Playing the Indian Card

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Beauty or Brains?



Sarasvati


Many women seem convinced that men do not value intelligence in a woman.

This is obviously wrong. Whether they themselves understand it or not, men are instinctively drawn to the best mother for their children. Since it is of obvious benefit for children to be intelligent, and to have a wise mother to care for and instruct them, intelligence in a woman is always highly valued. As in the classical figures of Athena or Sarasvati or Sophia. Traditionally, to be highly marriageable a woman was expected to be “accomplished”: able to play piano, dance, speak French, recite poetry, and so forth.

So too for almost anything else men favour in the opposite sex: it is whatever is best for children. Youth is valued, because a younger woman is most likely to have the most and most healthy children. Beauty is valued because what we consider beautiful is whatever implies good health. A good strong body will produce more healthy children. A gentle personality is preferred, because gentleness is best around children.

The same is true for the opposite sex: women value in a man whatever suggests the best father.

Why are so many modern women misled on this? 

Perhaps women are often poor judges of their own intelligence. Little girls are always told they are wonderful and clever. Eventually, however, if they are not physically attractive, this cannot be hidden from them. As compensation, parents will reassure less attractive girls with some line like “never mind, you are better than those other girls; they may be pretty, but you have more personality. You are more intelligent.” This is a natural dodge, because more difficult to disprove.

School marks might hint otherwise; but modern schools tell everyone they are doing wonderfully. Even when they do not, poor marks may not be as convincing as regular praise. 

And in the absence of such trusted feedback from without, the woman herself is unlikely to know: the infamous Dunning-Kruger effect. 

Then these less attractive women see the pretty girls getting all the guys, and assume it is because men value beauty over brains. 

Not so. Unjust as it may seem, the reality is that attractive people are also likely to be more intelligent: good genes mate with good genes. Even if men value beauty above brains, an intelligent man would stand a better chance of marrying a beautiful woman, and their children would inherit both characteristics.



Monday, August 30, 2021

Mirages Seen on the Banks of the Nile




.. somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man...
  

For many years, something puzzled me: why is it that whatever the majority of people believe is so often the exact opposite of the truth? It seemed so consistent I suspected the existence of some evil intelligence, the Devil, coordinating the many individual opinions. 

I think that is true; there is a Devil, and he is behind this. But a personal devil is not a necessary hypothesis to explain this. It is simply a universal law that, once you start to lie or to do wrong, you fear the truth. Since you fear the truth, you want to get as far away from it as possible. A lot of people are up to no good. Not necessarily a majority, but such people are both desperate and unprincipled. That is enough to cow others into obedience. Few people are actively good. Some are actively bad, and most others just go along to get along. So the grossest lies become standard currency.

Some examples:

The common condemnation of the Crusades as a macroaggression on Muslims based on religious prejudice. In fact, the “crusade,” the holy war, was a Muslim invention: jihad. The Christian Crusades were a response in kind, in imitation of the Muslim practice. The Muslims had overrun the Holy Lands and most of the Byzantine Empire; the Byzantine Empire appealed to the rest of the Christian world for help.

The common condemnation of slavery as a peculiarly American, British, or European sin, and a sin against Africa. In fact, slavery was a near-universal practice--except in Christian Europe, where chattel slavery was nonexistent. It was revived in the new European colonies only as a concession to local practice--through contact with slave-holding societies in Africa and the New World. Later, it was a British mission to eliminate slavery throughout the world.

The common notion that Indians/”First Nations” lived in harmony with nature. In fact, they lived in conflict with nature, pillaging for their needs. It is the settled farmers from Europe who husbanded the land, taking out only what they put in.

I go on about the Indians, because I have researched and written a book on the subject…

The common falsehood that the policy of the Canadian government has been to wipe out Indian culture, notably through the residential schools. The way to assimilate Indians, had this ever been the intent, would have been to put them in the public schools. It would have been to evacuate remote reserves and bring them into the towns and cities. In fact, the policy of Canadian governments has always been to preserve Indians as a distinct group, reducing their contact with others like animals in a game preserve. Out of misguided concern.

The common misunderstanding that Canada is built on stolen Indian land. The land was sold by treaty long ago; the aboriginal groups surrendered all claims on the land in return for agreed compensation. And it is worth mentioning that aboriginal title did not exist in the first place, by common law. It was invented as a useful fiction to gain Indian recognition of government authority. According to the philosophy behind the common law, nobody can really own land. God made the land for everyone. One only owns one’s labour, and this may be invested in the land by tilling and sowing, or otherwise improving it. Since the Indians did not work the land, but merely hunted and gathered, they have no more rights to the land than anyone else. They have the same right to purchase or to homestead or to hunt and gather, so long as the latter does not interfere with someone else’s more intensive use of the land.

The common illusion that the land was sacred to the Indians. The Indians were almost all nomadic. No particular area of land would have meant much to them. It means far more to the settled farmer or even city dweller, who may have spent his life on it, who remembers his childhood here, whose loved ones and ancestors may be buried nearby.

The common condemnation of “European colonialism” and “European imperialism.” In fact, almost all countries have been empires until recent times. The European contribution was not to invent imperialism, but to end it. The unique European creation was the ethnic or nation state. The first nation states were England and France, perhaps also Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. They spread this concept to the world—through their short-lived “empires.”

The common complaint that Western civilization is Eurocentric, and has too little regard for other cultures. This is easily disproven by the simple fact that “the West” refers to itself as “the West.” It is literally not self-centric. Most cultures usually suppose they are. This has led the West to be unusually outward-looking, to put to sea to explore, and to acquire influences and even people from other cultures.

The common fraudulent claim that the left works for the poor, and the right for big corporations. The left likes lots of regulation on business. This works in favour of big corporations, because it prevents market competition. The left will give some assistance to the very poor, but will ensure that they cannot improve their lot; it makes them permanently poor. Most of the money they claim to raise for “the poor” goes instead into the pockets of wealthy “experts,” who have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems.

If you ever imagined the corporations were on the right, seeing Google, Facebook, Amazon, Patreon, PayPal and Twitter all move as one being to suppress voices on the right has to disprove it. 

The common falsehood that women have, throughout history, been oppressed by men. The fact is, men were obliged to go off and work, usually for another, for a living. Women could expect to stay at home and be their own boss. Women were exempted from military service or conscripted labour; men were sent off to be killed. Women were exempted from any dirty, strenuous, or dangerous work, and in many times and places could not be prosecuted for a crime. Growing up, boys are given tough love and hard knocks. Girls are told they are princesses no matter how they behave. 

Following in this time-honoured tradition of asserting the opposite of the truth, in recent years racism has been rebranded “anti-racism,” and refusing to see race is now called “racist.”

There are many more such lies.

But the biggest lie of all is that there is no meaning to life, and no good evidence for the existence of God. Nothing could be further from the truth; yet surely it is the general modern consensus. I think of Monty Python’s rambling movie “The Meaning of Life.” ‘Alas!’ we moderns and post-moderns feign to lament. ‘If only we could figure out why we are here.’ 

Literally everything that exists proves the existence of God. God is the necessary answer to the question, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” What could be more proven?

But wait; there’s more. We have more and stronger logical proofs of the existence of God than of anything else in the universe. Why, other than whistling past the grave yard, this pretense that the matter is in dispute?

And the meaning of life has been well known and accepted across cultures since ancient times, and no doubt before. It is to seek what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. These qualities are of self-evident value; the value of truth or good or beauty does not need to be justified. Rather, all things are of value to the extent that they are true, or good, or beautiful.

I recently wrote an essay for the national Mensa publication, pointing this out. 

No surprise: it prompted an energetic argument. Two members, and counting, felt driven to write articles asserting that life had no meaning. 

