The Road to Hell

 

Acts 4: 8-12

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said: “Leaders of the people and elders:

9 If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved,

10 then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed.

11 He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

12 There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

Lumen Gentium:

16. Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator, Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, "Preach the Gospel to every creature", the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.

An interesting theological back-and-forth on YouTube, based on last Sunday’s first reading, from Acts, given above. It is a topic of deep interest to me. For some years, I could not see myself as a Catholic due to the misunderstanding that the Church held that only Catholics could be saved. This is obviously wrong, and offensive. No just God would accept this. 

So I agree with Bishop Barron, and disagree with Father Goring, here. On the other hand, Bishop Barron is too eager to allow everyone into heaven. Dr. Martin adds a valuable corrective.

To accept Jesus as God is not simply to acknowledge “Jesus” as the name of God. This is silly and trivial. It is not to declare oneself Catholic without actually studying the teachings of the Church, and sincerely believing them. To do this is to follow the Evil One, having “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”

Jesus is not just a guy. He is the Cosmic Christ: the Logos of creation. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. The person who follows Jesus and is a member of his Church is the person who sincerely and wholeheartedly seeks the way, the truth, and the light. 

Any nominal Catholic who has not made a sincere effort to examine the faith, or is not fully in agreement with it, is not Catholic, and is emphatically not saved. Conversely, any Muslim of Buddhist who has made a sincere effort to examine their faith, and is fully in agreement with it, and seeks wholeheartedly to do as it requires, is a true follower of Christ, a true Christian, and is saved. The Church is the community of believers, living and dead. These people are members in good standing.

Bishop Barron focuses on conscience: he seems to say that anyone who sincerely follows his conscience is saved. This is not true; I agree with Father Goring on this. As Dr. Martin points out, this overlooks the critical last three sentences of Lumen Gentium 16. One must not just seek the Good, but also Truth. 

Dr. Martin holds that the great majority of humanity is doomed to hell. He cites Matthew 7:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

I’m not sure this is what that passage means. It means one must seek truth and morality for oneself, not simply do what those around you are doing. We must examine the stones the builders have rejected.

It does seem to me that most people avoid making choices about truth and morality by simply doing this, by going along to get along. Anyone who does this is condemned. They are not following God or Jesus: they are following society, profit and self-interest. 

This does appear to be the majority of mankind.

The Conservative Liberal Budget

 

Friend Xerxes summarizes the highlights of the new Canadian federal budget as “child care, a green economy, pandemic relief, increases to old age pensions, funding for improving the health of indigenous communities.”

Although introduced by the “Liberal Party,” this is a strikingly conservative set of priorities—conservative in the true sense.

The OED defines “liberalism” thus: “Support for or advocacy of individual rights, civil liberties, and reform tending towards individual freedom, democracy, or social equality; a political and social philosophy based on these principles.”

That is more or less what they call “libertarianism” in the US now. The Koch brothers are liberals. Maxime Bernier is a liberal, or was when he ran for the Conservative leadership.

“Conservatism” or “Toryism” sees this approach as soulless. The state, instead, is like a family. Equality is not the point; the point is everyone having responsibilities to everyone else.

Let’s go down the list of what the Liberal government wants:

Government-funded child care is classically conservative. The government as parent: this is an almost perfect expression of that concept.

A green economy: this is conservation, preservation of what is, conservatism by both definition and etymology.

Pandemic relief: Conservatives, seeing government as a parent, would of course issue relief. I assume, however, that any government would see this as their responsibility in an emergency. And all governments have, worldwide, in this pandemic.

Increases in old age pensions: in Canada or the UK, the old age pension was originally brought in by a Liberal government, but less as a matter of ideology than to co-opt the Marxist left. In world terms, the first old age pension was introduced by Bismarck in Germany, under a conservative regime. It can probably be justified by either ideology: as paternal care for a vulnerable group, or as just reward for labour.

Funding indigenous communities: a classic conservative position. Liberalism calls for social equality. Treating indigenous people differently is an obvious violation of that principle. Conservatism is more inclined to endorse such things; it sees the indigenous people as wards of the state, like children. Liberals would consider this an affront to human dignity.

Perhaps the most important distinction between the two philosophies is that conservatism seeks to preserve the status quo, with those in power preserved in power, while liberalism wants to open things up and, broadly, democratize. 

