Stephen Roney's Blog, page 202

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

It is now more than a year.

Just as the vaccines seemed to bring hope of an end, new concerns. The AstraZeneca shot, hoped to be the workhorse, has been suspended in Canada for under-55s for fear of causing blood clots. New variants are spreading that are deadlier and more virulent than the original virus. People are speaking of a “Third Wave.” 

It seems possible that the virus will be able to mutate faster than vaccines can keep up. If, say, the UK and the US manage to vaccinate nearly everybody, new variants might still breed in other countries, enter the US/UK, and be resistant to the vaccines. New round of new vaccines, new round of virus mutations, and the battle goes on year after year.

And everyone seems at the breaking point with the lockdowns.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Bigotry of the Left

 

Michael Knowles has recently lost a sponsor for his podcast because, a few years ago, he expressed the opinion that being a man who believes you are a woman, or vice versa, is a mental illness.

On another occasion, he was berated on Fox News, and the network apologized, for saying Greta Thunberg is mentally ill.

Isn’t there an obvious problem here?

If you consider it an intolerable insult to say someone is mentally ill, what does that say of one’s attitude towards the mentally ill? 

That their existence is intolerable. That they are to be dismissed from the conversation.

It seems that, on the left at least, this is the standard view.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Conspiracies

If you don't know what this image means, I'm not telling.

Everyone on the left is currently deeply concerned about “QAnon.” My friend Xerxes points out that it is a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories are not rational.

He is right, but not in the way he thinks. QAnon is apparently in itself a conspiracy theory. But getting agitated about QAnon is also a conspiracy theory, considering QAnon a significant factor. Yet people on the left apparently do. In a recent poll, those on the right listed their chief concern as illegal immigration. Those on the left listed their chief concern as people on the right.

Funny that I only ever hear of QAnon from the left. On the right, nobody is interested. The same was true, a little while ago, of “Pizzagate.” Nothing about it on the right; the left was all over it. Or the “alt-right”: same thing. Entirely a discovery, if not an invention, of the left. Or “anti-vaxxers.” Definitely started on the left, with figures like RFK Jr. Or “white supremacists.” According to the left, everybody but them is a white supremacist. The term is never used on the right. Or "dog whistles." People on the left keep hearing them, but imagining they are for the right. People on the right never hear them.

In other words, “QAnon,” the “alt-right,” and “white supremacy” are conspiracy theories—in that they really exist almost entirely in the imaginations of people afraid of them. The reality is probably in each case a few kids blogging from their basements, and probably being misinterpreted or misquoted at that. You could probably conjure up an infinite number of such conspiracies on any conceivable subject with a little Googling.

Most if not all of leftist politics seems to be based on conspiracy theories. One is the concept of “patriarchy”: that men, throughout the ages, have been conspiring to oppress women. Or the Marxist concepts of “ideology” and “hegemony.” Marxism, very like Gnosticism, holds that most or all of what we think of as reality is actually invented by rich capitalists to maintain their control. Or the idea that “white people” have invented not just the USA, but Western civilization in order to suppress “people of colour.”

The larger a claimed conspiracy, and the longer it is claimed to have continued, the less plausible. Because people are people, and are not good at keeping secrets. Yet with “patriarchy,” “white supremacy,” or Marxist “ideology,” the left has gone as far as possible: conspiracies embracing the entire world since the first written records.

Pettipiece: “Ancient Gnostics believed that the world we perceive is, in fact, a prison constructed by demonic powers to enslave the soul and that only a small spiritual elite are blessed with special knowledge — or gnosis — that enables them to unmask this deception.”

Striking, surely, how closely that describes the claims of the left, since at least Lenin’s “vanguard of the proletariat”; if not to Rousseau and the French “romantic” revolutionaries.

Why do people keep believing in conspiracies? In part, because some conspiracies are real: ask Julius Caesar. Ask Adam Smith, who observed that, if any two members of the same trade got together, the conversation would inevitably turn to possible collusion in restraint of trade.

But more broadly, and for the bigger, less plausible conspiracies, it is because of a loss of belief in God.

People need meaning. We are born with an empty God-sized hole in our hearts. With God, you have meaning. Without God, you have paranoia.