They made no argument that this was so—they simply asserted it, and claimed I had not proven the opposite. In the process, ignoring my arguments.

My experience is that many people very strongly do not want life to have any meaning. 

Especially if that meaning is truth. Truth for many is the great enemy.

It all has to do with a river in Africa.


Sunday, August 29, 2021

Redistricting for a New Federalism

 

Cities have become much larger than they were back in the day when provincial and state boundaries were drawn, and this has created a political problem. City life and city concerns are very different from those of the smaller towns and rural areas. There is a cultural divide. In many territories, the rural and small town vote gets consistently overwhelmed by the big city. That is the very problem that federalism was meant to prevent.

Accordingly, it is time for a general redistricting, establishing really large cities as their own independent provinces and states. 

In Canada, Montreal and Toronto-Golden Horseshoe need to be hived off. This would create a better demographic balance with the other provinces as well: Ontario and Quebec have far more people than the others.

In the US, there is rural dissatisfaction in the Pacific states and in Illinois. Chicago, Los Angeles-San Diego, San Francisco-Silicon Valley, and Seattle-Portland could be hived off. In the East, New York City-Long Island could be a separate state.


The CANZUK Future

 




The current chaos in Afghanistan offers one more good argument for CANZUK—a formal coalition of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Britain, Australia, and other nations were trapped by America’s sudden withdrawal. America no longer looks like a reliable ally. Had CANZUK existed, it might have been able to take charge.

CANZUK should also appeal to Britain as a way to stand strong in trade competition with the EU. For Canadians, it elevates them beyond just being America’s eternal kid brother. For New Zealand, the added partners prevent being overmatched by Australia. For Australia, it is protection against China.

It is suddenly looking possible that Erin O’Toole may become Canadian prime minister. If so, CANZUK is an official part of his party’s policy.


Saturday, August 28, 2021

The New Apartheid

 

Shadd as she appears on Mackenzie House.


Shadd as she appeared in life.

A new mural has blossomed on the side of historical Mackenzie House in Toronto. It is a portrait of Mary Ann Shadd, the publisher of the Provincial Freeman newspaper (1853 – 1857 or so).

She is being honoured for being black and a woman—the Provincial Freeman was not an early newspaper, but the first in Canada to be published by a black woman. 

This in itself seems discriminatory. We should not honour people simply for being the first of their sex or ethnicity to do a thing. That is a textbook case of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

But the way she is portrayed is more troubling—dolled up like a cartoon African Queen. Shadd was a proper Victorian Quaker lady, who dressed accordingly. The three commitments in the banner of her paper were to “anti-slavery, temperance, and general literature.” Temperance at that time did not just mean abstinence from alcohol, but sobriety and moderation in all things—including in personal adornment. 

The agenda of the Provincial Freeman was to promote integration and to “develop in Canada a society to deny all assertions regarding the Negro's inability to live with others in civilized society.” This was a major issue of the day, even among strident abolitionists: should all the blacks, if freed, be shipped back to Africa, to Liberia and Sierra Leone, or could they adapt to live among civilized people? 

Shadd had previously run a school. She lost her funding because of her adamant insistence on integration, rather than running it, as other prominent blacks preferred, as black-only.

The portrait, in visual terms, takes the side in direct opposition to Shadd, saying she was inalienably alien, and could never fit in.

Next, I expect to see portraits appear of Martin Luther King wearing a leopard skin, carrying an assegai, and with a bone through his nose. Well done, regressives.


Friday, August 27, 2021

Banning Conversion Therapy

 

Ex-gay Milo Yiannopoulis


Friend Xerxes has written a column opposing “conversion therapy,” which seeks to shift preferences among those with homosexual attractions in the heterosexual direction. Justin Trudeau has said that, if elected, a ban is an “absolute priority.” The Conservatives and NDP have also promised a ban.

Xerxes’s first argument against conversion therapy is that nobody ever convinced anyone of anything.

Our parliamentary system would not work if this were true.

People on the right, at least, enjoy exchanging accounts of their “red-pill” moments. The religious similarly exchange their conversion stories, most often due to a particular sermon, or a talk with a Christian friend.

Some people, it is true, cannot be persuaded by evidence or argument. These people are the insane. There are a lot of them, the number is growing, and it is not always obvious that they are insane. We tend to see it only when their core beliefs are challenged. They may then become violent or abusive, or they may just ignore what was said and repeat their point. Or they may begin speaking obvious nonsense.

Alcoholics, for example, are insane. It is never rationally coherent to be an alcoholic. 

Are homosexuals insane? That’s a harsh claim. If so, even so, we do not simply give up on other mental illnesses. We do try to offer therapy.

Xerxes’s second argument is that conversion therapy is coercive. 

“You set up a situation where the victim desperately wants a break from the constant barrage of pressure to change. Sleep deprivation. Tag-team arguments. Aversion training. Noise. Pain. Never left alone.”

No existing conversion therapy does any of this, because itr is already illegal. It would be the crime of coercion, or duress. Conversion therapy is necessarily far more like going to a diet centre, or a psychotherapy session, or an AA meeting. Should they be banned?

Another argument that might be made is that conversion therapy does not work: people are born homosexual, we are told, so how could it? Yet I know personally of former homosexuals who have switched; perhaps you do too. There are public examples. And there are many public examples of people who switch from a heterosexual lifestyle, suddenly divorcing and running off with a gay lover. How can we assume it only works one way?

There may be no solid scientific proof that conversion therapy works. There is no solid scientific proof that psychiatry works either, or psychiatric medicines, or AA.

The final argument that might be made is that nobody could possibly have a reason not to want to be gay. But this is obviously false as well. Leave aside for now all possible moral objections to homosexuality. Being homosexual makes it much more difficult, at best, to have a family, to have children and to pass on your genes. It severely limits your choice of partners, and sets you up for a lifetime of mostly unrequited love.

It is unjust and cruel discrimination against homosexuals to ban such therapies. If some homosexuals do not themselves understand this, and actually want such therapies to be made illegal, they are indeed insane.


Thursday, August 26, 2021

Is the Fall of Kabul the Fall of the Left?

 


Does the chaos in Kabul mark an inflection point?

It seems to me an inflection point is due, and overdue. And current events in Afghanistan are surely shocking enough to burn for some time in collective memory. Someone needs to be blamed for thiis, and someone needs to be punished. “Never again.”

It looked as though we were already hitting an inflection point in 2016; first we had Brexit, and then we had Trump elected. Both seemed miraculous, a turning of the tide. The cognoscenti, the clerisy, the managing elite, did not want either. Moreover, the elite predicted with confidence that neither would happen. It was as though the common man was rising up and refusing to do as he was told.

We should have expected a response, even a hysterical response, and for the past four years we have seen it. 

Realizing that a wave had swept over the gunwale, it was all hands on deck for the brass-polishers of the regular navy. So we got cancel culture, deplatforming, critical race theory, an openly partisan press, lots of fake news, multiple impeachment attempts, and branding at least half the country, or respective countries, racist and fascist. They didn’t manage to reverse Brexit; the voters remained adamant, dramatically endorsing Nigel Farage, and dramatically rejecting Jeremy Corbin. But they did manage in America, with or without the help of electoral tricks, to frighten enough ordinary folks back into their habitual cap-doffing to their betters. For the moment.

But now they have demonstrated their incompetence in the most dramatic terms. People are dying. Biden was their guy; now they own him. Covering his own away-from-the-mirror parts, Biden insists constantly he was following the advice of the experts. He ran promising to do so, and has claimed all along to be doing so. 