In this ultimate sense, too, the modern Canadian Liberal Party is conservative. It is the “natural governing party,” which represents and is supported by the big corporations, the government bureaucracy itself, the professions. It sees “populism,” unrestrained democracy, as its enemy.

Each philosophy might have an argument, but the important thing is to keep our terminology consistent. There is a danger is political speech to deceive by falsifying the meaning of terms. The general intent of much political language, Orwell warned, is “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Look! Up in the Sky!

 

Something is happening in the news about which I have no expertise and no insight. And yet it seems to me dishonest not to note it. Reports of UFOs are rather rapidly becoming both more common and more official.

It looks to me as though people in authority are orchestrating this, to soften us up to the idea that UFOs are a real thing. Governments used to be accused of being secretive about UFOs. The obvious reason, if true, is that they feared mass panic. Perhaps they have chosen this time of pandemic as useful for slipping it in without causing panic, the way governments have always buried bad news by releasing it on a Friday afternoon. We are too preoccupied with viruses to get really upsest about something that seems more abstract and hypothetical.

Back in the 1940s, when this UFO thing began, it was possible to dismiss it all as mass hallucination. Jung did at the time. But this does not work anymore: with smartphones becoming more common, we are getting more video and images, not just hearsay; and the objects are showing up on our instruments.

I find it implausible that these are Russian or Chinese secret weapons. They commonly “defy the known laws of physics.” It is unlikely that the Chinese or Russians have secretly developed technology so much more advanced than the Americans, generally well ahead on technology, that they cannot even imagine how it works. 

Are they America’s own secret weapons? That seems unlikely, as the military itself, at high levels, is now reporting and acknowledging sightings. If it were their own, they would know not to publicize it.

Are they alien craft? I have always thought this, too, highly unlikely. The distances are too great. Even if you could, what would be worth coming this far for? What could they not find closer to home? Breeding stock? An absurd fiction, if you understand the most basic biology and biotechnology. Are they here only to observe? Surely any civilization able to develop the technology to bridge the vast distances would also be able to develop the technology to monitor us remotely, without having to make the long trip, even robotically. 

Are they beings from another dimension? Stripping out the pseudo-science, this means beings of pure spirit—angels or demons. Granted, they are physical as seen and videoed; but it has always been understood than angels and demons could take physical form if they chose. This seems rationally possible; but a motive is lacking. Why would they appear as they do, silent and remote? What message would they mean to convey? Why not just show up and talk to someone, like in the old days?

Elon Musk might explain the UFOs with the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation; we are all video game characters. So these objects are there simply because they are put there by the unseen programmer; or else they are a bug in the code.

I feel this has little explanatory power. Anything imaginable could be accounted for in the same way. Whether we are in a simulation or not in a simulation makes no difference. The question “What are they, and what are they doing?” remains the same.

A more likely scenario, to my mind, is that the UFOs are from the future. This has the advantage of being the explanation most in conformity with Occam’s Razor. 

Is it possible to time travel? Conceptually, yes; we can easily imagine it. The one sure proof that it is not possible has always been simply that we have never encountered visitors from the future.

Perhaps we have. Perhaps they were always up there, observing, but until recently we lacked the technological awareness to conceptualize these strange objects in the sky as spacecraft. They were just unexplained lights in the sky; perhaps angels, perhaps apsaras, devas, minor divinities, perhaps just hallucinations.

It seems reasonable that these visitors would try to be unobtrusive, in order not to alter the past. Leaving aside “time paradoxes,” which might after all be possible to go back and fix if necessary, this could be for the same reason that we do not look kindly on littering in a National Park. They are touring, observing, studying their own origins, as we would. 

The ability to time travel would explain all the apparent violations of the laws of physics. If you can warp time, you need not be concerned with trifles like rates of acceleration or deceleration. Occam’s razor.

Whatever the answer, at this point, any possible answer boggles the mind.

That Old Hallelujah Chorus

My friend Xerxes recently wrote a column suggesting that the COVID pandemic might go on and on. I do not think so, and wrote so at the time. I think we’ll get a pretty good handle on it by the summer, and we have seen the worst.

But others objected to the column on quite different grounds. One responded, not that Xerxes was too pessimistic on the facts, but that he did not like to contemplate such a dystopian future. A second objected to thinking about COVID because “we become what we think about.” A third, objecting to the gloom her husband was exposing them all to on the TV news, wanted to “vehemently” sing at him “‘I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ...”

