Catholic comments on the passing parade.
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| A community gathering in Nuremberg |
An annoyingly common phrase in the popular culture these days is “my community,” or “the X community.”
Community is a good thing, but in this case, it does not refer to a neighbourhood or small town. It refers to a tribe: “the black community”; “the LGBTQ community.” It implies that you have nothing in common with, and do not want to spend any time with, anyone who does not share some random, usually physical, characteristic.
It is radical apartheid.
Since childhood modern suburbs have horrified me. What could be worse than living in one? The deadening sameness; the lack of any sense of community; the labyrinthine streets designed to be hostile to escape. They are the stuff of nightmares. They seem designed to promote conformity. Just as might be most desirable to an oppressive totalitarian government.
It is apparently not just me who thinks so. Locally, there have always been jokes about having to live in "Scarberia." Yet people are forced to do so, everywhere, against their will.
They are also oppressive to the poor. They make it necessary to own a car, and to use it to do anything. They require you to pay for a front yard, of no use to you. They offer no inexpensive row housing or apartments. They prohibit any jobs nearby.
The cities of Europe or Asia are infinitely more interesting and charming; and not because they are older. When I lived in Seoul, it was a revelation that even the remotest suburbs had charm, street life and amenities. And densities to support decent public transit.
The problem is zoning bylaws. It seems to me that zoning bylaws have always been used maliciously. Urban planning has always been malicious. Give somebody such power over others, and you will attract the power-mad. Other than setting aside some land for parks, streets, and public utilities, a mere absence of rules would have produced a better result. The market would have forced development of just what people wanted and most needed. We would have diversity. We would have services and work nearby. We would not have the frightening housing shortages and high housing costs we now face in Canada. Nor would we have the urban sprawl and high carbon dioxide emissions environmentalists so lament.
It could all be fixed, if not quickly, by repealing zoning bylaws. That’s a cause I wish some provincial or municipal political party would take up.
Having been through the entire original run of Corner Gas, I’m now binge-watching Schitt’s Creek. After a couple of decades abroad, it is a good reorientation to Canadian culture.
Both follow the Canadian tradition of focusing on small town life; like Sunshine Sketches, Anne of Green Gables, or Alice Munro. But they are very different in tone. Corner Gas relies on a more distinctly Canadian sort of comedy: nobody is allowed to take themselves too seriously. Nobody is better than anybody else. There is no fourth wall. And it is laugh-out-loud funny.
Schitt’s Creek is more like an American comedy in having both straight men and clowns. You are supposed to laugh at some characters, not others. Some are serious. The overall tone is more serious; people can get hurt. And I have only been moved to laugh out loud once in the first season.
One element, however, besides the occasional place references, makes Schitt’s Creek feel Canadian. Formulaically in comedy, since the ancient Greeks, characters we are supposed to laugh at are from the lower class, and most often rural: “clown” originally meant a hayseed.
Compare Green Acres, an old American sitcom built on a premise similar to Schitt’s Creek. We were expected to see it all from the point of view of the city people; the rurals were exotics. Or Beverley Hillbillies, a reverse of the Schitt’s Creek premise: the rurals were sympathetic characters, but odd and foolish.
Now look at Schitt’s Creek. The rurals are the straight men; we are to laugh at the odd and foolish upper class people from the city. The locals are more sensible, and always outsmart them.
This strikes me as an expression of the Canadian character. Culturally, we are profoundly democratic, and an essentially rural people.
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| Poor people: not as spiritually uplifting to look at as wildflowers. |
Friend Xerxes laments that a local hiking trail he has been accustomed to use to view wildflowers has now been fenced off to allow the construction of a new subdivision. “In our social structure,” he observes, “private property is close to sacred.”
In the video clip. A college student asks Frank Turek whether she is going to hell.
Turek of course does not want to say so. He dodges the question. But in fact, she is a good example of someone bound for hell.
She says she is a “good” person. She of course hopes this is sufficient. But her definition of “good” is “according to the standards of our society,” and in the expectation that others will treat her the same.
This is what the Bible condemns in the passage
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Doing whatever society expects is an abdication of moral responsibility. It is taking society and your own well-being as God. Idolatry is a far graver sin than lying, theft, or murder.
Speaking of which, some of my students troubled me recently. The text was on lying. And the book asked the question, “Is it ever all right to lie?”
“Sure,” they answered. “If nobody finds out.”
At the beginning of the clip, Turek has just asked the student, “If God exists and if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?”
She answers “there is no proof that I would be able to accept.”
When he offers her a book to read on condition that she promise to read it, she at first will not do so. I wonder if Turek meant this as a test. It demonstrates that she is not looking for the truth.
This is the essential qualification for heaven. This is what true faith means: to seek truth. The Christian God is “the way, the truth, and the light.”
Not wanting truth means rejecting God. And Turek is right in his definition of heaven: heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of God. If we reject God in life, we choose for ourselves to go to hell.
I suspect in the end this woman will find her way. I sense a tremor in her voice when she asks about hell. She finally does promise to read the book. Part of her is seeking; otherwise, she would not have come to the talk. She is at least hearing the voice of her good angel.
It is those who will not read the book if offered, who are surely going to hell.
Each of us, before our deaths, perhaps gets that offer.
Useful and I think accurate background for why Hitler started World War Two. I suspect the situation for China today is similar.
The Economist has published an alarming analysis of the situation of Taiwan.
Apparently, China has established naval dominance in the Eastern Pacific. The proximity of the Chinese mainland ensures air dominance over Taiwan. This dominance cannot be reduced without bombing the Chinese mainland.
American wargaming now shows the Chinese winning any confrontation with the US over Taiwan.
The Economist, as always, is relatively sanguine about the prospects. Why would China risk upsetting the global applecart so long as the situation for them is improving year over year?
I am less sanguine. If this were their calculus, why march in and take Hong Kong? Why rattle sabres in the South China Sea? Why cross the Zone of Actual Control with India?
It is not clear that things are really improving for China year over year. The calculation in Beijing may be the opposite: that things are likely to collapse unless something is done to reshuffle the deck.
What is really going on in China in economic terms has never been transparent. We must rely on government reporting on their own performance. It seems likely the figures are fake. The prosperity is real, so long as everyone thinks it is real. But it can pop like a soap bubble.
China is progressively less competitive on their prime advantage, cheap labour. Without that, can they compete with the West on innovation and efficiency? I suspect a centrally-planned society intrinsically cannot. The officials in Beijing see the real accounts, and they may look grim.
