Introducing Mr. Hyde

 

Man's fate.

It seems clear to begin with, that civilization is crumbling. Why?

Postmodernism is the immediate cause, perhaps. But postmodernism seems more symptom than disease. Postmodernism arises from the failure of the scientistic world view.

Scientism is the elevation of empirical science to a religion, to the fountain of all truth.

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard

But where does scientism’s attraction come from?

I think it is from scientism’s denial of a distinction between right and wrong. Granted, science has allowed technology and engineering to accomplish many things, giving it much prestige. Other tools, in other times, have achieved idolatrous status for the same reason: written language, or metalworking, or mathematics. We have seen in recent times superstitious reverence accorded to anything done with computers, or to radioactivity. The Frankenstein legend was based on a brief period in which newly-discovered electricity was thought to be the essence of life. But I think at least a large part of it is that science demands “objectivity.” That means, for scientism, assigning no particular value to anything. That means no right or wrong.

This is immensely liberating. Now we can all do as we like.

But we cannot. The attempt to behave just as we like comes up against an innate awareness of the difference between right and wrong.

Nietzsche wanted to argue that, without God, there was no longer any necessary morality. 

“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident ... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands.”

Nietzsche went mad; perhaps this was why. He was wrong. His conscience caught up with him. Perhaps this is what madness, psychotic madness, always is—one’s conscience catching up with one. For the “Christian” morality indeed is self-evident.

When we speak of “conscience,” we are tacitly acknowledging that the difference between right and wrong is self-evident.

Benjamin Franklin said so boldly in the core passage for the US Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This states the essence of social morality. All men are initially of equal moral worth. Their ultimate worth is determined by their actions. To deprive another of their life, their liberty, or their property, is the essence of immorality. (Jefferson had altered Locke’s prior “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”; and I think wrongly. Pursuit of happiness is already covered by “liberty,” and property is not.)

It follows from the truth that all men are created equal that one must “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—see them as equal to yourself, and treat them as equal. This Golden Rule is a phrase found almost verbatum in all the world’s moral codes; strong evidence, again, that it is self-evident.

Kant asserts again that the basic principle of morality is categorically imperative and impossible to deny. He phrases it as “act always as you could wish everyone else to act,” or, “treat others as an end, never a means.” These are simple reformulations of “do unto others.”

This imperative to act morally cannot be escaped. Nevertheless, there is an eternal desire to escape it and to deny it, in order to do what we will and see ourselves as superior, in effect as god. This is the eternal struggle between good and evil in every soul. 

Quite simply, to continue to struggle to do what is right gets you to heaven, but inevitably through suffering—like Jacob wrestling with the angel, like St. Paul “fighting the good fight.” To stop struggling and cop to the claim that there is no evil, no Devil, no right or wrong, it doesn’t ultimately matter, gets you to hell. If you have started down this road and are lucky, you will instead through the offices of some good angel go mad, and through the madness recover the true path.

Benin Bronzes Returned to Nigeria

 

The morality of it all gets complicated...

All Hallows Eve

 

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell

And many a lesser bell sound through the room;

And it is All Souls’ Night.

And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;

For it is a ghost’s right,

His element is so fine

Being sharpened by his death,

To drink from the wine-breath

While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

Halloween is coming. There is an annoying misconception, among both Christians and secularists, that Halloween is a pagan holiday.

It is “All Hallows Evening”—the evening of All Saints Day. It forms an important part of that celebration just as Christmas Eve is important to Easter, or New Year’s Eve to New Year’s, or Holy Saturday vigil to Easter.

The usual claim is that Halloween is the continuation of an old Celtic seasonal festival, Samhain. But All Saints’ Day is celebrated, and celebrated on roughly similar ways, throughout the Catholic world. Mexico’s “Day of the Dead” is one famous example. Are the Mexicans Celts?

The seasonal festival of Samhain was held on the same day. But our first references to Samhain are from Ireland in the 9th century, when that country was already well Christianized. For all we know, it never had any more pagan religious associations than our own modern harvest festival, Thanksgiving. Indeed, it would make more sense to see Thanksgiving than Halloween as a continuation of Samhain.

It is probably true that the feast is held when it is for the same reason Samhain was held when it was: because November 1 is halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It therefore serves as a celestial marker for the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. As a point at which the dark half of the year abuts the light half (more or less), it represents symbolically the link between the visible world of the living and the invisible world of the dead. So it is a time when the living should remember the dead, and perhaps equally when the dead might remember the living.

The hostility towards Halloween among Christians probably comes from the Protestant prohibition against praying to the saints. As a result, All Saints’ Day would have been anathema to them. Any idea of contact with the dead was and is, to them, necromancy.

Halloween is really the first day of a three-day festival. All Saints’ Day proper is for the saints in heaven. November 2, the next day, is All Souls Day, for the souls in purgatory. There is a third place that souls might go. Halloween proper is when we hear from them.

On the Subway

 

A young black man suddenly takes offence to a white woman walking past him. He berates her for several minutes, calling her a “nigger” and a “vampire” and throwing something at her.

As he leaves at the next stop, he shouts “Your mother is a Jesuit pig.”

Jean Chretien on the Residential Schools

 

Jean Chretien circa 1970

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien is being criticized for saying recently that, when he was Indian Affairs Minister from 1968 to 1974, he never heard of any problems with the Indian Residential Schools, now commonly held to be genocidal.

Chris Selley, in the National Post, lists specific complaints of abuse that were actually sent to the Department of Indian Affairs while Chretien was minister. How could he not have known?

But this misses the point. In the same interview, Chretien acknowledged that sexual abuse was going on at the Quebec boarding school where he was once a student. Abuse was par for the course. The reality is that, until recent decades, we simply assumed that a certain amount of sexual abuse and bullying was going on at any residential school. This was regrettable, but unavoidable. Welcome to real life. Was one going to close the schools? The question was, and remains, whether the Indian Residential Schools were any worse than any other residential schools. Or, for that matter, than the typical home, on reserve or in the general population.

We do not really know, because nobody has ever done a study with proper controls. It is often noted that in the great majority of reported cases of child abuse, the perpetrator is a close relative.

I recall Robertson Davies’s novel Fifth Business, published in 1970—in the middle of Chretien’s run at Indian Affairs. In it, the protagonist, a teacher at a private school, is accused by his good friend, a school trustee, of regularly buggering the boys, and warned that if he did not stop, he would never make headmaster. 

There was no question of his being fired; no question of this affecting their friendship.

John Addington Symonds wrote in the 19th century of his experience at Harrow, among the most prestigious of British public schools,

“Every boy of good looks had a female name, and was recognised either as a public prostitute or as some bigger fellow's 'bitch.' Bitch was the word in common usage to indicate a boy who yielded his person to a lover.”

C.S. Lewis seems to take pedophilic homosexual activity for granted in his 1955 school memoir, Surprised by Joy. 

Child abuse in institutions became an issue only recently, and pretty much still only when it comes to institutions run by the Catholic Church.

A Journal of the Plague Year--Year 2

 

Out and about in downtown Toronto yesterday. In the Eaton Centre, the Food Court seating is cordoned off. To enter you must wear a mask, and show your vaccine passport and some form of ID. 

As I was sitting there with a friend, a group of perhaps five blonde women of varying ages walked past me, opened the cordon, walked out, then replaced the cordon. None of them were wearing masks. They did this right beside a group of five security guards and police, standing around talking to one another, presumably there to enforce the rules.

