extempore soliloquy: 

“St Paul said that God’s gift to the Church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views that gives our Church its strength. In the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that there is one sin I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness. And carries on.”

There’s just about everything wrong with that.

To begin with, St. Paul never said God’s gift to the church was variety or diversity. That’s some weird projection. My guess is that the intended justification for this claim is that St. Paul said there was neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. This is not a celebration of diversity, but a call to unity. In the Bible, the diversity of mankind is the result of sin—see the Tower of Babel. 

And necessarily no Church is about a diversity of views. People come together as a church because of shared views. If you are a Christian, you profess the Nicene Creed, and must commit to it at each mass. If you are a Catholic, you accept the Catechism of the Catholic Church, all 2865 paragraphs of it.

You are free to have diverse views on other topics; but that is not what religion is about.

Lawrence actually says certainty is a sin. Not just a sin, but the worst sin. 

If certainty is a sin, then the apostles and the prophets and all the martyrs were particularly sinful men. As are monks and nuns. They surrendered everything, even their lives, for their certainty. 

Moreover, certainty is not the enemy of tolerance—uncertainty is. This is not just an innocent error, but highly dangerous. If you are certain of the truth, you are untroubled by someone else denying it. Nobody gets agitated at hearing someone else say that the sun orbits the earth, or that the moon is made of cheese. We laugh; we condescend. 

Only if we are uncertain of truth, if we are plagued by our own doubts, do we need to plug our ears, or shout down or eliminate other views. 

You see this, for example, in the current plague of Muslim terrorism. Someone I read recently pointed out that, until rather recently, Muslims were relatively sanguine about the West and accepting Western political norms. The Middle East was mostly quiet, and cooperative, even with imperial powers like Britain and France trudging through and setting up their colonial administrations. After the formation of Israel, the PLO rose in opposition: but as a Marxist, not a Muslim, organization. There was no Muslim opposition to Israel then. The Middle East in general was secularizing, under nationalist leaders with no religious agenda: Nasser in Egypt; Assad; Saddam; all secular nationalists. In Iran, the monarchy was similarly secular.

Something happened. Something changed.

The Muslim terrorists who have risen to prominence since are almost always Western-educated.

What has changed is the internet. The Muslim world had been largely hived off. Remarkably few Western writings were ever translated into Arabic. With greater exposure to Western thought, Muslims are now commonly doubting their religion. And so they are less tolerant. They cannot any longer trust Allah to manage his own affairs.

“Let [God] grant us a pope who sins and asks for forgiveness” is also incoherent. It suggests sin itself is a good. Theologically it is incoherent, since we all sin. And incoherent since we all, as Catholics, ask for forgiveness.

And the movie, and Cardinal Lawrence, then contradict these words, when Lawrence insists that Cardinal Adeyemi can never be pope because of a sin he committed, and repents, years ago. This is heresy. Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer. The Good Thief went straight to heaven. St. Paul persecuted Christians. Redemption is what the Church is for. 

Cardinal Bellini, the “progressive,” objects to Adeyemi as pope because he “would send homosexuals to hell.” No Catholic cardinal would say that; nobody has the power to send someone to hell. Not even God himself does this. We choose hell. And this suggests that cardinals get to individually decide on faith or morals. Not even the pope can do that; not even an ecumenical council can. Should the Church be wrong in believing homosexual sex to be sinful, this error could not send any homosexual to hell; any more than not believing in gravity means you can fly.

After the bombing, which is more than a bit over the top, a cheap thrill, the screenplay has Cardinal Tedesco orate, “We need a leader who fights these animals.” No Catholic prelate is going to refer in public, among fellow cardinals, to another human being as an “animal.” That would mean rejecting basic Church teaching, not to mention Aristotle. 

And it would be so easy for the screenwriter to simply omit this word. Had Tedesco said “terrorist” instead, we would have had an interesting moral and philosophical issue to consider. Should we fight if attacked, or turn the other cheek? When is it right to fight back?

Perhaps the screenwriter inserted this word precisely to avoid an interesting moral question he did not want. But that is malpractice as a writer.

And Cardinal Benitez responds with his own howler, supposed by the screenplay to be deeply persuasive, the last word: “The church is not tradition. It is what we do next.”