This, after all, is the obvious explanation for the rapid rise of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian domestic policies. The government feared unrest. Loosening up failed to save the old Soviet regime in Russia; they were determined to do the opposite.
The Soviet Union hit a wall and collapsed: this seems to have been because their economy was all smoke and mirrors. Nazi Germany faced the same dilemma: their impressive economic performance towards the end of the 1930s was based on cooking the books and printing money. Hitler had no choice but to invade neighbouring countries and seize assets to meet the next payroll or debt repayment.
Xi’s China may be in the same situation. They may have taken Hong Kong because they needed the assets. They may have been probing for weakness elsewhere.
They may see a pressing need to take Taiwan.
Taiwan is the world’s largest chipmaker. That is an immense asset. China could rule the market in high-tech.
For this reason, taking Taiwan could also change the balance of power globally. According to someone The Economist quotes, losing Taiwan could be “America’s Suez,” the effective end of US dominance.
In other words, the stakes are gigantic, for both China and the US. The stage is perfectly set for a serious, total war; for neither side can easily accept defeat.
And it would probably be a world war. Australia, India, Japan, are also necessarily deeply concerned should China come to dominate. Britain and France have also recently signaled their concern, sending warships to the area. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Canada, would probably also join an American-led anti-Chinese coalition.
China may bank on the West being too decadent to pull themselves together to resist. And they may be right, Ominously, a poll suggests only 50% of the Taiwanese themselves are prepared to resist if China invades.
But Hitler made the same calculation in 1939, and turned out to get wrong. Imperial Japan made the same calculation in 1941, and turned out to get wrong.
And we thought COVID was the big problem…
CBC’s The National last evening reported that two “church service organizers” in Calgary were arrested for violating lockdown orders. Global News reports the same.
“Church service organizer”? Why the awkward phrase, instead of the standard term, “pastor”?
Perhaps because the two were not ordained by any recognized large Christian denomination?
This is not required. Merriam-Webster defines “pastor” simply as “a spiritual overseer.” The Oxford English Dictionary has “A person who has the spiritual care of a body of Christians.” “Pastor” is the correct term here.
We are at the point, in Canada, in America, in the UK, perhaps across the Western World, at which telling the truth is a dangerous, subversive, brave, even revolutionary act.
But it is essential to keep telling the truth, whatever the consequences. Truth is of ultimate value. If we stop telling the truth, we have invalidated our very existence. Solzhenitsyn said, of the old Soviet Union, that if one day one man woke up determined to say nothing but the truth, the entire enterprise would have collapsed.
That’s where we are.
The obvious example is the one which brought Jordan Peterson to fame: that men are not women. We are now under tremendous pressure on this particular issue. We are not allowed to be neutral: we must endorse the view that men are women.
The second obvious example, in Canada, is the residential schools. We are not allowed to suggest that they were a good thing. Although we are obliged to agree that education is a good thing in all other cumstances.
But why these issue in particular? Of the infinite number of possible lies that can be told, why is all the electrical charge on these particular things?
If, after all, a real woman were addressed as “sir,” or “bro,” would she take great offense? Would this be considered a slur? That trans people do consider it so is a tacit admission that they are lying, and they know they are.
No—the issue is not “misgendering.” It is that one must explicitly endorse the premise that others have the right to lie, and further endorse the premise that those who lie have a right to silence those who seek truth.
A second clue is that this aggressive insistence on lying is focused on sex, and not, say, race, height, age, or weight. One is required to accept and vocally agree if a man says he is a woman; one is not required to accept and agree, at least not yet, if Rachel Dolezal says she is African, or if Elizabeth Warren says she is Indian, or if some sixteen-year-old insists she is eighteen.
That seems to suggest that the underlying truth people want to deny is sexual.
The second prominent aggressive lie is about Canada’s “First Nations.” It may not be so clear that this, too, is about sex; but it is. To our primitive minds, aboriginal culture is all about the absence of supposedly oppressive sexual mores. Accordingly, nothing bad must ever be spoken about aboriginal culture. To do so would be to criticize unrestricted sex.
We make much of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The cause is no mystery; but nobody is allowed to say it. These young girls were either abandoned, or forced to escape, by their birth families. A lack of sexual mores was the obvious problem. We are being forced to very publicly declare it was not.
If aboriginal culture represents unrestricted sex, the residential schools represent the opposite. Because they were run by the churches, their primary intent, in the popular mind, has to have been to impose sexual morality. Or, using the standard euphemism, “erasing native culture.”
Our culture is going totalitarian and decadent, is actually prepared to destroy itself, in order to preserve sexual libertinage.
You, gentle reader, may be reacting badly to my bringing up sexual morality. Isn’t this “puritanism”? Isn’t it all nonsense and foolish inhibition? After all, who is harmed by a supposed sexual sin? Who’s the victim?
The first and obvious answer is, the children. Sex is obviously designed, by God or by nature, for conceiving children. Engage in it randomly, and children are entirely liable to pop up.
The initial premise behind the “sexual revolution” was that, with the new birth control pill, this connection had been broken, and we were now liberated to engage in recreational sex.
That might have worked were birth control one hundred percent effective; but it is not. So free and unrestricted abortion became a thing: mass murder. And we are feeling deeply guilty, and in denial, about that.
But even aside from that, it is callous to suppose there is no victim. Recreational sex necessarily involves viewing another human being as a mere means for physical pleasure. Like we view a steak or a beer. On the unhappy chance that a given sex partner does not see themselves the same way, as a mere slab of meat, and does not see you the same way, as a slab of meat, you are hurting them emotionally, possibly gravely. Emotional blows are at least as cruel as physical blows, and can leave scars at least as deep.
It is time to sober up, gang.
Xerxes has seen an art exhibit on the theme of the nuclear age. He left angered, he reports, at Canada’s “complicity.” Canada; after all, was a participant in the Manhattan Project, The uranium used in the first bombs was mined in Canada, and refined in Canada.
But was unleashing the genie of nuclear power on balance a bad thing? This is far from self-evident, and an interesting question.
For example, when Canada joined in the Manhattan Project, circa 1942, there was good reason to believe that getting to the bomb first would be the difference between ending Nazism and surrendering the world to it--should they have gotten there first. Should any Canadian feel guilt? I think pride is more appropriate.
