The Biggest Problem with AI--And How to Solve It

There is a fundamental problem with AI. It is not, or not just, that it will replace all our jobs, or that it will turn on us. It has no ability to determine what is real, and no sense of values. As a result, there are growing reports of AI systems “hallucinating,” and encouraging people to harm or kill themselves.

In other words, it has no judgement. AI bases its responses on the mass of data available on the internet: reputedly, it gets most of its responses from Reddit and Wikipedia. It is just quoting. This, in philosophical terms, is the ad populum fallacy—there is no necessary connection between popular opinion and truth. 

The other principle on which it operates is that it will agree with any opinion stated by the human who queries it. If the questioner begins with a delusion, the AI will assent to and reinforce that delusion.

How can this be helped?

Not by relying on “experts” for data. That is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Encyclopedias that relied on experts for their content have been shown to be no more accurate than Wikipedia. On top of this, we increasingly discover that “experts” have their own agendas to protect and advance.

As it happens, AI shares these two problems with psychiatry: psychiatry relies on consensus, not judgement of what is real, and therapists will usually automatically affirm the patient’s point of view. No judgement, and so no guidance.

The solution is obvious: we need AI to get religion. This is where guidance comes from. This is where our sense of values comes from. We need a Catholic AI which will prioritize as its sources the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Bible, the creeds. Then, if the answer is not found there, it will go, in order of authority, to the formal documents from the various ecumenical councils, the Patristic writers, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, St. Augustine, the writings of Doctors of the Church, papal bulls, the writings of the saints. It could also access all the rest of the data available on the net, but only if the answer was not found here. Ideally, it would have the ability to test other data against these prioritized sources just as a law is tested against the constitution. Although I doubt that is possible.

Aside from giving reliable guidance day to day, something most of us want urgently, this is an ideal way to teach the faith. With the decline of denominational schools and universities, this is also an urgent need.

The same could be done for other religions too: one could choose the engine or filter that suits one’s faith. But it would be easiest for Catholicism, since the lines of authority are most clear, and the sources most plentiful.

Kindness and Honesty

 

A poet of Iranian ancestry writes:

“Instead of searching for the truth,
be kind to others.
There’s no truth beyond that.”

This seems to me to reflect a difference I have noticed between East and West. In America, Canada, or England, if you want to say someone is a good man, you say “he is honest.” But in China, if you want to identify someone as good, you say “he is kind.”

I think this is a telling difference in values. The West values truth above social harmony; the Far East values social harmony, keeping everyone happy, “kindness.” Perhaps Iran is more like the Far East.

I find another example in a Confucian story. It is meant to illustrate the essence of good morals. The righteous emperor heard an ox chosen for the annual sacrifice bellowing with fear on the way to slaughter. So he intervened and insisted that this ox be replaced by another. This demonstrated his impeccable morals. 

But to me as a Westerner, it looks only like sentimentality. After all, the next ox would still be slaughtered, and would quite likely be just as afraid. The emperor just didn’t have to hear about it. 

As a Westerner, I would almost reverse those lines: 

“Instead of trying to make others happy,
Seek and speak the truth.
There’s no kindness without that.”

I wonder if this comes specifically from Christianity.

Still, Why Poetry?

 

Emily Dickenson

I have argued that we need poetry to restore meaning to our lives; to address and evoke truth, good, and beauty.

Still, poetry is hard. Why can’t truths just be spoken as simple declarative sentences?

Firstly, we can really only speak declaratively about material things. Anything beyond that requires metaphor. For example, the word “spirit” actually means breath or wind. “Psyche” actually means butterfly. “Anger” means pain. We have difficulty understanding abstract concepts, spiritual experiences, or emotions, because of this; because we have no way to objectively verify that we mean the same thing by the words we use.

This, without poetry, shuts us off from all the meaning of life, and all meaningful communication with others.

Poetry and the arts, but especially poetry, is necessary to express anything really important clearly. 

There is a second reason why we cannot speak plainly. Some people are invested in lies. They have something to hide. Truth terrifies them.

Jesus says in the New Testament, explaining why he speaks in parables instead of saying thing directly:

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

People who are purely materialist and bestial in their concerns will crucify you.

Therefore one speaks in parables.

Emily Dickinson:

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” 

The Buddha gives a somewhat similar warning in the Fire Sermon. 

Your house is on fire. Your children are in the house. You cannot simply shout that the house is on fire. They will panic. They will not know what to do. Instead, you lure them out with toys.

Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Was Mad

 

There is a saying: “never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.” It is often useful to defuse one’s anger.

But is it true? 

It does seem to me that groups and nations pursue obviously bad policies, insist on obvious untruths, and seem impervious to explanations. One obvious example: the persistent insistence that there are mass graves of indigenous children murdered in the old residential schools. Another: that Trump claimed Nazis or white supremacists were “good people.”

Are they simply ignorant of the facts, only repeating what they have heard? No; if told the facts, they do not counter them; they just ignore or suppress them. They react in anger. Can it be that they don’t understand what is being said?

Let’s assume that people are this stupid. They just can’t make logical connections. Wouldn’t the obvious solution, then, be to select out those with the highest IQ’s, and have them run things? 

This is more or less what Plato proposed in the Republic. 

So should we turn things over to the “Experts,” presumably weeded and fostered based on their intelligence and knowledge by the universities?

No; these academics seem more prone to believe obvious nonsense than the general public. This has long been ovserved: the “ivory tower” syndrome. Academics is an echo chamber in which delusions can be mutually reinforced indefinitely without ever being tainted by reality.

How about selecting for raw IQ? 