Tradition is exactly what the church is: the “deposit of faith.” “Holy, catholic, and apostolic. That third term means it must not deviate from tradition. On matters of faith and morals, anything it says must be demonstrated to be in full accord with what the apostles said two thousand years ago. Unmoor from this, and the Catholic Church has no reason to exist. It is just a social club. 

It is not, in the end, an evil movie. It is a bad movie.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

Fr. Calvin Robinson makes a compelling case in a recent blog post that feminism is the most destructive ideology of all time.

He does the math. 

“Add up all the wars throughout human history, and they amount to an estimated 1.5 billion deaths. That is inclusive of combatants, civilian casualties and those who died of the results of war (i.e. famine).”

For comparison, abortion, since widespread legalisation in the 1970s, “has amounted to 2.5-3.5 billion deaths.”

This is just since the 1970s, fifty years, against all of human history. And these are all innocent lives. It is, moreover, far worse to kill a child than to kill an elderly man, say, who has only a few years left to him. 

One can also consider that a good many of the deaths in war are not intended, collateral damage. Indeed, in principle, they are all unintended. Any general, any leader, tries to minimize casualties in achieving his objectives. But all abortions are deliberate, cold blooded, and certain to cause death. 

Again, perhaps fifty percent of combat deaths are legitimate self-defense: in the usual course of things, one side is in the right. No abortion deaths are legitimate self-defense. Not even in the case of rape or incest, which account for only 1.5% of abortions.

Father Robinson cites statistics showing abortions are overwhelmingly used by women simply as a form of birth control. Simply because they feel having a child did not fit into their current plans.  Saving the life of the mother? If it is done to save the mother’s life, it does not even show up in the abortion statistics.

Legally, the woman has the unilateral right to have an abortion. The father of the child has no say. This, therefore, must be placed entirely at the feet of women. Given that it is feminism that justifies this, feminism is the deadliest ideology known to mankind. And women,  given power, are far more violent than men.

Feminism is also responsible for the death of the family. This is by no accident: it was the family, per Betty Friedan, which was to be destroyed. Women were to accept no family responsibilities. That is “patriarchy.”

In North America, over 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. No doubt following Ann Landers’ advice from as far back as the Seventies that the only standard should be, “Are you better off with him or without him?” No thought for the children. No thought for “For richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.” No thought for the in-laws. No thought for the wider society. Just what seems best for her at the time.

Under feminism, women have turned against child care. They will farm their children, if they have them, out to strangers, even though we know this is worse for children. By neglecting the next generation, they are destroying the culture, the civilization itself. For family is the basic building block of society as a whole, and culture is whatever we pass on to the next generation.

And, predictably, women turning away from children and childbearing is causing a demographic collapse. The developed West has as a result seen a need to open the doors to unrestricted immigration. This causes its own problems, which are becoming increasingly apparent. Ultimately, social chaos.

It is vain to talk of legal solutions to this problem: the necessary laws cannot be passed until and unless we can change hearts and minds.

I believe that cultures worldwide had it right, before feminism threw everything off kilter. Girls were spoiled growing up, and allowed to expect a life free of responsibilities. In return, they were required to defer to men. Boys were held to a higher standard, and in return, should they pass that bar, given command.  It worked, everywhere, for all of recorded history.

Now girls are still spoiled growing up, and then put in command. Disastrous.

Trump Is Making Canada Great Again

 

As a Canadian, I support Donald Trump in the current trade negotiations with Canada. His chief complaints are, first, border security, second, the flood of drugs across the border, third, the Canadian egg, poultry, and dairy quotas, and fourth, the digital services tax. 

In each case, what Trump wants is in Canadians’ best interests. What the Canadian government wants harms Canada.

Border security: We should be just as worried about terrorist attacks as the US; why is this controversial? It is apparently fact that more terrorists are entering the US from the north than from the south. The Canadian government has been alarmingly lax about Chinese influence, Kalistani terrorism, and floods of supposed refugees from the Middle East. Canada has no land border with any nation but the US, and is separated from the rest of the world by oceans. We don’t need to build any wall, or turn back small craft at sea. It would be far easier to stop the flow of undocumented or undesirable aliens here than it is for the US, Britain, or any of the countries of Europe. Yet the Canadian government is making no effort, even opening the doors ever wider—as if they want chaos.