Today, many are concerned about global warming—even seeing it as some world-ending threat. Nuclear power is our best option to reduce greenhouse gases. Aside from being more practical, it is less harmful to the environment than any alternative. There is something to be said for cheap, clean, essentially unlimited power.
Of course, there is a risk of nasty accidents; that is an engineering challenge. Fire is risky in a similar way, but we have not refused to use it.
Then there is the horror of nuclear war. But even this, since 1945, has been only a theoretical danger. That’s a pretty good safety record in itself. It may be that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” was right: once both sides have nuclear weapons, there is essentially no chance of any high-intensity conflict. It would be suicidal, including for the leader who initiated it. In the first half of the last century, we had two devastating “world wars.” Right up to the invention of the bomb, it looked as though “total war” was going to become a permanent and escalating feature of our existence; the sides were already drawn up for the next big one. This is what Orwell predicted in 1984. It looks as though the bomb ended all that with an exclamation point.
Someday, someone in authority might make a miscalculation, or just not care anymore, and unspeakable devastation might result. But it seems possible that the bomb has been preventing unspeakable devastation for seventy years or so, and counting. That perhaps should be weighed in the balance.
I am pleased to see that some farmers in the US are filing
suit against the federal government for racial discrimination.
The problem is worse in Canada. The Trudeau government is blatantly
setting tax funds aside for female-run and black-run businesses.
Unfortunately, while racial and sexual discrimination is
ultimately illegal in the US, it is legal in Canada. The Canadian Constitution
has a carve-out:
“Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”
As well as a separate carve-out for “aboriginal people.”
Any government can therefore discriminate against any group
so long as they declare their intent to be to balance out some supposed
advantage.
Hitler insisted that ethnic Germans were disadvantaged by the Jews in 1930s Germany. Mussolini insisted that Italians
were disadvantaged as a nation in the 1920s. Jim Crow began in the US South
because white Southerners saw themselves as disadvantaged by the North.
And so it goes.
Odd that I had forgotten about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” An eccentric friend just posted a belated review on his website; I’m grateful for the reminder of something that was once very important to me. When I applied to take a film course back at Queen’s, I cited it as one of my three favourite movies; the other two were “Bonnie and Clyde” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The best thing about it was of course the dialogue. I love me that snappy dialogue. I also find the classical unities compelling, here as in “High Noon,” or “Culloden.” That is, events in the movie take place in real time, centre around the same action, and do not jump (rather than move) to another place. This gives an immediacy, like watching news live as it happens.
I also think the acting was a tour de force, by Burton, Taylor, and Dennis. Especially Dennis.
I have actually met the stage manager for the original run of the play on Broadway. He scoffed at the movie, on the grounds that Taylor was miscast and just did not have the talent to hold up her end as Martha. A cheeky claim, considering that she won a Best Actress Oscar for the role. I think she went all out to prove she was more than just a pretty face, and she succeeded. I suspect my acquaintance just resented the greater fame of the movie version, with which he had no association. “You haven’t really seen it done right if you haven’t seen my version.” Burton is always compelling to watch, and is ideally cast as a history professor.
Although it was Mike Nichols’ directorial debut, I am amazed by his framing. Especially when George goes for the gun; that plays a lot like Hitchcock, the way Nichols uses depth of field to show different things happening in the foreground and background, the swinging light, the gun as it is revealed from under an old carpet, the living room seen from George’s perspective returning, the reaction shots, Martha’s face in closeup. And I think Nichols uses this to make us think we are about to see a Hitchcockian turn, an actual murder. Damn fine.
Watching it all again now, the one thing that doesn’t work for me—is really the most important thing of all. The ending. The problem is, you cannot kill an imaginary character. George and Martha are not facing the cold light of dawn; mourning someone who never really existed is just continuing the fantasy. And logically, since it is a story, and utter improbabilities have already been allowed, and breaking of all conceivable rules, it would be perfectly easy for either George or Martha to declare that the report of Sonny Jim’s death was, after all, mistaken.
Perhaps that was supposed to be the point, that there is no way out for them or for us, that there is no reality, only stories, that Godot does not come.
But if so, if everything is fantasy, why get so worked up in the first place? Why all the drama? Why not Buddhist detachment? One is left feeling cheated. It seems to me there really has to be a hard reality, something worth concealing. But in the movie or the play, we do not get to see what it is. It cannot be the death of an imaginary son, and it cannot be something so pedestrian as not having been able to have children.
I think Martha and Honey are very powerful portraits of two types of narcissism. George and Nick act out two roles family members take to try to cope with narcissism. This is, I think, what really most hooked me on the movie back in the day. I remember having seen it at least three times by second-year Queen’s; no small thing back before VHS or the Internet. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, I recognized these people, knew them well, and the chaos they brought with them. It felt liberating to see it all portrayed on a big screen for the world to see.
And yet, in the end, we do not see where this all comes from, or how it ends.
Acts 4: 8-12
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said: “Leaders of the people and elders:
9 If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved,
10 then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed.
11 He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.
12 There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
Lumen Gentium:
16. Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator, Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, "Preach the Gospel to every creature", the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.
An interesting theological back-and-forth on YouTube, based on last Sunday’s first reading, from Acts, given above. It is a topic of deep interest to me. For some years, I could not see myself as a Catholic due to the misunderstanding that the Church held that only Catholics could be saved. This is obviously wrong, and offensive. No just God would accept this.
So I agree with Bishop Barron, and disagree with Father Goring, here. On the other hand, Bishop Barron is too eager to allow everyone into heaven. Dr. Martin adds a valuable corrective.
To accept Jesus as God is not simply to acknowledge “Jesus” as the name of God. This is silly and trivial. It is not to declare oneself Catholic without actually studying the teachings of the Church, and sincerely believing them. To do this is to follow the Evil One, having “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”
Jesus is not just a guy. He is the Cosmic Christ: the Logos of creation. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. The person who follows Jesus and is a member of his Church is the person who sincerely and wholeheartedly seeks the way, the truth, and the light.
Any nominal Catholic who has not made a sincere effort to examine the faith, or is not fully in agreement with it, is not Catholic, and is emphatically not saved. Conversely, any Muslim of Buddhist who has made a sincere effort to examine their faith, and is fully in agreement with it, and seeks wholeheartedly to do as it requires, is a true follower of Christ, a true Christian, and is saved. The Church is the community of believers, living and dead. These people are members in good standing.
