Hallowe'en and Samhain

I spent last Sunday afternoon in a cemetery. I was not alone.

We band of Catholics said a rosary for our departed relatives. The bishop presided.

And this concluded the Hallowe’en Tridium.

There is a popular misconception that Hallowe’en is a pagan festival: specifically, the Celtic harvest festival, Samhain. This is often stated as simple fact. It shows a profound ignorance of religion, mixed in with some surviving puritan anti-Catholic propaganda.

Does it not occur to these people that the non-Celtic Mexicans celebrate their mysteriously similar “Dia de los Muertos” on the same date?

In the Philippines, families spend that same evening in the cemetery. They commonly bring the favourite foods of departed ancestors to hold a picnic at their graves.

Hallowe’en is the eve of All Saints’ Day—“All Hallows Evening.” This three-day memorial for the dead is part of the culture of any Catholic country. It is a time to pray for the souls of those in purgatory, and to remember the truth that death will come for us as well: a “memento mori.” 

Ghosts are the souls of those in Purgatory. 

Demonic figures coming around to “trick or treat” remind us of the dangers of Hell.

All can be explained perfectly in proper Catholic terms.

Samhain is more related to the North American feast of Thanksgiving.

The Greatest Novels

 

What are the greatest novels? This is not my area of expertise; I am a poetry guy. It is entirely likely that I have not read some of the greatest novels. But from my own experience, these are the novels that did not merely entertain, but took up residence in my mind, and changed how I looked at the world. 

At least, they changed me.

Crime and Punishment 
Don Quixote
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
1984
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis

Should Women Vote?

 

The pendulum is swinging with remarkable speed. Now I see some talk of repealing the 19th amendment in the US—that is, the constitutional amendment requiring that states give women the right to vote.

Of course, there are reasons for doing this. The basic principle, so often forgotten, is that our ancestors were not idiots. They had reasons for what they did, and so must have had reasons for restricting the right to vote to men for a hundred years or so. Do we understand their reasons? If not, Chesterton’s rule should have applied: never pull down a fence because you do not know why it is there. You must know why it is there before you pull it down.

Begin with the recent Internet discovery, by informal census, that men on average think of the Romen Empire every day; and this astonishes women, who never do. This shows plainly a basic difference between the male and female mind. Men think in more abstract terms, being concerned for people and things not immediately present—about society as a whole, mankind as  whole, about the distant past and distant future, not just what is immediate to their own lives. For women, in contrast, to cite the proud feminist slogan, “the personal is political.” They are by and large concerned with their own lives and their circle of family and acquaintances. Why would they ever think of the Roman Empire?

In other words, men are more concerned with the health of the community and the greatest good for the greatest number. Women are more likely to distort public priorities to serve special interests. On balance, this is bad for everyone.

It is also in everyone’s interest to accentuate different sex roles. This encourages pairing off, and so is a way to approach the current crisis of depopulation. 

Voting has often been tied to serving in war: by sacrificing their youth and risking their lives for the country, many a group have established their right to participate in government. Most recently, during the Vietnam War, this was the argument for lowering the voting age to 18: if old enough to serve, old enough to vote.

But on this basis, women have not established a right to vote. Nor would we want to ask this of them—women are too valuable to a society as childbearers. It is suicidal to throw them into the front lines. Men fight for the women back home.

All this might not have mattered when women tended to vote the same way as men. However, in recent years, voting tendencies between the sexes have increasingly diverged, raising concern.

Of course, it is probably practically impossible now to pull back the franchise from women—they would have to consent to allow it to happen. We can only hope we have not made a civilization-ending mistake.

2BR02B

 

Recently looked at the Vonnegut short story “2BR02B” with a student. First published in 1962, it is a record of our great concern with “overpopulation” back then, in the middle of the Baby Boom. The premise is that the population of the USA had been fixed at 40 million. Since medicine had progressed to virtually allowing immortality, it was necessary, in order to preserve the population at this level, to abort every new baby--unless someone chose suicide in the government “gas chambers.” That would allow a designated new child to be born.

Vonnegut obviously saw this as an undesirable future. He notes in passing that the women who ran the gas chambers mysteriously always grew moustaches. Like Hitler.

I remember well the overpopulation hysteria. It was not that long ago. In my last year of high school, circa 1970, our biology teacher made us all buy and read The Population Bomb, warning that there would be mass starvation and shortages of clean drinking water by the 1980s. My friend in first-year university was planning his future so that he could move to New Zealand. He calculated that, when the world descended into total war over food and water, that would be the safest place. In the 1980s, I became a vegetarian largely on the argument in the book Diet for a Small Planet, that not eating meat saved scarce resources for others.

Weirdly, although Vonnegut saw this all as draconian, measures we might resort to due to an emergency of overpopulation, he seems to be fairly accurately describing the Canada we live in today. We have not found a cure for aging, but we have unrestricted abortion, and “Medical Assistance in Dying” anyway. As well as feminism demanding that women give up having and raising children.

This leaves me with the thought that current government policies, and our current crisis of declining population, are caused by a mass hysteria. It was always wrong, and now surely everybody knows it was wrong, but we are still suffering from the consequences. We are still pursuing the worst possible policies for our current situation.

This should be a valuable moral lesson. “Climate change” is a more recent mass hysteria; some say it is in decline, and even Bill Gates has admitted it was largely a mirage. But governments have been pushing truly draconian measures in its name.

“Transgenderism” is another mass hysteria. So is “ecology” or “environmentalism.” So is the current mania for “indigenous people,” this being a nonsense concept. So is feminism.

I suspect the threat of depopulation and the supposed need to bring in masses of new immigrants is also mass hysteria. Some are predicting, almost in the same breath, that many jobs will soon be relaced by robotics, and a large population will be a liability.

As Nietzsche said, “Madness in individuals is rare. In groups, it is common.”

Let Me Say It Clearly While It Is Still Legal

 There was no "genocide" in Canadian Indian Residential Schools.

If this NDP member has her way, that sentence would make be liable for two years in prison.

The price of truth.

Canadian Fertility Collapse

 

From the Epoch Times.

2.1 is replacement level.

Cruel and Unusual

Apparently, the Canadian Supreme Court has just ruled it unconstitutional for Parliament to impose an automatic one year minimum sentence on those possessing "child sexual abuse material," which I resume means child pornography.

Whether a year is too much seems to be a judgement call, and just the sort of thing parliament is supposed to decide, not the courts.

Cruel and unusual? The average sentence in the US for possession of child pornography is 6.5 years for a first offense. UK statutory penalty is 5-10 years. 

For the sake of Canadian democracy, the Supreme Court must be reined in. I fear this is virtually impossible under the current constitution. The only escape may be provinces separating individually.

Mental Illness Is a Nonsense Concept

 

An Asian demon.

My Chinese student immediately sees the absurdity of the term “mental illness.” Like a physical illness?