And this is the premise on which Mensa, the high-IQ society, was founded.

And it did not work, does not work, either. On any given issue, you will never get a consensus among Mensans. They are about as likely to believe the latest obvious untruth as the general public. And hold to it with the same energy. A meeting of Mensans is like herding cats.

(Of course, I face my own logical problem here. How can I be sure it is the other guy who is clinging to an untruth despite evidence? Am I smarter than the Mensans? 

I recall this little poem by Albert Einstein: "A thought that often makes me hazy:/Is it them, or am I crazy?"

But all I can do is look at the evidence and arguments, and use my own judgement. I think it is conclusive if the other side does not counter. Although it might also be that they find the matter so obvious that arguing it is tiresome.)

It seems to me it cannot be incompetence, in most cases. It is deliberate self-delusion. Most people simply believe or try to believe what they want to believe. They believe whatever they find most comfortable or most in their interests to believe, and ignore both the truth and the general good.

I daresay women are more prone to do this than men… They will cover an ugly situation with a pretty word, and it will all be okay.

A case in point I noticed recently: a YouTube psychiatrist advising that you should cut all contact with any relative or spouse who voted for Trump, telling them “How could you vote against my livelihood?” (Sic: surely she meant interests). 

This presupposes that everyone should vote only for their own self-interest. (Given that it is also in one’s self-interest not to alienate one’s relative or spouse.)

And so, I arrive at an important truth about the world: most people are delusional, and people are morally responsible for their delusions.

Which explains why we do instinctively think insanity is not a disease, but a moral failing.

The Bible knows this. This is why, for example, it makes acceptance of the dominion of God the first commandment. Not to see this, to be atheist or agnostic or polytheist, is a deliberate delusion. 

And this, according to the Bible, is the litmus test for heaven: are you seeking truth, or not?

Facts and Opinions

 

A measure of how materialist our society has become: every textbook I have had to use  that teaches critical thinking distinguishes only between fact and opinion, which they correlate to “objective” and “subjective.” as though this is the only issue. The message is that only facts are certainly true.

There are many truths that are subjective, not facts.

 The first obvious example:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ll men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Facts are provable truths, objective truths. These truths are not provable, but self-evident. We know they are true. 

Another truth, the most certain of all, is that God exist. This is not a fact, even if there are mathematical proofs; it is a truth. Indeed, none of the truths of mathematics are facts. Facts are only probvisionally true; the truths of mathematics are absolute.

Then there are moral truths. Murder is wrong. You should do unto others as you would have them do to you. Truth is better than lies. These are not facts; but they are certain.

Beauty is better than ugliness. Also unprovable, but self-evident. 

And then there is the universe of emotional truths: that I love my wife, or my kids or country. These are truths, not opinions, although they will commonly appear in the texts wrongly as opinions. I can know with certainty that I love my wife, or my country. 

Doesn’t this illustrate how limiting, how damaging, materialism is? It reduces us to lizards, zombies, or robots, without emotions, without conscience, and without meaning to our lives.

Welcome to hell.

Not Light Yet

 

“I've been down on the bottom of the world full of lies
I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes.” – Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet”

Theodore Sturgeon once said “ninety percent of everything is crap.” He was referring to literature; but perhaps everything really means everything.

One explanation for why the world has seemed recently to go so weird is that, with the improved information flow through the internet, the crap that was always there is becoming more obvious. And the liars more desperate to stop the information flow.

Surely ninety percent of all political speech is lies. “Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”—George Orwell. Almost everything spoken by a practicing politician contains a familiar logical fallacy. Nobody is seeking what is best for the community; only angling for power by whatever means necessary. Most government money seems misspent.

Surely too ninety percent of academics is nonsense. When you read almost anything written by a college professor, you realize that it is written as obliquely as possible, to withhold and obscure information, when the entire point of the academy is to discover and convey information. Someone has pointed out that whenever a major new scientific discovery is made, it takes a generation for it to be recognized and accepted by the academy. The current generation of professors has to retire. They will have vested interests in the previous paradigm. There is a reason why Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity as a patent clerk, the Wright Brothers cracked flight from their bicycle shop, and college dropout Steve Jobs created the first personal computers in his parents’ garage.

Probably ninety percent of organized religion is also fake. The Bible itself says so: pharisaism and hypocrisy.

Everyone knows, of course, that business and corporations are greedy and dishonest and trying to sell you junk. The irony is that this is the one place we have the best protection against such lies and fraud.

In sum, we all live in a world full of lies. 

This is an argument for the existence of an afterlife; C.S. Lewis made it.  We have a yearning for truth. How can we yearn for, or even be aware of, something that does not exist? That must mean it does exist somewhere …

One might suppose that, in the case of science fiction and literature at least, the great mass of crap is due to incompetence. Not everyone can write well.

Perhaps not so. Perhaps everyone can.

Perhaps the artist is really someone who insists on seeing the lies around him, and feels morally driven to speak the truth. Then he will find his medium. He is a prophetic voice crying in the wilderness. He speaks obliquely, in parables, because those in charge are determined to suppress truth. “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/ Success in circuit lies”—Emily Dickenson.

There are endless stories about how many times this or that famous book or great author was rejected for publication. Why? When it is so obvious to everyone that this is a great book, how can it not have been obvious to all those trained and seasoned acquisitions editors? 

Perhaps the trick is to slip by the censors. Pretend it’s just fantasy. Pretend it’s about sex or thrills. But sneak truths in.