It seems obvious to me that this was a planned act of defiance. No doubt there were other places where they could have left the seating area that were not right beside a gaggle of security guards. It was anything but sneaky. It obviously did not affect anyone’s safety. It would have been little or no inconvenience for them to have just walked out by the designated exit; to leave, they would not have had to show anything.

One of the security guards challenged them. “Do you think you’re special? Do you think you don’t have to follow the rules like everyone else?”

I imagine this is what they had wanted. The women assembled in front of him. One of them responded, in a distinctly Eastern European accent: “we are doing this for you. You will thank us in two or three years. We are from a Communist country. We know how this is going to go. We are fighting for your freedom.”

The five stood there and took turns arguing with the security guard, remaining relatively calm. One turned to me and apologized for the disturbance.

I was impressed.

I hope they are wrong.

A Chinese View

 

Alec Baldwin Kills His Cinematographer

 

Baldwin

Most peculiar news: that Alec Baldwin accidentally shot the cinematographer and the director of his current film, using a prop gun. The first is dead, the second in intensive care.

It seems extremely improbable for there to have been a live round in a prop gun on set. It is doubly improbable, then, for there to have been two. It seems extremely improbable to have shot and killed one person by mistake. It seems doubly improbable—we are up to multiple improbabilities--that, having shot the first person and seeing the gun was loaded, you would still go ahead and shoot someone else—accidentally.

It seems plausible that an actor might be shot accidentally—by a prop gun no one realized was loaded, during a scene. But why would a prop gun ever been fired at the cinematographer, or the director.

Perhaps some explanation will surface. But it looks to me like murder. The only question is whether it was fully premeditated, or done in a moment of rage. 

It seems to me it must have been premeditated—it takes time and some planning to load a prop gun with real bullets. Why would anyone do it, unless murder was premeditated?

If Baldwin is not charged with murder, I suspect a fix.

Diversity R Us

 

If the political term “diversity” actually meant “diversity,” I would be the ultimate diversity hire. Like many whose ancestors have been in Canada for some time, I am diverse ethnically in my own being. Some of my genes, are Irish, some Scottish, some English, some French, some Flemish, some Mohawk. My cousins and in-laws have Indian cards.  I have no known African blood, but because of my Irish blood, most African-Americans are probably distant cousins. There is a reason so many American blacks have Irish surnames.

I am culturally as well as genetically diverse. To begin with, Canadian culture is a melting pot of elements from all over the world. I grew up in NDG, an immigrant neighbourhood in a bilingual city. I went to school with kids whose parents were from Italy, who spoke Italian at home, or from Poland, or Latin America. The kids on my block were one generation removed from Poland, Greece, Lithuania, the Ukraine. One of my best friends in high school was from India, one from Greece. My first girlfriend’s parents were from Latvia. My first wife was born and raised in Pakistan, and my second in the Philippines.

I do not think this is so unusual for a Canadian. 

As an adult, I have also lived in Asia for almost thirty years, in China, Korea, the Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. I have studied non-Western cultures and the classics of Asia at the doctoral level. I have published on Hinduism in India, and on Buddhism in Korea. I have lectured the Hadassah Society on Judaism.

Yet, according to modern political usage, I do not count as “diverse.” Apparently, that has only to do with the colour of my skin, which is rather pale. Instead, government and businesses hire people with little knowledge of the world, with little experience of cultures other than their own, often little or no interest in cultures other than the one they grew up in. And little aptitude for living with people from other cultures. And they hire them in the name of “diversity.”

More evidence that the world is mad.

Indian Horse

 

I hear from a fellow teacher that the kids in grade 8 are now reading a book titled “Indian Horse,” by Richard Wagamese. Not a part of the literary canon when I went through. Apparently it is a fictional account of a First Nations child’s life in one of the Indian Residential Schools.

It is fiction, of course, so Wagamese is free to make things up, and cannot be called on it. However, I’m not sure eighth graders are sophisticated enough to realize this. To be honest, I’m not sure the average high school teacher is sophisticated enough to realize this. They are all going to think it is an accurate description. 

It is chock full of accusations against the residential schools and the Catholic Church. In a sane society it would be recognized as “hate speech,” and would not be allowed in the school library, much less taught there.

A representative passage:

At St. Germ’s the kids called me “Zhaunagush” because I could speak and read English. Most of them had been pulled from the deep North and knew only Ojibway. Speaking a word in that language could get you beaten or banished to the box in the basement the older ones had come to call the Iron Sister. There was no tolerance for Indian talk. On the second day I was there, a boy named Curtis White Fox had his mouth washed out with lye soap for speaking Ojibway. He choked on it and died right there in the classroom. He was ten.

And then, of course, he was thrown into an unmarked grave.

This is almost at the level of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda. It is likely to end in violence.

It is perhaps worth noting, and perhaps significant, that Richard Wagamese, the author, never went to an Indian Residential School. Although ethnically Indian, he was also not raised as an Indian. Abandoned by his birth parents at age two, he was raised by “white” adoptive parents in St. Catherines. He has no more knowledge of the reality of residential schools than the next Canadian.

Killers in High Places

 

One thing that troubles me about writing poetry is that what you write is so commonly misunderstood; and the same is so for creative fiction. So if people are not going to get it, are you wasting your time writing it?

A recent discussion on a Leonard Cohen Facebook group was over someone’s puzzlement over the lines

I can't run no more

With that lawless crowd

While the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud

But they've summoned, they've summoned up

A thundercloud

They're going to hear from me

And the interpretations they got were various. Some suggested that “killers in high places” referred to the government of George W. Bush. And the “thundercloud” was a political revolution.

The reference, of course, is to all governments. It is the plain understanding of both the New Testament and the Old that “the nations” are up to no good, that the Devil is the lord of this world: “it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.” (Luke 4:6).

All governments kill as a matter of course. Being able to kill without repercussions is pretty much definitive of government: the monopoly on force. We even tacitly acknowledge this in selecting as our leaders relatively ruthless men. A Churchill, a Lincoln, a Sherman; they did some very cruel things. This is why Constantine delayed his baptism until his deathbed—because he had to sin so long as he was going to be Emperor, and so baptism would be insincere and meaningless until then.

Government is necessary. Government cannot be much improved. Revolution does little. The thundercloud is divine judgement.

Why Were Indian Residential Schools Uniquely Abusive?

 

Xerxes went to a private residential school in India, and he and his fellow alumnae seem to have pleasant memories of it. He writes: 

“The majority of letters describe the boarding school experience in glowing terms, especially about lifelong friends made there. I wonder even more what made the staff at Indian Residential Schools, especially the nuns, so abusive. I wish I knew more.”

He has a point. There is no good reason why the level of abuse should be higher at an Indian Residential School than at any other residential school. The circumstances are the same.

In fact, we do not know if the Indian Residential Schools were any more abusive than the average residential school.

The reports we have in either case are anecdotal. Some may come forward; some may not. For those who do, we rarely have independent corroboration. We cannot really tell how widespread abuse was.

We can assume that a situation where an adult has control over every aspect of a child’s life is a situation that will allow for bullying and sadism, and will attract bullies and sadists. This will hold true for any kind of residential school. It will hold true for orphanages. It will also hold true for families. The easiest way a bully or a sadist can indulge their worst desires is to have children. 