So it is natural and proper to hold the elites responsible for the unfolding Afghanistan disaster. They can’t tag it on Biden personally, because Kamala Harris is on record as saying she signed off on the decision. Nancy Pelosi insisted it was wise at the time. Blaming Biden and pressuring him to resign would only pass the presidency on to one of them.

it now looks possible, in the shadow of Kabul, that Gavin Newsome will be recalled, and replaced by Larry Elder—not just a Republican as governor of the ultimate “blue” state, but a libertarian Republican. If California falls to the “fascists,” who on the left is going to feel safe? Who on the right who has been cowed until now into silence won’t feel emboldened?

It now also looks possible that, in defiance of expectation, and also in the shadow of Kabul, the Liberals might fall to the Conservatives in Canada.

And this might look to all like a swelling wave, encouraging others to resist and to speak out. 

We seem already to be seeing it at school board meetings across the US.

In a few years, the fashionable leftist positions of today may look as bad as Joe McCarthy did by the 1960s, or Chamberlain and isolationism did by 1945. 


Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Wow



 

Advice for Life

 A friend to all is a friend to none. -- Aristotle

Charlie Watts Dies

 

Charlie Watts has died. He was a great drummer. Some drummers are more celebrated for their attention-grabbing performances. This is not what good drumming is about. The drummer is responsible for the roll in rock and roll, and this means consistency, not flash. Watts was flawless.

On Aussie TV, remembering Watts, the presenters shared opinions of the best Stones song. One suggested "Wild Horses." A great song, but not a true Stones song. The best Stones song, to my mind, against stiff competition, is "Gimme Shelter."








Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Canadian Election Prediction

 



As a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic gained steam, on the day that Kabul fell, with two years left on their mandate, the Liberal government of Canada thought it was a good idea to call an election.

I cannot understand why the polls looked promising. This is a government that has careened from scandal to scandal, failure to failure. Their foreign policy has been disastrous; their spending has been profligate, even before the pandemic. The Governor-General who formally called the election was a recent replacement for a bad appointment. 

They expected to be rewarded for their management of the pandemic. But their management of the pandemic has actually been awful. They bungled the acquisition of vaccines. Canada has done well against the virus, but this is not their doing. The distribution of vaccines has been remarkably efficient: a provincial responsibility. The uptake has been fast: a credit to the Canadian public. In general, the feds have just imitated whatever the US government did in the crisis, meaning they have been spending recklessly. We will probably have an eviction and foreclosure crisis, and inflation to reckon with for some time to come. 

Perhaps the people have been paying attention. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, a week into the new campaign, the Conservatives are suddenly tied with the Libs in the polls.

The voters seem to be in the mood to punish the government for the unnecessary and cynical election. Against the backdrop of Afghanistan, there seem to be more important issues the government should be dealing with. 

Erin O’Toole and the Conservative campaign also seem to be performing so far above expectations. O’Toole has done an impressive job of improving his French. The Tory platform has come up with some novel ideas that sound forward-looking. People may want a clean broom and a fresh start after the dark days of the pandemic, just to emphasize the feeling that they are behind us. O’Toole seems to be projecting those vibes.

I dislike O’Toole’s lack of principles, running for the Conservative leadership as a “true blue” Tory, then swerving left. Having unprincipled leaders is never a good idea. But it might be good politics. It has often been said that the Liberals lose if they run to the right of the Tories. That equally means the Tories win if they run to the left of the Liberals. O’Toole seems to be trying to do this. 

Over the longer term, this is likely to shatter the right into warring factions. But over the shorter term, it might win O’Toole a term in government. Luckily for him, the further right is fatally splintered: there is the PPC, the Maverick Party, and now the True North Party. Bernier will not qualify for the leadership debates, so there will be no voice there to O’Toole’s right. 

In the meantime, running to the left as a Tory encourages the left to fragment. If the Conservatives look scary to the left, they unite behind the Liberals to keep the evil Tories out. If they look friendly, the NDP vote swells, at Liberal expense. 

The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh is personally rather popular. Yves-Francois Blanchet, leading the Bloc Quebecois, is also popular. The BQ pulls votes in Quebec mostly from the Liberals.

For now, the Conservatives have the momentum. Momentum feeds on itself. It can shift, but the Liberals, cynically, chose the shortest possible campaign, in hopes of freezing in their advantage. Now it tends to freeze in the Tory momentum.

Biden’s collapsing popularity in the US also hurts the Liberals. Nobody wants to admit it, but Canadian politics is largely monkey see, monkey do. Canadian leaders tend to be chosen in imitation of a recent popular American leader. Trudeau came in as a Canadian Obama; his father rose as a Canadian JFK. O’Toole was selected by his party because he looked faintly like Trump. Justin Trudeau got a second wind when Biden beat Trump. Now that Trump is looking better and Biden worse, the Canadian kid brother factor tilts in O’Toole’s favour.

I predict the Conservatives will get the most seats.


Monday, August 23, 2021

Biden Their Time

 


One thing about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan strikes me as insane. But I see no one else commenting on it.

Before and since the pullout. Biden and his people were saying they expected the Afghan army to hold out for another nine months. 

But if it was clear enough to them that the country was likely to fall in nine months, wouldn’t it have been clear to the Afghans? And if you are going to lose in nine months, why would anyone continue fighting? You would be risking death for nothing, and ensuring the Taliban would see you as an enemy once they came to power.

Accordingly, the idea that the Afghan army could or would keep fighting for nine months was always delusional, and obviously delusional. Yet Biden and his team made policy based on it. Only on such an assumption did it make sense to leave so many American civilians in country.

This is the sort of self-serving delusion that is typical of a narcissist. Biden is not rational.


A Thought for Bad Times


 

The Bwa Kayiman

Friend Xerxes wonders why Haiti has had such a grim time of it—inspired to this thought by its latest earthquake. Why always Haiti?

Televangelist Pat Robertson had a theory. God has been punishing Haiti because the nation was actually founded on a pact with the devil. The Haitian revolution began with a voodoo ceremony, the Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caiman, Alligator Woods).

On the face of it, Robertson has a point. The Bwa Kayiman was, in Christian terms, a pact with the devil: all pagan gods are demons.

But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God, and I don't desire that you would have fellowship with demons. – 1 Corinthians 10:20

And such pacts with devils, like Moloch, are why, in the Old Testament, Yahweh destroys the Canaanites. In effect, a pact with the Devil—gross inherent immorality--is why Nazi Germany had to be taken out.

However, Robertson’s theory ultimately does not work, because the point of such destruction would be to punish individuals, but to eliminate a system that seduces people into sin. The calamities that have struck Haiti since independence have not done that, over two centuries. If this, then, were their intent, they are gratuitously cruel. 

There is another possibility: those whom God loves, he chastens. He tests them, like gold is tested in fire. Look at the prophets. Look at the Jews.

Too many of us have been corrupted by the errors of the “prosperity gospel.” If one has had a happy, contented, comfortable life, one ought to be worried. 

See the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

“But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.’”


Sunday, August 22, 2021

Living in Harmony with Nature

 

Eve iin the Garden of Eden; Rousseau le Douanier.

There is a pervasive and dangerous myth that before the coming of the European settlers, the First Nations of Canada “lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years’’ to quote a claim seen recently online.

I suppose “harmony” here might have different possible meanings here. No doubt the Iroquois did not sit around humming. But I think war is the clearer analogy. Nature was likely to kill them at any moment; not, perhaps, in the form of a large predator, but of starvation, hypothermia, or disease. It is almost certainly a myth, although a common one, that they lived largely disease-free until they were exposed to smallpox and other plagues to which they had no natural immunity by European explorers and settlers. Tuberculosis, the second-worst killer, has been found in Peruvian mummies from millennia ago. Smallpox actually seems to have first appeared in Europe and the Americas at about the same tiime; yet it was far more devastating in the Americas. During recorded history, new waves of smallpox and a variety of other illnesses seem to have swept the continent every two generations or so. It seems that, because their hunter-gatherer lifestyle forced low population densities, herd immunity to viruses could never be developed and maintained. Whether the Europeans came or not, there would be an inevitable epidemic of whatever viruses were circulating and a large die-off every few generations; as we see in many animal species.