Drugs: Fentanyl is a major crisis in Canada as well as the US; we should want to stop the traffic just as they do. Granted that the “war on drugs” was a failure, and prohibition did not work. But the current Canadian governmental approach of legalization, turning a blind eye, and handing out free drugs to addicts, is clearly making matters worse. We ought to work with the Americans to try something else. The obvious thing is to try to cut off supply.

Cheese: the Canadian government seems far more concerned with the smuggling of cheese than the smuggling of fentanyl. The Canadian “supply management” system is an obvious violation of the free market. It is a perfect example of a cartel in restraint of trade, which should be illegal. It is the government’s job to prevent cartels from forming, not to impose them. The result of this cartel is that the very poorest among us are made poorer for the benefit of a handful of large producers. The cheapest sources of protein are made artificially expensive. It is pure evil, quite apart from its unfairness to American farmers, our neighbours. It is even bad for the Canadian dairy industry, which used to be able to compete internationally. 

Happily, the digital services tax is already suspended.  It would have made the cheapest forms of entertainment more expensive; and would have made Canadian high-tech start-ups less competitive.

I hope Trump will also go after Canadian content regulations, which cut us off from dialogue with the world.

Why Mainstream Protestantism Lists Left

Some notorious sinner who ignored the ethical concerns of his community.

 

Friend Xerxes is arguing that our sense of morality comes from the community.

This is the claim of “cultural relativism.” It is obviously false. If a given community decided murder was perfectly okay, would it be okay? Killing Jews was perfectly acceptable in Nazi Germany; do we have no right to object to the practice? Or to slavery, since it was socially condoned in most parts of the world until rather recently? To child sacrifice? 

Challenged on the point, Xerxes seemed confused. So where then did I suppose morality comes from? Where else could it come from

From the natural law. We are all born with a conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong. Kant showed that the moral law is the one thing we cannot possibly dispute, a “categorical imperative.” It can be summed up in the simple phrase, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Nobody truly believes that murder is right, or lying is right.

Since this is self-evident, why do people like Xerxes fail to see it?

Often, I’m sure, due to guilt. Many find it easier to deny the reality of right and wrong than to admit doing wrong.

But this may also be a mainstream Protestant problem, at least in Xerxes’s case. Denominations like the United Church of Canada, or the Anglican Church, really have no fixed doctrines; you pretty much believe what you want, and worship what you want. Anglicans have their rituals, but since they do not believe in transubstantiation, they amount to little more than aesthetics. So why do you go to church?

Perhaps all that is left is latitudinarianism: you go to learn how to behave better.

Hence they must cling to the doctrine that morality comes from the community you keep. It becomes their raison d’etre.

And we can perhaps go a step further. Since the basics of morality are self-evident, they have to come up with something new. They cannot simply preach “Do not lie.” 

This may explain why these churches seem to veer into weird wokery and left-wing politics. What we sometimes call “virtue-signalling” or “political correctness.” They must have some mock morality that is not self-evident. 

It cannot be anything that requires self-sacrifice, or great effort: not fasting, say or climbing mountains on your knees. Mainstream Protestant congregations are democracies, and even strive for consensus. Such strenuous requirements are sure to cause some backlash.

So it becomes a matter of using the correct language, voting the correct way, condemning the right things in others.

Who I Think Is on the Epstein List

 

BFF?

I have no business speculating on the Jeffrey Epstein list, but here’s my speculation.

I believe the most plausible reason the Epstein client list or its equivalent has not been released is that he was an intelligence agent. Exposing more would destroy some intelligence operation.

This would explain how he became rich despite no relevant background.

He was not, I speculate, Mossad, as some are suggesting. Seems to me the point of his Lolita Island was that it took him off the US coast; the CIA is not allowed to operate within the US. If he were with Mossad, there would not be this need. Mossad may come up only because of antisemitism. It fits with the eternal trope of an International Jewish Conspiracy.

And the Trump administration would not have great incentive to avoid blowing up an Israeli intelligence operation.

The names we hear of, supposedly among the Epstein clients, tend to be famous Americans. This suggests a deep state coup.

And the failure of the Trump administration to release the information suggests that the CIA has some means of controlling them as well.

The obvious explanation is that Trump too is on that client list. Allan Dershowitz says he has seen the list, and it includes some people pointing fingers at others for being Epstein clients. That could include Trump.

