Through the Looking Glass

 

Carl Jung hypothesized a “collective unconscious” of shared memories. And he had compelling evidence for it: certain recognizable figures appear in cultures world-wide, as well as spontaneously in our dreams, or in the delusions of the mad. Every culture has the notion of the dragon, a large winged serpent. It generally figures large in their legends. Yet there are no dragons in nature. Every culture has witches. Every lake of any size hosts a lake monster. East and West both know of unicorns, not just as shy beasts with a single horn that appear out of the forests, but as creatures with an unrelenting sense of right and wrong. When they went about conquering the known world, the Greeks and then the Romans had no problem identifying their own gods one by one with those of Egypt, or India, or Germany, or Carthage.

This begs explanation. Yet a “collective unconscious” of shared memories does not work. Nobody has a memory of actually seeing a dragon—let alone all of us. How can we have memories of things that never happened?

Being a pseudo-scientist, Jung explained it all as springing from the physiology of the brain. But that does not work. Why should any synapse express itself as a unicorn? 

There is a simpler explanation: that the imagination is not random, but is an organ which gives us glimpses of a real, objectively existing, realm. 

Moderns have trouble accepting this, because our religion of “scientism” is uncompromisingly materialistic. It insists, a priori, that only what is apparent to the physical senses is “real.” But this is an arbitrary, and ultimately nonsensical, position. A thing is real if it exists independent of any individual perception of it; and “perception” is a much broader category than sense perception. If not, then truth or justice are not real either, are they?

Just as truth or justice exist, then, a realm exists that we perceive with our imagination. We do not create what is there; we perceive it. 

Any serious artist knows this is so. Michelangelo, for example, claimed he did not design his sculptures. He started chipping away to discover what was hidden in the marble. Stephen King explains that he never outlines before he begins to write. He writes to find out what happens. He compares it to excavating dinosaur bones. The story already exists; his hope is to get it all intact. Leonard Cohen speaks of keeping “the equipment” in working order, in case something comes.

Fairyland is a real place. This is why all fairy tales are broadly similar: you are not allowed to make anything up. Shakespeare, moreover, presents it as where all mortal problems are solved; it is his “green world.” 

Plato proposes it as where all ideas come from. We would never be able to organize our random sense impressions into the concept “giraffe” or “morning” had these concepts not already existed in our minds. They indeed come to us like memories. 

This fairyland / collective unconscious / realm of ideal forms is, then, more perfect than and prior to the physical world. We see it in our dreams, and in art.

It is here that we find heaven and hell. And there is every reason to suppose that we will continue to exist in it after the carnival big top we call life has folded and moved on.

The Republican Stakes for 2024

 

The Republicans have a problem for 2024: two obvious candidates. Trump gives every sign of intending to run again, and many will feel he deserves the chance. But many also worry that he is too old or too divisive, and want to rally around Ron DeSantis.

It would be best for the party if the two could make some deal. Yet a backroom deal is anathema to a populist movement. Ideally, they both go after the nomination, but obeying Reagan’s eleventh commandment: speak no ill of a fellow Republican. The party members and the public could decide. Yet the brand would not be tarnished. A contested nomination increases public interest, and, should one stumble, the other would be available. Once the matter is decided, as reward for sticking to the bargain, the loser would be chosen for the VP position. Either ticket would be awesome.

The problem is, this works better for DeSantis than Trump. For Trump, VP would probably still feel like a comedown. Rather than taking the VP position for himself, the deal might be that it goes to one of his children. 

Trump is also better with the bare knuckles than DeSantis is likely to be; because he is better than anyone. That, ironically, makes him a perfect VP candidate. But it means that a deal to be gentlemanly costs him more than it does DeSantis.

The Turning?

 

We have been living through a strange three years or so. Things have been going from mad to worse. Old ways may persist for some time out of sheer inertia, but it feels as though something fundamental has changed. We are floating off the edge of a cliff, and sooner or later, like Wil E. Coyote, we are going to look down. 

People no longer believe the authorities. They no longer trust the experts. The superstructure of our civilization is rotting away.

Is political revolution coming? In the developed world, I doubt it. Democracy is a good shock absorber. We are likely to see populists come to power: Trump, Poilievre, and the like.