And, of course, as hunter-gatherers, they lived by killing nature--by killing, raping, and pillaging nature.

Living in harmony with nature fits far better as a description of the European settlers. There is a reason why a farmer is called a “husbandman.” He is wed to the land, and faithful to it, in a reciprocal relationship. He reaps only what he sows; he must forever put back into the land what he takes out.

Not that such harmony is the necessary ideal. An engineer, an artist, or a technologist, at least in principle, improves nature. For they, in one way or another, transform pure nature into spirit, which is a greater thing.


Saturday, August 21, 2021

Personality, Personhood, and Self

 



Friend Xerxes suggests that COVID rates don’t mean anything until a person you know is affected. Although Confucian morality might agree, that is wrong for Christians, who hold that all men are brothers. This is the point, for example, of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The fact that people are dying right now in Afghanistan does not affect me personally, or involve anyone I know. Probably not you either. Yet we have a moral duty to care and to do what we realistically can.

It is similarly wrong to “take things personally” when a general principle is at stake. That violates the universal moral principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Which translates in political terms to always supporting not self-interest but the greatest good to the greatest number. 

The feminist phrase common some years ago, “the personal is political,” uses “personal” in this selfish sense. 

There is another sense in which making things personal is good: when the person referred to is not one’s self, but another. One ought to treat other people as persons, not as things; in Kant’s formulation, as ends, not as means.

Including God. William Blake caught the point when he said “Picture a holy cloud, you cannot love it. But picture a holy man within the cloud, and love springs up.” He also said “man cannot conceive anything greater than a perfected human.” This is one reason why the incarnation is vital, and why it is necessary and necessarily correct to conceive of God as a personal being, not an abstraction. Anything else is less, to the human mind, and so falls short of reflecting God’s greatness. Anyone who imagines God as something other than a person is in fact imagining God as lesser than themselves.

This is the same point Buber makes with his “I-Thou” relationship. We must understand God as a person, like ourselves. Indeed, every encounter with another person is indirectly an encounter with God: personhood or thou-ness is the essential divine attribute.


Friday, August 20, 2021

Britney Spears Update

 





How to End Homelessness

 

Moby Grape. Bob Mosley, bottom centre.

The cost of housing in Canada and across the developed world has grown unrealistically high. Tent cities are sprouting up. 

However, the main cause of homelessness is not poverty, but mental illness.

The mentally ill cannot get organized enough to go through the proper channels to get aid. But that is not the only problem. Tim Poole recently observed that he has worked with the homeless, and he found that most often, they will refuse shelter if offered. Toronto mayor John Tory has recently made the same observation. He asked the police to clear the local parks. He thought that arranging for accommodations for everyone would fix the problem. He has been blindsided by this all becoming controversial, because the tent-sitters refuse to move.

I read long ago about the bassist for Moby Grape, Bob Mosley. He went schizophrenic, and was found years later sleeping under a bridge. He refused to rejoin for a band reunion or to come indoors. “He felt he’d earned this.”

"We went to find Bob, and there he was, living in this cardboard box. He had these friends, the squirrels and the lizards that he had. And I brought this guitar, cost me a hundred bucks, you know, and I left that with him and a tape of Moby Grape songs and a tape recorder with batteries in it and some extra batteries. So the next weekend, I came back, and there was no guitar, but the cassette case... He had tried to tear all the tape out of it and had left it, you know, down there in the bushes.”

Generally speaking, the “mentally ill” are people who have seen the madness of the people around them, and, one way or another, want nothing to do with it. They are doing what they can to escape the matrix.

My own brother suffered chronic depression. He owned a house in the city, but preferred to live out in the woods in a cabin without running water or, I believe, year-round road access. He felt calmer there.

This explains the stigma of mental illness. They are heretics. Their views are potentially contagious. They might make sense.

The solution to homelessness is simple, and cheaper than what we are doing now. Set these people up in cabins in the woods. 

Or revive the monasteries.


Thursday, August 19, 2021

Oh, Canada!

 



Freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and property rights all under violent assault. The news media seems to sympathize with the aggressors.



Wednesday, August 18, 2021

A Day that Shall Live in Infamy

 




The actual situation in Afghanistan is rapidly looking worse. Geraldo Rivera, who is Fox’s representative for the Democratic Party viewpoint, is condemning Biden’s handling of the matter in unambiguous terms. Kamala Harris is nowhere to be seen. It is all looking bad enough that other Dems do not want to be associated with it. They are starting to turn in order to hang it all on Biden.

This is, I think, a historic debacle. The fall of Kabul is something everyone will remember for generations, as a watchword for incompetence. People will remember it the way they remember 9/11, or Kennedy’s assassination, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are now hearing that on top of perhaps 40,000 Afghans and their families who have legitimate claims to US protection after having aided the US and allied forces, perhaps 10,000 or more American citizens are stranded in Afghanistan. Are they all now abandoned to their fate? People are angry.

The Taliban may turn out to be a bunch of softies. But that is not the lesson of history. When an army conquers, the first troops in are usually well-disciplined and well-behaved, but after a few days, realizing victory is won, discipline breaks down and the troops are inclined to celebrate, rewarding themselves as they see fit. Even if the Taliban leadership wants to act nice to the Americans—which is unlikely—I doubt they will be able to control their ragtag forces. A series of atrocities is more likely.

Biden is now trying to blame the Afghan army and the intelligence agencies. Bad idea. People are going to feel pretty sorry for the Afghans who supported the US and were abandoned. Blaming them looks monstrous. Someone has pointed out that the Afghan army lost 60,000 soldiers in the fight with the Taliban—more than the US in Vietnam. And everyone in the military and intelligence now has an urgent need to leak to the press how it was all Biden’s fault, to cover their own stern parts. If Biden were a little more intelligent, he would have chosen one fall guy. Now it has to be him.

I think this has to end with Biden’s resignation or removal under the 25th Amendment; failing that, impeachment. Incompetence can’t be the charge, but between Hunter’s laptops and Biden’s extraconstitutional eviction moratorium, there are obvious grounds on which he could be impeached if necessary.


Monday, August 16, 2021

The Fall of Kabul and the Fall of Saigon

 



Folks are referring to the situation in Afghanistan as “Biden’s Saigon.” But in almost every aspect, this is worse than the fall of Saigon in 1975. This is an incalculable blow to American prestige.

1. The collapse was much faster: a week as opposed to two years.

2. The enemy was much less substantial. In Vietnam, the other side had major backing from the Soviet Union and China. North Vietnam itself had a large population and a stable government infrastructure. This time, the US was beaten by just a band of guerillas.

3. In the fall of Saigon, the most disturbing image was people trying to get onto a helicopter leaving from the embassy roof. In Kabul, we have already seen people trying to grab onto a cargo plane as it tried to take off. This is worse in both numbers and in apparent desperation.

4. In the fall of Saigon, the Ford administration could rightly claim their hands had been tied by Congress. In Congress, blame was spread out; and Congress was not equipped to make any snap policy shifts. This time, it is entirely the Biden administration’s decision to pull out, and they planned it without any restraints. Nor were they particularly constrained by public opposition to the war, as Congress and the Presidency were in 1975.  They are holding the bag.

5. The US invested nine years in Vietnam, to no purpose. They invested twenty in Afghanistan.

Shockingly, Biden has now sent more troops into Afghanistan to try to secure the evacuation than he pulled out. Surely that is a mark of signal incompetence.

