Stephen Roney's Blog, page 3

The Motive Behind the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I had been puzzled over the motive behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination. There was no sign of mental illness. There was no prior criminal record. The assassin was not some desperate loser like Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan whose only hope of fame was to kill someone famous. This guy had been an A student. Why did he kill Charlie Kirk?

Now it makes sense.

It turns out he had been living with a trans lover. Now it makes sense. He was necessarily part of the “LGBTQ community; although he was probably not sure himself which letter properly referred to himself. His “trans” “partner” initiated him into the trans ideology, and he had to embrace it to be in that relationship. And the trans ideology is in effect extreme narcissism: the idea that one’s personal will must override biology, mut override physical reality itself. This is in effect an assumption of godlike powers, the right to control reality. 

God naturally also has the right to kill; God kills all of us, after all, sooner or later. As God, the assassin could kill or destroy anyone who stood in his way.

Charlie Kirk denied he had the right or ability to control the world. So Charlie Kirk had to die.

Transgenderism is endemic in the culture now because he conviction that you are God is endemic in the culture now. A recent Facebook post--from a close acquaintance and in a sense a friend!-- expressed the common New Age sentiment. I encounter it at least monthly, it not daily, in Canada. I quote:

“We are divinity itself…we are here to take FULL responsibility for Ourselves, we are the ones we've been waiting for, we are here to save Ourselves…We are the manifestations of Source expressing and experiencing itself in the form of Infinite Many-ness. We are already ‘That.’ … There is no God outside of you. It is nonsense to worship that with you are a literal living, breathing expression of... It's a mind control program propagated to keep the masses feeling less then, keeping them disempowered and continuously beLIEving that ‘God’ or ‘the power’ is ‘out there’ - It's all nonsense, tools of control.”

Here is a whiff here of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism: “tat tvam asi,” “Brahman-atman.” But Vedantic Hinduism has been mostly superseded in India itself by devotional Hinduism: it has over the centuries lost the competition of ideas even there. It is of course incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, or Islam; and with Buddhism. 

And with Western paganism.

This is the sin the ancient Greeks called “hubris”: thinking you are a god. Bad news: it leads inevitably to madness and disaster on a social scale. It was also a crime in Athenian law; it was understood to lead automatically to the abuse of others. 

It is moreover the original sin with which Satan tempts Eve: “when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And it is Lucifer’s own original sin. From this sin all other sin emerges.

It is also an untenable claim. As Descartes pointed out in his Meditations, it is immediately obvious to us that it is false.

“If I were independent of every other existence, and were myself the author of my being, I should doubt of nothing, I should desire nothing, and, in fine, no perfection would be wanting to me; for I should have bestowed upon myself every perfection of which I possess the idea, and I should thus be God.”

And this, however much the narcissist might wish it, is transparently not so. We know we do not know everything; we know we make mistakes. We know we cannot fly. We know things happen to us that are unexpected, even against our will. 

Hence the inevitable retreat into bitterness, anger, depression, and hostility towards the universe. And to violence towards others.

There is another emotional issue with the belief that we are God: it leaves us alone in the universe. I recall Ramakrishna’s emotional objection to monism: “I want to taste sugar. I don’t want to BE sugar.” There is no possibility of Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship, which is the entire point of existence. God is love, and now there is no one to love, and so no love, and no God.

We must pull out of this tailspin. 

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

The Tell-Tale Heart

 

I am not a fan of Edgar Allen Poe. To me, his writing is over the top—fear-jerking, cheap thrills.

But I just went through “The Tell-Tale Heart” with a student, and I think Poe may have a lead here on the true nature and cause of what modern psychiatry calls “paranoid schizophrenia.” 

In the story, the narrator is driven to psychosis by a guilty conscience. And not only guilt over murdering an old; he murders the old man in the first place out of guilt. A bad conscience made him imagine the old man saw into his soul and was judging him.

Poe does not tell us what he feels guilty about in the first place; but the clue is his insistence throughout the tale that he is not mad. He is more concerned about this than about being convicted of murder—he is resisting the obvious insanity defense. Why?