But the disillusionment goes deeper than politics. What we might be seeing, it seems to me, is the death of the great god Science. It took a hit back in the Sixties; people struggled to see the benefits of nuclear holocaust and Mutually Assured Destruction. But the way science has become politicized during the pandemic, and to support extreme demands on the general public in the name of “climate change,” may be a real tipping point. On top of this, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the “peer review” process has not been working, and that many of the tenets of current science are based on irreproducible experimental results. In the end, we discover, there is nothing magical about science, and scientists are not holy men incapable of deceit.

This should come as a crisis of faith to many. Folks in the West have increasingly worshipped Science as their god since the Victorian era. Like all healthy religions, science—or scientism—was not seen as a religion, of course, but simply as “the truth.” So was Catholicism, in the Middle Ages. This has always been a harmful idolatry, harmful to science as much as to humanity; because Science is a lousy, limited religion.

Many intellectuals have been aware there was something wrong here for some time; first existentialism, later postmodernism, have expressed an awareness that science has failed to give us real meaning or knowledge. But they have failed, because they have had no ground of truth or meaning to replace it with. Marxism is no substitute, since Marxism itself is built on the myth of science.

The only visible option is that nagging thing we call religion.

One can hope it is the Christian message.

A Fall Election?

 

A rumour is going round that there may be an election in the fall: called by the Liberals, not forced. Justin Trudeau almost seems to be campaigning this summer. 

This at first seems mad to me. Didn’t we have an indecisive election only a year ago, and wasn’t almost the biggest issue the frivolousness of calling an unnecessary election?

This fall we look likely to be suffering from rampant inflation, recession, supply problems, possibly a renewed pandemic, and, some warn, food shortages. Is this a good time for a government to call an election? People have been rioting against governments in Holland and Sri Lanka.

Nor can the Liberals claim, as they did last time, that their legislative program is being blocked. They have their informal coalition with the NDP.

It seems as though Trudeau may genuinely believe that his opposition is only a “fringe minority.” He anticipates Pierre Poilievre winning the Conservative leadership, thinks the general public will be appalled by his “far-right” ideas, and that he, Trudeau, can now grab a majority, freeing him from needing to cater to the NDP. The unrest among the unwashed can even be his issue: the need to put down this radical fringe of racists and misogynists and the supposed like.

This may be a measure of Liberal hubris. They may be out of touch with how ordinary Canadians feel. Or I am.

I’d put money on a big Liberal loss.

Blowing Turkey

 

Pope Francis and the assembled cardinals of Canada are under fire for participating in a pagan “smudging” ceremony during the Pope’s recent Canadian visit. Unless this was sprung on them without their foreknowledge, I agree.  The self-ordained shaman with his turkey bone is probably simply a fraud. If so, the pope and cardinals participating make themselves, and the church, look ridiculous. Sitting there in silent assent to New Age pseudo-profundity like “the heart is like a talking stick.”

But if he is not a fraud, he is summoning demons: calling on the “Western grandmother” to gather the “circle of spirits.”

There is a vital distinction here between monotheistic religions and paganism. Muslims, Jews, or devotional Hindus all worship the same one true God. All other “gods” are demons. The Bible, either Old Testament or New Testament, is clear that Christians must not participate in their worship. 

If Francis and the cardinals do not understand this, they cannot represent the Christian religion.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Fairy Tales

Snow White

W.C. Fields used to say “you can’t cheat an honest man.” I always took this for an alibi: an attempt by the con artist to deflect blame. Indeed, a clear case of blaming the victim.

But I have recently heard the same thing from a more reliable source; I think Jordan Peterson. Con artists count on the mark consenting to the con. The mark wants to believe something; the con man just gives them what they want. Anyone with a commitment to reality would have seen through the con, and the mark probably does too. Drink this, and all your troubles will go away. Take this gamble, and you can win a million dollars. Rub this on your head, and your hair will grow back. They are buying a pleasant fantasy, if for a few hours or a few years.

The words of Dr. Martin Luther King also come to mind: that nobody can oppress you without your consent. That sounds harsh, but maybe it is true. Con black men into the notion that they are incapable of doing things for themselves, and need to be taken care of. That requires consent. George Orwell saw a large number of black men taking orders from a white overseer in colonial Africa, and wondered in print, “How are they being fooled? How long are these people going to accept this?” But it appeals to indolence. Don’t we all more or less wish we could be taken care of, like a child?