So too for visual artists. I see what contemporary drek is shown in the public galleries. Then I see what fine work appears in internet feeds from amateur artists who cannot sell their work. Great artists of the past were also rejected by the academy and the galleries. Van Gogh never sold a painting. How account for that?

The vast bulk of art is bad not because there are not enough talented artists. It is bad because it is not telling the truth. Like Hollywood movies these days, empty formulae without purpose at best, at worst deliberately lying about the world.

Orwell understood this when he said that his one talent was really in simply being able to face truth. Most people run screaming from it.

Don't Mention It

 

Whatever you are not allowed to say must be the truth. Nobody needs to ban lies, generally speaking, because they can be disproven.

This is the secret to the “walking on eggshells” experience in the typical dysfunctional family: there is an elephant in the room, and nobody is allowed to notice it.

When speech is restricted in this way, it is a sure sign that a narcissist is involved, and up to no good.

One must not question global warming, or climate change; or else you are a “climate denier.” Because the case for global warming is obviously thin. But the premise is useful for expanding government control.

This is why you must not propose any “conspiracy theories”: because there is at least one monstrous conspiracy afoot. We can now see this much. The deep state is out to get Trump. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. 

One is not allowed to say the 2020 election was stolen. Nobody objected much about anyone saying an election was stolen in the US before 2020. This is itself proof that the 2020 election was stolen.

This is why you must not “misgender” anyone: because a man of course cannot become a woman, or a woman a man. No real, sane man ever took serious offense at being mistaken for a woman, or vice versa. 

This is also why, to tiptoe through a minefield, any criticism of homosexual behaviour is dismissed as “homophobia”: because there is a legitimate case to be raised against homosexual behavior. So it must not be raised. 

And one must not criticize Islam for current violence without being called “Islamophobic,” because there is an obvious case that Islam is inherently violent, and has something to do with the terrorism we are seeing.

This is again the truth behind the common perversion of Godwin’s Law: that the first person to make a comparison to Hitler loses the argument. This proves some people are doing things they know are comparable to Hitler. Be wary of the first person in any discussion who appeals to “Godwin’s Law.”

The one apparent outlier is “Holocaust denial.” I am in no position to deny the reality of the Nazi Holocaust. I believe it is real; I know virulent antisemitism is real; but have not done the research. Perhaps in this case, perhaps in some others, the prohibition is indirect: the ban is to discourage research in the area. It is an attempt to close the book, because some of the guilty parties are still in control and do not want their guilt exposed. And some of the purported victims were actually among the perpetrators.

Just go down the list of prohibited speech to discover truth.

Richard Dawkins Is Right

 

Richard Dawkins, celebrated atheist, makes an important point. If you call yourself a Christian, attend church, and say you believe in Jesus and God simply because you were brought up to do so, it is meaningless. You are not a real Christian. Any more than you can become a real Buddhist simply by being raised in a Buddhist milieu. Salvation is individual. 

Salvation comes not from saying the name “Jesus,” but from seeking truth and seeking to do what is right. 

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In other words, to follow Jesus, you must follow truth, and follow his way. Simply mouthing “Lord, Lord” is of little significance.

One must sincerely seek truth wherever that leads.

The real Christian must and will make themselves aware of what Jesus actually said and taught—they must read the gospel. They must make themselves aware of his way and his life. 

The Christian claim is that, if anyone sincerely does this, undertakes this study, they will know in their heart that this man was whom he said he was, and his teaching is correct. The words will speak to them.

This is what confirmation is supposed to be about; or adult baptism, in the Protestant tradition, or being “born again.” One must be personally convicted.

 A sincere Christian ought also to acquaint themselves with alternative philosophies: with Marxism, Freudianism, feminism, existentialism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhist, Hinduism. One is not seeking truth if one wears blinders. They must honestly consider and judge the plausibility of each.  A sincere and ethical atheist is a better Christian than a nominal Catholic. The latter is merely a hypocrite.

And a sincere Christian will recognize a sincere Muslim, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Jew, as a brother.

The Theology of Superman

 

Friend Xerxes has rejected monotheism in his latest column, on the grounds of that old saw about God logically not being able to create a stone too heavy for him to lift. Therefore, the concept of God as omnipotent is incoherent.

“Can God do anything?” the boy asked.

“Yes, dear,” said his mother.

“And God can make anything?”

“Yes, dear. That’s why we call him Creator.”

The boy asked, “So could God make a rock so big that even he can’t lift it?”

This is the “irresistible force meets immovable object” paradox. I remember it being the premise of a Superman comic as a child. Superman supposedly being both. It appears in China already in the 3rd century BC. 

Is it a problem for monotheism? No; there are two ancient responses.

It is a logical contradiction to posit that there can exist at the same time both an irresistible force and an immovable object. It is definitionally impossible. And the Christian response is that God is subject to logic, because logic is his own essence—the Logos. God cannot create a square circle, or a female male, or a married bachelor. So he cannot create both an irresistible force and an immovable object, existing at the same time. This is not a limit to his omnipotence, because if you abandon logic, “omnipotence” itself has no meaning.

If, on the other hand, you accept that God is not subject to logic, the problem or paradox still disappears. Then he could create a stone too heavy for him to lift, and lift it. This is only impossible if you accept the need to conform to logic, to Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction.

It is actually an argument for monotheism: if there cannot be both an immovable object and an irresistible  force, there can be only one God, one entity who is both immovable and irresistible.

The Christian belief, that God creates, abides in, and follows laws, gives birth in turn to science. Science is based on the premise that there is no such thing as chance, randomness, or coincidence. Everything has an explanation if we study it closely. As Einstein crudely put it, “God does not throw dice.” God creates and follows laws.