Out of pride. It is literally vitally important to him to convince the reader that his version of reality is the correct one. He must have the ability to impose his will on reality, and not concede to it.

In other words, a schizophrenic is a narcissist overwhelmed by his guilty conscience.

This is consistent with a mystery I read of a long time ago, in a book about Florida’s “death row.” It claimed that virtually everyone on death row seemed fully insane, delusional. Even though they were all judged sane and able to stand trial when they were convicted. And this included contract killers, mob killers—people who did it professionally, as a job. It seems implausible that such people were psychotic at the time they committed their crimes; a psychotic cannot plan well enough for a mob hit. 

Possibly the fear of death drove them mad; but most of us see death coming at the end of our lives, and do not go mad expecting it. It seems more likely the psychosis was provoked by having the chance to meditate over their former deeds.

M. Scott Peck, and Robert Fleiss, have both observed that narcissists when challenged can become psychotic. After all, their everyday assumptions, if examined closely, are already delusional. They all secretly think they are better than everyone, a Napoleon, or the god Siva, or the virgin Mary, or the promised Messiah. They will delude themselves with ideas of their own exceptional talents: like Poe’s narrator boasting of his extremely sensitive hearing, and of how clever he was in how he committed the murder and hid the body. This is how narcissists talk.

Shake them up enough, and the mask they wear to hide these assumptions from others slips. They openly declare themselves Napoleon, or Siva, or the Virgin Mary.

Paranoia comes with schizophrenia. Paranoia is itself a clear expression of egotism. It is the belief that everything is about you. Someone on the television is speaking directly to you. The CIA is trying to control you—obviously, they consider you that important. Everything is a message for you personally.

This is all the opposite of depression, which is caused by a sense of inferiority.

But in either case, the obvious and necessary cure is the same: to bring God and submission to God into the mix. 

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

The Murder of Charlie Kirk

In the face of the death of Charlie Kirk, I am consoled by the ancient saying, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”; and by the more modern saying, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." 

Some fear this will make public discourse impossible; and America will of necessity dissolve into general violence. 

I am hopeful that, instead, this might be the tipping point beyond which no decent person will admit to being on the woke left. The moral high ground counts for everything; and the left has now lost it decisively. 

I see signs of this. MSNBC fired their analyst Matthew Dowd within hours for commenting on air that Kirk deserved to die for his supposed “hate speech.” And they issued a public apology. U of T professor Ruth Marshall posted on social media “Shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist c–ts.” And has already been placed on leave.

Whether the left has developed a conscience or not, businesses know how their bread is buttered. They have belatedly gotten the message that the public mood has changed. They have learned the lesson of Bud Light, Disney, Target, and Cracker Barrel. Nobody wants to be next.

And the fact that some leftist has resorted to murder shows that Kirk won the argument. So they had to silence him. But did this work with Martin Luther King? Mahatam Gandhi? Socrates? Jesus Christ?

When they fight you, then you win.

I suspect that, two years from now, nobody will admit to ever having been “woke” or voting for Kamala Harris.

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

The Murder of Iryna Zarutska

Although barely being mentioned by the US legacy media, the murder of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte LRT is all over the internet. This is because it resonates with the moment; it is deeply symbolic. It is of a piece, I think, with the current violent uprising against the government in Nepal. Ordinary people have had enough, and are ready to rise against wokery in all its forms. It is about being fed up with censorship and government propaganda and misinformation and suppressing the truth. The video of the innocent white woman suddenly being stabbed to death by a black man, unprovoked, expresses visually and incontrovertibly something we have all known to be true, but forbidden to say, for years.

Anti-white racism is the real problem. 

Beyond that, government contemptuous of and hostile to the common people is the real problem.

The one point I would add to the ferment is that this is not about mental health. The lame common excuse that the killer was let down by the system in not being given “help” is diabolically wrong.