This is not to underestimate the great difficulty for any individual to buck an oppressive system. It never pays to be an “uppity nigger.” But the greatest resistance is likely to come from the fellow oppressed. A black man trying to get ahead is liable to be accused of “acting white.” He’s a sellout.

Or their fellows will turn kapo. It was his fellow black slaves who beat Uncle Tom to death in the famous novel, at the slavemaster’s bidding. (Yet, and tellingly, it is “Uncle Tom” who is remembered as a supposed sellout. Precisely because he wasn’t.)

The truth is, the black man we does right and works hard is making his neighbours look bad. They want their oppression. It absolves them from effort and from moral responsibility.

The same dynamic is at work among the aboriginals/”First Nations.”

Now apply this to mental illness. Because it is all most obvious, and most extreme, here. Early on, Freud realized that mental illness was the result of childhood abuse. However, he, and every analyst before or after who has realized this, found that the patients themselves would resist. They might not deny it, they might agree, they might even point it out, but they would stop coming to analysis. Not a paying proposition. Freud invented the “Oedipus complex” as a more marketable con. The patients did not want reality, and they did not want cure. Freud grew, on these grounds, to feel contempt for his patients. A con man must harden his heart.

Mental illness is in most cases the result of abuse by a narcissistic parent. But the critical form of abuse is not sexual, or physical, but moral. It is being conned into a false sense of reality and morality. The narcissist, by nature, sees themselves as their own god. By extension, they will set themselves up as their children’s god. They will con their children into embracing various falsehoods and immoralities, as con artists do. This is what gods are supposed to be able to do. This asserts their godhood. The children become accomplices, and idolaters.

If anyone tries to break out of this, they become the scapegoat of the others. Being accomplices in their own abuse, all in the family fear the cold light of the real. They cling to the fantasy—to the point of violence or self-harm if necessary.

Fairy tales are our best source on “mental illness”; they were created to advise children on life. Consider Snow White. She is the victim of abuse by a malicious parent. She escapes with her life. The dwarfs, her spiritual guides, warn her not to commune with “strangers.” Three times her abusive mother, “in disguise,” is able to abuse her again, by appealing to her vanity and her sense of being special. By conning her. This models the actions of an abusive parent; and the tendency of the abused child to keep returning to be abused again. Like a misguided moth, drawn back in to the initial fantasy, imagining the parent has “changed.”

Cinderella doesn’t immediately seem to be complicit in her abuse. But read carefully. When she goes to the prince’s ball, dressed to the nines, her sisters do not recognize her. Yet she does not reveal herself to them. Later, at home, she pretends she was not at the ball. Why? What is she hiding, and who is she protecting?

She is protecting the family fantasy, and her own abuse. She must remain Cinderwench, and they are the better daughters. She is more comfortable in this delusion, and so complicit in it. Only later does she gather the courage to reveal herself.

In Rapunzel, her state of abuse is symbolized by being locked in a tower. Yet she could actually leave at any time. The witch, and then the handsome prince, come and go by climbing her tresses. Why could she not escape herself, by cutting her hair, tying it to the windowsill, and climbing down? This is indeed just what the witch does later.

She is complicit in her own captivity, because to give it up she would have to give up the sesnse, cultivated by the witch, her narcissistic parent, that she is special.

Here we see both the cause of, and the cure for, “mental illness.” It must be a wholehearted embrace of objective truth and objective morality. This will require, as Alcoholics Anonymous rightly point out, an examination of conscience and a Frank confrontation with our own guilt.

Mental illness is ultimately a moral issue.

Psychiatry cannot help, because psychiatry rejects morality.

Rapunzel

Is China the Emerging Hegemon Already?

 

Although it has often been quoted for scare value, perhaps we have paid too little attention to Justin Trudeau’s open assertion, years ago, that he admires China’s “basic dictatorship.”

This sentiment might manage to explain a series of otherwise seemingly irrational acts not only by Trudeau, but by other leaders around the world. Why limit fertilizer use just as the world faces famine? Why prevent fracking, tax carbon, and force an energy shortage? Why impose vaccine mandates and force mass firings of truckers and medical professionals in the middle of a supply shortage and a pandemic? Why are governments so keen on payments to stay at home, and universal basic income, in the middle of a critical labour shortage? It all makes no sense except in this context: a top-down revolution trying to impose a Chinese-style system. The apparent plan is to make people dependent on the government, and afraid of the government.

