Stephen Roney's Blog, page 165

The Journey of the Magi

 

In honour of Epiphany, the Twelfth and final day of Christmas.

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

All this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death."

--T.S. Eliot 

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The Ship Comes In

 

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Adeste Fidelis

 

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A Swedish Christmas?

 

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Jordan Peterson on God

 

I am not a fan of Jordan Peterson. I respect his political stands, but as a thinker I find him incoherent.

Whenever he makes a statement, he tags on the phrase “in a sense.” And then does not explain further. Without defining the sense in which he means the statement, this just makes everything both irrefutable and trivial. There is a sense, after all, in which the earth is flat, and the moon is made of green cheese. It breaks Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction: either a thing is so, or it is not so. Since this is the foundation of all logical thought, no conclusions can now be drawn. All we know is what Peterson, personally, is feeling. This is not of any intrinsic interest, unless Peterson is otherwise special in some way. Maybe you feel the same, maybe you don’t.

I fear this might even be the kernel of some bizarre personality cult, like the Nazi leadership principle. It makes Peterson the centre of the universe.

As for his “Twelve Rules for Life,” to be fair, I have not been inspired to read it. But it seems obvious to me that he has no authority to lay down rules for life. No doubt he claims it is based on his experience with patients in clinical psychology. But any such clinical evidence is necessarily third hand, involves far too small a sample to be meaningful, and too may possible variables to draw any conclusions. All we are really getting, in Peterson’s case or in that of any other clinical psychologist, is his personal opinions and the conclusions he has drawn from his personal experience. This necessarily being so, on what grounds can we value his perspective on life over that of the next man we meet on a street corner?

More disturbingly, what sort of personality feels justified in setting down general rules for life based on their own experience? He might be leading anyone down a primrose path, and must know this.

He is, in other words, necessarily a narcissist. And the eagerness with which so many follow his commentary on every conceivable issue is an illustration of how co-dependency works. Too many want someone else to think for them.

Consider now his responses to the question whether he believes in God.

He asks, “Does saying I believe in God mean that I believe in God?” One might lie, but this is true of any response to any legitimate question. Why raise some special difficulty here? He is doing exactly what he insists he is not doing, and transparently: he is dodging the question. And he thinks he insulated himself from the charge simply be denying he is doing it. A typical narcissistic stance. “I’m not lying.”

The underlying problem is that Peterson thinks that if he admits God exists, this implies moral obligations. He says, incoherently, “what you believe is what you act out.” It is not. These are two separate issues. But it implies the incoherent thought that, so long as he does not consent to God’s existence, he can avoid these obligations.

This is a childlike error, like the baby playing peekaboo who thinks you cannot see him if he closes his eyes. If God exists, you cannot escape the implications by telling yourself he does not. Any more than you can fly by telling yourself that gravity does not exist.

Nevertheless, this is just how denial works. It is how narcissism works, and why you cannot ever get through to them, even with obvious facts and truths. They will not accept what they find it inconvenient to believe.

Peterson is not the man to listen to.

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Tenured Professor Fired for Trying to Help Canadian Indians

 

Tenure is designed to prevent exactly this. 

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Pretty Sentimental, But I Buy It

 

The charity involved is Samaritan's Purse. But this is not advertising for it. They do not identify it.'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

You Can't Teach What You Don't Know

 

This simple, almost self-evident truth seems to be beyond Ontario judges and the ed schools. 

According to them, all that matters is the right skin colour.

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Poletical Reviews "Playing the Indian Card"

Should you happen to be one of the silly kittens who has not get grabbed your own copy of my book, Playing the Indian Card, you should take a look at this review and interview by Jeff Hodgson over at Poletical. Which you should be following as well. It gives you a taste of the book and of the issues.

Spoiler: he thinks it is one of the best books he has ever read.

Purchase links are in the article or on this page, above and to your left.

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Ukrainian Christmas

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