Stop and think for a moment. Claiming that mental illness leads to violence is a grave slander against the mentally ill. They suffer enough already. It is like saying lepers are violent, or cancer victims are violent.

It also denies them the dignity of human agency. It excuses all attempts to control them and ignore their concerns. It treats them as lesser beings. It might even eventually excuse their extermination.

The mentally ill are no more violent, statistically, than the general population.

Moreover, whenever it is revealed that this or that killer is mentally ill, this also reveals that they have been through the system, in order to have that diagnosis. They have already been given whatever “help” the mental health system has to offer. The problem is that the mental health system does not know how to help; throwing more money after it is money wasted.

And as a matter of simple justice, the mentally ill must be held responsible for violent actions against others. Otherwise it is easy for anyone of malicious mind to use this as cover. It is like saying “the devil made me do it.” It is an abdication of responsibility, and in itself is gravely immoral. This is why, historically, the Church has resisted most claims of demonic possession. 

The devil can tempt; he cannot force you to do the thing. You still have your own conscience and judgement.

I can imagine someone hallucinating that they are being attacked by aliens or devils or other hostile forces and needing to defend themself. I can see this happening if police advance on a schizophrenic, for example, with their uniforms and their weapons; or doctors or male nurses in white coats. 

But that cannot be maintained in this case. The poor woman was sitting there minding her own business. The killer felt malice, and acted on malice.

His presumed insanity is no defense.

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

Solving the Health-Care Crisis

The Commonwealth Fund’s annual health policy survey has ranked Canada very poorly among 31 high-income countries with universal health care for timely access to services.

How to fix our health-care crisis?

The obvious first move is to abandon the odd political shibboleth that we must not permit private care. “No two-tier health care.” Why not? Canada is the only universal-care country that severely restricts private options. In Britain, the rich are publicly shamed if they resort to the public system.

As a practical matter, the Canadian rich currently often head down to the States for private care. This is an unnecessary travel expense for them, and it drains money from the Canadian economy.  Better to let private firms set up in Canada. The rich will be able to “jump the queue,” but as a result, the queue will be shorter for everyone. To object is mere self-destructive envy.

Then if a privately-run clinic or hospital can provide a service for less than the public system does, as may well be the case, the government plan too should cover the private option. 

Most of what doctors do, however, is diagnosis, and prescribing pills. AI can already diagnose and prescribe more accurately than a human doctor. Accordingly, we need much less training than we currently demand for a medical doctor; all we really need is basic computer competence. We need nurses, dispensing pharmacists, and technicians to run the diagnostic machines. We do not really need doctors.

We should also institute a nominal fee, a deductible, for a doctor or hospital visit, to discourage unnecessary use: say $5.

And we should not cover unnecessary non-health procedures like sex changes or abortions.

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

What God Asks of Us

 

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

This was the Gospel reading at today’s mass.

The priest began his sermon by assuring us that salvation is a free gift, we were ransomed by the cross, and we need only trust in Jesus to be saved.

It seems to me he was deliberately speaking against the Bible passage. No doubt he feared it would not go down well with the congregation.

But you don’t get to ignore or contradict the Bible.

The Catholic church holds that we cannot achieve salvation by our own merits; this much is true. But that does not mean everyone gets into heaven. Otherwise, what is the point of the created world? Why not just have us all born into heaven?

This world has to be a time of trial, as the Bible says here.

Following Jesus does not just mean a verbal acknowledgement, “I believe in God,” or “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savoir.” That is meaningless; that “Jesus” or “God” is just a word.

You must “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Here is an analogy suggested by John Lennox: compare loving your wife. Your commitment to your wife is profound, according to the Bible and the marriage vows. You must put her above your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your birth family. You must stay with her in sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, in old age, when she is no longer physically attractive to you. You must put your life on the line if necessary to protect her; you must eschew all others until death do you part. That is the vow you make.

Your commitment to God must be at least as strong as this, or you are not loving him with your whole heart.

It follows that you must be prepared to lose everything for his sake; for the sake of our relationship with him.