Countering this, it is said that Trump actually blew the whistle on Epstein originally, and cooperated with investigators when others would not. And the fierce opposition to Trump by the deep state and the media seems best explained by the thesis that they had nothing on him, that they felt they could not control him.

So we’re back to an intelligence operation.

It may be that the speculation centres around famous Americans only because of the natural local bias of the media. It is an old saw in journalism: you always want a local angle. Three locals dying in a car accident is more newsworthy than 300 people dying in a bus crash in Bangladesh. It may be that the bulk of Epstein’s actual clients were foreigners—like Prince Andrew, the one person actually identified so far.

Epstein visited Israel and was introduced by Dershowitz to government figures there? Don’t assume from that he was working for the Israelis. The simpler assumption, per Occam’s razor, is that he was working for the CIA to set honey traps for Israeli politicians.

I think the reason the Trump administration will not release the list is that it will include the names of prominent foreign allies. A Trudeau, a Macron, a Netanyahu, a Boris Johnson, or the like. 

How to Feel Good

 

A friend who is himself a therapist sent me a link to a brief summary by David D. Burns, promoting his book Feeling Good. Reading it, Burns himself acknowledges that no known form of psychotherapy actually can be shown to be effective. Including his own.

“For example, in one large, well-controlled outcome study, CBT [Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, essentially his own approach] was found to be comparable to the popular antidepressant medication paroxetine (Paxil) in the short-term, and slightly more effective in the long run, when patients were contacted a year or more after treatment (DeRubeis et al., 2005; Hollon et al., 2005). Most researchers and clinicians have concluded that if CBT is at least as good as treatment with antidepressants, then it must be effective.”

Wait. The problem is, the SSRI inhibitors have not been shown to be effective. So if CBT is no better, it does not work. I had thought it was at least one therapy that did have scientific backing.

Burns confirms this further on:

“if you examine the data closely, and understand the rating scales the investigators used, it becomes clear that neither CBT nor antidepressants (nor any form of psychotherapy) appears to be much better than treatment with placebos. In fact, many recent research studies indicate that the so-called ‘anti-depressant’ medications may have few or no significant anti-depressant effect above and beyond their placebo effects.” One study I saw found them no more effective against depression than sleeping pills. “In order for any treatment to be truly deemed ‘effective’ it must provide an effect significantly superior to placebo. Sadly, this is not the case for any of the currently prescribed antidepressant medications or any currently practiced forms of psychotherapy.”

There you go—little to no scientific backing for any form of psychotherapy. You might as well just put on a mask and do a rain dance.

Burns cites no stats for his own “TEAM” approach, only anecdotes. But he does make the following claim for using his book:

“Results indicate that bibliotherapy [meaning his book specifically] can be almost as good, if not better, than the results obtained with antidepressant medications or psychotherapy in controlled outcome studies (Ackerson, Scogin, Lyman, & Smith, 1998;…)”

In other words, his book too does just about as well as a sugar pill.

Now you might rightly ask, what are you supposed to do if you are a therapist, and someone comes to you with a problem? You want to help; you do not want to send them away; you must give them something. Isn’t it better to give them a placebo than to give them nothing?

Yes, so long as you are not charging more than the cost of a sugar pill for it.

And only if there are no alternative treatments available that do work. To say that no forms of psychotherapy work is not to say that nothing works for depression or mental illness or the problems of life. There is an obvious alternative treatment for the problems of life, or for those who struggle with meaning or the nature of reality; it is almost too obvious. That is what religion is about.

Psychotherapy and psychology began as an attempt to replace religion. This is plain in Freud. Jung admits this. It is a failed replacement. Religion works, and materialist psychotherapies do not.

You can see the rates of depression, mental illness, drug addiction and suicide rise as church attendance falls. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is a clear correlation. Looking further back, the reason Christianity spread so quickly across the Roman Empire, then Northern Europe, then the Americas, then Africa, according to the chroniclers of that day, was its ability to cast out demons—in modern terms, to cure severe mental illness. That’s a lot of empirical evidence that it works. 

In the Seventies, the World Health Organization did an international study, and found the recovery rate for mental illness was dramatically higher in the “Third World” than in the developed West. The obvious variable is that the developed West relies on scientific psychology, and the poor South relies more commonly on religion.