“Mental illness” is a euphemism. We have sadly come to take it literally, and have even come to treating the thing with pills. Given this approach, the problem is incurable.

Older terms are more accurate. The various experiences we call mental illness are experienced subjectively as oppression, obsession, or possession by some will which either inhibits, distracts, or completely suppresses our own. Often, people actually “hear voices” in their head. You could say “out of your mind” or “beside yourself” or “driven to distraction.” But that is only half the equation. If you are out of your mind, who is in it? Who or what is distracting you? The best, most lucid description of the experienced reality we euphemistically call “mental illness” is demonic possession, or demonic affliction.

We refuse to use the terms only because we arbitrarily refuse to accept the existence of demons. Despite the overwhelming evidence—the evidence of “mental illness” itself. People are experiencing demonic wills interfering with their own, and fairly commonly.

Understand this simple truth, understand the problem in these terms, and the cure becomes obvious. You need spiritual assistance. The shamanic approach is to negotiate peace terms with the demon, the “voice in your head.” It does nothing to simply ignore it and pretend it does not exist. The Judeo-Christian approach, more effective, is to cast the demon out, supplanting it with the imminent presence of the one true God.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”

Therefore, it is necessary to occupy the spirit with a “strong man.” 

“if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.”

In other words, with a faith in the one true God.

And this approach, unlike that of modern psychiatry, actually works. It is scientifically proven to work.

On Pride

 

Thomas Merton wrote, “Pride makes us artificial. Humility makes us genuine.” 

A sort of robotic artificiality indeed seems characteristic of narcissists. Their smile is mechanical, as if pasted on; or it is a smirk, a sort of half-smile. Scott Adams says there is something about the eyes not smiling with the mouth that gives away insincerity.

They cannot be spontaneous, because they do not dare lose control. For this reason, they cannot have a sense of humour. Humour requires letting go. They do not understand it, and so will laugh inappropriately. They are just mimicking what they see and hear others do, without feeling it. The one thing they might find funny is watching other people in pain, mental or physical. Someone slipping on a banana peel.

Can narcissism be cured? Psychiatry says no. I have always been loath to believe this: can anyone be beyond redemption? I compared it with alcoholism: breaking an addiction is hard, but not impossible. People do. Surely one can also break an addiction to pride?

But there is indeed a point at which one is, in Christian teaching, beyond redemption: Hell is forever. If you die in mortal sin, and descend, there is no possibility of redemption beyond that point. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Like it or not, that is the clear Biblical teaching.

Doesn’t this match our experiences with narcissism? At a certain point, to wit, the point of confirmed narcissism, it would not matter if one had an infinite stretch of time, one is never going to pull out of this. Like Lucifer’s choice of self over God: Satan is not one day going to be redeemed.

An addiction to self is after all far more encompassing than an addiction to some single pleasure or vice. To invest your very identity in your vice means breaking the addiction looks impossible. There is no one there, outside of the vice itself, to break it. You have no other identity. Your soul has been devoured.

That is why the narcissist seems zombie-like, an NPC.

It may be going too far, however, to say ambulatory narcissism is yet incurable. Why would God allow the narcissist to stay alive, and doing harm to others, past this point? It makes more sense to assume that the point at which the narcissism is absolutely incurable is the moment God will step in and send to Hell. So long as there is the slightest chance for the narc to turn, God will give them that chance. 

But well before this point, the change might require a miracle. It may be beyond human agency, and so of course the psychiatrists cannot do it. Neither can any well-meaning relative.

Pride and Humility

 

Lucifer in Hell; as conceived by Dante and Dore.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This parable, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass, identifies pride as the one unforgivable sin. 

And it is. It is the source of all sin. Pride is the sin of Lucifer, and of Eve (“you shall be as gods”). It is the sin the Greeks called hubris; what modern psychology calls “narcissism.” 

As the parable says, all sins are forgiven so long as you are humble. And so long as you are proud, no virtues count. Pride or humility is the entire ball game. What could be clearer?

This is surely the sense in which Jesus says we must be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Little children are not moral; they do not always behave well. But they think of themselves as little, incapable, needing guidance and help. This is the attitude we need to have towards God.

People speak of “Catholic guilt,” as if guilt were a bad thing. But that is the whole point of Christian morality. “I want you to be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.” None of us can achieve that. All of us will sin.

That is the point. The point is to stay humble.

This is one more reason why I deeply dislike “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. The minute we decide we are in the clear, we are lost. Blessed are those who mourn. 

A caveat: anti-Christian bullies will use this against Christians, demanding they humble themselves and submit to the bully—and to the general consensus. William Blake said, “humble before God; not before men.” Humbling yourself to the mighty in this world is not moral. It is just cowardice and cunning. John the Baptist did not humble himself before Herod. The Old Testament prophets did not humble themselves before the kings and queens of Judea and Israel. Jesus did not act humbly at the temple, nor speak humbly of himself at the synagogue. Saint Dymphna did not submit humbly to her father the King; nor Saint Francis to his father the rich merchant.

We must serve the Truth, and not either ourselves or he powers and principalities of this dark world. We must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

Atheists in Their Own Words

 

Mother Nature: Traditional Indian conception

Honest atheists often understand that, rather than believing in no god, they worship “Mother Nature,” aka Gaia. They personify nature, imagine it is imbued with a will, and is all-powerful. Ergo, God. But what is the difference between this and the Judeo-Christian God? 

A recent correspondent gives us some idea. He neatly if unintentionally refutes the typical atheist argument that the belief in an afterlife is wish fulfillment. He writes that as an atheist, “You don’t have to think about your death, because there is no hell, just like there is no heaven… I don’t think I will fear death as religious people do.” Atheism is wish fulfillment. If there is no God, as Nietzsche pointed out, you can do whatever you want, and need not fear punishment. 

The essence of nature is amorality. Animals operate on instinct. The essence of morality is to sometimes resist our natural urges. 

But this “atheism” is whistling past the graveyard, the logic of the ostrich with his head in the sand. “If I don’t believe in God, he won’t hurt me.” That’s like saying “gravity doesn’t apply to me if I refuse to believe in it.” And jumping off a cliff.

One form of this “nature-worship” atheism is adulation of an imaginary aboriginal religion of nature worship. Christianity came in and ruined this peaceable kingdom, in which the lion lay down with the lamb. “I believe that the First Nations were correct. They saw the holiness of life in all things - -spirit (Great Spirit) existed in the bear, the wolf, the bison, the tree etc.  They didn’t attempt to conquer or manipulate the spirit but worked to live in harmony with the Spirit.”