And you had better think carefully of this at the outset, just as you had better enter marriage with a serious intent.

This is the import of the passage in the Lord’s Prayer that Pope Francis seems not to have understood, and objected to: “Lead us not into temptation.” 

It is our plea that God not demand all this of us, as he did of Jesus, or of Job, to test our love.

But he often will, perhaps especially if he cares enough about us.

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

Man the Creator

 Julia James Davis argues that men are better creative artists than women; and her argument makes sense. I just dare not make it as a man. Moreover, it seems objectively true. Most great artists are men.

As she points out, this is no more remarkable than that most great athletes are men. The male body is different from the female body; the male mind is different from the female mind. 

Men are creative; women are receptive. 

Art must express truth to be great. Female artists generally lack a sense of truth, and express only prettiness. Their art tends to be decorative.

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

Dysfunctional Governments and Dysfunctional Families

The majority of world governments are dysfunctional. They promote lies, mass delusions, propaganda, to their people. They do not respect human dignity and human rights. They do not practice social justice—that is, merit is not reliably rewarded. 

In my youth, there was the Soviet sphere, and the Third Word, and only a rough third of the world was “free.” and free of corruption to a dysfunctional level. It might seem that things have improved since the fall of the Soviet bloc; but it seems to me that things have been getting worse quickly in some of the supposedly “freest” countries: Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Germany. And until the modern era, there were no or almost no “free” countries. All governments were dysfunctional.

The Gospel warns of this: the Devil is the prince of “this world.” Government is better than no government, but government is given over to Satan.

The great value of studying history is that there you see the human truths writ large. The state is a proxy for the family; which is why we speak of “patriotism”—from the word “pater,” “father.”

So the lesson of history and politics is that most families, similarly, are dysfunctional. They promote shared delusions; they are not nurturing; they do not reward merit.

By my reading of the Old Testament, the inevitable failure of the family is the conduit for original sin: “the sins of the father are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation.” All the families of the patriarchs are obviously dysfunctional. Abraham abandons his son Ishmael, and is ready to slaughter his son Isaac. Isaac plays favourites between Jacob and Esau. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his brothers. Lot sleeps with his daughters. Noah curses his son Ham. Eve tempts her husband Adam into sin. The Bible is making a point, if subtly. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, thought his own childhood without a family had been pleasant enough. And he became a successful economist. So he decided to investigate, using the economist’s toolset. What did he find out?

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

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

Shocking? But that was the data. 

Accordingly, associating Christian values with “family values” seems diabolical. Just as we should not idolize the state, we should not idolize the family.

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

The Roots of Madness

 

NB Provincial Asylum before demolition.

I have been reading a history of the New Brunswick Provincial Mental Asylum.

A mental patient committed in 1868 kept a diary. In it, he classified fellow inmates as falling into three groups:

“Those that had become crazy about religion…others that had gone crazy about loss of property…and many that had become insane through the immoderate and excessive indulgences of their sensual passions.”

I find it interesting to see a lay classification not influenced by the modern DSM. I think these classifications are much more helpful than “bipolar,” or “schizophrenic,” or “depressed,” which only describe symptoms. It is as if modern psychiatry is trying to avoid looking at causes. But without knowing causes, you are unlikely to find a cure.

I nevertheless think this classification is off the mark on one thing. I doubt anyone actually goes crazy about religion. I can’t imagine the mechanism that would involve. That is the reaction of someone who starts by assuming religion is false—so that an excessive interest in it is automatically harmful or insane. Yes, many insane people seem deeply religious; just as many sick people enter hospitals. That is not evidence that the hospital makes them sick. I’d posit that religion is something many crazy people gravitate towards as a cure. Unfortunately, mental hospitals and psychiatry, then and now, will do everything they an to steer them away from it.

Which leaves two categories: those driven mad by injustice, and those driven mad by guilt. I think that is right, from reading the accounts of various inmates. 

But this can then be reduced to one cause for all mental illness: injustice.

