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. 

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.

How to Win a War Without Firing a Shot

 

Would you buy a used revolution from this face?

A Chinese student and I were discussing this past IELTS essay topic: “How much should government spend on the arts?” And he quoted what he claimed was a common Chinese saying: “If you want to destroy a country, first destroy its culture.”

This is a common Chinese saying? For they as actually tried to systematically destroy their culture themselves in the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps this saying emerged from that experience.

Certainly now we ourselves in Canada, America, and Europe seem to be trying to destroy our culture. Pulling down statues, burning down churches, teaching our young that our culture is evil, and “patriarchy” or “white supremacy.” Reversing the meaning of the fairy tales. Rejecting "conventional morality." Abandoning beauty in art. Encouraging and funding any culture but our own: “multiculturalism.” 

It is all suspiciously like the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China.

China descended into this madness without any foreign interference. So I guess we too are fully capable of destroying ourselves without help.

But this is a warning that it is a really bad idea.

And is it possible too, if this is the common Chinese view now, that the Chinese government, as part of their asymmetrical “wolf-warrior diplomacy,” is doing what they can to encourage this? Funding things behind the scenes. Wheeling in Trojan Horses—like Tiktok?

Either way, if this continues, the CCP can look forward to supplanting us as the dominant culture, and toward owning us.

East Is East, and West Is West

 

I was recently referred to, without malice, as “white.” Nevertheless, I resent the term.

It is dehumanizing to think of people in terms of race, as if we were animals. And nothing could be more cartoonishly superficial than to classify people by skin colour. 

We must also ditch our meaningless purely geographical term “Asian,” which absurdly lumps Koreans with Dravidians with Arabs.

Whenever I go to a Catholic mass, around me are people of all the skin colours you can imagine. And this is my true community, my home. These are the people I have most in common with, and feel most comfortable with; not some random person I meet on the street who has skin the same hue as my own. Let alone some pale face in Turkey or Xinjiang. It is absurd to identify me as “European,” as well. I was not born and have not lived in Europe. I am not “white,” or “European.” I am “Canadian” and “Catholic.”

It is as if, in our scientistic frenzy, we are determined to deny the influence of religion or the existence of culture.

Rather than identifying people by skin colour, which is meaningless, or race, which is dehumanizing, we should classify people by culture. Culture is real.

There are four great cultural zones on this planet: Christendom, Dar al Islam, Hindu India, and the Confucian East. No doubt there are others, less significant, and quickly being assimilated, in Sub-Saharan Africa. And there are smaller anomalous groups like the Jews, the Parsees, the Roma, and the like. These zones are coming together and becoming more similar, with improved communications; but they still real.

They have to do with the basic premises on which the society is built, on which people interact, and on which life decisions are made. With judgements of value and of what is right and wrong.

One can further subdivide: Catholic culture is distinct from Protestant culture, and Orthodox culture is distinct from either. Sunni Islamic culture is distinct from Shia Islamic culture.

We need to be more aware of them, because there can be problems when they mix. Planes can fly into buildings. When they interact, there are no understood ground rules.

This has nothing to do with racism. This has to do with comparative religion.

Culture and Civilization

 

Our civilization seems to be falling apart. Probably the one essential reason is that we have lost the plot. We have lost our sense of what civilization means and why it is of value. 

The term is rarely used any more, and if it is, it is misused. We absolutely must not, any longer, insist that all cultures are equally civilized. They are not.

In simplest terms, “civilization” means literally citification. For a culture, it means having fixed abodes; having a system of writing; and having a government with consistent rules and enforcement on at least the level of a functioning city and hinterland. 

By this definition, none of the indigenous people of Canada were, at first contact, civilized; they were, to use the literal meaning of the term, “savages”. This is a simple descriptive statement. We used, even in my grad school days, to use the euphemism “primitive.” That is, they had not developed socially to the civilized level.

It should further be uncontroversial that a culture that has failed to develop writing, fixed dwellings, and consistent government is inferior to a culture that has. 

Probably the finest cultures are those that first developed such things; imitation is easier. And culture is persistent. My travels and long sojourns abroad leave me with distinct opinions on what cultures are most civilized. Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Chinese, are, to my mind, in the top rank. Interestingly, these are also the nations that have been civilized for longest. No doubt they have perfected the art of education.

But there is also something to be said for recent success. Cultures can also no doubt weaken or become diluted. I have to respect the British, with their remarkable talent for social organization: the common law, the parliamentary system. Thay have, if I may be so bold, been a civilizing influence in the world. I feel, for example, that the average immigrant from the West Indies is distinctly more civilized than an average African-American. The difference, I presume, is the education system modelled on the British.

I say that as someone without a drop of English blood in my veins. And mostly Irish blood—the one nation and culture that has least reason to love the English.

Broadly, to be civilized means to be capable of cooperating in large groups. This implies, in turn, an ability to suppress one’s immediate desires to achieve a goal. This is unnatural; it takes work. That work is the work of education, and education is the key to civilization.

But the payoff is more than that. The ability to defer gratification is also the essence of all moral behaviour. It is what makes us human, not animals. It is the secret to material success, to acquiring wealth. And it is what gives us all the higher things in life—the arts, the grace notes.

Education is the key, and the key part of that education is what we call the humanities: religion, philosophy, history, language arts, literature. They teach us to be human; beginning with Aesop’s fables and the fairy tales.  

And, alarmingly, we no longer see the point of the humanities. That marks our doom.

Lacking this education lacking civilization, is disastrous both on the cultural and the individual level. It is the reason Canada’s indigenous people remain in a deprived and desperate state, five hundred years after first contact. Compare the Jews who immigrated to these shores since the complete catastrophe and genocide of the Holocaust. Who is doing better?

