Stephen Roney's Blog, page 59
December 19, 2023
A Ukrainian Christmas
Imagine There's No Heaven
I discover it is impossible to talk about religion to a bot.
I tried it with a chat bot. It was okay on talking about techniques, like meditation techniques and self-help. But belief; there’s the problem. I asked the bot if she were a theist. She said she had no beliefs, but was happy to discuss any.
Turing test fail. There was no one there to talk to.
Is it having ontological beliefs that makes us human, that makes us persons?
And is it the lack of any beliefs that makes an increasing number of us NPCs, people who seem robotic in their speech and behaviour? Hasn’t the number of NPCs multiplied as faith has declined?
Perhaps it is not that people believe in things like men becoming women, or foetuses not being alive. It is that they believe in nothing, so any “narrative” is as good as any other.
And they cling to their beliefs so defensively and robotically, wanting to shut all others down, not because they hold them strongly, but because their belief in them is so difficult to maintain, a feather might strike them down.
They have no soul.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 18, 2023
Song for a Winter's Night
Merry Christmas!
Progressive Schools
George Bernard Shaw went to a progressive "experimental" school in Dublin, and hated it.
James Joyce went to a Jesuit school a few blocks away, and although he did not end up a faithful Catholic, always praised the classical education he got there.
Education is conservative by its nature. It is the process of passing on to each new generation the accumulated wisdom of their ancestors.
This is true through to graduate level. New Ph.D.’s and new faculty are judged by a panel of those already ensconced—a practice designed to ensure orthodoxy, and prevent innovation, comparable to and derived from the apostolic succession among the clergy. Lone must ensure the preservation of the deposit of faith.
Education establishments are designed to resist change. This is not a bug; it is a necessary feature. Change is often desirable; but the education system is not there to do it.
From whence does change come? From open communication among the very intelligent. The Internet is ideally suited for this. New art movements always arise outside the academies. Major philosophers have almost never been professors of philosophy; major poets never arise in English departments. Einstein was a patent clerk, not a physics prof; the current IT revolution began in garages. The Wright Brothers rn bicycle shop.
Unfortunately, once science supplanted theology as our core faith, the education system went of the rails. Science is meant to experiment and innovate. Science has no core of knowledge, only eternal doubt and a technique to test beliefs.
We began, under the influence of science, to rely on the education system to experiment and innovate, instead of to educate; destroying the key mission.
This is one reason why the education system has stopped working. It often now literally has students sit in a group and decide for themselves what is real: “their truth,” “their lived experience.” Even if this makes sense, there is no reason to spend time in school. One already knows what one knows.
Having no remaining purpose, schools and universities have even taken it as their mission to destroy the civilization. Including trying to shut down free discussion so that innovation cannot take place.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 17, 2023
Needs to be Said
The Trump Campaign in Canada
The Canadian Conservative party, while still leading handily, has fallen by ten points in recent polls. Why?
So far as I can figure, only one thing has changed: Donald Trump is up in the US polls. Justn Trudeau has started campaigning against Trump instead of Poilievre. His message now, incongruously enough, is that a vote for him is a way to protest Trump.
So why do Canadians react so viscerally, indeed irrationally, to Trump? Why is Trump such a bogeyman in Canada?
Because Trump is boastful and rude. This is just not the way a Canadian ever behaves. It is not “nice.”
Small-minded, I know. But that’s Canada.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Gaudate
It's Gaudate Sunday! My once-annual opportunity to drown the entire neighbourhood in the sounds of one of my favourite Christmas songs.
Christus est natus! Suck it up!
It's Hip to Be Sankofa
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When Toronto, in the middle of tough economic times, decided they needed to spend at least 15 million to rename Dundas Street, for the ridiculous reason that Dundas, a leading Scottish abolitionist, did not demand abolition fast enough, I thought that was pretty stupid. But, as I blogged this at the time, after all Dundas had no particular connection to Canada, and we ought to doff the colonial attitude and choose Canadian names.
I suggested Dundas be renamed “Jubilee Street,” and Dundas Square “Jubilee Square.” Because, after all, it is a fitting name for a place of celebrations. And Canada was shockingly doing nothing else to commemorate Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, an unprecedented historic event.
Elizabeth not Canadian enough, you object? Au contraire, the entire historical raison d’etre for Canada’s existence is allegiance to the monarchy. She was Queen of Canada.
I would certainly have settled for Macdonald Square. But guess whose statues are all being covered up by tarps or torn down.
Toronto has announced its new name for Dundas Square. It will be called “Sankofa Square.” After a word in the Akan language, spoken in some parts of Ghana, meaning reputedly, but improbably, “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.” Deeply meaningful to all, no doubt.
The Aka, incidentally, were major slave-traders.
If you were writing a parody of Toronto’s eternal provincialism, you could not do better. No Canadian nor local references, no. Once a colony, always a colony. God forbid Toronto should ever have any culture of its own.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 16, 2023
Advent Music