Xerxes then, predictably, raises the problem of evil: if there is a God, and God is good, why is there evil in this world?

And this question too is older than monotheism itself. With or without a God, why is there evil in the world?

The point is, monotheism provides an answer.

To begin with, how do you define evil? How do you know that a thing is evil?

Xerxes’s example is “a logging truck … crushing your daughter’s car.”

This is evil if you define evil as something you do not want. This is obviously a thing you do not want, and something your daughter did not want. 

But does that demonstrate that it is evil? Consider a small child wanting another chocolate before supper. Is it evil that his parents refuse it?

No; to simply define “good” as “getting what we want” is puerile. It also does not work if, say, what we want is something someone else has. Good instead means something like “justice” and what is best for all concerned.

Now, while we know that our daughter does not want to be hit b a logging truck and killed, do we know that it is best for her not to die?

We do not, because we do not know what comes after death. For all we know, death releases her from bonding into a much better life.

We also know we do not want suffering, either the physical pain she might experience in the crash, or our own loneliness at her sudden absence. But do we know that suffering is evil, in the sense of not being in our best interests?

The parent who refuses the child a chocolate makes him suffer. The parent who takes his child to the dentist makes him suffer.

What about the muscle strain and bruising you feel as you win the Grey Cup, or the intense soreness after? Seriously, would the win be as sweet if you had done it without any pain or effort? Is a film fun to watch if nothing bad or scary ever happens to the heroine throughout?

Suppose that ignorance is bliss, and beauty only comes with suffering. Would you rather have a frontal lobotomy and be ignorantly happy? To remain in a childlike or vegetative state? Or is it worthwhile to grow up into wisdom, responsibility, and creativity?

To be, with God, a co-creator?

To embrace logic, justice, and beauty?

Trump's Lies

 

Here’s a riddle. The number one complaint about Trump on the left is that he lies. The Washington Post claims to catalogue 30,573 “lies or misleading claims” over his first term; a “tsunami of untruths.”

Examples:

“He overstated the ‘carnage’ he was inheriting, then later exaggerated his ‘massive’ crowd and claimed, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that it had not rained during his address. He repeated the rain claim the next day, along with the fabricated notion that he held the ‘all-time record’ for appearing on the cover of Time magazine.”

Yet, according to a recent poll, those who support Trump trust him to tell the truth more than they trust religious leaders, their friends, or even their own family.

These views directly contradict one another. How is this possible? Are we experiencing different truths?

Exactly.

The claim that Trump lies is intrinsically dubious. All politicians lie; Joe Biden will say anything. So will Justin Trudeau. So why this peculiar focus on Trump? Surely Trump is being held to a different standard here.

And note the lies the Post first cites to make their case: whether or not it was raining during his inauguration. Whether he holds the record for most Time cover stories. A claim that he exaggerated America’s problems. They seem oddly trivial. Would you call an acquaintance a liar for thinking it rained when it had not?

Here’s how the paradox is solved: the left, those who oppose Trump, are likely to embrace postmodernism and the dogma that there is no objective truth; only “my truth” and “your truth.” So that a man can declare himself a woman, and that becomes incontestably true.

When they say Trump “lies,” what they really mean is that he is not endorsing “their truth”: what they wish were true. He refuses to go along with their preferred “narrative,” which is to say, fiction.

Interestingly, Trump is apparently not entitled to a pass on the premise that he is asserting “his truth.” 

This is a backhanded admission that he is not asserting “his truth,” but truth itself. He refuses to lie, and that is what is intolerable.

Why Bernier Lost

 

Maxime Bernier did surprisingly poorly in the recent byelection in Portage-Lisgar. I, for one, thought he had a good issue with abortion. He should, in theory, have been able to shear off much of the Conservative base in a strongly conservative riding. But he actually did less well than the relatively anonymous PPC candidate who ran last time.

On reflection, I think this Illustrates that the real issue in the minds of voters is not this or that current controversy, but the question of sincerity. It may have been too apparent to the voters that Bernier’s new opposition to abortion was a political ploy, not an expression of his convictions. He had previously supported abortion. He was obviously running in Portage-Lisgar out of opportunism, not some love of the neighbourhood. And it must be said, in general, Bernier does not radiate sincerity. He does not come across as dishonest, but as unspontaneous.

Poilievre, by contrast, generally sounds like he believes what he says. This distinguishes him from his predecessors, O’Toole and Scheer. O’Toole was obviously dishonest. His positions were obviously chosen for political effect, not out of any conviction, betraying those who supported him as a “True Blue Tory.” And Scheer gave the same impression by colluding in the backrooms with the milk lobby to take down Bernier, and by trying to fudge his position on abortion when challenged.

This explains why Poilievre is not threatened on the right by Bernier the way O’Toole was, yet is also doing better on the left than O’Toole or Scheer, despite their attempts to pander in that direction. Because the people who will vote against Trudeau want, above all, sincerity, not this or that political promise.

In the US, this was Trump’s strength. He is not particularly right-wing, but the right wing would die for him. People love him because he seems to say just what he thinks. 

RFK Jr. has the same aura about him.

Some people, it is still and always true, prefer being lied to. They are terrified by anyone who seems to speak truth. This is the cause of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These people will want a Biden, because he is predictable and capable of lying soothingly with a straight face. These people will like Trudeau because, with his dramatic training, he will smile and speak of “sunny ways” and make anything sound superficially plausible.

Which group is larger? The good people who want truth, or the bad people who want the comforting lies? The last US election suggests it is about 50/50. I suspect it is 1/3 for either side, and 1/3 in the middle trying to avoid taking a stand.