This reveals the sickness in our hearts. Not only are these people grossly immoral, but they are calling morality itself immoral. This is the one unforgivable sin, and all of them are committing it. Our moral duty is to seek the truth. If truth is to us of no value, what exactly are our values?

There is a reason Satan is called the “father of lies.”

The Second Coming

 

Courtesy of the "Toronto Relationship Clinic"

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Current academic articles based on “critical race theory” keep cascading across my desk. They always accuse the US of being a racist society, based on “white supremacy.”

It is not obvious what they mean by this. I think many are confused. 

It is true, of course, that the US once had race-based slavery, and did not abolish it until 1865. But then again, most of the world used to have slavery, it was abolished, and in the US it was abolished over a hundred and fifty years ago. 

It is also true that discriminatory laws based on race were revived and then persisted in the US South until 1965, a hundred years later. But that too is over fifty years ago. Most now alive would have no memory.

What makes the US “white supremacist” today? Merriam-Webster defines “White supremacy” as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Oxford defines it as: “The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.”

According to the US Constitution, and American statute law, to act on any such belief in America today would be illegal. The US is almost uniquely a non-racial nation. To be German or Japanese or French is an ethnic, a racial, designation. To be American is not. It is the one country in the world least based on any kind of racial supremacy. In America, by its very founding document, all men are created equal.

There is no constituency to speak of in modern America for such an opinion as “white supremacy.” I doubt any reader of this piece has ever heard or read such an opinion expressed by anyone in the past forty years, in public or in private. I have not. And I read a lot.

So how can the US be said to be based, today, on “white supremacy”?

By a redefinition of the term. “White supremacy” as the term is used by the critical race theorists means any situation in which it is tolerated that people with white skin are statistically doing better on some metric than are people with darker-toned skin. This must be ended, by main force, or the system is “white supremacist.” Pale-skinned people of primarily European ancestry do better than “blacks” on measures of average income and average educational attainment. So long as this is true, apparently, the USA is and will be “white supremacist.”

Yet we have a logical problem. If you factor in all racial groups, instead of an arbitrary two, it turns out that the USA is “Asian supremacist.” Asian Americans do better than either European or African Americans on both those metrics. And, given that the Oxford definition expressly excludes Jews from the category “white,” American is probably even more “Jew supremacist.”

The essential premise of critical race theory is exactly the same premise as Nazi race theory. There and then, it was the Jews running everything; for the Jews in prewar Germany were wealthier and better educated than the average German. So they were supposedly in control of everything, and were to blame for all the sufferings of the Germans. Here and now, it is the “whites” running everything, and responsible for all bad things. Increasingly we hear calls for similar remedies as well.

No cause for panic, of course—many will say. After all, the Jews were only six percent of the German population in 1930. “Whites” in the US are the majority. They really do hold power, so long as the US is a democracy, and so have little to fear, however violent and vile the rhetoric becomes.

Except, to begin with, the rules are changing. The innovation of “intersectionality” allows things to be parsed so that the ethnicity can be expanded or contracted as seems useful. “White” can be read to exclude “Hispanics,” Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sicilians, or whatever group might be convenient. And you can discount women, homosexuals, and so forth. The remaining core might be entirely vulnerable in a democracy, depending on how the lines are drawn. Only a bigger and better Holocaust.

But it might not go that direction. Instead, there are growing signs that the gun turrets are swinging to Asians and Jews. Street attacks on Jews and Asians seem to be growing. The logic of critical race theory points inexorably in this direction.

It is amazing how history repeats; it is amazing how people seem incapable of learning from history. 

Pregnant Individuals

 

In last night’s news, the CBC reported on the decision to give priority to vaccinating “pregnant individuals,” who are apparently at higher risk from COVID. Throughout the story, both anchor and interviewee persisted in referring to “pregnant individuals” or “pregnant persons,” never “women” or “mothers.”

It strikes me as dehumanizing: as though the only salient fact about those mentioned here is being pregnant. As though they were no more than nondescript biological sacks. 

But I suppose more importantly, it is an open denial of objective reality. It is fantastically dangerous when an entire society becomes psychotic.

Earth Day Reflections

 

Yesterday was Earth Day. Normally I don’t care.

But friend Xerxes wrote a commemorative column. It prompts some interesting questions.

He condemns the automobile on the grounds that it sacrifices the lives of thousands of young men and women every year. Presumably he means in road accidents. But couldn’t you also say that about aspirin? Or water? Or anything you could name? 