The imponderable question then becomes, in which of these three situations is the likelihood of abuse the greatest, and is there any way we can reduce the risk?

In fact, the risk is probably less in an orphanage or residential school than in a home. In an orphanage or residential school, no one staff member has such absolute control as does a parent. Other staffers are likely to intervene. A child abused in a residential school can appeal to his parents to go home. A child kept at home (or in an orphanage) has no escape. 

Upper classes everywhere have from time immemorial farmed out their children to others. Was this is for the convenience of the parents? I doubt that. Do most people really dislike spending time with their children?

It is more likely for the children’s protection. Time has taught us this lesson, and we have forgotten it. A child is most at risk at home. No doubt the average upper class parent would not abuse. But they could not be sure of other relatives: not their spouse, and not some uncle. Safest to have them in hands known to be responsible. And anyone who did not do this was probably suspected of abuse, which itself was helpful.

As for orphanages, Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, found his own childhood had been happy enough. So he decided to investigate. Were orphanages really that bad? An economist, he knew how to gather his data.

He found:

Alumni reported that they had done better than the general population on almost all measures, including education, income, attitude toward life, criminal records, psychological problems, unemployment, dependence on welfare, and happiness…. The alumni reported that they had an overall college graduation rate 39 percent higher than the general population in their age group … They also reported 10 to 60 percent higher median incomes than those in their age cohort. 

Twice as many pronounced themselves satisfied with their own lives, and twice as many felt they had achieved “the American Dream.” 

“Yes, there were occasional bad eggs on staffs of my own and other orphanages I’ve surveyed,” Mackenzie acknowledges, “… but they were probably rarer than those found in many biological and foster-care families.”

How might we try to reduce the risk? One obvious strategy, and a traditional one, is to give the charge of residential schools and orphanages, and farmed-out individual children, over to religious groups, who pay attention, if imperfectly, to the moral character of their employees. In some cases, as with priests and nuns, religions require of them some material sacrifice, such as celibacy or poverty, as a proof of sincerity. Even in the public schools, until a few generations ago, the primary consideration in hiring a teacher was their known moral character.

Lacking hard evidence, there is good reason to assume that the level of abuse in the Indian residential schools was lower than on reserve, or in the general population. But this has never been looked into—due to a larger agenda of scapegoating religion and driving it off the reserves.

Most people raised in their biological families remember their childhood as a golden time. It usually is. Most people also remember their time in residential schools fondly: I think of Tom Brown’s School days or Goodbye Mr. Chips. There have always also been some who had the opposite experience. I think of the movie “If…,” my friend James FitzGerald’s book Old Boys, or George Orwell’s memoir “Such, Such Were the Joys.”

However, it is far more socially acceptable to report a bad experience at an Indian residential school than in one’s family or in a private school. One even stands to get financially rewarded for it. So we get far more reports of it.

Math Is Hard

 

From Small Dead Animals: clear proof not only that critical race theory is being taught in the Ontario public schools, but that it has even infiltrated the teaching of math.

The Canadian Caste System

 

It's all right there in black and white.

Friend Xerxes has identified Canada’s First Nations as our “Dalits,” the untouchables in our caste system. They are, after all, sequestered away on their sordid reserves without even clean drinking water.

I couldn’t agree more. The current reserve system is exactly what Martin Luther King fought against. It is segregation. Indeed, it is worse than that. It is apartheid.

However, ironically, it is not caused by any hostility or ill-will towards the First Nations, or any desire by the rest of Canadians to make them disappear. The roots of the problem are more complex. 

The Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau proposed abolishing the Indian Act and the reserve system in 1969, replacing it with a cash settlement. The chiefs of Alberta rose against it, and Trudeau and Chretien have been criticized for this ever since. The federal government wanted to abolish the residential schools too, as early as 1947. They were more expensive than sending Indian children to ordinary day schools. Here too, the Indian chiefs and band councils opposed it, and fought to keep the schools open until the late sixties.

The problem is, these things are established by treaty; it is not up to the Canadian government. They must have agreement from the chiefs.

Do the chiefs, in consistently opposing integration, represent the interests of the Indians? This is at least debatable. Band councils, designated permanent chiefs with powers to enforce their will, and reserves are all alien to traditional Indian culture. These are things created by the treaties themselves. Before this, individual Indians were more or less autonomous, moved constantly, and joined in groups or separated only for specific purposes. 

In recent years, councils and chiefs are at least supposed to be democratically elected. But there is no private enterprise or steady employment on reserve. The band council holds all the money, and is responsible for every aspect of your life. No one is likely to dare to express systematic opposition to whomever is currently in control. Should they lose the next election, or indeed, should they organize to contest it, they are liable to lose their home and their livelihood. It is a situation similar to that in a Communist country; or one too poor to have developed a middle class.

The one presence on a typical reserve able to stand against total control by the band council, around which a political opposition might form, has been the church and its residential schools. This is why the church is under attack by the band councils. It is the last check on their power, the last protection the individual Indian had.

Why are there so often problems with drinking water on reserves? Isn’t this, here as anywhere, primarily the responsibility of local government? Why is this not an indictment of the band council, and the band council system? 

One further big problem with the current system is that the chiefs have a vested interest in fomenting bad feelings towards the larger society. This maintains their power, it unites Indians against a supposed common enemy, and it keeps them in thrall on the reserve. Reconciliation can probably never come under the current system.

For Indians, or for the government, it is a Catch-22. 

My own solution would be to transform each reserve and each tribe recognized by treaty into a corporation, with each member holding a share. This would better reproduce the Indian tradition, without breaking any treaties. If any member dissented from the tribal management, he could sell his share and leave. Or he could keep and use it as collateral to start his own business.

More in my book, Playing the Indian Card.

Was Sir David Amess Targeted Because He Was Catholic?

Perhaps it was only because he was openly Christian.

Why Is China Being Such a Bad Neighbour?

 

China and India have failed to negotiate a de-escalation of tensions along their common border. China is now rushing further troops to the region. No doubt India is doing the same.

In terms of their national interest, China is acting irrationally. It makes no sense to alienate all of your neighbours simultaneously. And so long as China is developing and arming faster than their neighbours, stalling war for as long as possible and reducing their neighbours’ sense of threat is their best strategic path.

Three things might cause this mad behavior. First, the government in Beijing may see things going badly domestically. They are trying to distract the population from this and get them to rally around the flag to stay in power. Foreigners in general work as a scapegoat. Second, things may be going badly enough that, behind its opaque accounting, the leadership in Beijing believes their financial situation relative to their neighbours is actually deteriorating, or is about to; they need to strike when the iron is hot. This seems to have been why Germany went to war both times in the Twentieth Century. This thesis, however, seems least probable to me. Even if things are about to go downhill, China does not look powerful enough to take on India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the USA concurrently. If they really intend to attack any one of them in order to improve their position—for example, to seize Taiwan and its assets—they should be making nice with all the others.

Here’s another thought. The CCP has worked hard to destroy all rival internal power structures. They fear any organized group might develop into an opposition to their power. They no doubt have reason to. They have cracked down hard on religious organizations of all kinds: Falun Gong, the Christians, the Muslims. They have now also begun to crack down hard on large corporations, on Jack Ma and on Everbright. But the one potential rival organization they cannot crack down on is the military. A country always needs a military, well-organized and disciplined to take orders from its officers. This is why the military is the usual source of coups in any less-developed country. There has never yet been a military coup in a Communist country, but this may have been luck. Rumour is that it was touch and go whether the government of Deng Xiaoping could rely on any unit near Beijing to suppress the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Indeed, in most revolutions, it is all over when the army turns.