Even without being in the pay of China, a lot of politicians seem to want to emulate China’s basic dictatorship.

The thought has been attractive, perhaps, because China has seemed to work so well. Just as, a few decades ago, business execs were all talking about importing “Japanese management techniques,” back when Japan seemed to be developing faster than anyone else, and had the cachet. In more recent years, it has been China. Even if they were not prepared, like Trudeau, to say so openly, “Chinese management techniques” might have looked attractive. China could, as Trudeau further observed, turn on a dime in terms, of, say, meeting its environmental goals.

One indication that China is the model for other governments now is how almost everyone else quickly mimicked the Chinese response to COVID; the lockdowns.

Of course, the key Chinese management practice is dictatorship; along with Fascist collaboration between government and the big corporations. For this, the common people must be cowed into submission, by whatever means necessary. Voluntary associations, civil society, must be attacked and humbled. Occupations allowing too much personal freedom, like trucking or farming, must be suppressed. 

Then matters can be left to the mandarinate, who, of course, think themselves smarter than the average working stiff. A plausible enough argument, one relied on by Confucius, or Plato, before Marx. It is all for the public good.

How to get around the inconvenience of democracy? No doubt there are ways. Control the media. Threaten opposition with seizure of their assets. Make public demonstrations illegal. Introduce new voting procedures open to tampering, like voting machines and mail-in ballots. As Stalin said, it does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the ballots.

We are seeing these things happen before our eyes.

On the other hand, the growth of information technology is exposing incompetence in the mandarinate. This makes them vulnerable, and some of their overreach may be due to fear. No government can stand if the people will no longer obey. Here too, China might still seem a model to a panicked elite. They have kept their people under their thumb. 

Governments everywhere are undergoing a stress test as they in effect declare war on their own people. There seems a decent chance that the government of China will collapse first, discrediting the whole enterprise. There are runs on the banks and tanks in the streets. Big developers are defaulting. Will the CCP be able to paper it all over and hold things together?

It would be a happier time if we could point to at least one clear counter-example, of a government opening up further to the people. If it then clearly succeeded, a new paradigm might emerge.

Perhaps we see something of this in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. There is hope we might see it in a Canada led by Pierre Poilievre. 

Viva Barnes Interview Dr. Christian Warning about the Vaccine

 

Jordan Peterson and Michael Yon

 

Very scary predictions...

Is Climate Change Real? These Prominent Scientists Say the Science Is Not Settled.

 

"The theory of anthropogenic climate change has no reliable scientific basis."

It's not about science. It's about grabbing more power.

That's why they're targeting the truckers and the farmers: the occupations most able to resist government control.

Apologizing to the Waves

 

As predictably as the spring rains, Pope Francis’s apology for the residential schools, delivered in Edmonton only two days ago, has already been rejected by many native leaders, notably Senator Murray Sinclair. And the media refer to it as, at best, a “first step.” All the previous apologies have been rejected—there have now supposedly been no steps before this. No surprise that this one too is rejected. By obvious implication, there will never be a last step. Every step taken will ever remain a “first step.”

It never mattered what the Pope said, or whether he came or not. Someone is not acting in good faith. The last thing the aboriginal leaders or the left ever want is reconciliation, and they will always refuse to be reconciled. The moment reconciliation is achieved, they lose their funding. And they lose their scapegoat.

Is the pope such a fool that he could not see this? I, for one, think he slandered the Church, and the residential schools, with his apology. Is this helpful? The media quote some attendees triumphant at the supposed fact that the pope has now “admitted” that “native spirituality” was right all along, and the Catholic Church was wrong. This puts native people in peril of their souls.

The media have been aggressively complicit, as usual, in this con game. For example, the CBC asserts that Lac Ste. Anne was an ancient sacred site to the Indians, “God’s Lake,” long before the first missionaries arrived. By implication, Christianity and the Ste. Anne pilgrimage are an imposition on the authentic “native spirituality.”

No, it was not called “God’s Lake.” It was called “Devil’s Lake.” That is how the HBC factors translated the Indian name, and this translation is more accurate. The place was feared and avoided, because there was believed to be a great monster in the lake that devoured people. The lake became sacred when the first Catholic missionaries consecrated the waters to St. Anne and drove away the monster.