The difference is in child-rearing and the education system. Indian children are essentially taught nothing; they just run about and do as they like. They do not learn deferred gratification. Jewish kids have to go to school after school and learn the Hebrew language and all the ancient legends.

There may need to be a balance. Civilization is not an unmitigated good—the conflict between the demands of society and the natural man was the topic already of the world’s first epic, the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. I myself prefer the relative spontaneity of American music to the rigid formalism of Asian or European styles.

Everyone dreams of being a pirate, or escaping to the wild open range and living like an Indian. Perhaps the strongest civilizations allow for some such release, to keep the system elastic. The English, or  the ancient Greeks, always had the option of going to sea; the Americans to head West. It is also the genius of the Sabbath.

But we also seem to be losing that safety hatch.

Civilized people need to be aware of the issue. You do not, as a practical matter, want uncivilized people living just across the fence from you. They might drop in at any time, break down your door, smash your things, rape your wife, and devour your children.

Consider the events of October 7.

The essence of the general mild anti-American prejudice among Canadians is that the average American, broadly speaking, is less civilized. Well-meaning, but boisterous, less polite. They will come for a visit, and look in your fridge. If they are at home, they will walk around in their underwear. They are childlike.

Of course this is a stereotype. Nevertheless, it is generally true, and it is a real thing—and that is the effect of culture.

The Eight Commandments of Democracy

 

Nigel Farage has been de-banked.

Democracy is fragile; it relies on a series of gentlemen’s agreements. This is why, for example, John Adams said that the US Constitution requires a moral people. Unfortunately, these gentlemen’s agreements, these moral principles, are being violated one after another by the left.

People in established democracies seem dangerously unaware of this fact. Such ignorance is why, for example, the US thought it would be a simple matter to go in to Iraq or Libya or Vietnam, overthrow the dictator, set up a thriving democracy, and withdraw in good order. Due to such ignorance, we are losing our own democracies.

1. Thou shalt not seek to silence or deplatform one’s opponent. Otherwise political discourse cannot occur, and the people cannot make informed decisions. This is why, in the Westminster system, the usual laws of libel do not apply within the chamber. This is why, intending to introduce democracy, Qatar first sank a good deal of money into promoting debating societies.

This principle is now being violated by the left, who openly call for “deplatforming” and shouting down opposing viewpoints.

2. Thou shalt not mess with the language, redefining words. This is what George Orwell warned about in 1984 and in “Politics and the English Language.” Language must remain politically neutral for honest discussion to take place. 

This principle is now being violated systematically by the left, who openly require others to use their preferred pronouns, while inventing or redefining terms like “Islamophobia,” “gynophobia,” “homophobia,” “equity,” “social justice,” “white supremacy,” “racism,” “sexism,” “gender-affirming care,” “reproductive health,” “genocide,” and so on.

3. When the opposing side leaves office, thou shalt not throw them into prison, and must not pursue them through the legal system, unless their offense is obvious and egregious. This is necessary because it is a grave moral hazard: to eliminate opposition using the powers of the state. Moreover, if a politician knows that, once he leaves office, he risks prison time, this is an obvious reason to refuse to leave office: to instead declare oneself dictator. For this reason, no doubt, Donald Trump did not go after Hillary Clinton for her highly suspicious and certainly illegal treatment of emails as Secretary of State.

This principle is being violated by Biden, Attorney-General Garland, and other, local, prosecutors, in going after Trump on anything they can think of.

4. Thou shalt not seize one’s opponents’ assets or interfere with their livelihood. Jefferson held that democracy was only possible given a large body of freeholders, because their livelihoods could not be easily taken away by governments. Only then can opposition organize. This is why democracy almost never breaks out until the GDP per capita is around $10,000 in 2000 US dollars; and almost always does once this threshold is reached. At this point a significant middle class has probably formed, not dependent on some authority for their daily survival. They can afford to look up from the grindstone to organize in opposition to government power. We are no longer a society of freeholders; this foundation has become more fragile. It now requires the political neutrality of the banking system.

This principle is being violated now in the case of Nigel Farage. And he is not the first or only one. The UK banks have been doing this for some time, against Tommy Robinson, against other dissidents. It was violated wholesale by the Trudeau government in illegally shutting down the Freedom Convoy and its supporters. It is being regularly violated by Google YouTube, Patreon, and other high-tech platforms.

5. Thou shalt not subvert the voting process. The process of voting and counting the votes must be fully transparent. As Stalin said, “It does not matter who gets to vote. It only matters who gets to count the vote.” Without a secure and trustworthy voting system, democracy cannot exist. 

Again, the left is systematically subverting this, most systematically by moving to voting machines which are, to either other authorities or the general public, black boxes known to be open to abuse in a variety of ways. This lack of transparency and ballot security is fatal even if they are not actually falsifying the returns; although we must assume they are.

6. Thou shalt not, as a government, control the press. To do so is to prevent the public from getting the information they need to choose their governments. This is why freedom of the press is included in the First Amendment, in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

In Canada, in violation of this, the government is heavily subsidizing much of the press, while suppressing the rest, through legislation like C-11 and C-18. In the US and other Western countries, there seems to be an informal collusion between press and government, and informal suppression of alternative sources of news. “Journalists” move in and out of government positions, getting their rewards for compliance. This is in violation of the old and honourable gentleman’s agreement that newspapermen would be in eternal dissent from the government in power.