You might argue that there is in turn no proper scientific proof for the effectiveness of religion. I believe there is, but this is not that relevant. Science is a tool to study nature, not mankind; it does not work on subjects, only objects. Mankind is studied through history, philosophy, and the arts—the humanities. We deduce from first principles, from the lessons of history, and the advice of great minds.

Those Crazy Indians

 

Friend Xerxes writes that his father’s doctoral dissertation was almost rejected. His father was using the standard Rorschach test on Indian (as in India) subjects. The problem was, his study showed that most of India’s population was schizophrenic.

There are several possibilities here. One is that Xerxes senior was not properly applying the test. The thesis examiners, however, could not find and flaw here, and so had to approve his thesis.

The second, and the conclusion Xerxes draws, is that the Rorschach test is culturally biased. 

But this implies a further conclusion: that our understanding of schizophrenia is culturally biased. It is primarily a cultural prejudice, not an illness. This has grave implications. It means people might actually be drugged up or put in mental hospitals because of their cultural background. And it has been suggested that this has happened, often, to Native Americans/First Nations shamans.

And there is actually a third possibility, currently not permitted to be mentioned: maybe schizophrenia is a real mental disorder, and the majority of Indians are indeed schizophrenic. Maybe an entire culture can be mad, out of touch with objective reality.

We cannot entertain this last possibility, because we currently falsely identify culture with race; and then with the concept of human equality. So we cannot admit that one culture can be better than another.

This is obviously false. A culture is a tool for living, a technology, and one tool can always be better than another.

I will go further. Our present Western culture, which asserts that a man can become a woman, and vice versa, is objectively mad. It is leading to rising rates of depression and suicide. 

It is always possible that the schizophrenics, and the Indians, are sane, and psychology and the psychologists and modern secular scientistic “Western” culture, are mad.

If this sounds shocking, this is actually the foundational assumption of Christianity, or Buddhism, or Hinduism: that an entire culture, indeed “the world,” can have it wrong. 

The Emerging Effects of the New Media

 

I keep hearing and seeing online that Catholicism is now suddenly growing in Britain, France, the US. It is growing across Africa, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, even in places like Iran. Generation Z, and Generation Z men in particular, are reputedly showing up in Catholic Churches. Famous celebrities are publicly converting. 

Why now?

I think we are beginning to see the fruits of the new media. Governments and establishments have tried to control what people hear and think. They control through restricting what appears in the media, and wat is taught in the schools. Now that filter is off, despite their desperate rear-guard actions, because everyone now in effect owns a printing press and a television network.

Just as John Stuart Mill explained, the only way to arrive at truth is to ensure that all voices are heard.

In particular, we are seeing debates online. This actually used to be how universities worked: teachers established their reputation through public debates and lectures. Buddhism advanced in the subcontinent, and Christianity in Eastern Europe, through public debates. 

Let those public debates happen, and, over time, it becomes apparent that Christianity, and Catholicism, have all the best answers. We cannot overestimate the influence of online personalities like Wiliam Lane Craig, Bishop Barron, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Charlie Kirk, all laying out the case.

New Atheism had its part to play, in provoking this response, but the major factor is simply the New Media. While it can spread misinformation and lies as easily as truth, a good argument, and especially a good debate performance, cannot really be faked. The reasoning stands up, or it does not.

Proof that the New Media is the main cause of this awakening is that Gen Z is most affected. Gen Z is most inclined to get their information from new media, and not from the establishment channels.

Catholicism is simply the most coherent and plausible explanation for life and the universe. Which is shy the urgency to spread the gospel. Secular scientism, the political religion of Marxism, and, dare I say it, to an extent also Islam and Protestantism, have maintained their influence largely by restricting information and spreading falsehoods about Catholicism, its history and beliefs.

In the midst of present turmoil, this suggests that good times are coming. Better times than we have yet seen.

RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary

 

Friend Xerxes objects to RFK Jr. as US Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the grounds that he is unqualified for the position. And, of course, that he is an “anti-vaxxer,” and promoting dangerous unscientific falsehoods about vaccines.

I note that his Wikipedia entry introduces Kennedy as, among other things, a “conspiracy theorist.” “Since 2005, Kennedy has promoted vaccine misinformation.”

However, as a result of his criticism of Kennedy, Xerxes had two readers unsubscribe from his newsletter.