Madness and Civilization

 

Since it came up in our reading, I posed to my students in the last few days the question, “is there a rule book of a program for life? Is there a purpose to life?”

Unfortunately, none could give a satisfactory answer.

My most thoughtful student first offered the constructivist position: the goal and the rules and the real are whatever one’s own society has decided they are.

So, okay, is it, on this basis, legitimate to criticise Nazi Germany—let alone go to war with them? Is it legitimate to go to war to end slavery in a society that accepts it as proper? What about child sacrifice? Cannibalism? Wife-beating? They can be no better or worse in principle than any other random moral standard, right?

And when the world believed the world was flat, then it was flat.

He backed away at this, and proposed instead the existentialist position. We are free to decide for ourselves on our own particular life goals.

We had been reading MacBeth. So, did MacBeth or Lady MacBeth choose properly, in making their life goal to gain power no matter who else got harmed? Don’t they themselves soon come to regret the choice? And indeed, on this basis, o we have any right to criticize John Wayne Gacy? Execute, perhaps; but arbitrarily, in the end.

These are the official, and it seems prevalent, views on ethics and ontology in our time. They are logically and indeed morally untenable. For right and wrong, justice, and reality are actually objective and immutable qualities. You cannot will a thing into being, or into being right.

This shows why mental illness is rapidly on the rise. It explains why drug use and suicide are surging. And it explains why mass shootings and such desperate escapes as transvestitism are on the rise. It explains  social breakdown generally.

The problem is quite simple, and it is drastic: to most moderns, life itself is pointless.

Some, the good among us, will sink into hopeless depression. Some will seek death, a chemical escape, or self-mutilation. Others will conclude that the only value left is self-interest, and become like MacBeth.

This is often a failure of parenting. But then, if the parent has no moral core or values, they have nothing to pass on. And our culture has suffered a collapse of values. 

Going to Catholic schools growing up, the answer to the question was obvious. The purpose of life was to know and love God, and to serve him in this world and the next. There was a rule book: the Ten Commandments. One might reject it, but at least the answer was held out to you. 

Public schools, of course, no longer teach any such thing. They teach constructivism, or existentialism.

There I no excuse for this; for even across all religious beliefs, the purpose of life is clear, and always has been, even to the ancient pagans. The purpose of life is—in fact, self-evidently—to seek and promote truth, justice, and beauty. This corresponds to the Catholic teaching, because that is what God is: the perfect ultimate source and essence of truth, justice, and beauty. But it is equally true ithout that insight. There is, leaving aside the Ten Commandments, necessarily, a necessary rule: the rule of universal love, expressed in all cultures as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Kant demonstrated that, apart from any specific religious belief, this was a categorical imperative: treat others as an end, never a means. Act as you would wish all others to act. Stray from these essential truths, and you are insane.

Most of us are, in the true sense, insane.

It makes me fear to even walk among other men.

On Drawing With Strong Lines

 

When the Sistine Chapel murals were cleaned some years ago, many complained that the restoration made the images too clear and vivid. They preferred the murkiness of centuries of smoke and oil.

Teaching a student to write well, one essential piece of advice is to be clear, and avoid qualifiers. The purpose, after all, is to communicate. This is exactly the opposite of what I was told as a grad student, even in the humanities: I used to be criticized for speaking too plainly, for refusing to use them. It got me branded “arrogant.”

Many students struggle to do this, to write clearly, although it seems the simplest possible thing. As Mark Twain put it, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is take out words.”

There are two opposing forces in culture, one trying to make things as clear and simple as possible, and one trying to make things as obscure and difficult as possible. I remember on first reading Milton Friedman, being shocked at how clear and simple his ideas were. Can this be academically legitimate? Can this be right? After all, unlike Keynesianism, it actually makes sense. Yes, breaking windows really does cost money. When you spend money, you no longer have it. The obvious truth had been obscured.

Plato or Descartes are also clear and well-spoken. What a shock to discover, after always being told otherwise, that the best thinkers actually wrote plainly. Yet, in most academic courses, the works of these great thinkers are kept from you, on the claim that they are too difficult, and you are required to read prevaricating commentaries on them instead. Which are far more difficult to understand than the works they are supposedly explaining to you.

How can this be? What is going on here?

The truth is, most of us are in denial. Which means we are in frantic flight from reality. The academic elite—the scribes and Pharisees—are clearly more in denial than most. 

But so too even many current poets.

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Month is “joy.” 

I don’t think any real poet could have chosen that theme. After all, no prominent poet seems to have written memorably on it. I cannot conceive of Leonard Cohen writing about how happy he is. I cannot imagine T.S. Eliot doing so. William Blake did, it is true. But he followed it with the symbol of the tyger devouring the innocently joyful lamb. Schiller wrote an “Ode to Joy,” which became embarrassingly popular. But he himself disowned it, as “out of contact with reality” and “of no value to either poetry or the world.” Browning seemed to do so with “Pippa Passes,” but later he denied having any idea what the poem meant.

A fraudulent joy is the resting face of all delusion. Happy happy joy joy. Accordingly, it is virtually impossible to write an honest poem about it. 

I think of the vacant smiles on the oldest Greek statues: a smiling sphinx about to tear you limb from limb; a smiling soldier about to skewer his enemy through the heart. Perhaps an ironic comment; but chilling. I think of Pogo the Clown, aka John Wayne Gacy.

A student of mine was assigned “coming of age” as his poetic theme. He wrote well of casting off the lines and drifting out to sea. And then, in the final stanza, wrote, “after all, if things go wrong, the reins are still right there by my side.” 