Of course, this is a fundamentally Christian idea: that of original innocence in the Garden of Eden. It has nothing to do with the actual life of actual Indians. They saw the spirit world as mostly hostile to mankind. And they had no concept of conservation or ecology. It is the Judeo-Christian tradition that sees nature, the physical world, as holy, because God speaks to us through his creation. To most other cultures, including the native Indian, the physical world is ephemeral, only secondarily real. It is not that the spirit exists in the bear; it is that the bear really only exists in the spirit. The physical bear is just food.

Another recent atheist acquaintance avers that it is wrong to “categorize and label.” And this too I have heard before; it is a common sentiment among unbelievers.

An odd sentiment, on its face. There is another word for categorizing and labelling: thinking. Thinking goes beyond this, but it must start with this, with defining terms. Refusing to think is not a good idea. 

Consider the analogy of the eye. This is like saying it is wrong to put on your glasses and see things in focus. Best to leave it all fuzzy and vague.

Why and when would this be best? When there is something you are trying hard not to think about. Remember the wisdom of the ostrich. 

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

Another common atheist trope is to see God as some form of impersonal “energy.” “Mysterious, nameless, pure love ‘energy’ inside me and everywhere.” 

This, as William Blake pointed out, is an inadequate concept of God. The human mind can conceive of nothing greater than a perfected human being. “Consider a cloud as holy; you cannot love it. But picture a holy man inside the cloud, and love springs up.” 

Imagine a source of energy—say a fire, or a battery—next to a human being. Which do you see as more important, more worthy of your interest and attention? 

Suppose you had to throw the person into the fire to keep it from going out. Would you do so?

Conceiving God as “energy” running through you is conceiving of him as less than you.

You are thinking of yourself as God.

This is always the bottom line. Welcome to the garden, Eve.

Trump the Dictator?

 Friend Xerxes has declared Donald Trump a dictator. And he has listed eight proofs. It I a disorienting insight into the left-wing mind.

To begin with, we need to make a distinction between “dictators,” “strong leaders,” and “demagogues.” Xerxes does not. They are all “dictators.” These are three different things. For example, dictators usually come to power by military force (see the definition by Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, “a political leader who has complete power over a country, especially one who has gained it using military force.”) And coming to power by military force is more or less incompatible with being a demagogue, whose path to power will be by popular appeal. 

I also think there are examples of demagogic politicians—that is, politicians who rely on emotional appeals and anti-establishment rhetoric—who do not become dictators, nor aspire to becoming one. John Diefenbaker; I’d say Harry Truman. You might add Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Rene Levesque, or Martin Luther King Jr.

Moving on, having a “strongman” leader is not necessarily a bad thing. A tough guy may be desirable, given an emergency situation or a risk of chaos. Churchill being called in at the start of WWII is one obvious example. DeGaulle is another. Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Depression, Jefferson in the early years of the American Republic, Pierre Trudeau during the national unity crisis, were all strong personalities ready to play fast and loose with established norms. That this is sometimes needed is recognized in common law: a mayor may “read the riot act,” a democracy may declare martial law. In the constitution of the Roman Republic: a “dictator” might be appointed for a six-month term. Armies are not run by popular vote.

Now, the list of characteristics Xerxes cites for “dictators”: 

1. Dictators demonize a minority. 

The left in the US has been demonizing men, “straight white men,” “the far right,” the unvaccinated, and especially working class, Southern, straight white men. These are all minorities in the US. In Canada, Justin Trudeau condemned the unvaccinated as an “unacceptable fringe” who should perhaps not be permitted to “take up space.” 

What minority group has Trump demonized? “The Deep State”? “Illegal immigrants”? But these are people guilty of crimes, and cited only on that basis. It is not demonizing a person to point out their crimes. The police are not demon hunters.

2. Dictators politicize formerly independent institutions.

This is the standard complaint from the right: that the left has, in its “long march through the institutions,” systematically subverted and politicized the media, the schools, the academy, the FBI, the IRS, and the justice system. 

This is what the right calls “Cultural Marxism.” Obama and Biden used the IRS and FBI against their political opponents. There were many dubious prosecutions of Trump, Trump associates and advisors, even Trump’s lawyers. There was the excessive treatment, the persecution, of the January 6th protesters. There was the targeting of “tea party” groups by Obama’s IRS. People have been “debanked.” There were the forged claims of Russia collusion, publicly endorsed by the CIA and the security apparatus; the bugging of Trump’s campaign headquarters; the spurious impeachments. The government pressured social media to block views the administration did not like and promote those they did—now publicly admitted by Mark Zuckerberg.

3. Dictators spread disinformation.

See the Russia collusion hoax, the “fine people on both sides” hoax, the “drink bleach” hoax, the “kids in cages” hoax, the many lies spread by the Biden (and Trudeau) regime about Covid, Covid preventative measures, the Covid vaccines. The lies by the Obama White House about what caused the attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi. Lies about being able to keep your insurance under Obamacare. Lies about Biden’s state of physical and mental health. These are grave and gravely harmful lies.

Trump exaggerates, but harmlessly, without intent to deceive.

4. Dictators seize executive power, weakening checks and balances.

This is poorly stated. The US president holds executive power; nobody who has been elected president of the US has seized executive power. 

A president can try to bully or ignore the other two branches of government. FDR, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Biden have been accused of this. I’d need to see examples of Trump doing the same. It seems unlikely, since his party controls all three branches of government. Why would he need to?

5. Dictators squash criticism and dissent.

This has been cited as one of the pillars of MAGA: to end the censorship, suppression of dissent, “deplatforming,” and “cancel culture” of the left; to revive free speech and open discussion. No more malicious prosecutions of peaceful protesters.  No more controlled media. No more shouting down speakers, or assaulting them, or doxxing them, or assassinating them. This is why Musk bought Twitter; this is why Trump started Truth Social.

6. Dictators scapegoat already vulnerable communities.

The scapegoating of minorities by the left has already been mentioned. Indeed, the left formulaically always scapegoats the “rich capitalists,” the “greedy corporations,” the “billionaires,” “the rich.” The left eagerly accuses “whites,” or “cis males,” or “patriarchy” or “Christian nationalists” of all manner of heinous things, of all evil—scapegoating. They have recently shown a growing tendency to antisemitism—the classic victims of scapegoating.

You will argue that these groups are not vulnerable? History shows they are. Consider the Jews in Nazi Germany; the kulaks in the Soviet Union; the whites in South Africa; Christians in revolutionary France, or Spain, or Mexico, or Nigeria today.

And no, Trump has never scapegoated any identifiable group. Not Mexicans nor Chinese nor Muslims nor blacks nor women nor gays. He has never accused any, as a group, of anything discreditable, so far as I can tell. He seems to have taken great care not to.

7. Dictators corrupt the election process.

By pushing for casually distributed mail-in ballots, voting machines, and no ID at the polls, the Democrats were obviously trying to corrupt the voting process, whether or not they succeeded. But the latter must be assumed—the more so since they sought to criminalize any suggestion that they had. Even the Democratic Party’s process of selecting their presidential nominee looks questionable.