You need a cost-benefit analysis. Surprisingly few people seem to understand the concept. A telling example is the surprising resistance during this pandemic to getting vaccinated. Many would rather risk a one-in-one hundred chance of dying of CIVID to avoid a one-in-a-million chance of dying of the vaccine.

More generally, Xerxes laments that the material progress we have made, notably in medicine, has not been shared by other species—that the Suzuki Foundation estimates, by computer modelling, that 150 species go extinct every day.

Here we have to ask what our ultimate goals and values are. If it is to improve the number and longevity of all life forms, we have a problem. The very medical progress Xerxes lauds is at their expense. It comes in large part from killing bacteria and parasites. 

If we want to feed the poor, that too comes at the expense of other species. Because that is what they eat. And, if we multiply and extend the life of any other given species, that comes at the expense of whatever species they prey on or displace for their sustenance.

Trying to make the welfare of all species our concern seems vain. That seems to be the fundamental premise of the environmental movement; yet no action of ours other than blowing up the planet can really make things either better or worse given that standard. 

The traditional premise is that we focus on what pleases God, and what improves the lives of our fellow humans: the greatest good for the greatest number. Beyond that, to avoid unnecessary cruelty to other species.

Yet Xerxes, and most environmentalists, as opposed to animal rights activists, seem not to be concerned with the suffering of other living beings, exactly. Rather, with the possible extinction of species. Why is this more important? If species are more significant than individuals, wouldn’t it follow, in human terms, that corporations are more important than people? If not, why the difference?

Xerxes writes:

“We need more housing. But endless 5000-square-foot single-family residences on bulldozer-flattened subdivisions are not the answer.”

To make such a statement, I think one needs to propose a better alternative. People have moved to subdivisions because it was the most affordable family housing. Kids have a better life if they have a yard to play in. Where would you have them go instead?

Xerxes concludes by lamenting that all his efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are negated by population growth. 

Here again, we have to establish what the goal is. If it is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” then human population growth is a self-evident good. If it is not, for whom or for what value are we recycling and conserving resources?

If you cannot figure out the answer, comment. I can help.

Jeffery Epstein Didn't Kill Himself. But Maybe George Floyd Did.

 

No peace, no justice.

I hold to the principle that we should not second-guess the judicial process. It is there to settle disputes; social cohesion requires us to respect it. If a court declares a defendant not guilty, we owe it to him or her, to our neighbours, and ultimately to ourselves, to accept that and move on.

However, I believe the judgement in the Chauvin trial is wrong. I believe this precisely because the rules were not followed here. I expect it to be appealed and overturned. There was obvious public pressure on the jurors to return a guilty verdict. Their verdict was under duress, and so, just as with a contract signed under duress, it is not valid. It was equivalent to a lynching.

The jurors had every reason to fear that, if they returned a verdict of not guilty, their city would be burned down. Maxine Waters had called for violence if a guilty verdict was not returned. Joe Biden had come close to demanding a guilty verdict. They had every reason to fear their own homes might be burned down, themselves or their family attacked, perhaps killed.

Under the circumstances, Chauvin could not get a fair trial. By the rules, if a fair trial cannot be conducted, he must be assumed to be innocent.

I do personally doubt his guilt. No reasonable man with normal instincts for self-preservation would murder another person slowly in plain sight of many witnesses holding video cameras. Hence, any reasonable man must doubt Chauvin’s guilt. 

Some have actually argued that it was worth sacrificing Chauvin’s chance for a fair trial to the greater good—to retain civil peace and avoid more rioting.

This is folly. It will only lead to worse rioting, as the mob realizes they can impose their will by rioting. And it will ensure that police stop doing anything about it—not worth the risk of death on the spot or a lynching if there is any confrontation. Perfect recipe for chaos.

A better approach would be to go in the opposite direction: free Chauvin immediately, and legislate full immunity for police from any murder or manslaughter charge if any suspect resists arrest. This would cause no risk to the public from police brutality: it is simple enough to cooperate during an arrest, and presumably the police would have to prove resistance with body cam footage. Resisting arrest is, moreover, refusing the protection of the justice system. Your call.

Something like this might even be necessary, under these circumstances, to restore order.