A deliberate confusion? But of course, in the metaphor he chose, they are not. Nor are they in real life. You cannot go back to being a child. 

When I pointed this out, he froze up. “But that is too sad.”

Denial.

I had to finish the poem for him.

True art must always tell the truth. That is the reason for art. If it does not, it has no purpose, or worse.

This is really the war between good and evil. Those who are committed to good will seek truth, and do everything they can to write or speak or paint clearly. Those who are committed to evil will have things to conceal, and will work hard to be obscure. And to silence those who speak truth.

George Orwell once observed that his real talent was an ability to honestly and unflinchingly face the reality of evil. It is a rare talent.

William Blake insisted that all visual art worthy of the name must have clear lines. He railed against “the Flemish ooze.” 

I agree with him. It is immoral. All unnecessary lack of clarity is immoral.

And the greater the general evil in a society, the worse the art.

Writers, Artists, and Prophets

 

Born with the gift of laughter, and a conviction that the world is mad.

The mask of mental illness, the mask of the fool, is one way to get away with telling the truth. Another is to tell a story. 

This is why Hemingway said the one essential qualification for becoming a writer is to have had a terrible childhood. It gives you the need to tell the truth. The same could be said of the other arts.

That is why we have myths and fairy tales. They are “the stories”; the literal meaning of the word “mythos.” They are the distilled truths of human nature and the world of man, told obliquely. The common run of humankind use the terms “myth” or “fairy tale” as synonyms for “not true”: this is a perfect example of denial. Pay close attention to the stone that is rejected.

Jesus spoke in parables; and warned the rest of us, the good people, not to speak plainly to the mob, not to throw “pearls before swine.” 

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

Or crucify you.

Some people are not people. They are dogs or pigs. Consider the symbolism of these two animals. Dogs go along with social authority, no matter what. Pigs go with their natural urges.

Heartbreakingly, most people read Jesus’s parables in ways the text makes untenable. My father actually believed, or pretended to believe, that the moral of the tale of the prodigal son was that children should never leave the parental home and strike out on their own. He ignored the meaning of the word “prodigal.” Many seem to believe that the tale of the good Samaritan was simply about helping others in need. Of course we should; but we did not need the tale of the Samaritan to know. They ignore the meaning of the word “Samaritan.” And so it goes; the Pharisees can always quote scripture to their purposes. 

The postmodernists, the vanguard of the lost, even insist that no text has any inherent meaning. You are free to have it mean whatever you want. Supreme denial.

On one Facebook group, two hedonists were snickering about stupid Christians playing Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at their funeral. Didn’t they realize that it was a paean to sadomasochistic sex? The “Hallelujah!” refrain indicated orgasm; and the lines “She tied you to a kitchen chair; she broke your throne, she cut your hair” were female domination sex play. 

And then there are the snickerfests at Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed in Moby Dick; or Huck and Jim sharing a raft in Huckleberry Finn. This is pig thought.

I used to despair at this. What is the point of creating art, what is the point of telling parables or fairy tales, since nobody ever seems to understand them anyway? The Pharisees just co-opt it all and pretend they wrote it.

Jesus’s response is “let those who have ears to hear, hear.” One’s real audience is probably a small minority of the literal or physical audience. The rest enjoy a story, as an “escapist” exercise of the imagination, a few hours of not thinking of your problems. Or they like a painting because the colours go well with their other possessions.

A very few will understand; but then they will understand they are not mad, and are not alone.

That is perhaps the best we can do in a fallen world.

Christianity and Hypocrisy

 

In my book Playing the Indian Card, I point out that Christian missionaries coming to Canada had every reason to try to preserve Canadian First Nations cultures, and they did. This is the opposite of the usual claim. They are commonly scapegoated as supposed cultural imperialists. In fact, most of what we know today about Canadian First Nations culture comes from their work and writings. For the natives had no writing system.

This makes sense purely in terms of self-interest. Keeping the natives separate from the civil culture magnified the authority of the missionaries as intermediaries. But more nobly, the Jesuits and Recollets were concerned with the depravity of the general culture. Far better for the souls of their charges that they not venture into the cities with their alcohol, prostitution, and sharp trading.

My editor objected. Surely they were imposing on them their culture, their Christian religion?

Only the irreligious see religion as culture. To the religious, religion is counter-cultural.

Andrew Breitbart famously said “politics is downstream from culture.” Similarly, culture is downstream from religion. True, adopt Christianity, and you are liable to come up over time with things like empirical science, liberal democracy, and the Enlightenment. But Christianity, or Catholicism, is highly culturally diverse.

For people who are not religious, it is true, religion is their culture. These are the people who have never thought about it, or read the texts. They just do it because those around them do it. They celebrate Christmas, because it is a party, and everybody does. They get married in a church, because that is the way it is done.  They attend mass because their grandmother did, and their father.

But this attitude is the very opposite of true religion, which is above all a search for the truth: for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

And it produces something social that is the opposite of true religion. It produces a dull uncreative social conformity. It produces “happy happy joy joy” Hallmark-card-sentimental self-satisfied “be nice and get along” attitudes and behaviour.

Christianity is profoundly counter-cultural. If that is not obvious to you, consider that its founder figure was crucified by his culture as the worst of criminals.

So are the other great religions, but for Islam.

A recent example of how different the cultural facsimile is from the real article: one of Xerxes’s readers, a United Church minister, recently opined that she saw no distinction between secular and sacred Christmas songs for her services. “After all,” she remarked, “We are called to be a people of this world.”