This is what the mob was protesting on January 6th. 

8. Dictators encourage violence against a loosely labelled opposition.

Some leftists and Democrats openly call for violence against their opponents. “Punch a fascist” being a common slogan. Schumer warned that Supreme Court justices would be punished for overturning Roe v. Wade. Obama spoke of “bringing a gun to a knife fight.” Jay Jones, Virginia candidate for Attorney-General, tweets “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”  And he has not been shunned for it by his own party. The left’s rhetoric is violent, and has apparently led to recent assassination attempts and actual assassination.

Based on Xerxes’s quoted list, Trump has rescued the US from a developing dictatorship of the left.

Whether he might in turn become a dictator remains to be seen. However, Xerxes asserts that “strong men” tend to be Cluster B personalities (the “Dark Triad”). “Dark personalities tend to strive for positions of power.” All politicians strive for positions of power. Never mind Trump; it stands to reason that we are always largely ruled by ruthless men and women.

This is a strong argument for limiting the scope and power of government. As Republicans advocate; as Trump is trying to do. 

Try to find a dictator working to shrink government.  The concept is incoherent.

“Ben-Ghiat defines the tactics of authoritarian rulers as self-proclaimed saviors of a nation”

Again, all politicians make more or less this claim.

“They typically use masculinity as a symbol of strength and as a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority.”

Here’s a good example of scapegoating men. This equates “masculinity” with “taking what you want, and getting away with it.”

It changes nothing to falsely claim it is Trump saying this, not you. He never said this, and no one on the right would. This is entirely from the left.

Xerxes declares Trump’s economic performance “dismal.” Grok calls it “mixed.” Trump’s idea of using tariffs to improve the economy is inevitably going to cause an initial hit, even if Trump’s concept is correct; but in order to improve things in the longer term: “short term pain for long term gain.” It is obviously too soon to tell if it works. But early indications are surprisingly good: second quarter annualized growth in the US was 3.8%. Compare China at an estimated (probably inflated) 3.95%; Japan 0.9%; Canada 1%; France 0.9%; Germany 0.7%; UK 1.4%. It is hard to see this as a dismal performance.

Psychology and Religion

I am disturbed by a recent casual conversation with two guys who are both certified clinical psychologists. Between them, they seemed to believe every mass delusion and “conspiracy theory” currently on the market. I may not know much, but as a writer and a student of world mythologies, I can generally spot an urban legend when I hear one. They seemed to have no such ability. They believe whatever they hear on YouTube, generated by algorithms designed to feed them what they want to hear. I thought of the phrase, “the blind leading the blind.”

How are these people qualified to give advice to others on life, on what is real, on values? When they are so suggestible and easily misled themselves? Why do we think they have any such qualifications? 

To advise others on what is real, or good, or advantageous, we need a firm grip on some objective standard. We need to know what is real, or good, or advantageous; we cannot teach what we do not know. Psychology does not know.

This is the task of religion, or religion and philosophy. 

Whether any one religion is true or false, if any life advice is to be found, this is the only place it is to be found. By definition. “Worship” means “worth-ship,” determining the value and reality of things. “What is real?” is a religious question. “What is good?” is a religious question. “What is the good life?” is a religious question.

The great universal faiths agree on most things; psychology is an outlier. One could do better relying on any one of them.

Intolerance as a Virtue

Matt Walsh argues that intolerance is a virtue.

I’d say he is directionally right, if overstated. His statement should not be shocking. Sometimes tolerance is the right thing; sometimes intolerance is the right thing. It is sinister that we are all taught that only tolerance is a virtue.

It is good to be merciful, magnanimous, tolerant, in victory. It is gravely evil to be tolerant of evil when you could do something to end it. “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” “None so guilty as the innocent bystander.”

Would it be good to tolerate Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jews? To tolerate child rape and infanticide? To tolerate Kitty Genovese being raped in your stairwell? To tolerate salmonella in the market goods?

This idolatry of tolerance is bundled with the false claim that Jesus models tolerance in the Bible. He does not. He is the divine judge. He was systematically intolerant of the scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees. He was intolerant of the money-changers in the temple. He was strict with the wealthy young man, demanding he give up all he owns, and demanding of his followers, saying they must despise their father and their mother, their wife and children, and take up their cross. He was stricter that Moses with his Ten Commandments: don’t even look at another woman with lust in your heard. Don’t even insult your brother. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

This further neatly parallels the false claim that “diversity is our strength.” Diversity at best must be balanced with unity, or it is purely destructive. Purity is a virtue; diversity is not.

It is the council of Satan to urge and demand tolerance and diversity. This is what the worst people want. It gives them free rein. Devils are by nature multiple; diversity is of their essence. “My name is Legion.” “Pandemonium.” “She had seven devils.”

Contrast “The Lord your God is One.”

Appeal to Heaven

So Doug Ford has taken $75 million of taxpayer money, and spent it to undermine trade talks with the US.

While Carney is chumming with China.

It is as though Canadians have a death wish. We are like ungrateful, spoiled children. 

We cannot blame our leaders. We recently voted Ford and Carney right back into office to do this, to fight America instead of make a deal.

This is well calculated to kill Ontario’s auto industry, and force Alberta to separate.

It seems of a piece with our placid acceptance of multiculturalism, of mass immigration, of a prime minister who claims there is no such thing as Canadian culture, and of outrageous land claims and claims of genocide by the native peoples.

Come back, Bond Head. All is forgiven. We are not capable of self-government.

The Pendulum in Full Swing

Things may look bad, but there is much reason for hope. The pendulum is in full swing. Let’s do a score card.

Transgenderism is dead. “Gender-affirming care” is dead.

Multiculturalism is dead. “Diversity” is dead. Mass immigration is dead.

Atheism is dead. Scientism is dead.

Feminism is dead. “Affirmative action” is dead. Men are being listened to. Women are no longer given free passes.

Censorship is dead. Political correctness is dead.

The legacy media is dead. The gatekeepers no longer have a gate.

Xi is reputedly in trouble in China; rumours persist and grow. Putin is reputedly in trouble in Russia; evidence grows that Ukraine is winning that war, incredibly, against mighty Russia. Lukashenko is reputedly in trouble in Belarus. Cuba and Venezuela are reportedly struggling to keep the lights on. Japan has just elected a Trumpian “far right” leader, joining Argentina, Italy, and the US. 

Left-wing or centrist parties in power are doing poorly in the polls. Macron is in trouble in France. Starmer in Britain has record low poll numbers. The government of the Netherlands has collapsed. The government of Germany is barely hanging on, in grand coalition, and unpopular. In each case, this is at the hands of some new “populist” party, not the traditional opposition.

Major figures are abandoning the left and moving right day by day and month by month: Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, John Fetterman, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, and on and on. Being on the new right is becoming the cool place to be.

The grand trend is clear. An old order is passing.