It may therefore seem prudent to Xi Jinping to keep the bulk of the Red Army and its most respected or ambitious commanders occupied at the distant border. The Himalayan border with India is ideally remote in this regard. The South China Sea is a pretty good place to keep your naval commanders busy; navy revolts in port were critical in the German Weimar and the Russian revolutions.

This would explain why there are no comparable border tensions or sabre rattlings with Russia or Mongolia. Their borders are still too close to Beijing.

If this assumption is correct, the last thing China wants is a shooting war. If they lose, the loss of face might easily be enough to topple an evidently shaky government. If they win, the prestige may go to the Army or to the local commander, setting them up for a coup.

The risk is of a miscalculation. And that they are acting so recklessly suggests the current regime in Beijing is indeed very shaky.

The Origins of Cancel Culture

 

You might be wondering what’s behind “cancel culture.” How did we so quickly descend into apparent mass psychosis?

The answer, I believe, is postmodernism. Specifically, it is the idea that there is no objective truth. If this is so, everyone invents their own narrative, making the world whatever they want it to be.

The current battleground is transgenderism because it establishes the basic principle: I can be whatever I want to be; I can choose my reality.

The naïve postmodernist imagines this leads to a world of “live and let live,” in which everyone gets to be and do whatever they like. But the necessary consequence is the opposite. Without any objective standard to appeal to, there is no possibility of compromise of or coming to any accommodation. Instead, when my “reality” inevitably conflicts with your “reality,” the only course is to silence you, and ultimately a battle to the death.

That is what we are seeing now. A quite similar movement, operating from the same premises, led to Nazi Germany.  It is the triumph of the will.

The Sin of Pride

 

The Realities of Early Childhood

 

A Narcissist in Charge

 

Never trust anyone who strikes this pose for a photo. It is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

Almost everybody, including many who should know better, have been saying that Donald Trump is a narcissist. He was not; his character was pretty much the opposite of narcissist. Joe Biden, by contract, clearly is. We are now seeing what a real narcissist in power looks like.

Trump was notable for making a real effort to keep his campaign promises. He governed just as he campaigned. He did duck and compromise under pressure, but not to an unreasonable extent for a politician—politics, as they say, is “the art of the possible.” Biden, by contrast, ran as a moderate, but is now governing well to the left. Trump would stand and fight with the media at press conferences. Biden ducks questions and avoids the press. 

The latter is what you expect from a narcissist. A narcissist has no spine, and no principles other than his personal convenience. Denied, they will throw a tantrum; but if genuinely challenged, they will back down. After all, their self is to them the most valuable thing; they do not want to risk it any injury. So Biden takes whatever position is most convenient at the moment, depending on whom he is talking to.

Part of this is not keeping promises, including campaign promises.

Consider the Afghanistan pullout. Biden took no heed of America’s implied commitment to their allies on the ground, or to the people of Afghanistan, or to the sacrifices of American soldiers over the past twenty years. He also took little heed of possible future consequences. He did what was convenient in the moment. Typically for a narcissist, he acted impulsively, enjoying the imposition of his will.

Biden similarly impetuously halted construction on the border wall and ended Trump’s “stay in Mexico” policy. There seemed no calculation behind this, no plan for what it would lead to, only the exercise of will for its own sake. Again, with his massive spending packages; there seems to be no consideration for the likely inflationary consequences.

When the offal then inevitably hits the ventilating system, rather than accept responsibility, a narcissist will scapegoat. We see this again in the Afghanistan situation. Biden has publicly blamed the Afghan government, the Afghan army, his military advisors, and Trump. He insists he made the right decision—illogically, at the same time he blames it on them. His excuses begin to look comical. A narcissist has no honour.

Blaming the military advisors also again demonstrates the narcissist’s impulsiveness, his lack of foresight. Biden ought to have foreseen that the brass, to protect themselves, would have to publicly contradict him. 

It is dangerous to put a narcissist in a position of power. It is like letting a three year old drive your car.

Biden is now scapegoating the unvaccinated for the continued existence of COVID, and for the continued lockdowns and disruptions. This is obvious nonsense. If the vaccine works, the vaccinated need not care about the unvaccinated. If it does not work, what’s the point of anyone getting vaccinated?

A narcissist will lie with abandon. Biden will lie with abandon. He will say with apparent conviction anything that helps him at the moment. He is a fabulist. 

Trump of course has been accused of this, of lying, but Trump’s “lies” are merely the exaggerations of a salesman. It is how the game is played. They are not intended to deceive about the product; a good salesman lives or dies on repeat customers. They are meant to make you feel good about your purchase, feel as though it puts you on the winning team. 

Biden, by contrast, lies to deceive, which is the proper definition of lying: claiming false biographical details, plagiarizing, falsifying his record, citing false facts in debate. A narcissist cares only for self; truth is not a value.

Everybody says Biden, personally, is a nice guy. Some say the same of Trump, some say the opposite. This again is proof that Biden is a narcissist, and Trump is not. Biden, a narcissist, will say whatever the person with him at the moment wants to hear: whatever is to his advantage. Never trust a man who gets along with everyone. Trump has principles, and so some will find him disagreeable. 

Another way to identify a narcissist is to look at his children. A narcissist is never a good parent. He or she will always either spoil a child, or bully them, as an exercise of will. Either way, children will struggle in later life. Having no morals, he will not teach his children any, or model any to them.

Now compare Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, or Ivanka Trump, to Hunter Biden. Whom do you think was raised by a narcissist?

Democracy is Coming ... to the USA

 

It seems to me we are seeing a general collapse of all social systems. We can no longer rely on any institutions. 

The parliamentary system, of reasoned debate, used to keep our legislatures functioning reasonably well. Now that civil discourse seems to have completely broken down. It is just a matter of massing votes.

But now, in America, nobody trusts the voting system, either.

The church used to stand as a voice of moral authority against excesses in the secular world. This seems no longer true. For mainstream Protestantism, it has not been true for generations. The last bastion of this, the Vatican, has now been stormed and fallen under Pope Francis.

The court system used to stand as an independent adjudicator to whom we could appeal, based on reason and precedent. Now the courts have become more political than the legislatures. Reason and precedent are largely ignored, and whims are “read into” the law.

The universities used to be semi-monastic in their separation from practical affairs, and able to reflect objectively on them. Now they have become more political than anywhere.

The press used to pride themselves on their independence and lack of respect for any authority. Now they are an arm of the professional establishment. Journalistic standards have been abandoned, and news reports are not reliable.

We used to think science was objective and incorruptible. We could trust the science. That was probably always false, but the COVID crisis has revealed multiple examples of this not being true. “The science” too has become political.

We used to suppose private enterprise was a check against government. That was probably always false; but it is increasingly clear that large corporations and governments work hand in glove. 

We used to trust in a professional civil service. The trustworthiness of the government seems cast in dramatically greater doubt by revelations off the “deep state.” They now seem to be lunging for greater power. An example is Merrick Garland’s Justice Department declaring dissatisfied voters at school board meetings “domestic terrorists.”

I and many like me used to think that Silicon Valley and high-tech was a force for freedom; some of us are old enough to remember Apple’s “1984” commercial. Now they have been revealed as Big Brother.