I think it is a symptom of how dysfunctional our society has become that two people unsubscribed simply because Xerxes said something they disagree with. 

What is the point of reading opinions you agree with? They will tell you nothing you do not already know. To refuse to hear opposing arguments means you are not looking for truth; you can have no idea whether your own ideas are true or not, if you have not heard the opposing arguments. This amounts to deliberately choosing delusion. Too many people currently seem to be doing exactly that, systematically. They want to belong to a cult.

As it happens, I disagree with Xerxes on RFK Jr. I disagree with him on most things.

Regarding RFK Jr. being unqualified for his position, there is a Catch-22 here. Milton Friedman pointed it out. Who are the qualified experts? When a government wants to set regulations, they must indeed turn to experts for advice. That almost inevitably means people prominent in that industry or field set their own rules. For example, to regulate the automotive industry, government will turn to the executives of the big car companies. To set vaccine policy, the executives of the big drug firms. To set science, policy, prominent scientists. Of course. But such experts automatically have a conflict of interest, and an overwhelming temptation to set up a cartel. They are likely to regulate in their industry’s interests, or their profession’s interests, and to restrain competition; not in the public interest.

How can you get around this?

RFK Jr. arguably has the ideal qualifications for his position, precisely because he is not a medical doctor nor a food or pharmaceutical executive. Nevertheless, as a lawyer who has specialized in lawsuits against members of these groups, he has had to research the issues thoroughly and develop expertise to present his cases. You might argue he has a bias against the industry, but he is not beholden to them, nor nearly as financially interested. And a bias in the other direction might be a useful corrective.

For the same reason, it was rather a good idea to vote in an entrepreneur with no prior political experience as president. Trump knows how to get things done, but he is not compromised by nor beholden to what he calls the “Washington swamp.” Both appointments seem to be a useful experiment.

This is not to say I think JFK’s views are right; I have no position on that. I don’t have the knowledge nor expertise to know that. We do know something is wrong somewhere in the modern American lifestyle: perhaps in our food, perhaps environmental pollutants, perhaps the vaccines, perhaps in common drugs and medicines. We see an epidemic of obesity, of autism, of diabetes, of mass shootings, of suicides, of drug abuse, of unexplained sudden deaths of young and seemingly fit people. Something is up. Surely more research is a good thing, and independent research not directly funded by the drug companies or food companies. Maybe Kennedy can get to the bottom of it, with the resources now at his disposal.

One thing seems clear to me about Kennedy: he is sincere. He is doing this out of conviction. He is not paid off. I want leaders like that.

Why, other than voluntary delusion, would we not want to do the research to find out?

The Hound of Heaven

 

Trying to understand the general hostility to religion: it is hated because it makes us feel bad about ourselves. Therefore it is countered with “self-esteem.” And that will make everything better; once we cast off this nagging voice saying we are not good enough.

The problem is, self and getting what we want is a hollow idol. It takes all meaning out of life. Because if we are wonderful as we are, we never improve ourselves. We have no purpose; we just sit there with nowhere to go. And that nagging voice of guilt does not go away. It gets louder.

As they feel worse and worse, this causes the irreligious to get more and more hostile to religion. To their imagination, its residual influence is causing them more and more suffering. As if it is chasing them. It is everywhere. Clearly just walking away from it was not enough. The solution must be to wipe it out entirely, for everyone, every vestige. It must be poisoning the entire culture. Religious people are looking at you, and you know they are condemning you in their hearts. Maybe the entire culture must be destroyed.

Such people can do a lot of damage before they realize religion was not the problem, but their own guilt. Religion is the means to escape it. The problem is, first you have to face it.

A White Elephant?

 

It’s time to address an elephant in the room. Something nobody dares to say.

I have pointed out recently in this space (“Narcissism Is Not Depression”) that people with low self-esteem will compensate by “working hard at whatever they are asked to do, to prove themselves. They will be scrupulously moral, and always want the structure of rules. Rules will reassure them they are doing all right.”

This means that someone with low self-esteem is primed for accomplishment in life. Someone with high self-esteem will avoid what is difficult. They may enjoy life more, but will never accomplish much.

It follows that a culture that fosters low self-esteem, especially in its children, will, over time, develop faster and become more advanced than a culture that fosters high self-esteem. It will also be more orderly and have less crime and violence; and this in turn allows for faster development.