As G.K. Chesterton observed, “people who do not believe in God will believe in anything.”


'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Modern Prayers

 

Durer, Praying Hands

When I was young, and in the umbra of Vatican II, I always felt hounded by the demand that we must pray extemporaneously instead of by rote. That always felt wrong to me. Sometimes you felt like it, but most often you did not. So were you just not supposed to pray? Or be insincere to God himself?

There is great power in set prayer formulae. It is the power we recognize as soon as we call it a “mantra.” With rote prayer, it is possible to pray without ceasing.

Of course, there is a place as well for speaking to God as a friend; when one has a particular problem or question to pose.

Both forms of prayer have their value. 

Friend Xerxes recently objected to the “Our Father,” and suggested instead several modern alternatives.

His core complaint is that it encourages an “unthinking” idea of God as an “all-knowing all-seeing old-man-in-the-sky.” A concept that he finds untenable.

I can’t agree with his basic premise, that the “Our Father” depicts God as an “old man in the sky.” The sky is not mentioned. It says he is in heaven. Is that “the sky”?

Where is heaven? Jesus, who gave us the words of the prayer, tells us: “the kingdom of heaven is within (or among) you.”

At the same time, the physical heavens as metaphor is valuable to prevent supposing God is only “in here,” and not also “out there,” pervading the cosmos. He is not merely some Jungian archetype.

“I have trouble,” Xerxes continues, “with God as the hyper-engineer who keeps everything running, who fixes things we can’t fix for ourselves, who feeds us sliced bread and steers us out of temptation.”

But that is not the Christian God either. The prayer says “Our Father.” Doesn’t that sound more like a mother?

Like a father, he allows us our free will, and expects things of us. He is not going to do everything for us; he is judgmental, not unquestioningly supportive like a mother.

The modern prayers Xerxes cites as preferable to the “Our Father” all strip out this masculine imagery.

For example:

“Holy One, holy one-ness, in us and around us and beyond us,”

--removes both masculinity and personhood.

I’m with William Blake on this: humanity cannot conceptualize anything greater than a perfect human. Anything else is less, and an inadequate image of God. You care more for your father than for the number one.

“Separate us from the temptations of power, and draw us into your community.”

Why power? This suggests that power is the only motive for sin.

“the empowerment around us,”

Again power--praying for power. This sounds like an impious obsession with power. Which, I may say, defines postmodernism.

“and the celebration among us, now and always. Amen.”

This is a significant change, because the original, the “Our Father,” says nothing about celebration, let alone celebrating “always.” Instead, it implies that something is wrong with the world: that God’s will is not yet done.

To assert that all is right with the world is callous towards the suffering. And unquestioningly supportive of the powerful.

“O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us.”

This loses the two essential points of Christianity: that God loves us, and that we are to love God.

That God is Love requires understanding God as Trinity, because love is a Trinity. Love cannot exist without Lover and Beloved.

To attempt to conceive love as a pure abstract entity is to eliminate love from the conversation. Being in love with love is callous, the opposite of love.

“May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings.”

Connectedness is only half of the equation; this is a monist rather than a Christian sentiment. It would require that all we do must flow from our deep connection with the devil, not to mention the Mafia, Nazis, the KKK, or animal parasites and predators, without discrimination.

Xerxes concludes with a passage from a book, Richard Wagamese’s “Embers,” which he proposes might be ideal:

“I am the trees alive with singing.

I am the sky everywhere at once.

I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations.

I am light everywhere descending.

I am my heart evoking drum song.

I am my spirit rising.

I am my prayers and my meditation, and I am time fully captured in this now.

I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day.”

In simplest terms, “I am God.”

This again is monist, and Advaita Vedanta, not Christian. Identifying God with self is moving backwards on the Christian (or Buddhist) path. That is what Lucifer did, and what Adam and Eve did.

Lead us not into evil.

Amen

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Values

 

We often see references to “family values” or “Asian values,” or the like—generally meant as praise. 

Yet this makes no sense: it means we are valuing a value. On what grounds?

If values are a matter of choice, on what basis can that choice be made?

Values must be objective, or they are meaningless.

Values must also be ultimate, or they are meaningless. If not ultimate, they are not values in themselves, but are assigned value.

Ultimately, there must be value itself, by which all else is valued.