And it looks callous, cowardly, and chaotic that neither Biden nor his press secretary have yet been available for comment. It looks like chaos.

Were the US a Westminster parliamentary system, I think Biden would now have to resign.  The American system is less flexible. Incompetence is presumably not an impeachable offense.


Sunday, August 15, 2021

The Loves and the Wilsons: A Family Case Study

 

Left to right: Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson

Mike Love, of the notoriously dysfunctional Wilson clan, is a puzzle. Everyone hates Mike Love, because he is an obvious egotist. Yet usually narcissists, true egotists, escape such condemnation; because they are skillful manipulators of their image. 

I think the solution is simple. Mike Love is stupid. He is not smart enough to put on a good front. Most narcissists are better at it.

There is evidence enough that he tries. He wrote the lyrics to most of the early Beach Boys songs; he is responsible for their obvious simplemindedness. He was tailoring them to an intended audience as calculatingly as an ad copywriter.

“She’s gonna have fun fun fun ‘til her daddy takes her T-bird away.”

“I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me those excitations.”

When Brian Wilson tried for more meaningful lyrics on “Pet Sounds,” Love was reportedly upset at him “messing with the formula.” Even though the formula no longer worked: the Beatles had ended the “surf music” craze. He had the intent to manipulate and create a false image, but lacked all imagination in doing so.

His ever-present hat to conceal his baldness is similar. He never appears without it. This suggests the personal vanity and concern for appearances that mark the narcissist. Yet it also suggests a surprising lack of imagination, or initiative. If it matters so much to him, why not get a follicle transplant; he surely has the money for it. Nobody remembers that Joe Biden was bald, or Frank Sinatra. But with the hat, everyone realizes Mike Love is bald.

Looks like stupidity.

His mother Emily was sister to the Wilsons’ father, Murry. Reports are that they both had similar, “dominant” personalities. In other words, they were dominant narcissists. It runs in families.

However, Love got a treatment different from that of the Wilson boys. The instinct of the narcissist is to either possess or destroy. Being of the opposite sex to the dominant narcissist, and good looking, Mike was marked for possession. That means he would have been spoiled, thus groomed for narcissism himself.

Love fell out with his mother when he got some girl pregnant. His mother threw all of his things onto the driveway, and he was forced to find new lodgings. 

This was entirely predictable; but the issue would not have been morality or getting the girl pregnant. It was sexual jealousy. He was two-timing his mother, to her way of thinking, and she was reacting just as a wife classically would if she found that her husband had been cheating on her. 

This is what happens to the golden child when they reach adolescence; especially if they are of the opposite sex. The narcissistic parent sees themself losing a possession, and accordingly their objective often shifts from possession to destruction. The syndrome is modelled in Shakespeare’s Cordelia and King Lear. The narcissistic parent will always resent the partner of the favoured child.

Now let’s turn to the Wilsons. 

The fact that Murry Wilson physically abused and terrorized all three of his sons is well-known. We even have audio recordings of him berating them in the studio. Murry too was a narcissist, and, like Mike Love, a stupid one, who made his abuse too obvious.

Murry would have particularly hated Mike Love, because he could not control him or take credit for what he did. And Love was good-looking, too; the narcissist runs on envy. This explains why Love’s contribution to many early Beach Boys songs was not acknowledged. 

Brian, showing obvious early musical talent, would have been his father’s trophy child. He was driven mercilessly to excel.  Dennis, second in line, was excess to requirements, and dangerously handsome, making him look like a sexual rival. So he was forced into the role of black sheep. Dennis would have been implicitly encouraged to engage in and rewarded for bad and irresponsible behavior; but then “Out of the three Wilson brothers, Dennis was the most likely to get beaten by their father.” 

My own brother was forced into the same family role. I immediately see the parallels. Brian once said of his brother Dennis, “Dennis had to keep moving all the time. If you wanted him to sit still for one second, he's yelling and screaming and ranting and raving.” My brother Gerry was the same way. You could get seasick from sitting next to him on a couch.

Dennis Wilson dissolved into sex addiction, alcohol, and drugs. He died age 39. My brother fairly narrowly managed to save himself from a similar fate.

Carl, as the youngest, short, and baby-faced, was probably the golden child. He looked most like a possession. His father bought him a guitar and music lessons at age 12; and a really good guitar, a Fender Stratocaster, at age 15. This in a poor, working-class family. Despite Brian’s obviously greater musical talent, Brian was not bought instruments. He learned what he learned on the family piano, which was primarily for his father. It is probably no accident that Carl ended up as lead guitar, and the original name of the family band was “Carl and the Passions.” Their father would have insisted as much.

To his credit, Carl Wilson does not seem to have become a narcissist. This is a tribute to him personally, and makes the vital point that nobody is simply made a narcissist by their upbringing. It is always a choice, and the individual should be held responsible for it.


Saturday, August 14, 2021

Sermons from Nature

 

Old growth forest, Alaska

My distaff buddy Xerxes has been on vacation, hiking happily through the high coniferous forests of Vancouver Island. They have inspired him with religious insight. He uses the term “cathedral.” 

His insight is that all nature is interconnected:

“A forest is more than the sum of its trees. The forest itself is a living, breathing, organism.

“The forests challenge our obsession with individualism. We have made cult of standing alone, of being ruggedly independent. We are so immersed in the cult of individualism that, as Robert Bellah noted years ago, when we think of breaking free of individualism, the only route we can imagine is to be more individualistic.

“No matter how tall it stands, a Douglas Fir, towering in lofty isolation over a clear-cut hillside, will never say, ‘Every tree for itself.’ Or, ‘I won! I won!’”

This falsely conflates individualism with selfishness. While that is a possible sense of “individualism” in common speech, it is not a fair account of the Western philosophy of individualism. Here is Oxford’s (OED) definition:

“The principle or theory that individuals should be allowed to act freely and independently in economic and social matters without collective or state interference. Opposed to collectivism, socialism. Cf. LAISSEZ-FAIRE n.”

Here is Merriam-Webster’s:

“A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests.”

Nothing about that implies selfishness.

The “cult of individualism” which he refer to as permeating Western thought is, in fact, Christianity. That is where it comes from, and why the West is different from other cultures here. The Catholic Church teaches the principle of “subsidiarity”: that is, decisions should always be made at the individual level, or as close to the individual level as possible. As little as possible should be left to the state. For only the individual is a moral agent. God creates individuals, in his image. Social structures are created by man: they are, as postmodernists will aver, “social constructs.”

But Christianity also and more adamantly holds charity to be the highest virtue. It would condemn such sentiments as “every man for itself” or “I won! I won!”

Christianity holds it to be morally evil to go along with the crowd, rather than take responsibility and act as an individual—the proper sense of “individualism” as a social or political philosophy.

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

Salvation is individual, and cannot be reached by following the crowd.

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’”

Political and social structures are under the control of the devil.

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

“This world” means the social world, for the physical world is not sentient and cannot have idols. What the social world values is idolatrous and antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

Christianity’s essential opposition to social conformity is probably best illustrated by the fact that its God is condemned to crucifixon by the civil authority and the social elite.

Does the interconnected forest offer us a good model for society? 

No. 

The group is intrinsically more likely to be selfish, not less, than the individual. The group avoids personal responsibility, and so can give the individual cover and sanction for selfishness. After all, everybody else is doing it. In the magnificently interconnected forests of Vancouver Island, the high conifers kill all undergrowth with their acidic needles. Their high canopy denies the light that might be necessary for competing species to emerge; they kill off all diversity. Like most groups, the high conifers cooperate in their own self-interest against outsiders or those judged “different.”

It is the fascist model, that “the forest is greater than the sum of its trees.”