The confusion, or deliberate misrepresentation, comes because the native groups had only the one word, “manitou,” for any spiritual being. God is of course a spiritual being; so he would in theory be a “manitou.” As were the pagan gods of Greece and Rome. However, the only spiritual beings the First Nations were aware of in their environment before the coming of Christianity were hostile toward man. “Manitou” to them was something to be feared, not to be worshipped. “Devil” or “demon” is the English equivalent.

I hope, probably in vain, that the Pope’s visit, and the immediate refusal to accept his apology, may end up calling the bluff of the swindle. It may open eyes to the fact that the left is not honest. The optics of immediately refusing to accept the apology of an aged and infirm pope may be damning. The left’s arrogance may at last be its undoing.

-- Written by a day school survivor.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

 

Stephen Harper has just come out and endorsed Pierre Poilievre.

This should end it. Harper never endorsed anyone in the last two leadership contests. 

And this should make it easy for Poiliever to achieve party unity once he officially wins.

We Can't Return; We Can Only Look Behind, from Where We Came

 

A magical thing has happened: Joni Mitchell did a concert at the current Newport Folk Festival.

These are the songs of my own youth. And to my ear, Mitchell's voice is still strong. In fact, I prefer her deeper register. Jazz-style singing, with its low volume and low impact, is one genre that can hold up through old age. Compare Willie Nelson, who also still sounds great.

"Both Sides Now" really sounds more apt at her age than when it was written. Almost brings tears.

Scratch "almost."

I almost wish her partner, who does a great imitation of the early Mitchell, would be silent so we could better hear the richness of Joni's current voice.

This next song was my slender lifeline to get through one awful summer job in a plastics injection factory

The wind is in from Africa

Last night, I couldn't sleep...

I wonder if people who did not live in Toronto during a certain period know what a "big yellow taxi" actually is.

Pandemonium

 

Canute explains global warming to his courtiers.

It is exhausting dealing with other Canadians; because most Canadians are insane. They believe in delusions. We noted the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness last post. It is nonsensical at best, yet over 85% of Canadians buy it.

Other examples abound. The average Canadian accepts as true that there has been a huge conspiracy in all cultures throughout history to oppress women. But they scorn "conspiracy theories" out of hand.  They believe that homosexuality is inborn, although this violates the Theory of Evolution, which they also believe. Any gene for homosexuality would be bred out within two generations. They believe that American Indians lived in peace and comfort until the evil Europeans arrived with their agriculture, technology, and law enforcement: the “noble savage” myth. They believe that building schools for the Indians was oppressive, demanding apology and reparations. They believe that a man can decide to be a woman; or be a woman because they believe so. But even though it is all in the mind, and biology doesn’t matter, it is still essential to give hormone blockers and cut off their genitals to suit. They believe, as King Canute never did, that the government of Canada can order the tides not to rise, or the equivalent: "global warming." Canada can apparently fix global warming with a carbon tax, though industry can simply move to China. They believe that by raising the price of carbon, the tax will cause everyone to use less of it. But a minimum wage, by raising the price of labour, will not cause anyone to use less of it. 

They believe, and will say in so many words, that there is no objective reality. 

This is the definition of insanity. It means no rational conversation is possible. How does one respond when talking to a madman? Just nod your head and back away? The main concern is that they may become violent.

Not a pleasant intellectual climate.

I think Jung had it right that the human mind is easily drawn by “archetypes” away from reality.

I may be too optimistic, but I feel not everyone is as crazy as Canadians are. I lived in the Philippines for years, and with a Filipina longer, and I do not think Filipinos are nearly as crazy.

I think the clue is in Chesterton’s observation that “those who stop believing in God will believe in anything.” We need meaning, and if we reject God, we will deify almost anything: science, nature, sex, Adolf Hitler, you name it. Call them archetypes, idols, pagan gods; it is the same thing. The Filipinos avoid this because they still, most of them, believe in God. Those who don’t are still kept relatively sane by those who do.

Most of the rest of us are spinning out of control. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The Empire Gets Struck Back

 

I attended an exhibition yesterday at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “Faith and Fortune: Art across the Global Spanish Empire.” Faith was a draw for me; and my wife is from the Philippines. I have a thing for Hispanic concepts of beauty. So I had to have a look.