Ultimate value is God. This is a simple matter of definition.

Seeking ultimate value is called worship—worth-ship.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Harassment in the Workplace

 

The original "liberated woman": the Cosmo Girl.

Xerxes, further left as always than Attila the Hun—who was on the left, not the right, in contemporary terms—laments sexual harassment in the workplace. 

He does not blame Mario Cuomo, exactly, for sexual harassment. That would not do. Instead, he lumps him in with Donald Trump and blames “imbalance of power” that puts too many men in authority over women.

Imbalance of power is, of course, inevitable: no organization can exist without organization, and that means levels of authority and chains of command. Imbalance of power between sexes is equally inevitable so long as both sexes are in the workplace.

Is the problem, then, men? Men are more likely to sexually harass than women. Xerxes seems to note this, but does not elaborate. 

This is the result of simple biology. In the state of nature, men’s ideal strategy for spreading their genes is to have sex with as many women as possible. Women’s ideal strategy for spreading their genes is to get one man to commit to them. For men, a sex act is a few minutes. For women at least nine months, probably at least a dozen years. So men are programmed by nature to initiate any sexual encounter: it is up to the woman to say no. Accordingly, men are going to be the ones accused of sexual harassment.

If this is unfair to women in the workplace, it is also unfair to men.

And, of course, the sex game works both ways: a superior can use their power to gain sexual favours. An unscrupulous underling, equally, can use their sexual favours to gain power.

One hopes that good men and good women are above all this, above mixing sex with power. But, aside from the obvious chances of mixed messages and honest misunderstandings, no sane person can simply count on everybody being good.

Can the problem be fixed by having only women in positions of authority? 

It is perfectly naïve to think, or disingenuous to claim, that women are more moral than men; their sexual urges are only expressed in different ways. A female boss is as likely to promote or favour an underling because she finds him attractive, or indeed because they are having a sexual relationship. She will just not initiate it; and will stick to her favourite over the longer term. And, of course, she may penalize other women who are more attractive. 

If we are going to have both men and women in the workplace, there is no way to avoid this problem. If we did not see it coming, when we advocated women in the workplace, we are idiots. In fact, we did foresee it. In the early sixties, when we spoke of “liberated women,” the fundamental premise was “liberated for casual sex.” Getting into the workplace was merely to enable this.

We got what we demanded, and now we pretend to be shocked, shocked!

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Literally Worse than Hitler

 

The Devil incarnate? Or a lesser demon?

Modern history has left us Hitler as our image of ultimate evil.

He may not be up to the task. 

Awful as he was, he is not the worst possible human. He was just theatrical about it.

None of the Seven Deadly Sins requires a victim. You could regularly indulge all of them, wrath, envy, pride, lust, gluttony, acedia (spiritual, not physical sloth), and avarice, without coming to the attention of many others. Our society even tends to celebrate some of them. 

The same could be said for seven or eight of the Ten Commandments: you could get away with coveting your neighbour’s goods, or his wife, without anyone even knowing. You could fail to keep holy the Sabbath day; you could take the name of God in vain. Many do. You could commit adultery without much social blowback. Some would cheer you on. 

Hitler was guilty of mass murder—thou shalt not kill—but murder is actually not the worst sin. It is the worst crime. There is scant evidence he indulged in lust. He lived a celibate life; he had few and discreet liaisons, so far as is visible. Or gluttony: he was a teetotaler and a vegetarian. Or avarice: he lived on the royalties from Mein Kampf, which he had the state buy in quantity, but did not loot as he might have; like his lieutenant Goering. Hitler was preoccupied with power. This is pride, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. And he clearly indulged his wrath. But at least he did not submit to all of them.

Hitler also had one signal virtue: courage. A worse man would lack it. 

A thoroughly bad man, precisely because he lacked courage, would not so publicly sin. He would remain an upstanding member of your community. People might feel, personally, there was more than a little “off” about him, but they would not find anything they could openly condemn.

The Devil, they say, is a gentleman. You are more likely to encounter him at your next social gathering, than in the history books.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

O'Toole Swings for the Bleachers, and Hits a Pop Fly

 

I find Erin O’Toole’s speech to the Conservative Party policy convention underwhelming. 