Nothing in the system seems to work any longer as it is supposed to; everything has been subverted by people interested only in power.

I blame postmodernism.

But all of these institutions are also in decline, notably due to technology. Perhaps the rapid loss of power and relevance has provoked a panic reaction, and fear has led to overreach.

If we are seeing the fall of the American Empire, I see no obvious replacement in the wings.

Back in the 90’s, Leonard Cohen recorded his album “The Future.” It offered two competing visions: the title song, which saw chaos coming; and this has proven accurate; and “Democracy is Coming to the USA,” which saw instead an American revival, and a new birth of freedom. 

Perhaps he accurately foresaw both. 

Perhaps we are witnessing a case of creative destruction. Perhaps as old systems are dying, new systems are about to emerge. And perhaps Cohen is right, that it is still America where the new is most likely to appear.

It's coming to America first,

the cradle of the best and of the worst.

It's here they got the range

and the machinery for change

and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

I see hope in groups like the Daily Wire, Steven Crowder, and Tim Poole trying to build independent cultural engines. I see hope in Andrew Yang's new political party, proposing a new form of voting. I think we may be on the brink of a new moment of immense creativity.

Thanksgiving

 

Canadian Thanksgiving was this week. A little late, and actually pulled from the archives:

Things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving:

I am thankful to have been born Canadian, so that I know enough to celebrate Thanksgiving on the correct date.

I am thankful to have been raised Catholic, so that I didn't have to go through the costly and embarrassing process of having my son circumcised.

I am thankful to have enough food to eat, even if the supermarket is often out of my favourite things and some of it is not always cooked so well.

I am thankful to have been raised speaking English, so that I can make money teaching it instead of having to learn it. Because it really is a pain in the butt.

I am thankful to have gray hair, instead of either of the two obvious alternatives.

I am thankful for all the technology that has appeared over my lifetime. Just not entirely happy at how old it makes me feel.

I am thankful for all the fine writing, music, and art in the world. Even if it seems to be diamonds buried in horse manure.

I am thankful for the companionship of certain people along the path. Especially when they let me share their Skittles.

I am thankful for dogs, which were definitely a good idea.

I am thankful for the sunrise. Just don't make me get up and see it.

I'd like to be thankful for my wife and kids, but I'm afraid it might give them swelled heads.

Evangelizing for Social Justice in Barbados

 

Friend Xerxes laments that social justice is a hard sell to a black congregation in Barbados. He believes it is because “Evangelicals” are concerned only with individual salvation, and not with social issues.

But isn’t it odd to find a poor black congregation unreceptive?

After all, “social justice” is supposed to be largely for the benefit of blacks. It also seems probable that a black congregation in Barbados is poor; Barbadian GDP per capita is only $15,000 US. Social justice is supposed to be for the poor. 

Nor is social engagement alien to Evangelicals. The Salvation Army is evangelical. From their mission statement: "The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian church." Evangelicals give more than their fellow citizens to charity and volunteer more at food banks, soup kitchens, and the like. Perhaps next to the Salvation Army, the biggest presence in helping the poor in downtown Toronto is the Scott Mission, which is evangelical. They run a food bank, homeless shelter, children, youth, and camp ministry. George W. Bush, an evangelical, pushed hard for "faith-based initiatives," exploiting the eager participation of evangelicals in the government's own social programs.

The problem is with “social justice.” Which is manifestly something other than charity, in their understanding.  Social justice is not something done for the poor or the working class. When left-wing sources criticize movements like Trumpism, the PPC, Brexit, or France’s National Rally, as “populist,” they are acknowledging as much: the uneducated common rabble, the poor, are the enemy. If poor blacks identify themselves by class, they are likely to be hostile to the left and its “social justice.” If they identify themselves instead by race, they may be for it. This, unfortunately, gives the left an incentive to divide people by race, and this again becomes a stumbling block for sincere Christians.

Nor is there any clear connection between what is currently called “social justice” and the Christian virtue of charity. Charity is giving to others in need. Social justice is demanding that others do it instead of you. And social justice seems more to be about power and coercion. It looks like people who consider themselves better than others trying to control others’ lives, including the lives of the poor, in the process validating the power structure and fixing it in place.

Are the social elites who push the “social justice agenda” nevertheless well-intentioned?

I wonder. They call the common working people “rednecks”—a pejorative term those who work outside for a living. Hillary Clinton called the working poor “deplorables.” Obama called them “bitter clingers.” One can hear the classism, the sense of privilege, and the contempt.

Men of Science

 

Scienceman

Dr. Fauci likes to say “I am a man of science.” He has also said “when they attack me, they are not attacking me, they are attacking science.”

This is unsettling. He is wrapping himself in science as though it bestows sanctity, as though it makes him a higher form of being. And he is evoking science as though it is a body of incontrovertible truths. The closest parallel I can come up with is “I am a man of the cloth,” among ministers. But it would be considered bad form to say that of yourself, and it actually does not carry as much weight. You will say, so what? What denomination? Nobody gets away with much by it.

One does not hear anyone say “I am a man of double-entry bookkeeping,” or “I am a man of actuarial tables.” Yet all are on the same intellectual plane as science. They are all no more nor less than tools. 

It is an indication of how badly we have fallen into “scientism,” the worship of science as our religion and our God.

Besides the idolatry, we need to realize the obvious truth that having training in the scientific method does not make one a moral person. Anyone evokes “science,” and we act as though this is proof of good moral character. And of a truth beyond challenge—the very opposite of the scientific method.  Charlatans and scoundrels—not here referring specifically to Dr. Fauci—can make good use of this naïveté. Freud, Hitler, and Marx are obvious examples.

Do Facebook's Algorithms Pose a Public Threat?

 

Friend Xerxes is concerned about people falling into self-confirming information silos on the Internet, because of Facebook’s algorithms. The result, he fears, is that bizarre conspiracy theories are spread widely without ever being contradicted; and violence may result. He speaks of “A rising tide of people in this country [who] apparently believe … that they are called overthrow the established powers-that-be. By any means. Including physical insurrection.”

There does seem to be a general decline in civil discourse. Let’s assume the theory is true. 

Logically, people falling into limited information silos is equally likely on either the left or the right—or, for that matter, in the middle. At first glance, any of these is equally troublesome. 

But if we are talking of the potential for overthrowing the establishment and for violence, the bigger problem is on the left. “The right” is, by and large, conservative, and conservative means wanting to maintain traditions. Accordingly, the right is the one group least likely to attempt any kind of insurrection or radical change of government or how we are governed. They might want to throw the current rascals out, but it would be by established, constitutional means. If our form of government had changed recently, this might not be so—the right might then want to go back to an earlier constitution—but both the US and Canada have been stable for unusually long periods of time. There is not a constituency in the US for a return to the monarchy, or in Canada for a return to direct rule from London. Currently, as Xerxes himself notes, no visible group on the right wants an insurrection to change our system of government.

This is not true of the left. The left is by definition seeking change. Black Lives Matter wants a radical change in a society it calls “systemically racist.” Antifa does too; the advocates of critical race theory do. In my riding, last election, the ballot included candidates from both the Communist and the Marxist-Leninist parties. A bit quaint in 2021, but these leftist groups too, in principle, want to radically change our system of government, by violence if necessary.

So if the issue is social instability, to “overthrow the established powers,” the practical argument is entirely for breaking up silos on the left.