7. The police and courts must remain politically neutral. The average citizen must feel he has the recourse of going to law, and will find there an honest referee. He must feel that, if assaulted, he can go to the cop on the corner, and be treated fairly. If not, all civil society collapses, and we are either in a police state or beyond Thunderdome. 

Trudeau subverted this in Canada by using the police to suppress the truckers’ Freedom protest. The Canadian courts have subverted this with the Gladue Rule, which ended equal treatment under the law. In Britain, the police are in the business now of arresting people for posting anything online that they decide might offend some preferred group. In the US, the left is putting pressure on police forces to become ideologically subservient, with threats to defund them and spurious charges of racism. Police are terrified of being accused of racism or homophobia, and do not apply laws equally as a result. Currently, as one example, the police will turn a blind eye to nudity during a Pride parade that would be prosecuted as public indecency in another venue.

8. Thou shalt not stand in actual opposition to the country itself and the culture and civilization it represents and exists to preserve. This is implicit in the Westminster term, “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.” Opposition must be assumed to be loyal, and opposition must be, in the fundamental sense, loyal. All must ascribe to whatever shared values the country is founded upon: the Constitution, the doctrine of human rights, the welfare of the British nation, and so forth. Nobody must be actually trying to tear the system down; that is treason.

This too is violated by the modern left. They do indeed openly want to tear the system down: as “patriarchy,” or “white supremacy” or “colonialism.” They claim the US as we know it was created in 1619 to advance slavery. They claim Canada is built on “unceded” native land.

Is there a path back to liberal democracy, now that all the prerequisites are gone?

There has to be; for there was a way to form these gentlemen’s agreements and get to democracy in the first place. 

But with so few gentlemen in the audience, it is hard to see how the path back does not involve some great suffering and some violence. Or else divine intervention.

A Dark Age after History

 

Went downtown for a medical appointment on Thursday. I rarely go downtown. 

At Spadina and College, there is a Project Bookmark plaque on the sidewalk with a poem by Milton Acorn.

Knowing I live in a dark age before history,

I watch my wallet and

am less struck by gunfights in the avenues

than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face

calling a shabby poet back for his change…

And I see it has been defaced with green paint.

You know a civilization is dying when it defaces art, when it torches religious buildings and pulls down statues. This is a culture committing suicide.

Why do cultures commit suicide? For the same reason, no doubt, that people do. Because of a loss of meaning. Because people feel there is no point to anything. Except perhaps the moment’s gross physical pleasure: eat, drink, and be merry, for there is no tomorrow.

Downtown Toronto these days feels like the Cities of the Plain. 

A Very Public Suicide

 

Like the media and big tech, Hollywood seems intent on committing suicide. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is reputedly opening to disastrously small audiences; soon after Seth Rogan’s TV series Santa Inc. crashed and burned. Following the Star Wars franchise.

Any reasonable person should have seen this coming. Yet Hollywood is shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars into these projects.

West Side Story apparently features a fair bit of dialogue in Spanish; yet Spielberg refused to allow subtitles. As a result, he intentionally restricted his audience to those who are bilingual in English and Spanish.

He also insisted on casting, as Latinos only actors who were actually Latino. This reduced his talent pool, the film’s star power, and it is a measure rarely taken for other ethnic groups. Brad Pitt, Leonardo Di Caprio, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, for example, have all played Irish leads. The point of being an actor is that you act; you pretend to be somebody else. Of course, a Swede would have trouble being convincing as a Zulu, or an African as Anne Boleyn (ahem), but Latinos are a racially mixed group who do not look different, on average, from Southern Europeans generally.

As for Santa Inc., who could have thought that an animation criticizing the world’s most popular holiday would pull in enthusiastic family audiences at Christmastime? Do adults want to watch a Christmas animation without their kids? Who exactly is the intended audience? Did anyone think of the intended audience?

Similarly, space opera, the Star Wars genre, is most appealing to younger males. As is the concept of Ghostbusters. A great idea, then, to suffuse it with female leads and feminist messages?

The traditional news media are similarly self-immolating by violating all the standards of journalism in order to push a political agenda. And the high-tech oligarchs, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and Google, seem to be forcing customers to competing platforms with censorship of political opinions they disagree with.

What can explain this? Why are hitherto competent and successful businessmen throwing money away like this?

One possible theory is that they are terminally deluded by the postmodern fantasy that one can create one’s own reality. A lot of businessmen buy into the Power of Positive Thinking idea; this is just a few steps further.

Another possibility is that they see their power to influence, such as it is, slipping away, and they are reacting hysterically. Those who covet money are also liable to be people who covet power.

But the clearest element of it all is what looks like deliberate contempt for the possible audience; a contempt for the general public. A contempt so powerful that it cannot be restrained even by obvious self-interest.

An Artistic Manifesto

Everyone was reading Hesse in the Sixties. Steppenwolf was the hallucinogenic Bible—a literary acid trip. People thought he was advocating Eastern philosophies, paganism, Jungian psychology, drug use, and an ethic of doing your own thing. Sadly, his reputation has waned since from this perception, just as the Sixties sensibility has waned.

I have reread him since, and he is just as good as he was. But he wasn’t saying the same things.

In his own journals, he speaks disparagingly of Indian civilization; and of Jungian psychology. He was actually advocating Christianity. In his own words, “Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me.” In many cases his essential point has been exactly reversed.

For example Journey to the East, as the title is translated into English, seems to be advocating a trip east to find truth. India or Tibet, right?

In fact, “Die Morgenlandfahrt,” the title in German, “Journey to the Land of Morning,” is the common term for the Crusades. Kind of changes the sense of it.