He begins by saying we cannot count on scandals alone bringing down the Trudeau government. Then he lists Trudeau’s scandals, and points out how they make it urgent that the Trudeau government be defeated.

It is necessary, he says, to do more: for the Conservative party to be “bold” enough to “change,” so that it appeals to more Canadians. It needs “new arguments.”

Translation: he plans to run on the same platform as the Liberals, and count on the scandals to bring them down.

Even though he knows this is a failed strategy. It did not work for Scheer, and he has no better idea.

His argument against Jagmeet Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet is simply that they cannot bring the Liberals down. No hint of a disagreement on policy. Indeed, he made a point of endorsing, speaking only in French, Quebec nationalism and Bill 101. And of seeking union support. 

He did outline, in vague terms, a platform: “Canada’s Recovery Plan.” A Conservative government would create more jobs. A Conservative government would toughen anti-corruption laws. A Conservative government would boost funding for mental health. A Conservative government would build domestic capacity to produce vaccines and PPE. A Conservative government would bring the budget back into balance over the next decade.

It is the same platform as the Liberals; there is nothing there the Liberals, in government, would not do.

What government does not promise to create more jobs? What government does not intend to?

What opposition party in Canada has ever not promised to toughen anti-corruption laws? Mulroney did to defeat Turner. Chretien did to defeat Mulroney. Harper did to defeat Martin. Trudeau did to defeat Harper. It’s boilerplate.

Funding for health care? For a suicide hot line? The Liberals are at least as happy as the Conservatives to shovel more taxpayer money into mental health care. It is a payout to their natural constituency, the professions. There is precious little empirical evidence that mental health care as we know it actually helps anybody but the mental health care professionals. And their big idea is a suicide hot line? Where in Canada is there not already a suicide hot line? And what of mixed messages—a suicide hot line at the same time that we have government-assisted suicide? Sure sounds like cynical window-dressing—or an admission that we have no idea what we are doing.

Building domestic capacity for vaccines? What government around the world is not already doing this? The Liberals have already announced their plans, and funding.

Balancing the budget? Again, what government anywhere does not promise this? The Liberals have. Perhaps they have not promised a ten-year time line; but that hardly sounds ambitious.

There is no hint of ideology or ideological consistency here. More government money for this and that, while promising to spend less government money.

So the only pitch for voting Conservative is either greater Conservative competence or Liberal scandals.

O’Toole is making the traditional calculation among political professionals: that the way to power is to seek votes from the centre. It sometimes works; it worked for Tony Blair, or Bill Clinton. Ominously enough, both leading parties on the left. But I think the strategy is overleveraged. And does not work nearly so well for the right. It did not work for McCain, or Romney, or Joe Clark.

To begin with, the average voter is not motivated primarily by the issues. Professional politicians are, so they misread the public here. Issues change during the course of a government, most politicians are just reading the polls, and they do not keep their promises. The way most people vote, and the way they should, is by judging character. Who do they trust? Who seems capable of leading in a crisis? Who seems to care?

Abandoning principles is not a good character reference. Blowing with the wind is not a sign of leadership. A relentless smile may or may not convince anyone you’re a nice guy.

Second, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, they are running largely on a claim of greater competence. But an objective observer would expect more competence from the Liberal benches: this is their traditional strength. Because they are the “natural governing party,” they are the side most likely to draw smart young up-and-comers or people successful outside politics. The CVs of Conservative leaders are generally thinner than those of Liberal leaders. Compare Scheer, Clark, or Day to Pearson, Ignatieff, or Martin. Advantage Liberals.

Third, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, they are running largely on a claim of being more honest than the Liberals. But on what grounds can they make that claim, if they are abandoning their own principles in hopes of power? Instead, they will be suspected of some “hidden agenda.”

Fourth, the apparent centre is not the real centre. It is an artifact of the media, which controls the discourse, and of the positions raised by the various political parties. The Greens and the NDP pull the discourse in Canada to the left; and the media class is leftist. For a party of the right in Canada, this means an appeal to the centre is conceding every argument to the left right out of the gate, without resistance.