They had paintings by Goya, and El Greco, and Velasquez. Not great paintings by Goya, El Greco, or Velasquez, and none of them are much to my taste. Nevertheless, the artistry was magnificent. The religious statuary was exceptional. This is a Spanish and Portuguese specialty, in my experience. I would have liked to see more examples of cultural mixing, especially from South America. This felt oddly lacking; perhaps because it would be “cultural appropriation.” Perhaps because it would suggest that the Spanish and the various native peoples were not in constant conflict and struggle for power. They had a room full of early daguerrotypes of the Philippines. I was not impressed; daguerrotypes are designed to be looked at in print, not in an exhibit hall, and are more accessible online, without bending and squinting. The audio guide explained that they were taken by Spaniards, and so there was a need for Filipinos to “decolonize” and take possession of them. 

Martha and Mary

In the real world, of course, most Filipinos have some Spanish or European ancestry.

The audio guide was jammed with Critical Theory. The Spanish Empire was unambiguously an evil exploitation and corruption of indigenous cultures. This ignores the basic principle that any government, and an empire more widely than others, keeps the peace. The Roman Empire ushered in a millennium of “Pax Romana,” sorely missed when it fell. The British Empire produced a century or so of “Pax Britannica.” Even if you accept the Edenic myth that the happy natives were not, on the whole, enslaving one another, starving in large numbers, committing genocide, fighting endless wars, and so forth—something the exhibit expressly dismisses as Imperial propaganda--the Spanish imposition of peace and commerce over such a large area was probably to most people’s benefit.

I note also that, rather than similarly condemning the Muslim conquest of Spain, ended only in the year Columbus discovered America, the audio guide simply notes that “Muslims arrived in the peninsula in 711.” This particular empire, the Muslim Caliphate, supposedly brought peace and happiness in which all lived together in peace and harmony. 

Only Christian empires are bad, apparently.

Christianity is referred to as a “Western” doctrine, supposedly imposed on Spain’s new subjects. No awareness, it seems, that Christianity itself comes from Asia, and, from the Spanish perspective, the distant East. 

While there were, inevitably, religious statues and images of all sorts in the exhibition, the signage and the audio never spoke of faith. It was all about power. Saints were identified, towards the bottom of the signage, but in a cursory way. “Saint Michael represents good fighting evil.” “Saint X was martyred during a time when Christianity was illegal.” 

In one display box, four statues were identified as the four possibilities after death: heaven, purgatory, hell, and a skeleton to represent “the death of the body.” This was to my mind the most striking piece, and the one used for the Exhibit’s promotional materials.

The four fates of the soul.

But one of these four is not like the other ones. And Christianity does not ultimately believe in the death of the body, for those who go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Rather, as the curators of the exhibition were presumably too theologically illiterate to know, the skeleton probably represents those who die unbaptized but without personal sin—the animal death.

The audio guide features a local artist of Filipino extraction and unconventional sexual preferences—all the voices heard were from non-Spanish ethnic minorities, and several of them identified themselves as gay or queer or the like. He (or she, or whatever) was celebrating the fact that Santo Nino, the patron saint of the southern Philippines, is sexually androgynous. This is counter to fact: Santo Nino is the baby Jesus. There is no room for sexual ambiguity in the very name: “Santo Nino” is masculine. The feminine would be “Santa Nina.”

Leaving, I had to thread my way through walls of gay pornography. “Blurred Boundaries: Queer Visions in Canadian Art.” 

Great idea—take your kids to the gallery and develop an appreciation for art?

No longer. Grooming.

Our established institutions have become illiterate and immoral, and we can no longer trust them to tell the truth.

Tom Cruise Vindicated?

 

A new metastudy from the UK finds no evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin levels--the theory on which it has been treated since about 1980. The theory over 80% of us still believe with a religious fervor.

“The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”

Prozac and all the SSRIs work as placebos. The dirty secret nobody wants to point out is that placebos do work.

But the “chemical imbalance” line was always a con. Michael Knowles pointedly wonders how Tom Cruise, an actor, knew all this years ago. 

It should have been obvious to any thinking person all along that it was no explanation at all. If chemical balance causes depression, what caused the chemical imbalance? If depression is associated with low serotonin levels in the brain, which is cause, and which effect?

If he hadn’t figured it out for himself, Cruise knew this because he was a Scientologist. Scientology has been calling out psychiatry on this for decades. 