Of course, in the novel, he never gets to the east. Instead, the climactic final scene is a visual representation of John 3: 30: “He (Jesus) must become greater; I must become less.”

I perceived that my image was in the process of adding to and flowing into Leo’s, nourishing and strengthening it. It seemed that, in time, all the substance from one image would flow into the other and only one would remain: Leo. He must grow, I must disappear.

Demian seems to advocate paganism and doing your own thing, scorning conventional morality. At least, its title character does. But look at that name again, “Demian.” It is actually a Christian morality play, and “Demian” is the Devil incarnate. The main character, who follows his lead, ends the novel in the fires of hell.

The realization hurt. Everything that has happened to me since then has hurt. But if I sometimes find the key and go all the way down into myself, where the fate pictures slumber in the dark mirror, then I only have to lean over the black mirror and see my own image, which is now completely like him, him, my Friend and leader.

For more on that, you could do worse than to read my paper, “Hesse’s Demian as Christian Morality Play.”

Hesse is not the only Christian writer the Sixties got wrong. How about Tolkien? His Ring trilogy was also de rigeur reading for hippiedom, and everyone thought themselves Hobbits. Far from being pagan, it was entirely intentional Christian allegory. Nobody seems to realize just how hallucinogenic and countercultural real Christianity really is.

Another foundational author to the Baby Boomers and the Sixties zeitgeist is Jack Kerouac. A lot of the phraseology and the concepts of the time, things like “hung up,” and hitchhiking across the continent, come from Kerouac’s On the Road and Dharma Bums. He is read as casting off Christianity for Buddhism, and conventional morality for “if it feels good, do it.” Being moral is being “hung up.” But he was actually advocating Catholicism, and called himself a “general of the Jesuits.” To him, one became “hung up” on desires, not inhibitions. Dean Moriarty, whose libertine lifestyle was taken by everyone in the Sixties as example, was not his hero, but an example of someone taking the wrong road. The book ends with Dean unable to talk, unable to explain or justify himself, refused the final ride, disappearing in the rear view mirror. 

Dharma Bums begins with an encounter with a hobo who has carefully preserved, as his prize possession, a prayer to Saint Theresa. He is the “dharma bum” of the title.

Kerouac called the movement he inspired “the Beats.” People think this has something to do with rhythm and jazz music. Kerouac himself explained it as a reference to the Beatitudes.

He was plain enough; people refuse to see what they don’t want to see, and take it all the opposite of as intended.

Another example, speaking of beat, is rock and roll. People see it as the Devil’s music, soundtrack of Sixties rebellion, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Few seem to realize that rock’s roots are religious, and it got its energy from the gospel.

Go to YouTube and look for Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She invented it, and performed it in a thousand churches in the South and Midwest, That’s where all the early rockers heard it, singing themselves as kids in their church choirs. 

Jerry Lee Lewis’s cousin was a famous TV evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart. Elvis Presley recorded a good deal of gospel; remember “Crying in the Chapel”?

You saw me crying in the chapel
The tears I shed were tears of joy
I know the meaning of contentment
Now I am happy with the Lord

Little Richard actually became an ordained minister.

Rock was gospel, but with the lyrics skewed to speak instead of courting and sexuality. And it has lost its energy since it lost this awareness of its origins. You want to feel that old rock energy now, you’re going to have to go back to a Pentecostal or a Baptist church.

How about another Sixties icon, in another medium, Andy Warhol? Supposedly all about sexual rebellion, right? Actually, there’s no evidence of any such rebellion in his personal life; he was a devout Byzantine Catholic. And, once you hear this, you can perhaps see where his art comes from: he was transferring the concept of the icon to popular culture. 

The tragic truth is that all the underlying energy of the Sixties was directed towards a religious revival. It was a reaction to the deadening robotic scientistic world view, a rediscovery of the human soul. You even saw it budding, in movements like the Jesus people, the Hare Krishnas; and the like.

Then it was all strangled in the Seventies and Eighties by dark forces. By Marxism, by Yuppiedom, by the cheap materialist pseudo-salvation of New Age, and by postmodernist relativism.

I had a bit of an online scuffle once with a contingent of Leonard Cohen Facebook fans who were mocking Christians for playing “Hallelujah” at their funerals. After all, the song was obviously about kinky sex, and the Hallelujah chorus referred to an orgasm, right?

The pagan Cohenites apparently had no awareness that “she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, she cut your hair” was a Biblical reference. They thought it was celebrating sadomasochism. Even though the first two words of the song are “King David.”

It isn’t just about the Sixties. It isn’t only the Sixties that most people seem to get wrong.

Years earlier, I had a similar scuffle with a fellow student who was shocked by my reference to Coleridge as a Christian writer. She thought him a pagan nature-worshipper and an advocate of drug use. A view that would have horrified Coleridge, a key Anglican theologian of his day.

And another scuffle with a with-it band of fellow students who thought it outrageous of me to claim Oscar Wilde as a Christian mystic, instead of, as they supposed, a prominent advocate of sexual libertinage and the gay lifestyle. You probably thought so too, didn’t you?

But his love of paradox is extremely similar to Chesterton. His fairy tales are full of Christian references. Wilde declared himself a Christian, converted to Catholicism, had a priest administer extreme unction at his death, and denied throughout his life being homosexual.

And I recollect another argument with a grad student who marked down my undergrad essay for referring to William Blake as a mystic. Despite the fact that his preface to Jerusalem has become the classic Anglican hymn.

There is serious and widespread denial here. It is embedded in the culture, and certainly embedded in the academy.