You might object that fascists are a counter-example, a rightist group that advocates overturning the establishment and violent revolution. But fascists are deader than Marley’s ghost. Unlike Communists, they do not appear on any ballots anywhere. And there is nothing actually placing them on the right. Historically, they are a Marxist movement, “right-wing” only in comparison to the Leninists. Others have called them the “radical centre.” Historically, the conservatives were their chief opposition, and they have many more views in common with the contemporary North American left than the contemporary North American right. Arguably, the present government of China is fascist.

The specific conspiracy theories Xerxes cites hearing in his daily rounds sound as though they come from left-wing sources. Something about the Queen, Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden being clones; that sounds like a garbled version of David Icke’s thesis that they and other world leaders are aliens. Icke is New Age, and was the national spokesman for the UK’s Green Party. Xerxes’s barber is against cops and immigrants. Being against cops is a position lately promoted aggressively by the left. Neither left nor right is against immigrants currently. This was historically more a left-wing position, as a supposed threat to labour; the current right wants to stop illegal immigration. Xerxes cited the anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaccine movement began on the left, and was primarily leftist as recently as a year ago. The right is anti-vaccine mandates currently, but only over the last few months. 

At a minimum, you are not going to stop any of these movements by breaking open the right-wing information silo. If they are not exclusively on the left, they are found in more than one silo. 

To be fair, there are conspiracy theories on the right: QAnon, Pizzagate. There are just a lot more on the left, and on the left they are more generally accepted: the idea that rich capitalists control everything, for example, or corporations, or “Big Oil,” or “Big Pharma,” or the “whites,” or the “patriarchy.”

The left is also more inclined to violence. Some PPC local official threw gravel at Justin Trudeau in the recent Canadian election; violence at a low level. Some people trespassed last January 6 in the US Capitol building. Nobody told them to do it, and their actions were immediately condemned on the right. Compare Maxine Waters, elected Democrat, calling on her supporters to “get more active, get more confrontational.” Compare Antifa, calling for physical assaults on “Fascists”—meaning, in reality, anyone they disagree with. Compare Black Lives Matter rioting, looting, burning, and killing last year; and Kamala Harris endorsing their actions, then bailing out those arrested. The PPC official, by contrast, was immediately expelled from his position.

So should we step in and shut down left-wing news outlets? This strikes me as exactly the wrong step. Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of full information, as the “information silos” thesis itself suggests. Rumours take over. Reducing access to any news source therefore makes conspiracy theories more likely, and plausible. Perhaps the Facebook algorithm should be adjusted. While it is obviously desirable in general to try to predict what the audience wants to see—that is the whole point of a search engine--political slants might be omitted from the equation.

And if you stop and think, at worst, we are in a better situation than before the Internet. All of us were then trapped in the same information silo, without any choice, a silo determined by the fairness doctrine, the need for media corporations to appeal to the largest audience, and the relatively small number of people who work in the mainstream media. A smaller number than we perhaps realize: due to time pressures, social pressures within the profession, intellectual timidity, and a fear of taking risks, most media took their cue on any new story or controversy from a handful of outlets. 

This made it easy to manipulate the news, and popular opinion. Conspiracies were more possible, and conspiracy theories more plausible. 

Whether the algorithms automatically direct us there or not, we now have full access to any information source we choose. We can now, for the first time, hear all sides, not just some arbitrarily selected one or two, and make more informed decisions.

In sum, if civil society is becoming less civil, it is not because of the Internet.

For Comics Fans

 

The Real Argument for Atheism

 

The primary atheist argument for the non-existence of God seems to be the problem of evil. If there is a God, how can innocent children suffer? How can children in Africa suffer from parasitical worms in their eye? This seems the whole argument for Christopher Hitchens. If God existed, Hitchens objects, he sounds like a North Korean dictator.

Yet something here makes no sense. There are a dozen good logical arguments—philosophical proofs-- that God does exist. This one counter-argument does not suggest that he does not exist. Rather, it suggests he is not on our side. “Like flies to idle children are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” So why do the atheists instead jump to the non sequitur conclusion that he does not exist?

It is not that they are angry at God for evil, either. It makes no sense, after all, to be angry at someone for not existing. Yet they sound angry.

It seems to me that their real problem must be fear. Anger is the natural mask for fear: “fight or flight.” Of what? Of God punishing them. If God exists, and he is a moral being, they will eventually be judged. An evil or malignant God may not judge on moral grounds—but he too will punish, probably even more so. The safe and reassuring assumption is that God does not exist.

Then they project their own sense of having sinned on God, portraying this God, even though non-existent, as evil. This is scapegoating. If there is evil in the world, if evil is natural, if God is evil, and everyone is evil, I have the moral right to do what I want. Then they project the claim that those who believe in God are indulging in “wishful thinking,” while they are the hard-headed realists—an act of misdirection. It reveals their fear of hell. Once you start to lie, you begin to reliably say the opposite of the truth.

It is all classic denial. It all suggests the correctness of the Biblical assumption that atheism is not an innocent intellectual error, but a moral failing. And it means that the level of atheism in our or any society is some measure of how morally depraved it might be. Although wicked people can claim to be religious, the level to which being openly atheist is socially acceptable is a reflection on society as a whole and its values.

But that is rather good news, for North America. In Canada, the current figure declaring themselves atheist is only 8%. In the US, it is 3.1%. In Britain, various surveys put the proportion at 25% or higher.

Child Abuse in France

 

\

Why have we heard so little?

Last week a report was released estimating that 216,000 children have been victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in France since 1950. This is revolting, of course, but we are sadly getting used to such reports.

It is worth noting, however, that we have no control. It is only the Catholic Church, it seems, that is ever investigated for this. We do not know if this is more or less than the level of abuse in the home, in the schools, in other denominations, and so forth.

If we really cared about children, we would be looking at all of these. The most shocking thing is that we are not. Until we do, we are all complicit.

Teachers' Day

 

October 5 was International Teachers’ Day, a day not generally observed in Canada. It ought to be. There is no more important job than that of teacher. Confucius, the most influential thinker who ever lived, never held any higher position. Neither did Socrates or Aristotle; and who is more influential in Western civilization than they? Yet we know of them only from their students’ reports and lecture notes.

Actually, there is a more influential figure over the West than Socrates or Aristotle: Jesus. His followers, too, addressed him as “Rebbe,” “teacher.” We know him, too, only from their lecture notes.

I expect that most readers can, as I can, remember some special teacher in their past who influenced them deeply, who is responsible in some important way for what they later became. Mr. More in grade 6, who confirmed my love of poetry; of A. Pat Smith in grade 13, who drove me into literature; of Professor John Cooke at Queen’s, who lured me into comparative religion; of Paul Nowack at Ryerson, who found me too old to have had the influence he might have had, but who taught me again the value of storytelling. 

Since being a teacher is about as glorious a job as anyone could have, is seems odd that Canada has no “teachers’ day,” and that Canadian teachers often prefer to call themselves “educators.” As though reaching for some euphemism. Teaching has fallen into disrepute. While we may disagree on the problem and the remedy, we seem all agreed, including teachers, that there is something very wrong with the schools.

This is the more alarming, because it is improbable. We all spontaneously want to learn; we are programmed for it. We all remember with respect approaching awe the good teachers we have had. It must take some doing to poison that well.

Moreover, a culture or civilization that fails to produce great teachers is a culture or civilization that is dying. This is the essential task of a culture: to pass on the accumulated wisdom generation to generation.