Bishop Barron focuses on conscience: he seems to say that anyone who sincerely follows his conscience is saved. This is not true; I agree with Father Goring on this. As Dr. Martin points out, this overlooks the critical last three sentences of Lumen Gentium 16. One must not just seek the Good, but also Truth.
Dr. Martin holds that the great majority of humanity is doomed to hell. He cites Matthew 7:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.
I’m not sure this is what that passage means. It means one must seek truth and morality for oneself, not simply do what those around you are doing. We must examine the stones the builders have rejected.
It does seem to me that most people avoid making choices about truth and morality by simply doing this, by going along to get along. Anyone who does this is condemned. They are not following God or Jesus: they are following society, profit and self-interest.
This does appear to be the majority of mankind.
Friend Xerxes summarizes the highlights of the new Canadian federal budget as “child care, a green economy, pandemic relief, increases to old age pensions, funding for improving the health of indigenous communities.”
Although introduced by the “Liberal Party,” this is a strikingly conservative set of priorities—conservative in the true sense.
The OED defines “liberalism” thus: “Support for or advocacy of individual rights, civil liberties, and reform tending towards individual freedom, democracy, or social equality; a political and social philosophy based on these principles.”
That is more or less what they call “libertarianism” in the US now. The Koch brothers are liberals. Maxime Bernier is a liberal, or was when he ran for the Conservative leadership.
“Conservatism” or “Toryism” sees this approach as soulless. The state, instead, is like a family. Equality is not the point; the point is everyone having responsibilities to everyone else.
Let’s go down the list of what the Liberal government wants:
Government-funded child care is classically conservative. The government as parent: this is an almost perfect expression of that concept.
A green economy: this is conservation, preservation of what is, conservatism by both definition and etymology.
Pandemic relief: Conservatives, seeing government as a parent, would of course issue relief. I assume, however, that any government would see this as their responsibility in an emergency. And all governments have, worldwide, in this pandemic.
Increases in old age pensions: in Canada or the UK, the old age pension was originally brought in by a Liberal government, but less as a matter of ideology than to co-opt the Marxist left. In world terms, the first old age pension was introduced by Bismarck in Germany, under a conservative regime. It can probably be justified by either ideology: as paternal care for a vulnerable group, or as just reward for labour.
Funding indigenous communities: a classic conservative position. Liberalism calls for social equality. Treating indigenous people differently is an obvious violation of that principle. Conservatism is more inclined to endorse such things; it sees the indigenous people as wards of the state, like children. Liberals would consider this an affront to human dignity.
Perhaps the most important distinction between the two philosophies is that conservatism seeks to preserve the status quo, with those in power preserved in power, while liberalism wants to open things up and, broadly, democratize.
In this ultimate sense, too, the modern Canadian Liberal Party is conservative. It is the “natural governing party,” which represents and is supported by the big corporations, the government bureaucracy itself, the professions. It sees “populism,” unrestrained democracy, as its enemy.
Each philosophy might have an argument, but the important thing is to keep our terminology consistent. There is a danger is political speech to deceive by falsifying the meaning of terms. The general intent of much political language, Orwell warned, is “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
It looks to me as though people in authority are orchestrating this, to soften us up to the idea that UFOs are a real thing. Governments used to be accused of being secretive about UFOs. The obvious reason, if true, is that they feared mass panic. Perhaps they have chosen this time of pandemic as useful for slipping it in without causing panic, the way governments have always buried bad news by releasing it on a Friday afternoon. We are too preoccupied with viruses to get really upsest about something that seems more abstract and hypothetical.
Back in the 1940s, when this UFO thing began, it was possible to dismiss it all as mass hallucination. Jung did at the time. But this does not work anymore: with smartphones becoming more common, we are getting more video and images, not just hearsay; and the objects are showing up on our instruments.
I find it implausible that these are Russian or Chinese secret weapons. They commonly “defy the known laws of physics.” It is unlikely that the Chinese or Russians have secretly developed technology so much more advanced than the Americans, generally well ahead on technology, that they cannot even imagine how it works.
Are they America’s own secret weapons? That seems unlikely, as the military itself, at high levels, is now reporting and acknowledging sightings. If it were their own, they would know not to publicize it.
Are they alien craft? I have always thought this, too, highly unlikely. The distances are too great. Even if you could, what would be worth coming this far for? What could they not find closer to home? Breeding stock? An absurd fiction, if you understand the most basic biology and biotechnology. Are they here only to observe? Surely any civilization able to develop the technology to bridge the vast distances would also be able to develop the technology to monitor us remotely, without having to make the long trip, even robotically.
Are they beings from another dimension? Stripping out the pseudo-science, this means beings of pure spirit—angels or demons. Granted, they are physical as seen and videoed; but it has always been understood than angels and demons could take physical form if they chose. This seems rationally possible; but a motive is lacking. Why would they appear as they do, silent and remote? What message would they mean to convey? Why not just show up and talk to someone, like in the old days?
Elon Musk might explain the UFOs with the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation; we are all video game characters. So these objects are there simply because they are put there by the unseen programmer; or else they are a bug in the code.
I feel this has little explanatory power. Anything imaginable could be accounted for in the same way. Whether we are in a simulation or not in a simulation makes no difference. The question “What are they, and what are they doing?” remains the same.
A more likely scenario, to my mind, is that the UFOs are from the future. This has the advantage of being the explanation most in conformity with Occam’s Razor.
Is it possible to time travel? Conceptually, yes; we can easily imagine it. The one sure proof that it is not possible has always been simply that we have never encountered visitors from the future.
Perhaps we have. Perhaps they were always up there, observing, but until recently we lacked the technological awareness to conceptualize these strange objects in the sky as spacecraft. They were just unexplained lights in the sky; perhaps angels, perhaps apsaras, devas, minor divinities, perhaps just hallucinations.
It seems reasonable that these visitors would try to be unobtrusive, in order not to alter the past. Leaving aside “time paradoxes,” which might after all be possible to go back and fix if necessary, this could be for the same reason that we do not look kindly on littering in a National Park. They are touring, observing, studying their own origins, as we would.
The ability to time travel would explain all the apparent violations of the laws of physics. If you can warp time, you need not be concerned with trifles like rates of acceleration or deceleration. Occam’s razor.
Whatever the answer, at this point, any possible answer boggles the mind.
My friend Xerxes recently wrote a column suggesting that the COVID pandemic might go on and on. I do not think so, and wrote so at the time. I think we’ll get a pretty good handle on it by the summer, and we have seen the worst.