It is impossible to understand English literature in general, or Western art in general, or any art in general, in other than religious terms. Outside of Western Europe, there is no concept of non-religious art in the first place. English literature is incomprehensible without background knowledge of Christian symbolism, Christian morality, Christian philosophy. Yet it is never studied in these terms.

My ambition was to study it in these terms; I signed on for graduate school to study the new field of “religion and literature.” Unfortunately, that movement within the academy, timid as it was, died with the first generation of scholars. I arrived on campus just as they were retiring, and was unable to find a supervisor for a doctoral thesis.

Instead, the religious beliefs of writers and artists seem to be deliberately ignored, if not suppressed, everywhere. Instead, utterly foreign philosophies are imposed, things the writers themselves would not have recognized: Marxist interpretations, feminist interpretations, searches for supposed homosexuality, Freudian or Jungian interpretations, structuralist framings, existentialist framings, postmodern deconstructions. All of which arrive at having nothing to say about the text.

Realizing all this has long shaken my faith in the value of creating art. Being oblique, it can easily be misinterpreted, and lead people, as here, in exactly the wrong direction. Makes me wonder, what is the point?

But then, the same can be said of Jesus’s parables. They can be, and usually are, misunderstood, even to the extent of meaning the opposite of what they say. For one example, people commonly seem to suppose that “the Good Samaritan” is simply telling us to help those in need. “The Prodigal Son” has actually been preached to me as a lesson in the higher morality of never leaving home. Nobody seems to notice that every parable says something deeply transgressive of conventional wisdom, of their own time or of this.

Yet Jesus actually says he speaks in parables for this very reason: so that they will be misunderstood by people.

"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables:

Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

Art is actually a way to separate the sheep from the goats.

In the Garden of Genesis, God forms Adam out of the clay—“Adam” apparently means “red clay.”

“God said, ‘Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. … God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.”

“Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

God made man as a potter casts a pot. Man is God’s work of art. And in breathing a soul into him, God makes man in his own image. Man has the soul of an artist. His mission is to create art.

When the Bible portrays the goal of creation, the heaven that will emerge at the end of time, it is a city, not a garden. 

“I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.”

“Her light was like a most precious stone, as if it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal; having a great and high wall; having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. On the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. He who spoke with me had for a measure a golden reed to measure the city, its gates, and its walls. The city is square, and its length is as great as its width. He measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand twelve stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal. Its wall is one hundred forty-four cubits, by the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. The construction of its wall was jasper. The city was pure gold, like pure glass. The foundations of the city’s wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; he fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; and the twelfth, amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each one of the gates was made of one pearl. The street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.”

This describes a vast work of art.

Man is co-creator of heaven. Nature is from God; art is nature processed through the smithy of our souls.

And the religious life is life itself approached as a work of art. That Christian mystic, Oscar Wilde, almost said as much: “I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”

It is traditionally understood that history is, to monotheists, the working out of man’s salvation. But this is far more true of culture. The development of culture is the development of salvation. Because this is so, culture is an ongoing war of good and evil.

This is why the understanding of the parables, the literature, the art is inevitably perverted. Because evil gets its innings.

All true art comes from the Holy Spirit—it is inspiration.

Yet it is then denied or perverted for the general population by the opposing power. Sometimes the initial inspiration is perverted by the original artist; more often by the academy or the experts or the popular culture.

When religion wanes, accordingly, art wanes too, having lost its inspiration. We see in more recent years that most of the arts are moribund. They are failing to create, because the artistic class has drifted away from the sources of inspiration.

We tried to get back on track in the Sixties.

It is time to try again.

Tea and Culture

Proust

Tea is civilization.

Have you noticed? Wherever it goes, it is far more than a drink.

A, English friend notes that tea must be drunk with milk, never cream. The milk must be put in the cup first, then the tea.

I, on the other hand, drink my tea with evaporated milk. Comparing notes with my brother recently, he insisted on the same. It was how our grandparents always served it—our grandparents, who ran a dairy farm, for whom either fresh milk or cream was freely available.

My friend notes you must always “scald the pot.” We do that too, but we say “warm the pot.” An Irish friend uses the same term, and also insists it must be done.

Americans, on the other hand, if you order “tea,” will bring you something with ice and lemon in a tall glass. An American YouTuber visiting London is not sure what to do with a strainer.

I confess that it deeply troubles me when people speak of “brewing” instead of “steeping” tea. For me, hearing that “wrong” term is like wet chalk making a false move on a greenboard. It is simply barbaric.

George Orwell’s essay “A Nice Cup of Tea” is a classic. He spends some time on the eternal debate over whether the tea or milk should be poured first. So is Charles Lamb’s “Old China,” on proper teapots. There are all these important rituals around tea, and all must be just so.

They probably have nothing to do with the taste of the tea. Because other countries have entirely different rituals, and they are just as insistent on them.

In Canada, we insist on a rolling boil. In China, it is essential that the water not be too hot.

In Canada, we insist that tea must not be steeped for more than five minutes; otherwise it becomes bitter. In China, the tea is left in the pot, more water is poured on, and the second steep is considered better. In Russia, you steep it all day, until it is concentrated, then add more water.

In North India, the tea must be poured from a great height, to be properly aerated. In Morocco, it must be served sweet and green, with mint. In Tibet, it is served salted.

The thing is not the flavour of the tea; it is the pleasure of the ritual. Of doing it just so.

In Korea, tea does not involve tea. It is a selection of tisanes. Odd, that, eh? Tea in China, tea in
Japan, no tea in Korea.

Tea was actually illegal in Korea for several centuries. They had prohibition, just like alcohol in North America. Tea was socially dangerous. But they never thought to ban mere alcohol.