Ford Gets a Better Idea

 

Doug Ford’s government here in Ontario is facing criticism for having called for a total lockdown, then rescinding part of it within 24 hours. They had intended to have police stop people and issue fines if they did not have a good reason to be out and about. A number of police chiefs publicly declared they would not do it. The government had intended to close playgrounds, but people quickly and loudly protested that, with kids home from school, they needed the playgrounds. And kids playing outdoors did not spread COVID.

I would have been okay with the original measures. This is a public health emergency. In an emergency, it is acceptable in our liberal democratic tradition to suspend civil liberties. This is why we have a “riot act” in most democracies, and a “war measures act.” France has been using a stop-and-check policy just like the one envisaged.

But if we feel the initial orders went too far, surely it is to the government’s credit that they backed off quickly. Anyone can make a mistake, and everyone does. The mark of a good and competent person is to acknowledge this, and change. How have we lost this basic principle of morality and good judgement?

The Endless Pandemic

 

People are losing hope. In Canada, we are into a third wave of the pandemic, and each wave seems worse than the last. Friend Xerxes writes a column on “What if it never ends?”

It will end.

Even without any human intervention, all epidemics end. The Spanish flu managed four waves, but it ended, without a vaccine.

We are going to break this third wave by summer. We may be fighting variants for a few years, but at a lower level, with booster shots. 

See if I’m not right.

COVID and Divine Justice

 

Someone asks, “Why would a good and just God send COVID?”

It is a fair question. The moment you accept monotheism, everything is from God that is not from man.

But COVID may be from man. I think it is likely it escaped from the Wuhan Virology lab. It may even have been intended as a weapon, although its release was surely in error. It is mysterious how outbreaks seem to have been less severe in East Asian countries—almost as if there is some component sensitive to Chinese/Mongoloid and non-Chinese genetics.

But even if it is from God—it is just. We needed and deserved chastisement. Our nearly universal acceptance of abortion is about the same thing that led Yahweh in the Old Testament to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Romans to salt the ground of Carthage. They practiced child sacrifice. The collapse of the Aztecs, the Inca, might be accounted for in the same way: they practiced human sacrifice. They deserved to be taken down, and Yahweh did so, swiftly, through the Spanish. 

Aside from killing them outright, we have also ignored the welfare of the young in having women all work outside the home. We have ignored the need to pass on morals to our young. These are ample justification for destroying a culture. The entire point of a culture is to pass on moral guidance generation to generation. Our culture is therefore poisoned.

If this has not led to our own destruction—yet—it seems only because there is not some other culture ready to replace us. The Spanish, or the Hebrews, or the Romans, have not yet arrived on the scene. Who might they be?

Not the mainland Chinese, the CCP. If we are depraved, they are more depraved.

The Reptile Brain

 

“Anything possible of being believed is an image of truth”—William Blake.

David Icke believes the world has been ruled by reptilian aliens for thousands of years.

A lot of people believe him.

Icke’s claims seem automatically disproven by the fact that he is able to publish his claims and speak them publicly. If there were such a conspiracy of space lizards, they would have silenced him. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.

But they have to be an image of truth, because so many find them compelling.

What does “reptilian” really mean here?

The most striking thing about reptiles is that they lack concern for their young. They lay their eggs, and wander off. This seems to correspond to the fact that their brains lack the parts that, in the human brain, correspond to our emotions.

“Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like a brain of a crocodile. Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system or mammalian brain, which evolved tens of millions of years ago in ancestors who were mammal but not yet primates. It is a major source of our moods and emotions, of our concern and care for the young. And finally, on the outside, living in uneasy truce with the more primitive brains beneath, is the cerebral cortex; civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.”

— Carl Sagan, Cosmos

In other words, reptiles seem to operate only on immediate urges. They may be self-aware, but they are not aware of any other “selves” in their universe. Just things they want or do not want. This is the “reptile brain.”

Icke’s vision of reptilian humans rings true because there really are such reptilians: beings in human shape who nevertheless operate only on urges, unaware of any other “selves” in the universe. These are the people we call “narcissists.” The “type B personality disorders,” in psych speak.

Icke seems to understand this. I have not read any of his books, but I see he speaks of love as the antidote to the dominion of the lizards. 

And they do by and large rule the world. When you care for no one but yourself, and recognize no morality, you have a huge tactical advantage. Of course such people will regularly end up on top. Anyone in power should at least be suspected, as Icke does, of being a lizard.