The spectacular success of Jordan Peterson shows how deep the hunger is for good teachers. That is what Peterson is: he does not have an especially good record as a researcher. He is a teacher The world is responding..

What have we done to so badly mess things up? 

2020, But Almost Invisible

 

Barcelona Pavilion

Expo 2020 opened last week.

That’s not a typo; I thought it was at first. Expo 2020, held in Dubai, was postponed one year, like the Olympics, due to COVID.

I feel sorry for Dubai over this. Few I speak to seem aware of the fair, and I realized it existed only after it opened.

Their overall strategy is to turn Dubai into a tourism destination, before the oil-related revenue one day runs out. It seems a sensible idea. Dubai is reasonably well-located for a midwinter getaway for Northern Europe. It has miles past reckoning of natural beaches. Hosting a World’s Fair should have introduced the destination to a lot of first-time tourists. Now the expense is likely to be largely wasted, as travel is a complicated matter in the pandemic.

I suspect the UAE government also sunk more money into this than is obvious. Apparently the fair has 192 countries participating. The United Nations has only 193 members. Expo 67, considered the most successful world’s fair of the 20^th century, had only 62 participants. To get everybody, I presume Dubai must be subsidizing pavilions for at least some nations.

There is a common view that the days of international expositions have passed. And there is a logic to that. With exponentially improved communications, is it really still necessary to bring things and people together in one physical place?

I think that is wrong. The modern Olympics, originally a sideshow held at World’s Fairs, has endured and prospered, even though it has little practical value to anyone. I think World’s Fairs, in comparison, still serve an important purpose. You cannot really experience architecture or some technology at a distance. Moreover, experimental architecture or engineering installations probably need to be subsidized to be practical. A World’s Fair does that: an Olympics of the mind.

World’s Fairs have done other things, no doubt: showcasing art, or culture, or new consumer products, or the manufactures of a given nation, in promotion of trade. Yet the great value has always been in introducing new architecture or engineering installations. The Crystal Palace, the architectural marvel of the first-ever World’s Fair, in London, 1851, eventually burned down. But not before inspiring dozens of similar structures all over the world. The Paris Exposition of 1878 introduced outdoor arc lighting, perhaps cementing Paris’s image as the “city of light.” Not to mention the Statue of Liberty. The Paris Exposition of 1889 left the Eiffel Tower as a display of engineering prowess. Chicago’s 1893 fair gave us the Ferris wheel. Paris, 1900, was the first installation of the escalator. Milan, 1906, introduced the tram, the electrified streetcar. Barcelona 1929 showcased the Barcelona pavilion, first cannot shot of the new modernist style in architecture. Expo 67 was most memorable for the US pavilion’s geodesic dome, much imitated since; for Moshe Safdie’s Habitat ’67, a noble if only partly-successful effort at affordable housing; for the Czech pavilion’s kino-automat, an experiment in interactive media which looks now like the precursor to current social media.

I think it is unarguable that World’s Fairs have led to significant human progress; something that can hardly be said of the Olympics. For a time, they seemed to lose their way; following Expo 67, for some years, all exhibitors could think to do was show a film using some innovative screen—a cheap and easy option. Interesting, but not something easily adapted for use outside exhibitions.

I get a sense Expo 2020 will be more than that. In the end, it may be the most memorable thing about 2020-2021.

White Male Murderer Syndrome

The story of Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito has been dominating the news for a couple of weeks. Commentators often suggest that it is an example of “missing white woman syndrome”: when a white woman goes missing, it is big news. When a non-white woman goes missing, it isn’t.

In fact, the Petito case tends to disprove the thesis. Gaby Petito is not missing. Her body was found on September 19. Based on the “missing white woman” thesis, public interest should have waned at that point. Instead, it has grown since. It is not Petito people are interested in. It is Laundrie.

What we are dealing with, here and in most other cases of “missing white woman syndrome,’ is actually “white male murderer syndrome.” It is the white killer, not the white victim, that makes the matter newsworthy. For whatever reason—the initial premise would imply this is because of anti-white racism. People want to think bad things of whites. It is politically incorrect to report bad behavior by blacks or aboriginals.

Of course, one does not necessarily know the perpetrator. But if a black woman turns up missing or dead, the perpetrator is probably a black man. Therefore, not newsworthy. If an aboriginal woman turns up missing or dead, the perpetrator is probably an aboriginal man. Therefore, not newsworthy. This would change if the prime suspect turns out to be, or can be implied to be, white. This, for example, is why “missing aboriginal women” is recently a big deal in Canada—because it has new been insinuated that white people, not aboriginals, are somehow directly or indirectly at fault. 

If a white woman turns up missing or dead—this is newsworthy, because the perpetrator is probably a white man. This is especially so in the Petito-Laundrie case, since a white man is the obvious suspect. If, on the other hand, the obvious suspect is or turns out to be non-white, the story disappears.

A similar example of “white murderer syndrome” is the common misperception that mass killers are always white men. In fact, the proportion of mass killers who are white reflects their proportion of the overall population—about 65%. It is blacks who are overrepresented—approaching twice their population share. But if a black man starts shooting up a mall, it is less likely to be featured as major news. Or his ethnicity will not be mentioned, or will be downplayed.

Winsor McKay - Breaking News of 1917

 

The Sky Father

 

Urizen, Blake's conception of a false god.

"whoever believes in nature, disbelieves in God – for Nature is the work of the devil" - William Blake

As noted previously in this space, atheists—and perhaps some nominal Christians—have the bizarre belief that Christians think God is an invisible old man on a cloud, a “sky father.”

This concept is not in the Bible. Jesus does address God as “Father”; but the Christian God is a Trinity, Father. Son, and Holy Spirit, and the most correct way to represent him is as the Son, because this is how he chose to reveal himself to us.

And he is not in the sky. “The Kingdom of Heaven” or “The Kingdom of God” is among us, not in the sky. Here’s how perverse that notion is: Ephesians actually refers to the Devil as “the ruler of the kingdom of the air.” (Ephesians 2:2) Demons are “the spirits of the air.” The sky and clouds are the realm of Satan.

Pondering where this notion of a “sky father” comes from, I think it is a confusion in the popular mind of God with the classical polytheistic god Zeus or Jupiter. “Jupiter” comes etymologically from the IndoEuropean “sky father.” As he is the god of thunder, he is naturally imagined as seated in the clouds. He is sometimes referred to as “father of the gods.” 

In Christian terms, he is a demon.

Apologizing to the Pagans

 

Miss Persephone, can you identify the rapist from this lineup?

A recent HuffPo article calls for a Catholic apology for “the destruction and desecration of Greco-Roman polytheistic culture.”

Here are a few reasons why this is absurd:

1. Catholicism did not destroy Greco-Roman culture. Catholicism is Greco-Roman culture as it has evolved. The only thing missing is the polytheism.

2. Accepting the premise that polytheism should have been left alone, none of the polytheists who might have been harmed are still alive.

3. There are not even any remaining Greco-Roman pagans. Who then does one apologize to? Should the Israeli government apologize to the Canaanites and the Philistines? The Italian government to the Etruscans? The Irish government to the Firbolgs? How would this be meaningful?

4. Any actual suppression of paganism was an act by the civil, not the religious, authorities. It may have been done by them on grounds other than religious ones. Constantine and his successors believed in the value of consensus on values, to promote imperial unity, and saw Christianity as most likely to achieve it. All Catholicism did was win an intellectual argument.