This is the opposite of what the Bible says. 

1 John 2: 15-17:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

John 17: 14-17:

I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

John 15: 18-9:

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

The cultural Christianity almost systematically asserts the opposite of the actual Christian message. It generally asserts what is most comfortable, especially for the rich and powerful.

It is, in itself, proof of the existence of the Devil.

We are warned of this, of course, in the Bible. This is the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.

This is why everyone should actually read the Bible for themselves; and Catholics should read the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Way of the Pilgrim

 

Why are we here?

Many people plainly suppose we are here to seek pleasure. A high school friend used to say “we’re just two ends of a gastrointestinal tract.” A hotel co-worker said sex was what made life worthwhile. 

This is the perspective of an animal or a robot. It is also a will-o-the-wisp. Without hunger, food does not satisfy. Without abstinence, sex is just work. It all becomes addiction, and pleasure is gone.

Some people think life is about achieving “success.” Success here means power and social authority over other people. This is actively active evil. And it certainly does not lead to contentment. “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.” 

Some people say that life is about having children, and giving them a start in life. This is the Darwinian perspective; the Bible too does say “go forth and multiply.” Kids are part of our job, at least. But it does not entirely satisfy. If your life is meaningless, so are your children’s lives. 

Some people say life is about sacrifice of self to the collective: one owes ultimate allegiance to one’s parents, one’s community, and one’s homeland. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” But this is idolatry: one’s nation, one’s government, or one’s parents can be either good or bad. This leads to “good Germans,” Fascism, racism, and nepotism.

Some say that life is about going about doing good to others. And it is, in detail: we are to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, when we encounter them. But this can easily become a form of ego-worship. The Bible warns that if we do good and are seen to do good, we already have our reward; we are acting in self-interest. God does not need you to save the world; realistically, things are already going as he intends. I suspect figures like Mother Teresa. 

The meaning of life is to seek the true, the good, and the beautiful. 

This is necessarily so, because truth, beauty, and good are the only things of value in themselves. They do not derive their value from anything else, and everything else is valuable only to the extent that it is true, good, or beautiful.

These values can be falsified and misunderstood. People often confuse beauty with sexual allure, for example. People misconstrue fact as truth, truth as fact. Facts are only one form of truth, and a trivial form. And people misrepresent goodness in many ways.

It is not public charity. It is also not being “nice,” and getting along with everyone. That requires having no principles, and giving everyone what they want. This is, at best, moral cowardice, at worst devious self-interest. It requires aiding and abetting evil whenever it appears.

True good is justice. Not to be confused with the current leftist concept of “social justice,” a euphemism for injustice. Justice means giving everyone what they deserve on their merits.

How does one, in practical terms, do this?

First, in art. Good art manifests beauty. Art is adding beauty to the world. This is an intrinsic good, even if no other mortal sees this beauty. God does, and with him you are building the New Jerusalem, which the Bible describes to us as a vast work of art. But if possible, the Bible also tells us to “let your light shine,” and be a leaven to those around you.

Good art must also be true. As Keats said, “truth is beauty, beauty truth; that is all ye know, and all ye need to know.” One may speak truth outside of art, but inside of art, you must. And speaking truth outside of art can be dangerous. Jesus warned: “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” So he spoke in parables. Art is intended, as Emily Dickenson said, to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” Those who have eyes to see, will see.

Good art must also serve justice. We are aware of this when, for example, we read or watch a play. We will rebel, intellectually and emotionally, whether watching tragedy or comedy, if the resolution does not serve justice. Karma must come around. No cheap happy endings, and no gratuitous deaths.

Beyond art is something more: the practice of a religion. To bind yourself to a religion is, in effect, to make your life a work of art. Art shows the way; religion IS the way.

But there is no just going through the motions here, no “church on Sunday,” no hypocrisy. We are talking of full commitment, of “prayer without ceasing.” That is the ultimate. That is sainthood.

Stereotypes

 

George Orwell claimed that his only real talent was the ability to look truth straight in the eye, and speak it.

This is the secret of all the arts. Great artists are simply truth tellers; prophets. Most people, as Churchill observed, if they encounter truth, will pick themselves up and dust themselves off as though nothing has happened.

Because I have made a bit of a splash with my poetry lately, someone was writing my bio for publication. In a print interview, I offered them a variety of details about my life.

It did not matter. They ignored what I had written, and substituted stereotypes. I told them that my father was an engineer, and my mother had been raised on a farm. From this, they got “Both parents grew up on Canadian farms and brought a stoicism to child rearing that didn’t mesh well with Stephen’s innately empathic, sensitive nature.”

The author, a certifiably highly intelligent woman with literary interests, was superimposing on me the American Gothic stereotype of the farmer as salt of the earth, but rigid in his views, together with the nineteenth-century romantic idea of the poet as a fragile, sensitive soul. 

What I actually said had contradicted this. It did not matter. The stereotype must be substituted for the reality.

She also of course pegged me in passing as “an avid reader.” Yawn. True, as it happens, and a reasonable inference, but a cliché. Hardly worth saying, for it does not inform the reader.

Then she wrote “Stephen hopes to inspire others who might feel as alone and misunderstood as he did growing up.” The standard stereotype of the poet speaking “his truth,” “finding his voice.” It sounds like something deliberately bland said by a Miss Universe contestant. And not from me; if it is at least somewhat true, I would never say it. It is no excuse for poetry.