Icke claims that society as we know it is largely designed by these reptilians to generate fear and anxiety. He says this energy is nourishing to the lizard overlords.

This too makes metaphoric sense. The narcissist has an insatiable need to show their superiority, by causing others to cower.

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ”

--George Orwell, 1984

The urge to exert power over others, and have them feel it, explains much of human life and human history.

Not to mention the dysfunctional dynamics of many families.

A Justification for Empire

 

Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire

A correspondent observes that “history illustrates that racism is declining, but ever so slowly.”

I’m not so sure. That is the “Whig view of history” we are traditionally served: that the progress of history is always towards our own political preferences. Accordingly, we declare ourselves on “the right side of history,” and justify our views with “this is 2021, after all.”

 Which may be so, in broad terms. Given that there is a God, it makes sense that the greater trajectory of history should arc towards justice. However, recently I have come to doubt this particular premise: that racism specifically is in decline. It seems to me that racism has grown frighteningly worse over the past few years. That in turn makes me look back and question. What are the real dynamics here?

When you think of it, racism was almost necessarily worse in the past few centuries than it was earlier. The very concept of “races” of humans is a modern scientific one. We can pretty much trace it to Darwin. Before Darwin, ancestry might have mattered, breeding might have mattered, but not race. Hitler and the Nazis certainly traced their racial theories to him. 

The modern idea of the nation state emerges from the same source. It was born in the 1860s, in the wake of Darwin, and reached the status of international law by 1917, with Wilson’s 14 points. "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.” Wilson believed firmly in race and in racial segregation at home; it was a “progressive” idea. National borders were to be established on the basis of race; races were in principle not to mix. 

Before the nation state, we generally had little such notion; which is why empires seemed reasonable ways to run things. And they did produce general peace among racial groups. With nation states, interracial war broke out.

In an empire, civil allegiance was not to one’s race, but to a royal family or to a set of shared ideals. Anyone could become a Roman citizen, for example, based on merit. The Holy Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire were based on shared religious principles, not race.

Racism may now be growing, not declining, because we are losing our shared ideals. Religion was replaced for a time by secular humanism, but this has not proved durable. Postmodernism has rejected the very possibility of shared ideals. What is left is self-interest and instinct, which throws us into tribalism. For humans are instinctively tribal animals. Only civilization ever kept us from each other’s throats.

I am not advocating a return to Empire. But until corrupted by Darwinism in the nineteenth century, the problem with empires was not racism, but the lack of democracy. That might even have been simply necessary at the time, based on distance, not race. The British, after all, did not extend the Imperial franchise to the Thirteen Colonies, Canada or Australia. Instead, as soon as responsible government was introduced, these regions became independent. It was apparently not practical for them to send representatives to serve in Westminster.

Are we doomed to an inevitable spiral downward into savagery? I imagine not, on the grounds that there is a God, and the arc of history generally really does bend towards justice.

Laughing out of Both Sides of the 49th Parallel

 

I have been “binge watching” the Canadian sitcom “Corner Gas” in a moderate way: one episode each evening. At the same time, for some reason, episodes of the old American sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” have been popping up in my YouTube feed. I remember it as pretty good, so I’ve watched a few of those recently as well.

I think comparing the two illustrates the difference between American and Canadian humour.

WKRP, American, has a mix of sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. Some are there to be laughed at, but disliked, and some are straight, unfunny, and likeable. Herb and Les are unlikeable clowns. Andy or Bailey or Venus Flytrap never put a foot wrong. 

In Corner Gas, all the characters are sometimes sympathetic, sometimes unsympathetic. All have flaws and sometimes look foolish; all are fundamentally likeable. Even Oscar, who comes closest to being a villain. He is too much like a bratty child to dislike. Nobody is above getting ribbed, including the show itself, which often breaks the “fourth wall.” 

This is consistent in Canadian humour. There are no heroes or villains in Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches either. 

I think it is an expression of a religious difference between Canada and the USA. The USA was founded largely on Calvinist principles: the Reformed tradition of the Puritans in the north, the Baptists in the South, the Dutch Reformed in the Mid-Atlantic. Calvinists see people as either damned or elect; all good or all evil.

Canada was founded largely by Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists. Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists believe that all of us are sinners, but that all of us are capable of redemption at any moment.

And that pretty much accounts for the difference between the American and Canadian character overall.