5. Worshipping the pagan gods was not a matter of devotion or conscience. The pagan gods were rapists and murderers. They had no love for mankind. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” Ancient Greeks and Romans sacrificed to their gods out of fear. Conversion to Christianity would not have been a hard sell. It was like being released from bondage.

Accordingly, the modern Catholic Church apologizing for ending Greco-Roman polytheism would be like Britain apologizing for ending the slave trade. Apologizing, that is, to the slaves.

Be Reasonable

Xerxes, with enthusiastic agreement from much of his readership, has determined the original sin to have been reason: "I wonder if humanity’s original sin might be our obsession with labelling and categorizing our experiences.” One respondent characterizes this as a flaw of Western civilization. Another chimes in, “Judgement dams up the works! No sooner do I make a judgement, i.e., apply a label, then I stop considering alternatives and limit all the possibilities that might be realized by continuing consideration. Acceptance, on the other hand, permits flow, movement, discovery!”

This is a non-starter for Christians. One might point to Biblical verses like “judge not, lest ye be judged,” or the woman taken in adultery. But, importantly, these are about judging other people, not making judgments as such. And they themselves call for judgement—it is not that we must not judge others, but that we must judge ourselves first: ‘first, take the beam out of your own eye.’ ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’”

John 9:39: And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

As for naming things, God himself brings the universe into being, in Genesis, by his words—by calling it into being. Then, as if in echo of this divine act, he has Adam give names to all the animals. The implication seems to be that it is precisely in naming and clearly defining things that we are acting in the image of God, and in accord with the divine will.

Jesus is the Logos. He is judgement incarnate.

In sum, nothing could be less Christian—or more diabolical—than this postmodern doctrine of unreason.

Acceptance of everything requires acceptance of the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, and Charles Manson. This was precisely the philosophy Mason preached to his followers.

Wonderfulland

 

"ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF GANANOQUE
IN HONOURED MEMORY OF THE MEN OF THE TOWN AND DISTRICT WHO FOUGHT AND FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918"

 Often for sport the crewmen will ensnare

Some albatrosses: vast seabirds that sweep

In lax accompaniment through the air

Behind the ship that skims the bitter deep.

No sooner than they dump them on the floors

These skyborn kings, graceless and mortified,

Feel great white wings go down like useless oars

And drag pathetically at either side.

That sky-rider: how gawky now, how meek!

How droll and ugly he who shone on high!

The sailors poke a pipestem in his beak,

Then limp to mock this cripple born to fly.

The poet is so like this prince of clouds

Who haunted storms and sneered at earthly slings;

Now, banished to the ground, to cackling crowds,

He cannot walk beneath the weight of wings.

―Baudelaire

When I was a child, my brother and I used to swap stories about “Wonderfulland,” a place where everything was wonderful. The fact that this was a fascinating topic for us reveals that we were only too aware that, counter to a common myth about childhood, the real word we experienced daily was not so wonderful.

I remember my father describing Belmont Park in Montreal as “the real Wonderfulland,” when he planned to take us there. But I knew in advance this could not be true, and the amusement park, although enjoyable, was nothing like it. Wonderfulland was not a place of thrill rides or cotton candy or custard cones.  It was a land of stories where imaginary things were real. One area, as I remember it, was the Old West, one was islands of the Caribbean, one had castles and forests, and so on.

The one detail I remember best is that part of it was Statueland―a garden full of statues. 

Why the statues? What did I know of statues? There was, as I recall, only one statue in the small town where I was growing up, of a World War I soldier, commemorating the war dead. It did leave a deep impression on me. We might have seen more statues on a trip to Ottawa; but if so, I cannot remember. 

Gananoque, my home town, was also famous for its pink granite. There was a stonemason’s yard on the main street with a display of tombstones. 

This, along with the war memorial, seems to me the most likely origin of statueland. It was the land of the dead. Perhaps this is why I have always felt a particular fondness for Remembrance Day.

I rather think that Wonderfulland emerged from our—perhaps only my—intimation that there was a heaven. This might have been instinctive, or rather instilled by God. Or it might have been the result of an early Catholic education.

I thought of Wonderfulland the other night while listening to Bruce Springsteen. I had not thought of it, I imagine, for years. Yet the thought came to my mind, out of nowhere, that this was someone who had visited Wonderfulland. There were hints of it in his music and his voice—not anything explicit, but a mood. It was a mood I knew well, I realized, from other art.

The mark of great art is that it has this sense of Wonderfulland about it. Michelangelo has it; it is all over the Sistine ceiling. Shakespeare often openly refers to it; it is his “green world.” Hans Christian Andersen knows it intimately, and his stories describe it in detail. It is where all fairy tales are set. Romanesque art is the art of Wonderfulland. Chagall paints it. Kurelek paints it. Sendak paints it. Blake paints it, and writes about it. Other writers who clearly know it well include Cervantes; Don Quixote is all about the difference between Wonderfulland and the imperfect diurnal world. Yeats, Stevenson, Coleridge, Hesse, Carroll, Dostoyevsky, H.G. Wells, all write about it. It is where the Krishna Gopala cycle takes place. Arthur Koestler chronicles it in non-fiction. 

It is perhaps most present in music. I hear it in Cohen, Dylan, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Diana Krall, Whitney Houston, Prince, Sinead O’Connor, Ian Tyson, Mark Knopfler, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Buffy Sainte-Marie. It is everywhere in classical music. They say all art aspires to the condition of music; they speak of the music of the spheres, and of angels playing harps and blowing trumpets. Perhaps this is why: music among the arts is able most accurately to express the nature of heaven.

 “Realistic” art is an absurd and a philistine idea. The purpose of true art is not to show the world, not to “hold the mirror up to nature,” other than to shame it. It is to open a window to a vista of Wonderfulland.

Another insight: those who most experience Wonderfulland are inevitably going to be the most dissatisfied with life here below. The contrast is too intense. At the same time, God seems to give the clearest vision of Wonderfulland to those who are suffering, like Andersen’s Little Match Girl, in this life.

“Socrates: And now, I responded, consider this: If this person who had gotten out of the cave were to go back down again and sit in the same place as before, would he not find in that case, coming suddenly out of the sunlight, that his eyes were filled with darkness?"

Who Is Mad?

 

To be insane is to be out of touch with reality. But what is reality?

It is not just the majority opinion. That is the ad populum fallacy. The majority of men once thought the sun moved around the earth. A plurality of Germans voted for Hitler. 

Plato’s cave analogy suggests reality is experienced by only a few; most of us may live a delusion. Buddhism asserts the same. As, arguably, does Christianity. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” (1 Corinthians, 3:19) A more familiar concept to many may be that of the Matrix films.

And postmodernists, of course, assert that there is no reality. Everyone just makes things up.

So what is real is not self-evident. We therefore cannot use it as a standard for sanity, or else one man’s sanity becomes another’s madness. The person who experienced the world as it is might be declared insane by the deluded majority. “Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending.” (The Republic, Book 7, Jowett trans.)

Rather, then, than saying that sanity is knowing what is real and what is not, we might say that Sanity is the quest for what is true. Insanity is no longer caring or trying to find out. We all understand the concept of a lie, a denial of the facts or of the evidence. Insanity is believing a lie, while being at least partly aware that it is a lie.

This means that sanity is always at least in part a moral issue.