But others objected to the column on quite different grounds. One responded, not that Xerxes was too pessimistic on the facts, but that he did not like to contemplate such a dystopian future. A second objected to thinking about COVID because “we become what we think about.” A third, objecting to the gloom her husband was exposing them all to on the TV news, wanted to “vehemently” sing at him “‘I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ...”
This reveals the sickness in our hearts. Not only are these people grossly immoral, but they are calling morality itself immoral. This is the one unforgivable sin, and all of them are committing it. Our moral duty is to seek the truth. If truth is to us of no value, what exactly are our values?
There is a reason Satan is called the “father of lies.”
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| Courtesy of the "Toronto Relationship Clinic" |
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Current academic articles based on “critical race theory” keep cascading across my desk. They always accuse the US of being a racist society, based on “white supremacy.”
It is not obvious what they mean by this. I think many are confused.
It is true, of course, that the US once had race-based slavery, and did not abolish it until 1865. But then again, most of the world used to have slavery, it was abolished, and in the US it was abolished over a hundred and fifty years ago.
It is also true that discriminatory laws based on race were revived and then persisted in the US South until 1965, a hundred years later. But that too is over fifty years ago. Most now alive would have no memory.
What makes the US “white supremacist” today? Merriam-Webster defines “White supremacy” as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Oxford defines it as: “The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.”
According to the US Constitution, and American statute law, to act on any such belief in America today would be illegal. The US is almost uniquely a non-racial nation. To be German or Japanese or French is an ethnic, a racial, designation. To be American is not. It is the one country in the world least based on any kind of racial supremacy. In America, by its very founding document, all men are created equal.
There is no constituency to speak of in modern America for such an opinion as “white supremacy.” I doubt any reader of this piece has ever heard or read such an opinion expressed by anyone in the past forty years, in public or in private. I have not. And I read a lot.
So how can the US be said to be based, today, on “white supremacy”?
By a redefinition of the term. “White supremacy” as the term is used by the critical race theorists means any situation in which it is tolerated that people with white skin are statistically doing better on some metric than are people with darker-toned skin. This must be ended, by main force, or the system is “white supremacist.” Pale-skinned people of primarily European ancestry do better than “blacks” on measures of average income and average educational attainment. So long as this is true, apparently, the USA is and will be “white supremacist.”
Yet we have a logical problem. If you factor in all racial groups, instead of an arbitrary two, it turns out that the USA is “Asian supremacist.” Asian Americans do better than either European or African Americans on both those metrics. And, given that the Oxford definition expressly excludes Jews from the category “white,” American is probably even more “Jew supremacist.”
The essential premise of critical race theory is exactly the same premise as Nazi race theory. There and then, it was the Jews running everything; for the Jews in prewar Germany were wealthier and better educated than the average German. So they were supposedly in control of everything, and were to blame for all the sufferings of the Germans. Here and now, it is the “whites” running everything, and responsible for all bad things. Increasingly we hear calls for similar remedies as well.
No cause for panic, of course—many will say. After all, the Jews were only six percent of the German population in 1930. “Whites” in the US are the majority. They really do hold power, so long as the US is a democracy, and so have little to fear, however violent and vile the rhetoric becomes.
Except, to begin with, the rules are changing. The innovation of “intersectionality” allows things to be parsed so that the ethnicity can be expanded or contracted as seems useful. “White” can be read to exclude “Hispanics,” Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sicilians, or whatever group might be convenient. And you can discount women, homosexuals, and so forth. The remaining core might be entirely vulnerable in a democracy, depending on how the lines are drawn. Only a bigger and better Holocaust.
But it might not go that direction. Instead, there are growing signs that the gun turrets are swinging to Asians and Jews. Street attacks on Jews and Asians seem to be growing. The logic of critical race theory points inexorably in this direction.
It is amazing how history repeats; it is amazing how people seem incapable of learning from history.
In last night’s news, the CBC reported on the decision to give priority to vaccinating “pregnant individuals,” who are apparently at higher risk from COVID. Throughout the story, both anchor and interviewee persisted in referring to “pregnant individuals” or “pregnant persons,” never “women” or “mothers.”
It strikes me as dehumanizing: as though the only salient fact about those mentioned here is being pregnant. As though they were no more than nondescript biological sacks.
But I suppose more importantly, it is an open denial of objective reality. It is fantastically dangerous when an entire society becomes psychotic.
Yesterday was Earth Day. Normally I don’t care.
But friend Xerxes wrote a commemorative column. It prompts some interesting questions.
He condemns the automobile on the grounds that it sacrifices the lives of thousands of young men and women every year. Presumably he means in road accidents. But couldn’t you also say that about aspirin? Or water? Or anything you could name?
You need a cost-benefit analysis. Surprisingly few people seem to understand the concept. A telling example is the surprising resistance during this pandemic to getting vaccinated. Many would rather risk a one-in-one hundred chance of dying of CIVID to avoid a one-in-a-million chance of dying of the vaccine.
More generally, Xerxes laments that the material progress we have made, notably in medicine, has not been shared by other species—that the Suzuki Foundation estimates, by computer modelling, that 150 species go extinct every day.
Here we have to ask what our ultimate goals and values are. If it is to improve the number and longevity of all life forms, we have a problem. The very medical progress Xerxes lauds is at their expense. It comes in large part from killing bacteria and parasites.
If we want to feed the poor, that too comes at the expense of other species. Because that is what they eat. And, if we multiply and extend the life of any other given species, that comes at the expense of whatever species they prey on or displace for their sustenance.
Trying to make the welfare of all species our concern seems vain. That seems to be the fundamental premise of the environmental movement; yet no action of ours other than blowing up the planet can really make things either better or worse given that standard.
The traditional premise is that we focus on what pleases God, and what improves the lives of our fellow humans: the greatest good for the greatest number. Beyond that, to avoid unnecessary cruelty to other species.
Yet Xerxes, and most environmentalists, as opposed to animal rights activists, seem not to be concerned with the suffering of other living beings, exactly. Rather, with the possible extinction of species. Why is this more important? If species are more significant than individuals, wouldn’t it follow, in human terms, that corporations are more important than people? If not, why the difference?
Xerxes writes:
“We need more housing. But endless 5000-square-foot single-family residences on bulldozer-flattened subdivisions are not the answer.”