The Last Helicopter out of Kabul

 

Mohammed Zahir Shah, last king of Afghanistan, 1914-2007

The American war in Afghanistan is ending badly for the US; it looks like a debacle, evoking memories not just of the rise of ISS in Iraq, but of the fall of Saigon. A massive blow to American prestige.

Could it have ended differently? Was the US mad to go in at all? After all, Afghanistan had already proven too much for the soviets, and for the British Empire. Could they have improved matters by staying longer; or would this only have delayed the inevitable?

I thought in 2001 it made sense to go in; but only for a fast, surgical operation. My thinking was to they go in, overthrow the Taliban government, punish the ringleaders, and pull out. Then let the chips fall where they may. Rather on the model of how the British reacted to the Boxer Rebellion in China. I thought the same about Iraq. And I still think this could have worked.

If the Taliban then regrouped and retook government, as they now look about to do anyway, it would not have looked like a debacle for the Americans. A punishment would have been delivered, at relatively little cost to the US. Its power would have been asserted.

And there was a second easy and obvious step, that the US could have taken, which would have made this outcome much less likely. 

The Americans cannot seem to understand that Afghanistan is not now, and has never been, a nation. It is geographically like the Balkans, each valley developing an independent culture, with purely local allegiances. There is no ethnic unity around which to build a national consciousness.

In Afghanistan, therefore, there are only two ways to unify the country: either around a shared religion or ideology, or around allegiance to a royal family. The latter exploits the instinctive attachment to family—the king becomes everyone’s father. That means, either the Taliban, or a king. 

Convert the entire country to liberal democracy instead? Not a realistic goal; if possible, it would take generations, and in the meantime you, an alien, are attacking the one thing that holds everyone together, that everyone agrees on.

The US had available to them a candidate with legitimate historical claims to the throne. The former king was still alive. It could have quickly and easily been done, and they might have made an early exit.

They should have done the same thing, for roughly the same reasons, in Iraq. 

Americans hear “king“ and think it means an oppressive, authoritarian government. This is obviously, objectively, wrong. Some of the least authoritarian governments on earth are monarchies: the UK, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain. The most stable, benevolent, and least authoritarian governments in the Middle East are monarchies: Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Jordan, Morocco. 

Indeed, under Zahir Shah, by the 1950s, Afghanistan was peaceful, developing economically, and becoming a modern constitutional monarchy.

It should have been a no-brainer.


Friday, August 13, 2021

Limerick

 

Bacon and Newton and Locke

Went to fish from the Bay Street dock;

Instead of a worm,

Used a variable term,

And could not digest what they caught.


-- Stephen K. Roney

Clerihew Too

 



Amelia Earhart

Couldn't fill her dance card;

So she thought it would be terrific

To transit the Pacific.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Clerihew

 



Thomas Alva Edison

Wouldn't take his medicine.

He gave light to the earth

For whatever that's worth.


--Stephen K. Roney



Thursday, August 12, 2021

Jamie Spears Out?

 This needs to be confirmed, but sounds like good news in the Britney Spears case.




Cuomo Resigns

 


I have no reason to defend a prominent Democrat, but I find Andrew Cuomo’s defense against charges of sexual harassment plausible: that it’s just an Italian thing. Of the eleven accusations, most seem to be unwanted comments, perhaps boorish, but no more. It should not be a crime to be socially awkward. Only three sound like touching with sexual intent, beyond just being Italian and accordingly touchy-feely. One woman says that, during a photo shoot, he touched her buttocks. Another said he “touched her chest.”

It is at least possible that a touch on the buttocks during a photo shoot was inadvertent. Cuomo would have been looking at the camera, not down; did he know what he was touching? And “chest,” as opposed to “breast,” is ambiguous. It might have been somewhere on the rib cage, say, and still not sexual in intent; just a friendly embrace aimed too high.

Leaving one accusation that sounds serious: “groping one of her breasts under her bra by reaching under her blouse.” Not okay, and not plausibly inadvertent.

Yet it is also true that, for any prominent politician, or even prominent figure, there is a built-in incentive to make false charges of sexual impropriety. Except under exceptional circumstances, nobody can prove you’re a liar, so there is no cost. It is a good way to tarnish the reputation of, or perhaps even get rid of, a political rival. And it is a way for woman can draw attention to herself, as someone an important and desirable man found irresistibly attractive. 

Accordingly, I find it more than plausible that one accusation could simply be a lie. 

If it were real, I would expect more than one woman coming forward wiith an accusation of comparable gravity. If someone is genuinely inclined to giving in to sexual temptation so egregiously, it is unlikely they gave in to the temptation only once. Police departments count on this: they can generally recognize an “M.O.” Pedophiles do not stop at one child, and gropers do not stop at one woman.

I suspect the man is innocent.


Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Pallister Resigns

 


 I am sad to see Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister resign, apparently for saying that Canada and Manitoba were not actually created for the purpose of genocide. I wish he had not caved to the bullies. Had he stood firm, he might have been the leader we need. 

I find it hard to believe the average voter actually buys this critical race theory stuff.


Tuesday, August 10, 2021

The Lady's a Vamp

 

Waterhouse, "Lamia"; an image of the narcissist type

Over the last few weeks, I have been in email correspondence with the mother of a man diagnosed as schizophrenic. She declared that she had cured him. The cure consisted of playing music through headphones into just one ear. She claimed to have helped hundreds in the same way.

Oddly, however, she also spoke of her son as still schizophrenic, of having cured him repeatedly, and of his sometimes cursing her or her husband. It sounds as though the “cure” was temporary and symptomatic. “Cure” may have been an exaggeration.

I’m not sure she has actually demonstrated anything beyond the traditional wisdom that music has charms that calm the savage breast. An observation at least as old as Orpheus and the Bible.

But I think I may have seen here something of the family dynamic that leads to schizophrenia.

Seemingly unaware of the ancient observation about music, the lady was certain she had made a scientific breakthrough on the order of Harvey discovering the circulation of blood—she literally used this comparison. She had demonstrated that schizophrenia, and mental illness generally, was actually a hearing problem. It was caused by a physiological defect in the right ear. As a result of this, the brain becomes unbalanced, out of sync. The right brain becomes dominant over the left. By playing music in only one ear, she had rebalanced the two hemispheres.

This sounded odd; beginning with what looked like a naively literal interpretation of mental illness as being “mentally unbalanced.” I pointed out to her that other than handedness, there was no demonstrated scientific basis for the left-brain, right-brain distinction. She promptly responded that she was not concluding this from anyone else’s work, this is something she had personally discovered.

As we engaged in further discussion, I realized that she conceived no distinction between “mind” and “brain.” When I suggested that the one thing was a physical entity you could hold in your hand, and the other was not, she seemed to simply ignore the point, and went right back to identifying them, without explanation. It was as though she were mentally blocking any contrary suggestion. 

We had a parallel discussion of the distinction between “behavior” and “experience” or “thought.” She consistently referred to all as “behavior.” When I argued the difference, using a computer analogy, it did not seem to register. She did not respond, and continued calling it all behavior. I could not get her to acknowledge the difference between “mental” or “metaphysical” and “physical” either. Nor could she recognize a possible distinction between “physical” and “real.” After being queried on this, with reference to Berkeley, she used the terms interchangeably, as if in defiance: where I had written “physical,” she quoted me as writing “real.” 

This looked semi-intentional. At some level, she understood the distinction, but she refused to acknowledge it.

This seemed to make her a total materialist. Yet, surprisingly, she claimed to be an unchurched Christian, who believed in a soul and an afterlife. 

Then, in another context, she lamented that her husband was currently so depressed he thought he was going to die.

(Odd—why hadn’t she used her listening therapy to cure him? Or had it failed?)