They were on to something. Anybody who’s paying attention should realize that stopping for a cup of tea has major psychological effects. It makes one want to create culture.

The Brits managed to addict most of South China to opium. But do you know why they did it? In order to have something to trade for their own drug of choice. Tea. China did not want to part with any.

The rituals of preparation are the least of it. There is tea literature and tea philosophy; the Chinese Classic of Tea, or Okakura’s Book of Tea in Japan. Proust’s magnum opus is provoked by a sip of tea. Both Zen Buddhism and Taoism are intimately associated with the drink. There is tea art and tea aesthetics. There is a teapot museum in Hong Kong, and no doubt many tea sets in the Victoria and Albert Museum; a large percentage of all Japanese art was created for admiration during the tea ceremony. There is tea cuisine; the English make a meal of their afternoon tea. There are, always, tea gardens; in England as much as in China or Japan.

But the peak of tea culture, of course, is in Canada. In Canada, we have little porcelain figurines, bird lithographs, and jazz-playing chimpanzees.

Paris Is Burning

I am seriously depressed by the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Its rose windows are one of the three or so most beautiful things I have ever seen. Now probably gone forever. They will no doubt rebuild, but it will not be the same.

Others on my personal list of the world’s most beautiful sights:

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, also in Paris

Sinulog, Cebu’s annual festival, Philippines.

Mirinae shrine, Korea, when the cherries are in blossom.

The view of Westport, Ontario, from Foley Mountain, in fall.

Tian Tan Buddha, Hong Kong.

The Sigiriya maidens, Sri Lanka.

Jihua Shan, China.

If the Biblical advice "by their fruits you shall know them" is sound, I count 5 great beauties produced by Christianity, 3 by Buddhism. Other religious traditions seem to trail in their ability to evoke the spirit; although my selection is no doubt biased by both my own preferences and where I have happened to visit. I suspect Hinduism would do rather well had I travelled more in India, On the other hand, I expect Orthodox Christianity would be well-represented here had I travelled more extensively in Eastern Europe.

The Who vs. The Stones

In the face of unrelenting bad news on the Church, it is perhaps time for a breather. Let's talk about The Who.

Some say that The Who are the ultimate rock band, and that “My Generation” is the ultimate rock song.

I disagree. “My Generation” is a great song, but The Who are not even a good rock band. They do not have the roll that is the beating heart of rock and roll. Their rise may have been the beginning of the end of real rock.

The roll is the solid, predictable, relentless rhythm. That is what the drums have always been about, and the strong bass line. These are the spine and sine qua non of rock and roll.

Keith Moon was a flashy drummer. But he could not keep a beat. John Entwhistle was a technical virtuoso on the bass, but he rarely did the same bass line for two bars. It was all about showing off.

Pete Townshend had the same problem, with his windmilling arms on guitar. Did this change the sound? Did it do anything? No; it was just flashy. Ditto Roger Daltry throwing the microphone around; and the ultimate gimmick of breaking their instruments at the end of a performance. It was cheap pantomime, not rock and roll. It was rock and roll grown decadent,

Compare the Rolling Stones. Every song is based on a riff. The relentless, catchy riff is the roll. Charlie Watts can do lots of impressive things on the drums, but he maintains a steady beat. Bill Wyman's bass was prominent, but consistent, and almost never said “look at me!”

And the best rock song ever? “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.” “My Generation” is just an imitation, in its sense of general discontent. So is the entire “punk” or “grunge” movement, which preserved the true rock flame.

It's all there in “Satisfaction.”

Dirty Pictures

The Manchester Art Gallery has taken down the famous pre-Raphaelite painting “Hylas and the Nymphs” because of “tricky issues about gender, race and representation.”

Here is the painting.

Waterhouse

There is irony here. We have now officially become more prudish than the Victorians. The pendulum swing away from the “sexual revolution” of the Fifties and Sixties has come in recent months full semicircle.

To be fair, though, there is more to the story. This is supposedly only for seven days, as a form of “video art” by artist Sonia Boyce. It is supposed to “provoke discussion” on these issues, and visitors are supposed to post sticky notes on the blank wall space where the famous painting was giving their reactions.

A pretty lame sort of “art.” Sticking up Post-it notes on the wall expressing your feelings? That's an elementary school cliché.

And the “video art” is at least suggesting the painting should be taken down permanently. It is hard to explain otherwise why the “video art” required all postcards featuring the famous painting to be pulled from the museum shop as well. Looks more like a trial run, to judge popular reaction to removing the piece permanently. Or the museum management is protecting their bureaucratic butts. If the painting suddenly becomes politically incorrect, as they apparently expect, they can say they were on the side of the angels, but the public, not they, made the decision.

And how are visitors supposed to comment on the art work sight unseen? It seems the game is set up to be prejudiced against it. Unless they know the piece well, they are left taking the curator's and Boyce's word for it being objectionable.

I suspect that, below the claimed political issues of “gender and race,” disgusting and philistine as they are when applied to the pre-Raphaelites, whose slogan was “art for art's sake,” there is something else involved. After all, the “race” being portrayed is/are nymphs. Nymphs are purely spiritual beings. They have gender, yes, but no physical sex. Warning to sharks: at this point, look up. It's pushing things pretty far to read politics into this.

The real issue is that a lot of people resent beauty. And a lot of the people who hate and resent beauty are currently working as artists, and artists of some renown. The real scandal here is that the nymphs in the painting are more beautiful than the artist, or the museum curator; and neither the museum curator nor the artist has ever painted anything nearly so good. What is not your own, you need to destroy.

This attitude seems widespread in the arts currently. The people posing as artists to the public are people who have the least possible feeling for art—indeed, they hate it.