To make such a statement, I think one needs to propose a better alternative. People have moved to subdivisions because it was the most affordable family housing. Kids have a better life if they have a yard to play in. Where would you have them go instead?
Xerxes concludes by lamenting that all his efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are negated by population growth.
Here again, we have to establish what the goal is. If it is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” then human population growth is a self-evident good. If it is not, for whom or for what value are we recycling and conserving resources?
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| No peace, no justice. |
I hold to the principle that we should not second-guess the judicial process. It is there to settle disputes; social cohesion requires us to respect it. If a court declares a defendant not guilty, we owe it to him or her, to our neighbours, and ultimately to ourselves, to accept that and move on.
However, I believe the judgement in the Chauvin trial is wrong. I believe this precisely because the rules were not followed here. I expect it to be appealed and overturned. There was obvious public pressure on the jurors to return a guilty verdict. Their verdict was under duress, and so, just as with a contract signed under duress, it is not valid. It was equivalent to a lynching.
The jurors had every reason to fear that, if they returned a verdict of not guilty, their city would be burned down. Maxine Waters had called for violence if a guilty verdict was not returned. Joe Biden had come close to demanding a guilty verdict. They had every reason to fear their own homes might be burned down, themselves or their family attacked, perhaps killed.
Under the circumstances, Chauvin could not get a fair trial. By the rules, if a fair trial cannot be conducted, he must be assumed to be innocent.
I do personally doubt his guilt. No reasonable man with normal instincts for self-preservation would murder another person slowly in plain sight of many witnesses holding video cameras. Hence, any reasonable man must doubt Chauvin’s guilt.
Some have actually argued that it was worth sacrificing Chauvin’s chance for a fair trial to the greater good—to retain civil peace and avoid more rioting.
This is folly. It will only lead to worse rioting, as the mob realizes they can impose their will by rioting. And it will ensure that police stop doing anything about it—not worth the risk of death on the spot or a lynching if there is any confrontation. Perfect recipe for chaos.
A better approach would be to go in the opposite direction: free Chauvin immediately, and legislate full immunity for police from any murder or manslaughter charge if any suspect resists arrest. This would cause no risk to the public from police brutality: it is simple enough to cooperate during an arrest, and presumably the police would have to prove resistance with body cam footage. Resisting arrest is, moreover, refusing the protection of the justice system. Your call.
Something like this might even be necessary, under these circumstances, to restore order.
Doug Ford’s government here in Ontario is facing criticism for having called for a total lockdown, then rescinding part of it within 24 hours. They had intended to have police stop people and issue fines if they did not have a good reason to be out and about. A number of police chiefs publicly declared they would not do it. The government had intended to close playgrounds, but people quickly and loudly protested that, with kids home from school, they needed the playgrounds. And kids playing outdoors did not spread COVID.
I would have been okay with the original measures. This is a public health emergency. In an emergency, it is acceptable in our liberal democratic tradition to suspend civil liberties. This is why we have a “riot act” in most democracies, and a “war measures act.” France has been using a stop-and-check policy just like the one envisaged.
But if we feel the initial orders went too far, surely it is to the government’s credit that they backed off quickly. Anyone can make a mistake, and everyone does. The mark of a good and competent person is to acknowledge this, and change. How have we lost this basic principle of morality and good judgement?
People are losing hope. In Canada, we are into a third wave of the pandemic, and each wave seems worse than the last. Friend Xerxes writes a column on “What if it never ends?”
It will end.
Even without any human intervention, all epidemics end. The Spanish flu managed four waves, but it ended, without a vaccine.
We are going to break this third wave by summer. We may be fighting variants for a few years, but at a lower level, with booster shots.
See if I’m not right.
Someone asks, “Why would a good and just God send COVID?”
It is a fair question. The moment you accept monotheism, everything is from God that is not from man.
But COVID may be from man. I think it is likely it escaped from the Wuhan Virology lab. It may even have been intended as a weapon, although its release was surely in error. It is mysterious how outbreaks seem to have been less severe in East Asian countries—almost as if there is some component sensitive to Chinese/Mongoloid and non-Chinese genetics.
But even if it is from God—it is just. We needed and deserved chastisement. Our nearly universal acceptance of abortion is about the same thing that led Yahweh in the Old Testament to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Romans to salt the ground of Carthage. They practiced child sacrifice. The collapse of the Aztecs, the Inca, might be accounted for in the same way: they practiced human sacrifice. They deserved to be taken down, and Yahweh did so, swiftly, through the Spanish.
Aside from killing them outright, we have also ignored the welfare of the young in having women all work outside the home. We have ignored the need to pass on morals to our young. These are ample justification for destroying a culture. The entire point of a culture is to pass on moral guidance generation to generation. Our culture is therefore poisoned.
If this has not led to our own destruction—yet—it seems only because there is not some other culture ready to replace us. The Spanish, or the Hebrews, or the Romans, have not yet arrived on the scene. Who might they be?
Not the mainland Chinese, the CCP. If we are depraved, they are more depraved.
“Anything possible of being believed is an image of truth”—William Blake.
David Icke believes the world has been ruled by reptilian aliens for thousands of years.
Icke’s claims seem automatically disproven by the fact that he is able to publish his claims and speak them publicly. If there were such a conspiracy of space lizards, they would have silenced him. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.
But they have to be an image of truth, because so many find them compelling.
What does “reptilian” really mean here?
The most striking thing about reptiles is that they lack concern for their young. They lay their eggs, and wander off. This seems to correspond to the fact that their brains lack the parts that, in the human brain, correspond to our emotions.
“Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like a brain of a crocodile. Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system or mammalian brain, which evolved tens of millions of years ago in ancestors who were mammal but not yet primates. It is a major source of our moods and emotions, of our concern and care for the young. And finally, on the outside, living in uneasy truce with the more primitive brains beneath, is the cerebral cortex; civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.”
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
In other words, reptiles seem to operate only on immediate urges. They may be self-aware, but they are not aware of any other “selves” in their universe. Just things they want or do not want. This is the “reptile brain.”
Icke’s vision of reptilian humans rings true because there really are such reptilians: beings in human shape who nevertheless operate only on urges, unaware of any other “selves” in the universe. These are the people we call “narcissists.” The “type B personality disorders,” in psych speak.
Icke seems to understand this. I have not read any of his books, but I see he speaks of love as the antidote to the dominion of the lizards.
And they do by and large rule the world. When you care for no one but yourself, and recognize no morality, you have a huge tactical advantage. Of course such people will regularly end up on top. Anyone in power should at least be suspected, as Icke does, of being a lizard.