Myths We Live By

 

The common cultural myth, inherited from the romantics but not original to them, is that civilization is bad and man is naturally good. This is a consoling way to look at the world; it means by doing just whatever we want, we are also doing the good. But obviously wrong. If man is innately good, how could he have created a civilization that is innately bad? Where could evil, moral evil, have come from?

It ends up scapegoating the Jews, or rich capitalists. It ends up assuming that, while we are born good, some others are born irredeemably bad alien beings.

A correspondent recently cites the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” as proof that racism is learned behavior. Broadway tunes are not good scientific sources. Nor are fantasies of some Garden of Eden in the South Pacific. Humans, like the other higher primates, and like dogs or sheep, are herd animals. Fear of the other is hard-wired by evolutionary pressures. Everyone is prejudiced who does not make an effort not to be. Fortunately, we are not animals, and can rise above our programming.

This naïve romanticism is, I suspect, also behind so many assertions that the solution to racism or sexism or “rape culture” is to educate people that “abuse of others is unacceptable.”

Yes, ethics needs to be taught. But knowing something is right does not compel anyone to do it. Morality is a struggle against instinct and self-interest. You cannot eliminate murder and theft by simply telling people murder and theft are wrong. If it were so, there would be no such thing as ethics.

Pippa Passes

 

The death of Prince Philip, I expect, will kill any public sympathy for Megan Markle or Prince Harry. 

It is reminiscent of the death of Princess Diana. I strongly suspected that she was the problem in that marriage, that she was being selfish and irresponsible. But her death evoked sympathy; the royal family had to come onside and celebrate her or look heartless. Charles’s reputation has never recovered.

Now it works the other way. Harry and Megan look pretty callous for stirring up scandal for the royal family while Prince Philip was, we now discover, terminally ill. 

The royal family may forgive them. The public never will.

The Duke, who devoted his life to service of the monarchy, may have given his greatest service with his death.

Damnation by Faith Alone

 

 We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Bishop Sheen once said “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

That includes many people raised Catholic. 

Part of this is anti-Catholic propaganda; part of this is confusing Catholicism with other denominations; much of this is pure culpable ignorance.

In early adolescence, I thought I was an atheist. That did not last; but it took me many years of intense searching to claw my way back to where I needed to begin.

Hoping to save others much wasted time and suffering, I want to look at one common fallacy, a very grave one, one that troubled me.

It is the faith thing. 

People think faith means believing things without evidence. I remember at one point explaining that I could not accept Western religion because it demanded a “leap of faith.”

The postmodern leap of faith.

This comes at least in part from Luther, who believed in “salvation by faith alone.” 

News flash: Luther was not Catholic.

Faith is important in Catholicism, but it does not mean choosing to believe something. That is postmodernism, and that is Satanic. Let me make that clear: that is Satanic. A moral person must seek the objective truth, wherever that may lead.

“Faith,” dating in English from the 14th century, means primarily “The fulfilment of a trust or promise, and related senses.” (OED). As in “keep faith,” or “keep the faith”: to be loyal to one’s commitments. This is pretty much its Catholic sense as well: to stay the course. To go to mass, to keep the commandments, to run the race, to fight the good fight. It has nothing to do with deciding to believe or not believe in the existence of God; it was clear enough to me by the age of 18 that this was a smokescreen question, an avoidance of the issue. The existence of God is not in doubt. It is demonstrable.

“Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.”

- Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2: DS 3004.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of convincing proofs of the existence of God. Only a fool could say in his heart “there is no God.” The Bible takes no trouble to make the case: it is self-evident.

There is a second meaning of “faith,” in the religious context. OED: “the capacity to spiritually apprehend divine truths, or realities beyond the limits of perception or of logical proof.” While the existence of God is apparent to reason, his nature is self-evidently beyond our comprehension. In places where reason cannot be employed, faith must be resorted to: we must take things we cannot understand “on faith.” These are the things the Church calls “sacred mysteries”: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection.

Conversely, anyone who takes anything “on faith” that he cannot think through for himself, or simply chooses to believe something despite contrary evidence, is guilty of the deadly sin of acedia. This is one of the Seven Sins that lead to sure damnation.

Unethical Materials

 

A proposed checklist to evaluate multimedia content for use in schools just came across my desk. One of the criteria was “ethical elements.” 

Digging deeper, this means the presence of “discrimination, bias, violence, and sexually suggestive material.” Materials used in classrooms at any level must not include these. And, to clarify further, “discrimination” means “discrimination related to gender, age, race, religion, and culture.” “Bias” means “bias for a particular notion and theory.”