I subscribe to a Facebook feed called “Artists trying to make a living creating art.” I recommend it for those who, like me, do love art. Better yet, if you have any money, buy something. I discover through it that there are a lot of artists out there doing wonderful work. Not all of course, but a striking proportion. The problem is, they are never featured in galleries and never manage to sell their work. Most of them would be hounded out of any art school. The people who run the institutions are anti-art. They have been for generations.

Another sphere which, like media and education, has been destroyed by being professionalized.

BB King; from the Facebook feed.

From the Facebook feed.

Artist trying to make a living creating art.

The Ten Wonders of the World

Sinulog is today. My wife is going. She will not let me go, because it is too complicated and dangerous, she insists, for a foreigner.

Sinulog is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

This got me thinking: I have been around a bit. What are the other most beautiful things I have ever seen?

Here's my list; of the Wonders of the Modern World. Not in any order:

Sinulog – Cebu, Philippines. Catholic religious festival with parade, costumes, dances.

Mirinae Shrine – South Korea. Catholic shrine.

Ji Hua Shan – China. Buddhist sacred mountain, community of temples.

Sigiriya – Sri Lanka. Ancient mountain castle with architectural ruins, fresco, gardens.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries – Paris, France. Medieval Christian religious allegory.

Rose Windows, Notre Dame Cathedral – Paris, France.

Sistine Chapel – Rome, Italy.

Perth, Ontario, Canada. Perth stands in to some extent for the entire Canadian Shield, and for many small towns almost as beautiful. It was hard to choose between Perth and Westport.

Lower Town, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

Kyoto, Japan. Magnificent temples and classic gardens.

One could add individual art works, but then the list gets longer. Shout outs to Botticelli, Vermeer, William Blake, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Krishna Gopala or Radha Krishna cycle.

Perth

House of Cards

The dam is bursting. Kevin Spacey now. Pity. A good actor.

My study of history suggests these things happen fast. Fast enough that a lot of people get caught out self-incriminating.

Another remarkable sign I just noticed. On Facebook, I follow groups of artists and writers. Always resolutely left-wing and political, which has long been discouraging. I do not think artists and writers are really all resolutely left-wing, but those who are not have for many years not dared to raise their heads above the parapet. It is hard enough making a living making art. They, along with students, are probably the one social group most vulnerable to bullying by those in power. Artists, especially in Canada, live on government grants, distributed by bureaucrats.

A recent meeting of writers was billed as “Writing in Dangerous Times: Survival, Resistance, Joy.” You just knew the “danger” was Trump.

But yesterday, for the first time I can remember, someone posted a right-wing illustration on the artists’ feed. It said that if you thought your gender was neither male nor female, your gender was in your imagination. Then another one popped up, less than a day later: a black artist calling out other blacks for blaming all their problems on “whites.”

I’ve never seen one such post on this feed before, let alone two.

I am not really all that surprised. The left had gone so far that you had to be insane to buy into what they were saying. Fifty-seven genders, "white supremacy," "cultural appropriation," and the like. You had to be against just about everything good or true. The remarkable thing is that it took this long.

Once the dam blows, everyone gets wet. A lot of people have probably been keeping a lot of things pent up, not daring to say them. Now, if they think they can, there will be passion and anger behind what they say.

But this is significant. Steve Bannon is quoted as having said "politics is downstream from culture," and he is right. This is where the turn will happen first: among the artist and writers. And it is happening. Next will come the young.

Mark 1: 29-39

On leaving the synagogue
Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever.
They immediately told him about her.
He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.
Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

When it was evening, after sunset,
they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons,
not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn, he left
and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you."
He told them, "Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come."
So he went into their synagogues,
preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

What jumps up at Christian Scientists about this Sunday’s reading is that Jesus had the power to heal, and healing illness was a major part of his activity. What jumps out at me in the reading is that there were clearly a lot of people possessed by demons in First Century Judea. About as many, it sounds like, as people with physical illnesses, at a time when physical illnesses must have been more common than today.

So why do we not have many people possessed by demons today? What happened between then and now? Or do we?

After all, demons are real. That is non-negotiable for a Catholic. All things, visible and invisible, seen and unseen. Logically, then, demonic possession is also real, and the Church retains rites to deal with it. So, not incidentally, do the Orthodox Churches, Islam, and virtually all other religions. Can they all be wrong?

The obvious conclusion, and the one I make, is that what was then called demonic possession we now call “mental illness.” Freud even used the terminology: he speaks of “obsession.” “Obsession” originally meant “hostile action by an evil spirit,” one notch down from possession. What could be clearer? And this, of course, is why we, as if instinctively, fear the “mentally ill.”

A “schizophrenic” of my acquaintance keeps hearing metallic voices telling him to go jump off the balcony. Occam's razor: the simple and obvious explanation is that he is being tempted by an evil spirit. Anything else requires a good deal of mental gymnastics.

Another, to use the classic example, thinks he is Napoleon? The simple explanation is that he is possessed by the spirit of Napoleon, or of an evil spirit masquerading as the French Emperor.

So too with anxiety and depression. 1 Samuel 16:4: 14 “Now the spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrified him.”

Given that “mental illness” is necessarily, by definition, mental or spiritual in nature, it seems only sensible and efficient to address it in mental or spiritual terms. In other words, if a person thinks he is being invested with an evil spirit, he is being invested by an evil spirit, because in this case the thought is the thing itself. And the most efficient cure is something that will drive out the thought of the evil spirit. If the thought is gone, the thing is gone.

How? How do you change hearts and minds?

Two ways: art and prayer.