Scientology has been dismissed everywhere as a dangerous cult; but Leonard Cohen, no less, although he did not himself become a scientologist, is on record as saying that they had the real deal. Dangerous, perhaps—but to whom? They might have been unjustly tarred because they were telling inconvenient truths, the way the powers that be now tar any dissent as “racist,” “white supremacist,” or “alt-right.” When someone or something is too generally and broadly condemned, we have a right to be suspicious. Remember Goldstein and the two-minute hate.

The “chemical imbalance” line worked because it was something people wanted to believe. It was a placebo, like the pills themselves. First, it offered a simple cure—just take a pill. Second, it sounded suitably materialistic and amoral, and so “scientific.” Third, it absolved everyone from blame.

It has always been a popular idea, long predating science. It is the theory of the humours: mental problems are/were caused by some imbalance of fluids in the brain. They were restored to balance by drawing bad blood, giving enemas, or cutting a hole in the skull to let the vapours out. SSRI pills supposedly work the same way.

And pills worked because we are conditioned to believe in pills. They seem properly medical and scientific, and science is our religion. The proper cure for spiritual distress, aka “mental illness,” is always faith healing. That is to say, faith.

This is why people cling to their preferred psychological theory with a fervour only seen elsewhere in religion; and not indeed in religion since perhaps the 18th century. It is as though denying another’s psychological faith, whether it is in “chemical imbalance,” the Freudian subconscious, Jung, or Abraham Maslow, puts one at risk of auto da fe and then eternal hellfire. Perhaps you, like I, have repeatedly seen this.

L. Ron Hubbard, being a science fiction novelist, understood the imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief. He understood faith healing. Cohen, as a poet and songwriter, recognized the insight. Scientology tends to appeal to artists and actors generally. They see that imagination is the key, and Hubbard and Scientology have worked out a satisfying cosmology—far more complete and satisfying than the barren cosmology of conventional science, although Hubbard is shrewd enough to claim a scientific basis. We are conditioned to worship science.

Still, when it comes to truly combatting mental illness, neither pills nor a consciously constructed fantasy world can really compete with actual faith. And Hubbard omits the essential moral dimension.

Cohen ultimately found that Judaism worked better. Like the other universalist faiths, it has a complete and coherent account of human experience, and includes the moral imperative.

And that is what is needed to cure mental illness. Mental illness comes from a loss of meaning.

Hope for Canada?

 

I pity the UK its sad choice of prospective Conservative leaders. It feels like a tragedy that Boris Johnson, with his great political talents, so quickly flamed out. No argument; it was his own fault. He could not stay. But now the right has no one impressive to speak for them.

The US also has a problem. They have impressive figures on the right, notably Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson, but Donald Trump dominates, and probably blocks anyone else from taking the nomination. Trump too is impressive, but also alienates a dangerous proportion of the electorate, and brings chaos in his wake, at a time when most Americans probably want competence and common sense to return.

By contrast, I feel we I Canada are suddenly, after a long drought, surprisingly lucky. We have Pierre Poilievre, Leslyn Lewis, and Maxime Bernier, all of whom seem both impressive and (relatively) honest.

All Things Visible and Invisible

 

It has been brought to my attention recently that a large number of people, possibly a majority, actually believe that the physical world is the real world. Not just that the physical world is real—which is debatable—but that there is nothing beyond the physical world—which is stark insanity.

What brings me most immediately to this thought is some poems appearing in my email box from the League of Canadian Poets, under their “Poetry Pause” programme (you can sign up free here). One was just the poet describing her body:

Most loyal beautiful body

--Who aches only for your love.

 Another was the poet describing her desk.

A surplus teacher’s desk, 

solid oak, three heavy drawers

on each side of a skirted knee-hole.

There is no poem to such poems. Poetry speaks of the transcendent. We do not need it to talk about what is before our eyes.

Another example of materialism, in the textbook from which I taught this morning: it took pains to distinguish between “fact” and “opinion,” but never noticed or noted that there is a more important third category, truth that is not fact. Here’s an obvious example:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Not a trivial point.

In the wider world of truths, facts are trivial; yet only facts are acknowledged by the standard textbooks.

Another example: most people are quick to deride “materialism,” but then they think that materialism simply means wanting or having wealth. A purely materialistic concept of materialism, a cartoon. They are not out of the box. They just resent people who have more material than they do.

I read a poem at a recent meeting of a poetry society, which asserted, in rhyme, that the delusions of the mentally ill had truth in them beyond the ken of psychiatrists. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.”