We all have an inner gyroscope, a conscience, which demands justice. Kant argued persuasively that justice is a self-evident truth, a “categorical imperative.” Monotheists assume justice because the universe is governed by a just God. Each of us faces judgement at death, and at the end of time all will be judged. But even non-theists believe the cosmos is necessarily just: this is the doctrine of karma. The ancient Greeks held that the gods themselves were bound by Dike, the moral law.

The matter is obscured by the current misuse of the term “social justice.” 

And the matter is obscured by modern psychiatry because it refuses to recognize morality, justice. Which makes it useless in treating “mental illness.”

For the obvious cause of mental illness is that someone’s internal gyroscope is thrown off by the prolonged experience of some injustice—either done to them, or done by them to someone else. Something within us rebels, says this cannot be, this cannot be allowed to continue. If they cannot take action to correct it, they will and do experience great emotional turmoil and disorientation.

It all seems to me to make perfect sense.

Religion is then indeed the cure, as it is the assurance of justice eventually being done.

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

Anarchy is Worse than Autocracy

 

That Madman Duterte

I recently attended a reading of a memoir by someone who had been in Korea to teach, as so many of us now have. He recalled running into a group of Filipinos there, and was shocked to discover that they all seemed to like “that madman Duterte.”

I know a lot of Filipinos.  have yet to meet a Filipino who does not like Duterte, and wishes he were still president.

I find it rather arrogant of North Americans to think they know better than Filipinos whom they should elect as their country’s leader. It is a colonialist attitude.

And they do not understand life on the ground in the Philippines. I have lived there. They are labouring under a grave misperception; which perhaps extends to their understanding of the less-developed world generally.

In a country like Canada or the US, we need to fear too much government. Government sticks its nose in everywhere, there are regulations about everything. Government collects half our income in taxes, and spends it erratically. We have reason to fear totalitarianism.

But the less developed world generally does not have enough government. Government by and large does not function; usually because of corruption. The result is chaos and every man for himself. The last thing the average person needs to worry about is government becoming too intrusive.

A good example: when Duterte came to power, there was quickly much more freedom of the press: the number of journalists getting killed went way down. Because until Duterte imposed order, journalists were regularly assassinated by organized crime for exposing corruption. I lived under Duterte, and never felt threatened or in danger from the government.

When the system is corrupt, the only way to fix it is by bypassing the system: breaking the “rules.” And this is commonly seen by North Americans as the man at the top acting like dictator, taking to himself dictatorial powers. Technically, this is correct; but it can be necessary in the circumstances; like a British government reading the riot act.

Duterte achieved results in Davao, as its mayor. The Filipino public wanted him to do the same for the country, and he did, for the length of his term. Because the Philippines has term limits, and because he was not a dictator, he then had to leave power.

Koreans, similarly, often have good things to say about Park Chung-Hee, their autocratic leader during the sixties and seventies. Unlike Duterte, Park really did seize dictatorial powers and bypass elections. Nevertheless, he replaced a deeply corrupt as well as autocratic regime and government that developed under Rhee Sing-Man, and was himself by contrast seemingly honest. He might have craved power, but not money. Under his rule, Korea was able to begin to develop rapidly.

I would like to put in a similar good word for the Saudi royal family, having lived under their rule. Other “republican” nations nearby, culturally similar, are fractious and violent: Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq. Saudi Arabia has remained peaceful, orderly, and prosperous. Their populace did not rise up during the Arab Spring, showing their general contentment. Granted, they have the advantage of oil; but so did and does Iraq, or Libya, or Iran, or Venezuela. The government is theoretically autocratic, but seemingly honest and not intrusive in practice.

We need to understand the common need, in less developed countries, for a strong hand at the top. We should not automatically consider such leadership evil or dictatorial. The proper litmus is this: does thiat regime aggress against neighbouring countries? Does it oppress some minority within that country? Is it corrupt and draining the treasury?

This is the critical difference between a Saddam, an Idi Amin, or a Hitler, on the one hand, and a Duterte, a Frederick the Great or a Tito on the other.

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