Bad as things have gotten, it is often necessary to hit bottom in order to see the need for change. The world is waking, like a recovering alcoholic, from its destructive delusions. Many things may soon be possible. We may see a period of great creative ferment.

Is Any Established Organization Corrupt?

Scoffing at the idea of a Chinese Community Party “anti-corruption campaign,” a Falun Gong commentator observes that all Chinese Communist Party leaders are corrupt. It’s like the Mafia, he explains. Anyone who is not corrupt is a threat to the others. He will not be allowed to take any position of power. He will always be an outsider. To rise in the party, you must have blood on your hands.

This is probably true of any well-established organization. Human nature demands it. What could prevent it?

It is apparently also true of the leadership of the USA. We see the curtain raised, at least partially, on “Hellfire Clubs” at Epstein Island and at P. Diddy’s “white parties.” Anybody who was anybody was there. To enter the elite, you had to do something compromising. This ensured you would never blow the whistle on others. You were then trusted by the others and given positions of prominence and leadership.

Only this explains the desperate opposition to Trump: he was not compromised, and so was a threat to the others. It seems also to explain the desperate opposition, within the Democratic Party, to RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, either of whom would have been ideal standard-bearers for the party in electoral terms. They were not trusted to do the wrong thing. Conversely, it explains how Bernie Sanders, or Pete Buttigieg, fell so meekly into line and folded what looked like winning hands in the primary process. They must have been compromised; the elite club had some hold on them.

Further, Trump’s record of accomplishment since being re-elected suggests how much corruption has held the nation captive. There were always special interests acting against the common good. 

It seems clear there is a similar dynamic in the Conservative Party of Canada; and in the Liberal Party of Canada.

And of course in the hierarchy of the Catholic church. This is necessary to explain the pontificate of Francis, which seemed to be fighting against the interests of the church. It is an open secret.

There is a similar dynamic in the universities and schools; one is not admitted to faculty, or to certification, unless one asserts certain approved and obviously false dogmas. If not necessarily oneself openly immoral, one must openly endorse immorality.

There seems to be a similar dynamic in the professions.

How can one break this sort of corruption?

Democracy is designed for this. There is nothing magical about the will of the people; the majority is not always right. But a periodic popular vote serves as a counterbalance against control by a corrupt clique. Without it, China is trapped. With it, albeit with great difficulty, the US seems to have begun a process of cleaning up the swamp.

The free market is designed for this. Given open competition, virtue will be rewarded with more customers. The problem with the professions and the academies is that they are cartels, where democracy and the free market cannot do their magic.

For the church, we have the Bible, and past ecumenical councils, as an objective check. And we have a free market: if any one denomination becomes too openly corrupt, any individual parishioner can walk out the door, and across the street to a different church.

For the academies, the internet may be bringing us a solution. YouTube allows for open public debate among prominent academics. There is coming to be an open market in virtual lectures. 

For the professions, AI and greater access to information with the internet may at least diminish their influence. Indeed, they may largely or entirely disappear.

Dating Advice for Women

The Dating Game

Women commonly claim that they do not want to attract men. That is their business. And so we have MGTOW. But if there are any women out there who like men, I offer a few tips on how to attract that hated and despised male gaze. Because it is easy if you want to try. There is so little competition.

You see a lot of women on YouTube giving dating advice to men on how to attract women. Interestingly, you never see advice from men on how to attract men. Presumably women don’t want to know. "How dare he?"

I do it out of love for women.

First point: most men are not looking for a beautiful woman. They don’t want a ten; too high maintenance. They want a six who adores them. Concentrate on being affectionate. Hug and kiss. In society, men rarely get fussed over. They crave it.

Studies show that the rush women get by hearing “I love you” is equivalent to men merely hearing “thank you.” So simple and easy; no commitment required; yet men rarely hear it. Be appreciative.

Be cheerful. Most women seem to be cross and angry at the world, and it is depressing to be around someone who is always depressed and complaining. People want to be around people who make them happy.

On the other hand, by all means ask a man to help you with something. Give him a quest; men love to serve women. This will bond him to you. But it has to be a problem with a clear and attainable resolution. And when he solves it, show appreciation. Many women currently make a point of belittling men’s efforts in their behalf.

Do not dress too well; do not wear fancy jewelry. The dress or earring looks nice, not you. The message the man gets is, “this woman has expensive tastes; she will probably expect me to pay for it.”

The same is true of excessive makeup. Makeup is also a mask; if it is too obvious, the man gets the message that you are hiding something. Also that you have crass tastes; your concerns are superficial. You want to look nice, to show you want his attention, but still natural.

Do not show skin. That will get you sex, not care or commitment. The message the man gets is “this woman is open for business. I’m nothing special to her.”

Wear your hair long. This is profoundly seductive; hair is your greatest weapon. Simple principle: men are attracted to women, not men. The less like a man you make yourself look, the more attractive you will be.

For the same reason, wear skirts and dresses, not pants. Long skirts. Frills are better than cutaways.

Feeding a man creates a strong instinctive bond. It is too forward to invite him to your place for a meal; but bake something for him as a gift. If you are not a good cook, this is something to work on, if you want to attract and keep a man. 

Don’t worry too much about your weight. Women want other women to be skinnier than men prefer. The true standard of beauty is to look healthy. Your typical runway model looks tubercular or anorexic. That said, if your waist is broader than your hips, you also begin to look unhealthy.

If you want commitment, rather than sex, do not jump into bed with him. This seems so obvious it should not need further elaboration. If you are easy with him, you will be easy with other guys. Not wife material.

It is a common misconception among women that men do not like smart women. This is completely wrong. Natural instinct and evolutionary pressures dictate that you want the smartest possible mother for your children. Being "accomplished" has always been highly valued in a wife. Cultivate and show off whatever talents you have. If you wear glasses, all the better. Men love nerdy girls, and love the thought that only they will see you with your glasses off.

That said, exceptionally intelligent women will face the same problems as exceptionally intelligent men in finding a match. Everyone is intimidated around people much smarter than they are.

You may have noticed a huge trend of American and European men marrying Asian women. This is because Asian women generally tend to follow these rules: expressing appreciation, dressing and acting feminine, trying to stay cheerful, valuing and showing their skills and intelligence.

In the West, feminism has cajoled women into making themselves as unattractive to men as possible. If that’s the way you want to go, fine. But if you want a relationship with a good man, you are going to have to resist feminism.

The Duty to be Cheerful

A new study has found that depression is contagious. As of course it is; nobody needed a study to know that.

This being true, it is our moral duty to those around us, and especially our intimate partners and our children, to try to keep a stiff upper lip, even if we do not really feel it.

This is perhaps the gravest failing in a wife and mother: to be always complaining. This is the stereotype of the nagging wife, or of the “Jewish mother.” They become a terrible burden on those around them.