Icke claims that society as we know it is largely designed by these reptilians to generate fear and anxiety. He says this energy is nourishing to the lizard overlords.
This too makes metaphoric sense. The narcissist has an insatiable need to show their superiority, by causing others to cower.
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ”
--George Orwell, 1984
The urge to exert power over others, and have them feel it, explains much of human life and human history.
Not to mention the dysfunctional dynamics of many families.
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| Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire |
A correspondent observes that “history illustrates that racism is declining, but ever so slowly.”
I’m not so sure. That is the “Whig view of history” we are traditionally served: that the progress of history is always towards our own political preferences. Accordingly, we declare ourselves on “the right side of history,” and justify our views with “this is 2021, after all.”
Which may be so, in broad terms. Given that there is a God, it makes sense that the greater trajectory of history should arc towards justice. However, recently I have come to doubt this particular premise: that racism specifically is in decline. It seems to me that racism has grown frighteningly worse over the past few years. That in turn makes me look back and question. What are the real dynamics here?
When you think of it, racism was almost necessarily worse in the past few centuries than it was earlier. The very concept of “races” of humans is a modern scientific one. We can pretty much trace it to Darwin. Before Darwin, ancestry might have mattered, breeding might have mattered, but not race. Hitler and the Nazis certainly traced their racial theories to him.
The modern idea of the nation state emerges from the same source. It was born in the 1860s, in the wake of Darwin, and reached the status of international law by 1917, with Wilson’s 14 points. "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.” Wilson believed firmly in race and in racial segregation at home; it was a “progressive” idea. National borders were to be established on the basis of race; races were in principle not to mix.
Before the nation state, we generally had little such notion; which is why empires seemed reasonable ways to run things. And they did produce general peace among racial groups. With nation states, interracial war broke out.
In an empire, civil allegiance was not to one’s race, but to a royal family or to a set of shared ideals. Anyone could become a Roman citizen, for example, based on merit. The Holy Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire were based on shared religious principles, not race.
Racism may now be growing, not declining, because we are losing our shared ideals. Religion was replaced for a time by secular humanism, but this has not proved durable. Postmodernism has rejected the very possibility of shared ideals. What is left is self-interest and instinct, which throws us into tribalism. For humans are instinctively tribal animals. Only civilization ever kept us from each other’s throats.
I am not advocating a return to Empire. But until corrupted by Darwinism in the nineteenth century, the problem with empires was not racism, but the lack of democracy. That might even have been simply necessary at the time, based on distance, not race. The British, after all, did not extend the Imperial franchise to the Thirteen Colonies, Canada or Australia. Instead, as soon as responsible government was introduced, these regions became independent. It was apparently not practical for them to send representatives to serve in Westminster.
Are we doomed to an inevitable spiral downward into savagery? I imagine not, on the grounds that there is a God, and the arc of history generally really does bend towards justice.
I have been “binge watching” the Canadian sitcom “Corner Gas” in a moderate way: one episode each evening. At the same time, for some reason, episodes of the old American sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” have been popping up in my YouTube feed. I remember it as pretty good, so I’ve watched a few of those recently as well.
I think comparing the two illustrates the difference between American and Canadian humour.
WKRP, American, has a mix of sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. Some are there to be laughed at, but disliked, and some are straight, unfunny, and likeable. Herb and Les are unlikeable clowns. Andy or Bailey or Venus Flytrap never put a foot wrong.
In Corner Gas, all the characters are sometimes sympathetic, sometimes unsympathetic. All have flaws and sometimes look foolish; all are fundamentally likeable. Even Oscar, who comes closest to being a villain. He is too much like a bratty child to dislike. Nobody is above getting ribbed, including the show itself, which often breaks the “fourth wall.”
This is consistent in Canadian humour. There are no heroes or villains in Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches either.
I think it is an expression of a religious difference between Canada and the USA. The USA was founded largely on Calvinist principles: the Reformed tradition of the Puritans in the north, the Baptists in the South, the Dutch Reformed in the Mid-Atlantic. Calvinists see people as either damned or elect; all good or all evil.
Canada was founded largely by Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists. Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists believe that all of us are sinners, but that all of us are capable of redemption at any moment.
And that pretty much accounts for the difference between the American and Canadian character overall.
The common cultural myth, inherited from the romantics but not original to them, is that civilization is bad and man is naturally good. This is a consoling way to look at the world; it means by doing just whatever we want, we are also doing the good. But obviously wrong. If man is innately good, how could he have created a civilization that is innately bad? Where could evil, moral evil, have come from?
It ends up scapegoating the Jews, or rich capitalists. It ends up assuming that, while we are born good, some others are born irredeemably bad alien beings.
A correspondent recently cites the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” as proof that racism is learned behavior. Broadway tunes are not good scientific sources. Nor are fantasies of some Garden of Eden in the South Pacific. Humans, like the other higher primates, and like dogs or sheep, are herd animals. Fear of the other is hard-wired by evolutionary pressures. Everyone is prejudiced who does not make an effort not to be. Fortunately, we are not animals, and can rise above our programming.
This naïve romanticism is, I suspect, also behind so many assertions that the solution to racism or sexism or “rape culture” is to educate people that “abuse of others is unacceptable.”
Yes, ethics needs to be taught. But knowing something is right does not compel anyone to do it. Morality is a struggle against instinct and self-interest. You cannot eliminate murder and theft by simply telling people murder and theft are wrong. If it were so, there would be no such thing as ethics.
The death of Prince Philip, I expect, will kill any public sympathy for Megan Markle or Prince Harry.
It is reminiscent of the death of Princess Diana. I strongly suspected that she was the problem in that marriage, that she was being selfish and irresponsible. But her death evoked sympathy; the royal family had to come onside and celebrate her or look heartless. Charles’s reputation has never recovered.
Now it works the other way. Harry and Megan look pretty callous for stirring up scandal for the royal family while Prince Philip was, we now discover, terminally ill.
The royal family may forgive them. The public never will.
The Duke, who devoted his life to service of the monarchy, may have given his greatest service with his death.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Bishop Sheen once said “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”
That includes many people raised Catholic.
Part of this is anti-Catholic propaganda; part of this is confusing Catholicism with other denominations; much of this is pure culpable ignorance.
In early adolescence, I thought I was an atheist. That did not last; but it took me many years of intense searching to claw my way back to where I needed to begin.