This seems unworkable. 

To begin with, we are talking about words and images, not actions. Based on the principle that my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, it is difficult to conceptualize discrimination in this context. Presumably, what we do not want is material advocating discrimination on these grounds. But that is not what the guidelines say: they use the vague term “related to.” The term used in most human rights legislation is “based on”: that one must not discriminate against persons “based on X.” “Related to” suggests one must instead not discriminate between religions or cultures or ages or genders. One must not distinguish between British and French cuisine, and one must certainly not say one is better.

This is absurd, and leads to unfortunate dining experiences. And human suffering.

The definition of “bias” seems objective and reasonable—but note that it would mean no teaching the dangers of global warming without featuring the other side of that debate; and no teaching the Theory of Evolution without also citing Creationism and Intelligent Design. And that’s just the start. Some people do insist that there was no Holocaust—so you cannot privilege the view of history that says there was. Some say there was no moon landing, there are alien lizards among us, and the earth is flat. Again, no bias allowed.

Prohibiting materials featuring “violence” would prohibit discussion of the news, and most of world history. Not to mention most fiction, in any medium, and any fairy tales. Who benefits from that? Certainly not anybody seeking an education.

Prohibiting sexually suggestive materials might make sense for teaching children, but a blanket prohibition means you cannot teach the Bible, the Krishna legend, or most great literature.

The problem here is that, in the name of inclusivity, we have jettisoned all specific moral traditions. Were we able to refer to the Ten Commandments, or the Analects, or the Dhammapada, or Sharia, weeding out unethical material would be relatively straightforward. While there are universal principles of morality, the average person cannot do very well at working them out in every instance on the fly. We’d probably require a graduate seminar for each individual decision. Without this, absurdities are inevitable.

We settle on “violence” or “sex” as proxies for “immorality,” for example, because they are objective and indisputable; not because they are unethical. Ideas like “discrimination” and “equality” turn out to be too abstract for most to understand.

We need to get back to our traditional moral standards. Of the great moral traditions, it matters far less which one we follow than that we can all agree on applying one or the other--at least within a given educational institution.

A Shot in the Arm

 

Got the Pfizer vaccine, first dose, yesterday—Easter Sunday.

No detectable side effect so far. Not even an aching arm.

I figure in three weeks, round about April 25, I will have substantial immunity, and need not worry about being out and about. Masking and distancing still, but only for the sake of others’ peace of mind.

Surprised to learn now that my cousins, all but one of whom are younger than I, have all already had their second dose of Pfizer. How can that be? I’ve been keeping close tabs, and got mine as soon as I was eligible.

I think it must be because they have their Indian cards. Racial preferences; or, put more frankly, racial discrimination. My own second shot, although older and with a couple of comorbidities, is not slated until the end of July.

It might make sense to rush-vaccinate people living on reserves, based on higher infection rates. Online, I see claims that infection rates on reserves are 187% of the national average. On the other hand, the fatality rate is much lower—less than half. As a matter of fact, as of August, the story was that the rate of COVID, too, was much lower on reserves than in the general population: only 25% of the national average.

Whatever is happening currently on reserves, shouldn’t the risk be greater in urban settings, where people are closer together? Are matters worse on reserves than in other poor communities, or is the issue just poverty? In any case, my cousins are prosperous and indistinguishable from their urban neighbours. The different treatment seems based not on any scientific or humanitarian justification, but purely racial preference.

We are creating different classes of citizenship in Canada based on race.

Gunter: O'Toole Is a Dud

 

I'm getting the same feeling.

He or She?

 

Filipino transvestite beauty queen.

Jordan Peterson rose to prominence over which pronouns to use to refer to transvestites. This has become a dominating issue: if someone looks like a woman, but is in fact biologically male, do we say “he” or “she”? Or “zhe,” or “they.” Or seventy or a hundred other possibilities now being floated.

This is a relatively new problem in North America, but it occurs to me it is not elsewhere. In Thailand or the Philippines, transvestitism has been open and socially accepted for generations, perhaps centuries. So I thought to ask my Filipina wife, in Visayan, do you refer to a male-to-female transvestite as “he” or “she.” 

She reports that, as indeed seems most sensible, biological sex is definitive. He may look like a woman, but he is still, in fact, “he.”

Problem solved.