It is equally important for the husband and father to stay stoic and not be forever complaining. But men are raised to be stoic, and shunned in society if they whine. Women are indulged. The legend of the Princess and the Pea tells the story. 

Indeed, feminism has legitimized and institutionalized constant female complaining. 

Is Islam Dying?

One never knows what to believe. I keep seeing contradictory assertions on the net. Even assertions coming with solid data: data can be falsified or misrepresented. Scott Adams avers that “all data is false.” 

I hear one moment that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion.

Then I hear that Islam is collapsing, and Muslims are apostacizing in droves.

All one can do is rely on faith and common sense.

I suspect the latter is more likely the case: that Islam is at least in danger of collapse.

The growth of Islam in recent decades, I gather, had to do with Muslims simply having more children on average than the Christian or secular West. And Muslim birth rates are now apparently collapsing as well. The temporary divergence perhaps had only to do with Muslim countries being less developed than Christian ones. Trends arrive there later.

My strongest evidence that Islam is dying is the worldwide trend to Islamic terrorism. Anger and violence is how people react when they have lost an important argument decisively. It is what you might do when you feel the rug has been pulled out from under you. You want to lash out at the person who destroyed your comfortable world view and self-image.

The reality may be somewhat hidden by the fact that Islam decrees death for apostasy. That being so, apostates are not going to be public about it. The number of actual Muslims might be a fraction of the nominal figures. The instant the threat of punishment is removed, there might be a huge visible exodus. So collapse cold be sudden.

I read that fewer books were translated into Arabic over the past 500 years than are translated into Spanish every year. If true, Islam may have kept deceptively strong by simply avoiding critical examination.

Now, inevitably, especially thanks to the internet, Muslim lands are opening up to the wider world. Islam may be unable to compete in the open theatre of ideas.

And I perceive that it is not losing to secularism, but to Christianity.

AI Predictions from a Non-Expert

 

How do you feel today?

I have seen a prediction that significant job loss due to AI will be evident by 2028.

This prediction is of course incompatible with the drive by various governments for mass levels of immigration. If the AI prediction is correct, we are only importing mass levels of unemployment. Wouldn’t it be wise to at least wait and see? Or, to be safe, to bring in only temporary guest workers?

Experts are usually wrong, of course. They are likely to be wrong about the need for mass immigration, and they are likely to be wrong about the AI impact on jobs. Making it a wash. Whenever government intervenes, the results are likely to make things worse.

This is not just a casual statement, nor an expression of cynicism. It is demonstrable. Experts are less likely to be correct in their predictions than either a coin toss or a man in the street interview. Studies show this, repeatedly. And there are good reasons for this. It is always in the interest of the experts to predict some dramatic change. This gets them attention and publication; and convinces the public that their expertise is needed. And there is no down side. Just as with fortune-tellers, nobody remembers predictions that turn out to be wrong. But should you get lucky, you become immortal.

However, while experts will always predict dramatic change, dramatic change is actually rare. In most cases, the best prediction is the boring one that things will continue on more or less as they are. And that gets you no attention. And gives governments no excuse to extend their power and influence.

Remember that next time you are warned about climate change.

If AI is going to start replacing jobs, I, being no expert, predict that the one profession that should be most concerned is medical doctors. Their expertise is diagnosis of illnesses, and writing matching prescriptions. The process is mechanical. It seems obvious that AI can diagnose and prescribe more reliably than a human. And because MDs earn so much, there is huge business case for replacing them. Suddenly health care costs are manageable again—a huge public and private expense. I suspect they would have been replaced already were it not for their political power as a lobby; but they must be living on borrowed time.

Clinical psychologists ought to go next. What they do is exactly what AI chatbots are already perfectly capable of: to agree with and echo back whatever the patient feels and thinks. An ersatz non-judgmental friend.

Is there any need for supervision of these chatbots? Not beyond that of the user. And, indeed, for the sake of privacy, a machine is preferable to a human. Moreover, you can make the chatbot exceptionally physically attractive, improving the experience and making the friendship seem more valuable; you can even let the patient select the physical features he feels most comfortable with. A human therapist is rather hit and miss. Nor will a chatbot take advantage of the patient, the way therapists are often discovered to do.

Nor can we tell all the unemployed therapists and doctors to learn to code. Actual coding is probably best done, again, by AI.

Will AI Be the End of Us?

As of a couple of years ago, I was not worried about AI. But the fact that Elon Musk is worried makes me worried. Let’s try to think this through.

My fundamental reason not to be worried was, put simply, if some AI system gets out of control, you can always pull the plug. Not necessarily literally, but it seems simple and obvious to build in a kill switch, so that you can cut power if it goes rogue. As AI gets more completely integrated into our lives, this might become more disruptive; but it is still surely fairly straightforward to craft systems that can be shut down incrementally with a minimum of disruption. Built-in redundancy is a standard engineering principle.

Simple-minded of me? What about more subtle matters, like job loss? What about the possibility that humans are made obsolete by AI?

I’ve had that discussion since the advent of desktop computers in the early 1980s. And it has really been going on since the days of Ned Ludd—since the days of Plato. At every new technological advance, people express this same worry. At the advent of the machine age in the 19th century, everyone feared there would be mass unemployment; and wealth would concentrate at the top. It did not happen. People invested the improved productivity in owning more stuff. General wealth expanded, and greater equality of wealth.

This happened again with the advent of computers. And with the advent of the World Wide Web.

So why not with AI?

There is an argument that AI is different: AI replaces the last human bit, the brain overseeing the operation of the machine. When self-driving cars have fewer accidents than mortal drivers, isn’t that the omega point? The machines can run themselves.

What they do still need is any purpose. They need a human to tell them the destination. Without humans, there is no place to go.

This argues that the greatest need in future will be for philosophers, theologians, creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. AI will take over STEM and the professions. But it seems to me a computer cannot address purpose or meaning, any more than science and technology can.

Scott Adams thinks that AI has an absolute limit, and will always need human supervision, because it “hallucinates.” In other words, by its nature, artificial “intelligence” cannot make judgements about reality. Only humans can; human consciousness is a sort of divine spark.

How many jobs will there be for philosophers, creatives, and entrepreneurs? Quite likely, a lot. When the AI and the machines can so easily turn ideas into products, when every individual already owns a printing press, a broadcast network, an AI accountant, an AI lawyer, a 3-D printer, we may again simply move to more employment, greater wealth, and greater equality.

Thanksgiving

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. It is a time to thank God for our many blessings.

The most obvious thing to be thankful for today is the release, after two grueling years, of the last twenty surviving Israeli hostages. We can hope as well for an end to the war in Gaza. Not for justice over the initial terrorist assault, perhaps; not in this life. But an end to their suffering, and an end one hopes the suffering of the people of Gaza.