I pointed out, hoping to ease her presumed concern over her husband, that death is not necessarily a bad thing for a Christian. She responded that in his case, he was also expecting “the worst possible outcome”—nonexistence. 

Very odd—claiming to believe in an afterlife, and a Christian afterlife, yet even in the context of a Christian afterlife, the concept of hell does not come to her mind as conceivable. For surely that is worse than nonexistence.

She was superficially perfectly lucid, and congenial, indeed, conspicuously socially skilled. Charming--or, more accurately, manipulative. She could probably have given a casual acquaintance a good impression of herself at a cocktail party.

But whether or not her son was mad, it was clear if one listened carefully, and probed, that in literal terms, she was as mad as a hatter. 

She was an example of what Fleiss called “ambulatory psychosis,” or M. Scott Peck called “ambulatory schizophrenia.” Both are alternate terms for what we call narcissism. And both Fleiss and Peck maintain that this character type in a parent leads to mental illness in a child. As it seems to have done here.

These are people who seem at least reasonably sane to the world around, and respectable, while actually holding delusional views about themselves and the world. They think of themselves as godlike, and will fabricate imaginary narratives to reinforce this impression, both to themselves and others. Yet it is their children, rather than themselves, who turn up at the psychiatrist’s office. They will never go to see a psychiatrist because, of course, they cannot be mentally ill. It must be everyone else. If and as their child, growing up, sees inconsistencies in their claims about themselves and the world, the child is forced into the role of mental illness, of mental problem. For being too sane.

In her own mind, this woman was convinced she was a scientist as great as Harvey. Descartes and Berkeley were obvious idiots compared to her. It emerged, as each of these subjects came up in discussion, that she had significant academic background in English literature, psychology, and philosophy. When the Iowa Writing Workshop came up, it turned out that her husband was a graduate, and her daughter worked for that university. Possibly true, but a pileup of coincidences.

My speculative observations:

The narcissist type—I prefer the term “hubristic,” but as exemplified here--is an absolute materialist, but also believes in an immortal soul. How is this possible? Because they believe that THEY have an immortal soul; but actually, nobody else does. Everyone else is a bundle of unconscious behaviours. 

They must believe they are immortal, being their own gods; but will not accept the possibility of divine punishment. There can be no question of them ever having acted immorally. Others do, of course, but since they are automatons, it is not their fault.

If they cannot plausibly make a boast about themselves, they may boast of association with someone else who is great. Otherwise, everyone else is worthy of scorn. This is the genesis of the co-dependent Echo type of narcissist. While describing all her close relatives as insane, this woman also claimed her father was a great scientist who designed essential parts of the first Canadian nuclear reactor. 

Her first instinct was to run anyone else down, but she would flip to the exact opposite when it seemed useful. This has often been commented on in narcissists: their reaction to everyone is either adulation or devaluation, and most often, in relationships, first the one, in order to entrap, then the other.

I deeply pity her son. She is, as are narcissists generally, a vampire feeding on his substance.


Monday, August 09, 2021

TB or Not TB, That Is the Question

 


This book documents the high infant mortality rate in Canada’s fairly recent past. “A century ago approximately 1 in 6 babies Canadian babies died by age three. In the tubercular slums of the bigger cities the death rate was worse, 1 in 3.”

This is the simple explanation for those “mass graves” we have been recently hearing about. Tuberculosis was rampant on the reserves.


News You Have Not Heard

 


Most folks no doubt are utterly unaware, but there has been a major earthquake in ESL (English as a Second Language). It has been going online in the last few years, and the vast market has been China, with its 1.4 billion increasingly prosperous prospects. Apart from COVID, the economies of this approach are obvious: no need to transport teachers halfway across the world, and look after them in China. 

Now, suddenly, the Chinese government has banned overseas tutoring. This is causing the sudden collapse of a huge and rapidly growing industry.

The official reason is that the cost of extracurricular studies was too great on Chinese families, and was discouraging them from having more children. Getting into the best colleges is highly competitive in China.

But then, why go after online teaching in particular? Given that one wants to learn English, this is the cheaper way.

Perhaps the Chinese government does not want Chinese people learning English.

After all, if they are talking daily or weekly with people living in the US, Canada, or UK, strange foreign ideas are liable to rub off. Is it advantageous for the Chinese government if Chinese people have a clear view of life in North America? Is it advantageous that they have good foreign friends?

Not if the government sees things getting worse in China in the near future, either in terms of material prosperity or personal freedoms. And not if China wants to whip up war sentiment.

It seems to me unlikely that the Chinese government will be able to stop the overseas tutoring. Instead, they are probably just forcing Chinese companies out of the market, leaving it to foreign countries that operate beyond their reach.

But the fact that they are trying looks desperate.


Sunday, August 08, 2021

Madness and Civilization

 


The 16th Century Dancing Mania

Nietzsche wisely sad that madness, while rare in individuals, is common in groups. Madness is hard to sustain as an individual alone; but if everyone around you is saying the same insane thing, it gets easier.

Having lived in several countries, it seems to me that most nations are collectively mad. South Korea is quite mad. The US may be as mad or madder. The UK, despite seeing themselves as the home of common sense, is barking mad. Germany has a history of going mad, as does the Netherlands, and Japan. China is insane. It is hard to judge, because it is my own country, but I think Canada is maddest of all. 

That is, in each of these countries, a majority of people believe or claim to believe things that are pretty obviously not true. And get agitated if the delusion is challenged. And look for scapegoats.

What country is the sanest? In my experience, the Philippines and Italy. You might object that Italy went mad under Mussolini, but did it? The government went mad, especially later, under the influence of Hitler; it is not clear to me that the average Italian took that government seriously. The Irish in Canada or the US seems saner than the rest of the population; I do not know if the same holds for the Irish in Ireland. The Poles seem sane. I may be missing some entirely sane nations just through lack of experience.

The Arab countries are saner than the US or Canada, at least, but not sane.

It looks as though being Catholic might have something to do with it. On the other hand, this does not seem to have preserved the French, who are batty.

Perhaps one needs to be more than nominally Catholic. France has other influences, and historically flirted with Calvinism. Italy and the Philippines are more thoroughly culturally Catholic, and the Irish or Poles have Catholicism deeply embedded in their national self-image.

It fits with something Chesterton said: once you stop believing in God, you’re liable to believe in anything. The surest protection against madness is a solid and comprehensive religious faith. If solid, Catholicism is comprehensive. More comprehensive than Protestantism or Islam or Buddhism.

It also seems obvious that there is no relationship between sanity and economic development. This stands to reason. The most materialistic nations are likely to be most materially prosperous. But materialism is not a sane view of the world.

I do think there is a relationship between sanity and happiness. Or rather, “happiness” may be too ambiguous here. The link is more between sanity and serenity.


Britney Spears' Dysfunctional Family

 

An interesting, if necessarily highly speculative, analysis.

Britney Spears may be doing many of the abused a great service by bringing the syndrome to public attention.




In other, perhaps related news, Britney revealed in a recept post, since deleted, that she has become Catholic. This reinforces my thesis that the first necessity to escape the effects of a dysfunctional family is to re-ground yourself in transcendent reality. 



Friday, August 06, 2021

Pallister's Partial Apostasy

 


Brian Pallister; Globe & Mail

There are continuing calls for Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister to resign for saying, on Canada Day, “The people who came here to this country before it was a country, and since, didn't come here to destroy anything. They came here to build.”

“Those remarks,” the CBC explains, “were quickly characterized by scholars as ahistorical and insensitive.”

Pallister has since apologized. His indigenous affairs minister has resigned, saying “Inappropriate words and actions can be very damaging.” The chosen replacement, himself Metis, almost immediately had to apologize for saying the Indian residential schools were started with good intentions.