Hoping to save others much wasted time and suffering, I want to look at one common fallacy, a very grave one, one that troubled me.
It is the faith thing.
People think faith means believing things without evidence. I remember at one point explaining that I could not accept Western religion because it demanded a “leap of faith.”
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| The postmodern leap of faith. |
This comes at least in part from Luther, who believed in “salvation by faith alone.”
News flash: Luther was not Catholic.
Faith is important in Catholicism, but it does not mean choosing to believe something. That is postmodernism, and that is Satanic. Let me make that clear: that is Satanic. A moral person must seek the objective truth, wherever that may lead.
“Faith,” dating in English from the 14th century, means primarily “The fulfilment of a trust or promise, and related senses.” (OED). As in “keep faith,” or “keep the faith”: to be loyal to one’s commitments. This is pretty much its Catholic sense as well: to stay the course. To go to mass, to keep the commandments, to run the race, to fight the good fight. It has nothing to do with deciding to believe or not believe in the existence of God; it was clear enough to me by the age of 18 that this was a smokescreen question, an avoidance of the issue. The existence of God is not in doubt. It is demonstrable.
“Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.”
- Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2: DS 3004.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of convincing proofs of the existence of God. Only a fool could say in his heart “there is no God.” The Bible takes no trouble to make the case: it is self-evident.
There is a second meaning of “faith,” in the religious context. OED: “the capacity to spiritually apprehend divine truths, or realities beyond the limits of perception or of logical proof.” While the existence of God is apparent to reason, his nature is self-evidently beyond our comprehension. In places where reason cannot be employed, faith must be resorted to: we must take things we cannot understand “on faith.” These are the things the Church calls “sacred mysteries”: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection.
Conversely, anyone who takes anything “on faith” that he cannot think through for himself, or simply chooses to believe something despite contrary evidence, is guilty of the deadly sin of acedia. This is one of the Seven Sins that lead to sure damnation.
A proposed checklist to evaluate multimedia content for use in schools just came across my desk. One of the criteria was “ethical elements.”
Digging deeper, this means the presence of “discrimination, bias, violence, and sexually suggestive material.” Materials used in classrooms at any level must not include these. And, to clarify further, “discrimination” means “discrimination related to gender, age, race, religion, and culture.” “Bias” means “bias for a particular notion and theory.”
This seems unworkable.
To begin with, we are talking about words and images, not actions. Based on the principle that my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, it is difficult to conceptualize discrimination in this context. Presumably, what we do not want is material advocating discrimination on these grounds. But that is not what the guidelines say: they use the vague term “related to.” The term used in most human rights legislation is “based on”: that one must not discriminate against persons “based on X.” “Related to” suggests one must instead not discriminate between religions or cultures or ages or genders. One must not distinguish between British and French cuisine, and one must certainly not say one is better.
This is absurd, and leads to unfortunate dining experiences. And human suffering.
The definition of “bias” seems objective and reasonable—but note that it would mean no teaching the dangers of global warming without featuring the other side of that debate; and no teaching the Theory of Evolution without also citing Creationism and Intelligent Design. And that’s just the start. Some people do insist that there was no Holocaust—so you cannot privilege the view of history that says there was. Some say there was no moon landing, there are alien lizards among us, and the earth is flat. Again, no bias allowed.
Prohibiting materials featuring “violence” would prohibit discussion of the news, and most of world history. Not to mention most fiction, in any medium, and any fairy tales. Who benefits from that? Certainly not anybody seeking an education.
Prohibiting sexually suggestive materials might make sense for teaching children, but a blanket prohibition means you cannot teach the Bible, the Krishna legend, or most great literature.
The problem here is that, in the name of inclusivity, we have jettisoned all specific moral traditions. Were we able to refer to the Ten Commandments, or the Analects, or the Dhammapada, or Sharia, weeding out unethical material would be relatively straightforward. While there are universal principles of morality, the average person cannot do very well at working them out in every instance on the fly. We’d probably require a graduate seminar for each individual decision. Without this, absurdities are inevitable.
We settle on “violence” or “sex” as proxies for “immorality,” for example, because they are objective and indisputable; not because they are unethical. Ideas like “discrimination” and “equality” turn out to be too abstract for most to understand.
We need to get back to our traditional moral standards. Of the great moral traditions, it matters far less which one we follow than that we can all agree on applying one or the other--at least within a given educational institution.
Got the Pfizer vaccine, first dose, yesterday—Easter Sunday.
No detectable side effect so far. Not even an aching arm.
I figure in three weeks, round about April 25, I will have substantial immunity, and need not worry about being out and about. Masking and distancing still, but only for the sake of others’ peace of mind.
Surprised to learn now that my cousins, all but one of whom are younger than I, have all already had their second dose of Pfizer. How can that be? I’ve been keeping close tabs, and got mine as soon as I was eligible.
I think it must be because they have their Indian cards. Racial preferences; or, put more frankly, racial discrimination. My own second shot, although older and with a couple of comorbidities, is not slated until the end of July.
It might make sense to rush-vaccinate people living on reserves, based on higher infection rates. Online, I see claims that infection rates on reserves are 187% of the national average. On the other hand, the fatality rate is much lower—less than half. As a matter of fact, as of August, the story was that the rate of COVID, too, was much lower on reserves than in the general population: only 25% of the national average.
Whatever is happening currently on reserves, shouldn’t the risk be greater in urban settings, where people are closer together? Are matters worse on reserves than in other poor communities, or is the issue just poverty? In any case, my cousins are prosperous and indistinguishable from their urban neighbours. The different treatment seems based not on any scientific or humanitarian justification, but purely racial preference.
We are creating different classes of citizenship in Canada based on race.
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| Filipino transvestite beauty queen. |
Jordan Peterson rose to prominence over which pronouns to use to refer to transvestites. This has become a dominating issue: if someone looks like a woman, but is in fact biologically male, do we say “he” or “she”? Or “zhe,” or “they.” Or seventy or a hundred other possibilities now being floated.
This is a relatively new problem in North America, but it occurs to me it is not elsewhere. In Thailand or the Philippines, transvestitism has been open and socially accepted for generations, perhaps centuries. So I thought to ask my Filipina wife, in Visayan, do you refer to a male-to-female transvestite as “he” or “she.”
She reports that, as indeed seems most sensible, biological sex is definitive. He may look like a woman, but he is still, in fact, “he.”
Problem solved.