I, for one, and I am not alone, am thankful for President Trump. I was originally skeptical; I thought his nomination in 2016 was a disaster. But he seems to have worked miracles for the US, and set an example for the world, perhaps pulling civilization itself back from the brink.

I am thankful for Pope Leo XIV. No; to be honest, I do not know yet how Leo’s pontificate will turn out. I am really grateful for the end of the pontificate of Pope Francis. I feel immense relief at Francis’s passing. Not to prejudge his fate in the next world, he was terrible as pope. Leo seems at least a conciliatory figure. And I feel it is a good thing to have a pope from the USA.

I am thankful for the general apparent collapse of the “woke” culture; the culture war seems to be over and won. We are in the mopping up phase. The importance of this is beyond calculation. Culture is everything.

Connected to this, I am thankful for what appears to be a renaissance of interest in Catholicism and serious Christianity in the US and in Europe. Celebrities are publicly converting; Christianity and theism have won the intellectual battle over the “New Atheists” and scientism. This will move through the culture over the coming years.

I am grateful for the death of modernism in architecture. We lived recently through an awful era of public ugliness. We seem now to be in recovery. Everybody now acknowledges modernism is drear.

I am thankful for the improvements that technology has brought into our lives. We so readily forget how much has changed in the computer age. Many things were more difficult and expensive before smartphones, before desktop computers, before the Internet, before AI. Entertainment of all kinds is now at our fingertips, and much of it free. Information of all kinds is now at our fingertips, and without filter, to the alarm of established powers, much of it free. Anyone can in effect own a printing press and a broadcast studio; all voices can be heard. We can speak to and even see people anywhere in the world, in real time, at will.

Just think back a few generations ago: party line telephones, long distance was too expensive except for special occasions. Airplane flights were too expensive for most. Entertainment was a black and white TV, radio, and visits to the local cinema. For information, you had the newspaper, two or three news shows for one half hour a night, newsmagazines, and your local library. My grandparents had no indoor plumbing.

For all this—let’s be honest—we owe gratitude to “capitalists,” at least to a certain sort of “capitalist,” the entrepreneurs, who are men of vision. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, and Steven Jobs. They ought to be celebrated culture heroes.

I am thankful for all the food we now have available to us in all seasons. Not just the fresh and frozen produce, where earlier generations had to weather the winter on canned fruits and vegetables, pickles and preserves. Also the discovery of and access to a variety of cuisines earlier generations knew not: Indian food, Korean dishes, Thai dishes, Middle Eastern dishes, Mexican cuisine. Conversely, these countries are now familiar with hamburgers and poutine. In my youth, my Canadian hometown did not even have a pizzeria. Food is a central part of life; improvement here is a significant life improvement.

We are not as aware as we should be of the general decline of starvation and poverty worldwide. The whole world is developing. When I was young, even Southern Europe was desperately poor. China was starving, India was starving, Africa was starving. We do not hear any longer of mass starvations. The typical modern “Third World” problem is traffic: too many people can suddenly afford cars, and the infrastructure is not ready for it.

As a Canadian, I am profoundly grateful to have the USA next door. In this, we could not be luckier—other than being Americans ourselves. The US shares our culture and is the richest and most influential nation in the world. It is easy for us to emigrate, as most people around the world would love to. And we benefit from being next door, just as an individual would benefit from living next to the richest man in town; and perhaps running a convenience store. In many ways, it gives us a free ride.

We can be grateful that, as Stephen Pinker has shown, war and violence has declined over the years. There are conflicts and tensions today, but at a lower level than even in my youth, when we had Viet Nam and fears of imminent nuclear holocaust. The horrors of the early twentieth century begin to look like a historical anomaly; general war may indeed have become unthinkable. Nuclear weapons may have made it impossible. And any future war, should it occur, may be fought entirely remotely, with drones and robot vehicles.

The evil empire Reagan spoke of, the Communist Bloc, which once looked so sinister, evaporated like a mirage 35 years ago, freeing Eastern Europe. Vietnam has largely abandoned communism; China has opened up, at least economically. Cuba looks like it is in its last throes as a Communist system. Twenty percent of the population, mostly the top professionals, have emigrated recently.

We no longer need to fear the diseases that were once scourges, the greatest fears we faced. And no so long ago: tuberculosis, scarlet fever, polio, smallpox. Even AIDS; we all so recently feared dying of AIDS. Now we only speak of being “HIV-positive.” Perhaps slower than might be the case, medical science is reducing pain and extending life.

I feel uneasy expressing gratitude to God for personal things, for it seems to lack empathy for those who are not so lucky. But for all these things, I think all Canadians can be thankful.

Politics and the English Language

Friend Xerxes in his latest column argues, quoting another writer, that “violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.”

This is wrong, in a variety of ways. This condones violence.

If it were true, we would expect the survivors of the Nazi death camps, once released, to have been particularly violent. In fact, we found the opposite: they were notably unlikely to be arrested for any violent crimes. We would expect the depressed to be particularly violent. In fact, they are much less likely to commit violence than the general population. We would obviously never punish a child for misbehaviour: it would make them more violent. And prisons would make crime worse. 

Yet this is apparently the common opinion on the left. This is why they imagine that defunding the police would reduce crime.

The ancient and universal wisdom is that suffering teaches us not to inflict suffering on others. It teaches empathy. In the words of the I Ching, “through suffering we learn to lessen rancor.” This is indeed the reason suffering exists; why a good God would create a world in which suffering is possible.

So, too, coddling or spoiling a child creates a bully.

The claim that violence comes from suffering is well calculated to increase the general level of violence and suffering. It justifies violence, rewards violence, and encourages us to shun the suffering. They are, after all, violent—so we tell ourselves.

Xerxes then points out that “Violence is not limited to inflicting physical harm.”

It is, in fact, physical harm by definition.

Violence (Merriam-Webster): “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy.”

(American Heritage): “Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury: the violence of the rioters.”

This leads us in very dark directions: to justifying violence in response to speech. To the end of all civil discourse, or democracy, or human rights.

But even more disturbing, when I point out to Xerxes the dictionary definition, his response is “You shouldn’t let yourself be straitjacketed by dictionary definitions.” And he simply reiterates that “verbal abuse is a form of violence, directed against another. … As is emotional blackmail: ‘If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to leave you.’ Shutting down social security networks, so that people starve, is a form of violence.”

This makes a fairly explicit claim to a right to use violence against your political opponents: against those who would “shut down social security networks.”

I also find it sinister that his example of emotional blackmail is “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to leave you.” This is actually seen from the point of view of the abuser. The abused inevitably wants to get away; the abuser wants the victim to stay. And the abuser will accuse the abused of abuse. Perhaps this says everything.

But neither of these considerations are as central as Xerxes’s, and the left’s, claimed right to overrule the dictionary and take command of language itself. Both language and all human society collapses at the point people demand the right to change the meaning of words: if any word can mean anything, no word means anything. And this is just what the left is doing now, systematically. 