Fifth, if the Tories run on the same platform as the Liberals, conservatives are left with little reason to vote, and less reason to volunteer. It therefore does not follow that an appeal to the centre will bring in more votes than one with an ideological core. The 2015 election illustrated this: Mulcair, sensing a chance at victory, pulled the NDP to the centre. Trudeau, in third place, pulled left. Guess who won? 

It is an old saw in the Liberal Party that they lose any time they “run to the right of the Tories.” Which is really to say, if the Conservatives seem to have the ideas; when the Liberal leader runs as a competent manager, without an ideological message: Diefenbaker beat St. Laurent as a firebrand, Mulroney beat Turner when Turner’s platform was little more than “invest in infrastructure,” Harper beat Martin when Martin seemed to have no coherent platform but good management: “Mr. Dithers.”

Sixth, people want leadership. A government that just follows the polls, as most governments do, is useless. Donald Trump did well by speaking his mind; as, in their day, did Reagan, Thatcher, Ralph Klein, Rob Ford.

This is the way conservatives win. O’Toole has no idea and no ideas. The hope for conservatives is Bernier and the PPC. 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

If I'd Known You Were Coming--I Wouldn't Have Baked a Cake

 

There has been much in the media about the Vatican announcing that priests cannot bless same-sex unions. There should not have been. This is not news. In principle, the Vatican cannot change the Church’s stance on either faith or morals. The Church is supposed to be infallible on faith and morals.

There is much malarkey in the media about “bringing Christianity into the 21st century.” Right and wrong do not change by the calendar date.

Most world religions consider homosexual sex sinful: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bahai, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism—in effect, all religions that consider ethics essential to faith. Those that do not consider homosexuality sinful do not pronounce on sin in general.

The wider society sees no crime, because it is consensual. Nobody’s rights have been violated. “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

One might argue that this is not entirely so—that there are hidden victims. For example, one might claim that homosexuality spreads disease, or threatens to reduce population. However, so long as things like adultery are legal, it is hard to make a case that homosexuality should not be.

But the religious concept of sin is not based on the doctrine of human rights, but on obedience to God’s plan. Moreover, while the state has no business considering anything other than physical harm, religion takes spiritual harm into account. There is no physical harm to another in any of the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no physical harm to another in seven or eight of the Ten Commandments, depending on whether you count adultery.

 It is a dangerous error to confuse crime with sin. If you make every sin a crime, you have totalitarian government. If you make every crime a sin, you have totalitarian government.

It is vital to maintain the distinction between homosexuality as a sin, and homosexuality as a crime.  

A wise Christian, and a wise liberal, can support the Vatican pronouncement, while supporting state recognition of homosexual unions. If only for the value of maintaining this distinction.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Their Truth

At the supermarket checkout, I saw the cover of People magazine had a photo of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, with the heading “Our Truth.” (If I recall correctly, it was “Our Lives, Our Truth.” 

To speak of “our truth” is simple insanity. Truth is truth, unconditionally, one truth cannot contradict another, and you cannot declare yourself Napoleon Bonaparte as “your truth.” What Harry and Megan Markle claim is either true, and the Royal family is guilty of racism, or it is false, and the Sussexes themselves are guilty of slander. It is unjust to the innocent to leave the matter ambiguous, and say that anything said must be true. Nor can Hitler escape censure by declaring that Aryan superiority and Jewish depravity is “his truth.” People magazine is either endorsing insanity, or endorsing evil.

This same day, I witness a video clip of Don Lemon on CNN objecting to the Vatican refusal to bless gay marriage because “God would never judge us.”

Judgement is what we are here for.

Did God not judge Adam and Eve in the Garden? Is Jesus not coming again to judge the living and the dead? Why then did God create us? Just as cute pets? With no responsibilities? And if everyone gets to heaven, why did he not create us in heaven, and instead leave us to suffer here on Earth?

And why does the Bible condemn Pontius Pilate for refusing to judge Jesus? Why is Pilate the villain, and not the hero of the piece?

Why do we condemn the neighbours who reputedly let Kitty Genovese be stabbed to death in a stairwell rather than intervene? Who were they to judge?

As infuriating is the often-repeated claim that parents are supposed to show their children “unconditional love,” and never discipline.

That’s a perfect way to raise a psychopath or a narcissist. Or a helpless house pet.

Unconditional love is not love at all. It is ownership.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.