Pallister’s comments were not just inoffensive, but conciliatory. He was spreading oil on troubled waters, after a destructive riot on Canada Day, as a leader should. They were also obviously true. Why, after all, would anyone cross an ocean, or cross a country, just to destroy something?

Why the dramatic attack? The modern elite demands extreme ideological conformity, and conformity to statements and concepts that are obviously untrue, precisely because they feel endangered. They have to be sure they can trust anyone in a position of power to protect their joint position. They need this sort of public oath of loyalty.

They are unlikely, over time, to keep getting it; they keep raising the ante. At this point, if people start talking openly about the matter of the residential schools and Canada’s history of indigenous relations, their prior claims of genocide will fall apart. If people start talking openly about human sexuality, their claims about gender will fall apart. At that point, the entire elite gets discredited, and falls.

If they have not by this point, they are inevitably going to overplay their hand. They are in too deep. There is a house of cards here, and the remarkable thing is that it has not collapsed already. 

Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of the end in the school board meetings in the US, in which many parents are challenging critical race theory in the schools. 

I guess this can go a few different ways: a forward march into totalitarianism to preserve the privilege of the elites; a revolution, in which they are swept out for a more democratic society in the tradition of the French or American revolutions; or first the one, some dreadful holocaust, and then the other.


Thursday, August 05, 2021

The Devil is a Conformist

 


Most people seem to equate morality with going along with the crowd; and even see departing from the herd as somehow immoral. This means, unfortunately, that most people are going to hell.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7: 13-4)

I was recently teaching a grad student how to avoid the dreaded “death by Powerpoint,” warning her not to put text on her slides that simply repeated points in her presentation, but to use the slides for illustration and example. After a full lesson on this, she came back saying with some agitation that she has seen the other presentations, and they all used bullet points. So she was going to go with bullet points.

The very fact that all the other presentations were using bullet points was actually an additional strong argument not to use them. All the more boring. But she simply could not seem to grasp the concept that the majority could be doing it wrong.

The essence of genius, or of true morality, is to realize that the majority is doing it wrong. No human progress can be made without this starting assumption; and no moral choice. For if you simply go along with the crowd, you are avoiding making moral choices.

The more the majority is aware of doing wrong, the more they will insist on conformity and uniformity; the more they will condemn “individualism,” and grow tribal or clannish. The herd instinct is their best protection against conscience and taking responsibility for wrongs. “Everyone is doing it!” “I was only following orders!”

We see this in our current downward spiral into “cancel culture.” 

In just this way, the sexual libertinage of Weimar Germany led to the radical conformity of Nazism.

It looks as though history is repeating itself. 


Wednesday, August 04, 2021

Cuomo Is Just One More

 


USA Today

The Andrew Cuomo scandal seems another example of high-level Democratic politicians often being reprehensible people. And they seem able to rise high in the party without anyone noticing or, perhaps, caring. This in turn reinforces my growing impression that politics has become of late a moral choice: one cannot be a good person and attain and stay in leadership on the left.

Michael Avenatti was widely touted as a presidential possibility, as was Andrew Cuomo as of a year ago.  John Edwards came close. Elizabeth Warren faked her ethnicity to get ahead. Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer, if not a rapist. Ted Kennedy seems to have been responsible for a girl’s death. It looks as though Joe Biden is in the pay of China and others; his son certainly is.

 Really, are these the good guys?

When a Democrat who looks like a good, sincere human being comes along, they seem to be rejected by the party brass: Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Mike Gravel.

Sure, there are scandals on the Republican side too. But far fewer. There, it seems to be an individual matter, and good men and women can rise to the top: a John McCain, a Mitt Romney, a Rick Santorum, a Ben Carson.

I do not think it was always this way. I think this is another of the consequences of unrestricted abortion. Everyone knows in their conscience that it is wrong. A political party that supports it is in flight from morality.




The Levels of Hell

 


Dante's inferno.

The traditional view of Hell is as a place of many torments. Dante imagined it as having levels, with the punishments growing more severe to fit the crime.

Yet Catholic doctrine seems to make hell an up or down thing. There is really only one sin that sends you to hell. That is a willful turning away from God. This seems to imply that one punishment fits all, and that punishment is eternal separation from God.

However—justice seems to demand that, on top of this, there must be just retribution for harm caused to others.  And the story of the rich man and Lazarus speaks of undying thirst, and of fire.

The damned may eternally crave, like Tantalus in the Greek underworld. They crave because this is their nature: always seeking to satisfy their urges in life, they come to exist only as an enormous appetite thatcan never be satisfied. This is the essence of what we now call narcissism, and which the Greeks called hubris: a desire to possess or devour everything. This is an appetite that can never, in principle, be satisfied, and so it endures eternally. Buddhism, too, speaks of “hungry ghosts,” and sees the necessity of ending all cravings.

Heaven and God, by contrast, is living water, living bread, which if eaten once one can never hunger or thirst again.

As for the image of fire: perhaps this is the fire of desire, an automatic metaphor. The wicked cannot rest.

Isaiah 57:

Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death. But you--come here, you sons of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes!

… You burn with lust among the oaks and under every spreading tree; you sacrifice your children in the ravines and under the overhanging crags.

… But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.



Tuesday, August 03, 2021

ter Brugghen's Melancholy

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This early 17th century Dutch painting by Henrick ter Brugghen, found in the Art Gallery of Ontario, is titled “Melancholy”―what used to be the term for what we now call “depression.” 

According to a contemporary source, ter Brugghen himself suffered severely from depression. This painting seems to give his view of the matter.

The young woman contemplating the skull is Mary Magdalene. Tradition suggests she had been a prostitute; more definitely, that she was wealthy. Here, she is reflecting on the vanity of life. What, in the face of death, is the point of it all?

But surely the message is hopeful. Mary Magdalene discovered the point of it all. She met Jesus; he cast seven devils out of her. She became a devout disciple, and was the first to witness the empty tomb and the resurrection.

This suggests that, rather than being an illness, depression is the first step on a path to insight. The depressed recognizes the folly and wrongness of this world; she is now prepared to embrace the next.


Monday, August 02, 2021

The Woman Taken in Adultery

 




Two claims about Christianity that really disgust me are, first, the “happy happy joy joy” notion that Christians are supposed to find life always happy; an absurd and offensive thought to hold in the very shadow of Jesus pinioned on the cross. Second, the notion that Christians are not to judge―endlessly used as a get out of jail free card by non-Christians wanting to get away with bad actions.

I think I have dealt with both here before. 

For the second heresy, one passage often cited is the “judge not, lest ye be judged” verse in Matthew.

Matthew 7:1-5—in context.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

It actually ends with judgement; with you judging your brother. You are indeed to judge; but not judge by any standard you are not ready to apply to yourself. It is a warning against hypocrisy, not judgement.

A second Biblical passage often cited is that in John of the woman taken in adultery. 

2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

--John 7:53-8:11

Biblical scholars argue that this is a late insertion, not found in the earliest Greek texts. As a Catholic, I do not care. The Church obviously did find it significant, to insert it.

But Jesus does judge the woman—he says she has sinned. Nor does he say she should not be stoned.

When the Pharisees there to stone her fade away, she remains standing. She could have taken to her heels. Jesus is not looking, giving her this opportunity.  He is deliberately looking down at the ground. She has, by this, expressed repentance for her sin, and has acknowledged that she deserves punishment.

Under these conditions, we can and should forgive. And if we do, we can expect the same forgiveness from God.

If, on the other hand, we take to our heels, deny that we have done wrong, deny the justice of our condemnation, we are damned. 

And it is the fraternal duty of the Christian to point out to us our wrong. Unless, that is, he wants to see us in hell.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.