Aside from “violence,” consider how they have subverted the English pronouns; the word “phobia”; “genocide”; “exceptional”; “indigenous”; “aboriginal”; “woke”; “progressive”; “liberal”; “Fascist”; “Nazi”; “racism”; the list grows daily.

George Orwell pointed out that the most pernicious and dangerous form of totalitarianism is an attempt to control the language itself. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Sin vs. Guilt

 

Let me rant.

I suspected trouble when the handout for the session said that Jesus’s crucifixion justified us, and “justified” meant “just as if I’d never sinned.”

Typical of the day; perhaps of the human condition. Everyone is looking for a “get out of jail free” card.

So I can sin all I want, because I’m a Christian? What is purgatory all about? Why does the priest assign a penance after confession?

This was clearly the common modern “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. Self-centred materialism cloaking itself in the mantle of Christianity. As seems to have taken over all the churches. 

To this form of “feel good” religion, the problem is not sin. No, it is feeling guilty. 

It follows that we must not condemn sin in another. That might damage their self-esteem.

Someone asked, “what if I still feel unresolved anger towards someone?” And the response was not spiritual advice; it was to see a therapist. 

Therapy exists as a replacement for religion. Therapy refuses to recognize sin or morality.

Defining “sin,” the group leader cited Iron Man and Captain America as his text. Iron Man was about satisfying his desires. Captain America was about duty. And the proper path was to reconcile the two, and achieve both.

So you sin if you do your duty, and forget your own desires. You do what is right so long as it is in accord with what you want to do.

The issue of sex outside of marriage inevitably came up. It was important, no doubt, to raise it in order to dispel any sense of false guilt. One participant noted that it was unselfish, as it harmed no one.

General assent.

Another participant chimed in that marriage existed to protect women, it was a civil contrast, really. And adultery was considered perfectly okay until Christianity stepped in.

The chilling thing is that neither of these assertions take the slightest thought for the welfare of children. By the nature of the sex act, they are liable to be involved. Modern man clearly has contempt for children.

Not that casual sex has no other victims. It reduces the partner to a means, not an end. The essence of immorality, as Kant pointed out.

It is also worth noting, as I did at the meeting, that adultery was punishable by death in many non-Christian societies.

The group leader explained that sin was simply “missing the mark,” like an arrow missing its target.

I have heard this as a Muslim concept of sin. But it is not the Christian concept. The Catholic concept of grave (mortal) sin requires a willful turning away from what we know we should do. We must be conscious of the gravity of the matter, fully in control  of our actions, and do it anyway.

CCC para 1857 “For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: ‘Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.’"

It is not missing the mark. It is firing in the opposite direction.

And it certainly beggars the conscience to maintain that Hitler or Mengele were perfectly decent, well-intentioned fellows, but just made an oopsie.

This is an effort to excuse sin.

Tied to this, the group leader of course stressed the need to forgive; representing this as Christ’s way. 

He, and the group, deliberately ignored Jesus’s requirement that the guilty party admit guilt. So that the imperative was, in fact, to endorse sin.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Jesus did not even accept an apology and admission of guilt, if he felt it was not sincere: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

The cruelty here is unspeakable: telling someone who has been grievously wronged that they are in the wrong for not forgiving, rather than commiserating with them. It traps them in a cycle of abuse. Picture someone punching you in the face repeatedly, each time demanding you forgive him, then punching you again.

It is perfect pharisaism. Every religion will be infested with pharisaism, a desperate attempt to invert its message, by evildoers.

Jesus Reveals the True Meaning of Faith

 

 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

The Lord replied, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

"Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here immediately and take your place at table'? Would he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished'? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?

So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"

This was the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass.

Jesus’s initial statement is striking: if anyone has the slightest faith, they can order trees to uproot and grow on the surface of the ocean.

It would seem to follow that nobody has even the slightest faith. Because nobody can do that. Doesn’t that mean all is lost?

No, wait—I can do that. I can make a mulberry tree uproot itself and float upright on the ocean. I can do it in my imagination, in my mind’s eye. Anyone who has a decent imagination can do it. And we can draw it, too, or put it in a story.

So what Jesus is actually telling us is that faith = imagination. Or rather, faith is the willing suspension of disbelief, the ability to accept that the world of the imagination, and not the material world, is the real world. Our imagination is the kingdom of heaven, or our window into it.

But although the kingdom of heaven is in this sense within, we are also not in the kingdom of heaven now. We are living in a material world, where we must tend to our ploughs and our flocks, earning our daily upkeep by the sweat of our brow. This is what Jesus goes on to point out: we are servants spending most of our time just maintaining ourselves. And when we have free time—we ought to be taking the products of the fields, and using them to feed God. “You may eat and drink when I am finished.”

The kingdom of heaven is our reward, once we have done this—presumably, in the next life.

And this stands to reason. There must be some need for the material world; otherwise, why did God create it? Why not have us born into heaven?

The need is not simply to prove our worthiness for the world to come, although this might be reason enough. We are here to accomplish something God needs us to accomplish: to feed him.

That is, to take the produce of the fields, of the material world, and fashion something from it that will satisfy him.

Which seems to me to describe the process of creating art. In making art, we are co-creators with God; we are completing his plan for creation.

The Democrats Dance in their Hats

The sombrero memes furor makes me think the old saying needs to be amended: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” It seems to work on the downslope as well: “First they win, then you become an object of fun, then they can safely ignore you.” We seem to be at the object of fun stage now at which the MAGA right has won the culture wars. Th pretensions of the left begin to look absurd.

Part of the power of the sombrero meme is that Hakim Jeffries, Chuck Shumer, and the elected left generally is always so grim and so angry. It is hard to picture them smiling, or many other prominent leftist politicians. In the case of Shumer, I visualize a smirk, which is not the same thing. That makes them especially mockable—their apparent sense of superiority and self-importance.

The measure of the meme’s effectiveness is the criticisms leveled by the left. I have heard it called “insane,” “filth,” “disgusting,” and, of course, “racist.”

Is the sombrero and the mariachi music racist? It is certainly stereotyped, but there is nothing offensive about the stereotype. Part of the delight of the meme is that it expresses liberation from the humourless leftist prohibition on ethnic jokes. Why wouldn’t a Mexican be proud of mariachi music and a distinctive ethnic hat?

I try to imagine the Irish equivalent; as that is my own primary ethnicity. An image of Trump, or RFK Jr., or Nicole Shanahan, with white clay pipes in their mouths and stepdancers throwing up gold pieces? Nope, I still think it is funny and somehow liberating.

The sombrero meme does play on the idea of Mexicans as “the other.” This could be worrying. But in this case, they genuinely are the other, and that is the whole point: extending taxpayer-funded health care to non-citizens. So it has to be fair comment.

And I like mariachi music.