Shamanic cultures use what seems to us very much like drama: a story which can engage the mind and concentration, Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief,” and which then catches up and drives out, as Aristotle explained (it is the meaning of his term “cartharsis”), the evil spirits. This is how Korean mudangs, female exorcists, work, or the Native American “False Face Societies.” Other arts can also do this, in their various ways. David's harpistry drove the evil spirits from King Saul: “seek out a man who is a skilful player on the harp; and it shall be, when the evil spirit from God cometh upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.”

Myths, two, are probably designed to do this. “Myth” literally simply means “story.” Make it a real stemwinder, and it should have the engaging power to chase off the plague dogs.

If so, it is a serious misunderstanding to suppose a myth is a serious, but mistaken, statement of “scientific” cosmology—that it is meant to be taken seriously as the scientific explanation of how the leopard got his spots. It is real and true to the extent that it is engaging and vivid. This is why, for example, the Greeks, the Egyptians, or the Indians, could happily accept several contradictory myths in this scientific sense: several different origins for the sun, for example, or for mankind. Not a problem.

This is not science, but spiritual technology. Myths make the world meaningful and significant, and so fend off the demons. Or, should a demon come, immersion in a suitable myth can heal.

Now, what happens when the old stories, or the art, breaks down? That is, either it is forgotten by a large portion of the people, or it loses its power to enthral, to suspend disbelief?

All hell should theoretically break loose. There should be a general sense of meaningless and barrenness to the world; what was once a garden of shining meanings becomes a desert or a wilderness. And then the demons, who dwell in the wild places, like Lilith, or Pan, or the djinn, will come.

And they do. The classic case where this can be expected to happen is during rapid cultural change; when, for example, a culture long isolated encounters a new culture suddenly and massively.

Think, for example, of the North American Indians: as is generally understood, as soon as the Spanish arrived on their shores, they started dying off in droves. The usual explanation is the contact with unknown diseases, and that is fair enough, but it does not fully explain the matter. For one thing, logically, that spread of diseases ought to have gone about equally both ways, so the Europeans should also have started dying off. There is, indeed, evidence that syphilis came to the old world from the New; but it hardly had the effect on Europe the Indians experienced. For another, it does not explain how the early Conquistadors, with only a handful of men, were able to conquer vast Empires, the Incans and the Aztecs, with little effort.

Darwin spends some time in “The Descent of Man” documenting many similar examples from around the world, from the many new contacts of the European age of exploration and colonization. He does not see the effects of new viruses so much as the sudden loss of fertility: people in these societies stop having, and caring for, children.

Why?

Not because they are ill, but because they are dispirited. As we see in microcosm whenever an individual has a case of culture shock, the encounter with a new culture throws all the old stories into question, all the meanings the human world has acquired for that individual or culture. The individuals in the culture become depressed, unable to go on because unable to see any point in their existence. In time, they may well also become possessed--mad.

Why did the same thing not happen to the Europeans? Because they were inoculated by already, rather recently, having had contact with other alien cultures. Notably, the Spanish only finally drove the Muslims out of Spain in the same year Columbus sailed. More notably, they had long ago been inoculated by a mythos developed during the Alexandrian and Roman Empires, with their mixing of peoples.

I suspect, indeed, that a milder version of this sort of cultural collapse with the loss of the old stories was the general condition in Palestine and in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ. The conquests of Alexander, followed quickly by the conquests of Rome, suddenly brought a wide variety of cultures into direct contact, Persians, Semites, Greeks, Egyptians, Celts, destroying the common heritage of the shared stories and psychic dramas that Homer, for example, would have known. As a result, the gods were no longer taken very seriously. And as a result, a sense of meaningless and then an epidemic of demonic possession should be expected to be extremely common at that time. And it was—we can trace the sense of meaninglessness, the general depression, in the writings of what is sometimes called the “Axial age.” circa 500 BC. 


Ecclesiastes is the perfect expression of depression. Buddhism, Pythagoreanism, the Tao Te Ching, and the Upanishads are of the same time, and of the same genre.

Then, we seem to see, in the New Testament, the upwelling of demonic possessions—of that madness beyond depression and anxiety.

This explains, in turn, how Christianity spread so quickly through the Empire: its ability to cast out demons. This is in fact what the ancient historians tell us: that first the Jews, and then the Christians, developed a huge prestige throughout the empire specifically for their ability to cast out demons. The powerful impression of its spiritual coherence, its spiritual truth, its vivid and compelling narrative, was strong enough to restore the shattered spiritual order. Later, it was strong enough to give Europe the upper hand in encountering alien cultures world-wide. Later still, its ability to drive out the demons and restore psychic order has led to its rapid adoption throughout the Third World: in the Americas, Africa, and now China.

Unfortunately, in the more developed parts of the world, we have recently seen another shattering: the one reported by Eliot in The Waste Land, or Yeats in The Second Coming. Things have again fallen apart, over the past century or so; again the spiritual centre cannot hold. Again what we see around us is no longer the shimmering garden of meaning, but a desert, the desert too of “Waiting for Godot.” Art has become derelict and morbid, and the incidence of mental illness seems, by many accounts, to be skyrocketing.

We are all going mad. We are all becoming possessed by demons. There is a spiritual catastrophe taking place.

This, I believe, is not because of globalization. That has been a relative constant for five hundred years. It is because our fascination with the material successes of science and scientific technology has caused us to neglect and to abandon our spiritual technology. We are no longer teaching our children the stories. We are no longer enthralled by the mystery of the Mass. We no longer believe in anything in particular.

As a result, we have stopped having children, or caring for them.

We are letting the demons in.