And if he asks in riddle who you are

You must lie as dead as paper-thin straight line

Assume a name--say, one you took at birth

And pretend you only know of space and time.

Surely a group of poets would get it.

The first reaction from an audience member: it reminded them of Ogden Nash, or Alexander Pope.

What? Either meaningless nonsense, then, or mere clever wordplay. Pope is conspicuous for never speaking of the transcendent. For this Blake mocked him.

I can’t decide whether that respondent was trying to deny the existence of anything beyond the senses, or whether he was really so lobotomized in his view of existence.

Another listener chimed in that she liked the poem, and had often written herself about social justice.

Another common modern tack. Poets now all always either talk about “nature,” meaning the purely material world, or politics, the quest for power over others. Neither is worth an honest poem. 

It seems to me necessarily true that anyone who is not fully aware of the world beyond the visible is lacking a soul. More or less by definition. They are only robots.

Yet realizing that many are at this spiritual level explains the common conflation of just about everything with sex and power.

Mad Dog!

 

An interesting insight into dog psychology from Wikipedia. I quote: “Attempting to teach Siberian Huskies aggressive behavior can lead to mental problems in the dog.”

It is reasonable to suppose that what causes mental problems in dogs is the same as what causes mental problems in humans. Not teaching aggressive behavior specifically, but, in both cases, teaching things that violate their conscience.

This is the result, most often, of bad parenting, by parents who themselves have no morals. These are the parents Jesus says would be better thrown in the ocean with a millstone around their necks, for causing “little ones” to stumble.

Sadly, it is those children who have the strongest conscience who will be most severely affected by such ill counsel--the best among us.

Modern psychiatry or psychology is unable to help the mentally ill, because they begin with the premise that there is no right and wrong. This makes mental illness “incurable.” Getting back in touch with objective morality is the cure.

Original Sin

 

Lots of us have trouble with the concept of original sin; including the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand." Paragraph 404.

After all, it doesn’t seem fair—that one person should suffer for the sins of another.

Indeed, it is not fair; but it is the essence of the Christian message. Jesus died for our sins.

And it is obviously, objectively true. We all benefit and suffer from the actions of others: our ancestors, our countrymen, most obviously, our parents. Some of us were lucky enough to be born in a rich family, some in a poor one. That has given us a better shot. We had nothing to do with that, and it is not fair. Some of us have had abusive parents, and some of us have had parents who coddled or spoiled us. That is not fair. Some of us were born in Canada, and some of us in Ukraine. We had nothing to do with it.

All of us trace our lineage back to Adam and Eve. Having sinned, and departed from original innocence, they passed this on to their children through imperfections in their upbringing. So we have Cain murdering Abel. Cain or Seth passed the seed of bad upbringing on to their children, who passed it on to theirs, on to Noah, who passed it on to Shem, Japheth, and Ham, who passed in on to the children of Lot, who passed it on to those responsible for founding Canada or the Ukraine, who passed it on to our parents, who passed it on to us. 

It is, necessarily, in all cases, essentially sin. It is only relative degrees of sin. All far short of original perfection, and so all fall short of proper parenting. All children suffer from bad parenting, to greater or to lesser degree. This is why Philip Larkin wrote:

“They fuck you up, your mom and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.”

 

Not to excuse parents—all parenting is not equal. Some parents are also intentionally evil. This is why Jesus says, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

This is a fundamental problem. This is the original problem. Because we are naturally inclined, as children, to see our parents as the measure of all things, as our ground of being, the source of truth and morals, as gods. Accordingly, the errors and the sins they tempt us to are difficult to erase, and probably require divine intervention. It is the first and most dangerous idolatry.

This is why the Bible says, more than once, that “the sins of the father are visited upon the sons, unto the third and fourth generation.” This is why, when one prospective Christian wants first to bury his father, Jesus says “let the dead bury their own dead.” This is why we must be born again. We must fight free of the taint of our upbringing.

The Christian message has often been perverted to be one of “family values.” That is not in the Bible; that is the opposite of the Biblical message

“Honour your father and your mother,” yes. But that means support them in their old age, and ungrudgingly. Idolizing them is the greater danger. It is comparable to idolizing your motherland. We know from Nuremberg where that leads. But idolizing a parent is a greater risk than idolizing your motherland.

It is the original sin.