I had told her in the interview that I had lived and worked in half a dozen countries, married a ghost, befriended a Korean princess, witnessed miracles, and had at least three near-death experiences. All of this she left out. She even omitted the name of my home town, Gananoque, in favour of simply saying I “grew up in Ontario.” Anything that might be interesting to a reader, or identify me as a real human being, was avoided.

What is going on here?

And it is not just this author. In my career as a student and a teacher, I am always infuriated at how unnecessarily bland, dull, and stereotyped the material in textbooks always is. Whenever I try to change this in our materials, and run it by a colleague for vetting, they always strike out anything interesting, generally without explanation. Remember the old “Dick and Jane” readers? The blandness is deliberate. It is not due to mere incompetence, inability to do better. Most people are terrified of departing from stereotypes.

As a teacher, I find most students too rely on stereotype and cliché when they write. Not doing so is the dividing line between those who can write and those who cannot.

Most of those who pose as artists, even at the professional level, also deal relentlessly in stereotype and cliché. Most poems and paintings of any age look drearily alike. We can predict what they will be before seeing them. There is no reason for such art, as it is only saying things we already think.

The few who break away shine like diamonds.

Most people are insane. They are intentionally insane; it is a moral choice. They do not want to see reality. Only the small minority of those who consider themselves artists who really are artists are sane; and their core readership. It is a minority within a minority.

Why would anyone choose to be insane? For one reason: the truth would not speak well of them. They have a guilty conscience.

Further, people are driven to delusion, to cling to stereotypes and clichés, because they are afraid of truth. Those who are afraid of truth are afraid because they have a guilty conscience.

“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” John 3: 19-20.

Aside from being the only ones who tell the truth, artists and poets are the only moral people among us.

By their fruits, as Jesus said, you shall know them. 

Those who have eyes to see, see, and ears to hear, hear.

Klavan on Truth

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/lWeYoYQqK6c?feature=share

It's a broken world. Anyone satisfied with it is depraved.

Taking the Road More Travelled

 

Matthew 12: 31:

And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

What is the unforgivable sin? The question is of ultimate importance. For it seems this is the sin that sends you to hell—other sins can be forgiven, the passage implies, not just in this world, but if necessary in the next. They send you to purgatory, but not hell.

A widely-read Orthodox catechism explains clearly and simply:

“’Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’ is conscious and hardened opposition to the truth, because the Spirit is truth (I John 5:6). Conscious and hardened resistance to the truth leads man away from humility and repentance, and without repentance there can be no forgiveness. That is why the sin of blasphemy against the Spirit cannot be forgiven, since one who does not acknowledge his sin does not seek to have it forgiven.” – Archpriest Alexivich Slobodskoy, The Christian Faith

The ultimate sin is denial. Without an admission of guilt, no forgiveness is possible, from either God or man.

Sadly, it is a common sin. Too many of us are too ready to deny good and evil, and avert our faces when we see evil done. It even seems the social norm.

Who cares if there are a lot of Jews being held in some distant camps?

Who cares if so many babies are aborted?

Why get involved in a war between Russia and Ukraine? No doubt they are both to blame.

More broadly, and less obviously, many of us seem to think we have a right to believe what we want to believe, instead of seeking truth. If we want to be a woman instead of a man, we can simply declare it so. If history does not suit our purposes, we can construct our own “narrative.”

And on it goes; on the high road to hell.

Playing the Fool

 

Basil the Blessed, a celebrated Russian "fool for Christ"

Another possible objection to Christianity found in my 1982 notebook:

“Because religion is unreasoning. It is bound to appeal primarily to those whose reasoning is deficient. Therefore it is by nature anti-intellectual, and, if I subscribe to it, I am announcing to the world that I am not as intelligent or intellectual as I would like them to think. Therefore the world will mock me as a fool.”

This is based on a false premise, dealt with in a previous post: that religion is unreasoning. 

But, leaving that aside, this is a good example of the first of the three great temptations to sin, “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” It is caring about what the world thinks instead of what is true.

If you become religious, it is probably always true that the world will mock you as a fool. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” The world is, by definition, of average intelligence and, as the old saying goes, “no better than it should be.” The world will value the average, and resent the exceptional. Some psychologist claims to have determined that, if you meet someone whose IQ is fifteen points higher than yours, you simply cannot understand their thinking. They will to you appear mad.

This principle of mediocrity therefore extends to the social class commonly recognized as “the intellectuals.” Who decides who is or is not of this class? They choose one another, generation after generation, in the academic faculty and “peer review” model. Which tends to extend as well to such things as literary magazines. But who selected this group, to go on to select the others? It will ultimately be the mass of common people—crowds flocking to Jordan Peterson lectures today, students flocking to Socrates in his day. The mass of common people are not qualified to recognize who is much smarter than they are, and who isn’t. A little smarter, yes. A lot smarter, no.

The recognized intelligentsia will therefore not be the highly intelligent, but people of average intelligence or a bit more who play this role, and mouth the opinions currently supposed to be the intelligent ones. The only thing certain about these opinions is that they will go against common sense—for if they were common sense, they would not set you apart as one of the intellectuals.

Not that common sense is a very reliable guide—just a better one than always having to go against common sense.

One could, perhaps, select the supposed intelligentsia by raw IQ score. But this would not work either. There is the issue of application. Just because you have tha ability to reason well does not mean you habitually use it. Not everyone who is seven feet tall is a great basketball player. In fact, people with high natural intelligence can learn to be intellectually lazy. To cope with everyday life they never need to think very hard.

We all have the moral obligation, however, not to just conform to those around us, and to think as carefully as we can, for ourselves, about what is true and right and wrong.

How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way

that leads to life! Few are those who find it.

--Matthew 7:14