And this can easily explain, in turn, why some cultures “dominate” others. Why Jews are always so successful. Why “whites” do better than “blacks.” Why the British managed to manage one quarter of the world. Why indigenous cultures never invented the wheel, while Europe and Asia had printing and firearms and ocean-going vessels.

In fact, there is no other adequate explanation. The common one, that whites or Jews or Asians are simply racist and violent, while Africans and aboriginals were always peaceful and loving, is not just nonsense on the evidence, but nonsense on the internal logic. Simply being mean does not give you power over others.

Different cultures are simply better than others. And the key is in child-rearing. Child-rearing is really what a culture is all about: culture is what we pass on to our children. Some cultures instill low self-esteem. Their children suffer, but succeed, and the culture succeeds. Other cultures instill high self-esteem. Their children have a great childhood, but accomplish little in life, and the culture does not progress. They will also suffer more in later life; because the culture around them will be less orderly, less developed, and more violent.

The British upper class has long understood this. It was all about “breeding.” For countless generations, they sent their young away to spartan, rigorous boarding schools, where they were commonly bullied, and expected to fend for themselves. This was the key to the continued dominance of that class. 

Do the same with Canadian aboriginal children, and they call it “genocide.”

I tutor many Chinese and Korean students. They barely have a childhood. For them, it is a grind from morning to night. What is their favourite free-time activity? The usual response is “sleep.”

And you wonder why they do so well at academics? It is not discrimination in their favour. They are systematically discriminated against.

“Jewish guilt” is similarly notorious. You are never good enough.

African-Americans, by contrast, freely boast about themselves. They spike the ball in the end zone. They trash talk. A current ad for Hamilton Ontario tourism features a local football player paid to talk up the city. But he also inserts that he is the best football player ever seen—just in case you didn’t know. One cannot picture a ‘white” athlete saying such a thing. One cannot imagine a Chinese athlete saying such a thing. It is perhaps the most obvious cultural difference between the two groups.

A further irony is that those with low self-esteem are unlikely to complain. They will feel they do not deserve more than they have; and if they are genuinely discriminated against, they will fear drawing attention to themselves. It is likely to cause them trouble.

Those with high self-esteem, and those accustomed to getting what they want, on the other hand, will complain loudly if they do not get it. 

So if some group is complaining loudly of discrimination and injustice, they are almost certainly already privileged. 

This includes women. Boys are traditionally treated roughly and held to account as children. Little girls are traditionally treated as “princesses.” Young women are fawned over. And so they grow bitter when privilege is not acknowledged.

This includes African-Americans. If not privileged by the wider society until recently, they almost always grow up privileged. African-American mothers are famously indulgent. African-American fathers are often absent. And they currently have systematic privilege, and complain the louder for it.

This includes Canadian “First Nations.” Contrary to the myth, they have always been given every consideration by the government and the wider culture, as advised by the best experts of the day. As a result, they remain mired in poverty and a sense of grievance. Again, fathers are often absent; and mothers are indulgent. 

The current popular push for “self-esteem” is increasingly making a disastrous mistake. Our growing lack of interest in child-rearing is making a disastrous mistake.  A civilization-ending mistake, unless we correct it at this late date.

Report from the Trenches

 

Over just the past two weeks in my small city, someone has thrown a rock through one of the stained glass windows of the Catholic cathedral. Someone showed up at the choir recital, pulled out a knife, and started anointing the floor with alcohol. I wonder if his intent was to start a fire; the police were able to restrain him. A local café, run as a Christian charity, hosted a private meeting of Right to Life. Word got out; there was a protest and a call for boycott. They have now banned Right to Life from the premises. I now learn that all expressions of religion have been banned from the local Culturefest festival.

It has become alarming. Yet on the other hand, many seem to be turning to the Catholic church. There have been many recent high-profile conversions. There are record adult baptisms, I hear, in England and France. Some US dioceses are reporting a 50% growth in converts year over year. Generation Z, particularly young men, are said to be flocking to mass. Our own cathedral congregation seems to be growing each week.

On YouTube, I keep hearing about many conversions in places like Iran, China, Japan, and throughout Africa.

We seem to be at a moment of clarity. People are choosing sides.