Stephen Roney's Blog, page 66

Gaza

 

“Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why then doth every one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers?”

Malachi 1: 10; from today’s Mass reading.

I am wimping out if I do not take a clear stand on the current mess in Gaza. In most conflicts, contrary to the common cowardly and self-interested nostrum, one side is essentially right and the other wrong.

The Palestinians under Hamas began the present conflict, in particularly heinous and unprovoked fashion. Right is on the side of Israel.

One might protest that Israel is a “colonial settler state.” The Palestinian Arabs have a longstanding grievance: that their ancestral lands were taken over by Jews, largely coming from other countries.

I ask myself: How would I feel if I felt myself obliged to move because some other group had made my hometown inhospitable to me?

And I answer, I have had that experience. It causes me grief. I grew up partly in Montreal as an Anglophone. My family had roots there. Over time, Quebec has become inhospitable to Anglophones, and many have felt obliged to leave. It became hard for Anglophones to find a job. It would be difficult to get schooling in English for my children. 

Yet it does not seem to me to justify war or random murder. One picks up stakes and moves on; as have so many immigrants who come to Canada.

I also had to leave Gananoque, my second home town. I did not want to. But I could not complete my education there, and could not get a job.

Most people are used to having to pull up stakes and move on. And that is really all that is being asked of the Arabs. 

The Arabs—a culture actually founded on mobility.

And Palestinian Arabs have many opportunities near to hand; they are not some distinct ethnic group. Lands in which their own language is spoken and their religion established. Moving on to Cairo or the Persian Gulf for opportunities would seem natural in other circumstances. I myself moved to the Persian Gulf for opportunities.

So, other than antisemitism, I do not see the problem.

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

The End to War All Wars

 

I am left uneasy by a poetry reading I attended last week. There was no planned theme, but perhaps unsurprisingly, given events in Gaza, poems tended to focus on the horrors of war. My own contribution too, actually. What troubled me was how the moderator, summing up, suggested we were all, by saying war was bad, speaking out boldly to end war and change the world.

That, it seemed to me, was offensive. I cannot go so far as to say everyone agrees war is bad; the Fascists liked it. But it is the opposite of controversial to say so. By saying so, the poet is accomplishing absolutely nothing for anyone but himself, by washing his hands of the affair. Such a stance ought to be condemned, not praised. It is the stance of Pontius Pilate.

It further annoys me that people put such emphasis on killing civilians—as though it is perfectly okay that any number of soldiers die. The average soldier has no more control over war and peace than the average woman or child; killing him is just as wrong. Unless men’s lives don’t matter.

The necessary task is to propose how we might end this war, or war in general. Simply lamenting war is doing more harm than good: it gives succor to the aggressor.

In my defense, my own contribution proposed, in poetic terms, that all life is war until and unless we turn to God.

And that was a problem for those assembled: it violated “the separation of church and state,” one participant observed.

Not that “separation of church and state” is in the Canadian Constitution or Charter of Rights, or for that matter the US Constitution. And certainly not in Britain’s, which recognizes an established church. Not that that is a basic liberal principle that would have been propounded or recognized by John Locke. But all references to God or morality are now excluded from public discussion. Or rather, they are excluded unless you are Muslim.

Which is fatal to social and individual peace, because they are the solution to literally everything. And I mean literal in the literal sense.

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

God Only Knows

 

Would have liked to see Paul McCartney in there.

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

From the River to the Sea?

 

Thanks to improved communications, the decline of British influence in the world, and the drive for multiculturalism, Canada has much less sense of self than it did even fifty years ago. Has the justification for Canadian independence of the US gone?

It was originally, of course, loyalty to British traditions and the British crown that drew that boundary. But now the British ties are not just nearly invisible, but generally scoffed at by the Canadian elite. Britain and the British crown are, after all, part of the “patriarchy,” of “white supremacy,” of “colonialism,” and all that evil nonsense.

For a time, thinkers like D’Arcy McGee strove to build our own unique Canadian culture. Now this is also condemned; government funding has been withdrawn from anything uniquely Canadian in favour of supporting foreign cultures resident in Canada. For local Canadian culture is now considered too “white” and a manifestation of “settler colonialism.”

So what rationale is left for not joining the US? Few outside observers would see two cultures on this continent; unless it is Quebec, and then everything else down to the Rio Grande. This is the usual justification for political independence: a distinct ethnic identity. 

Since the US is a democracy and a federation, Canadians would not be losing self-determination or self-government in any substantial sense.

A border is an expensive thing to maintain; having two countries means a huge duplication of effort.

At the same time, with unification Canadians would almost surely achieve a higher standard of living; many more career opportunities; better retirement opportunities. 

It would reduce or eliminate a chronic Canadian problem of things corporate, political, and cultural being controlled by a small cabal: the Family Compact, the “Laurentian elite.” This small elite is the party that benefits from Canadian independence of the US, and consequent restriction on American ownership and participation. Historically, and especially at present, they have not served us well.

Really, unless we are prepared to end multiculturalism, invest in Canadian culture, and bust some social trusts, American assimilation seems inevitable.

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

Get Thee to a Nunnery

 

Greg Gutfield and the crew attempt to tackle a growing current problem: what to do about the homeless?

The same issue arises in my current classes on “The Glass Menagerie.” Laura, in that play, is the type: the type who end up homeless. Surely this is her likely fate, once her mother dies. 

How then could she escape her glass menagerie?

Psilocybin is snake oil. I think Gutfield comes closest to the solution when he says, get them out of the cities. Get them out of their current situation, which, as with Laura, is driving them mad. Madness is situational. It is a rational response to an impossible situation.

This would not be a matter of involuntary confinement, a violation of their human rights. You might say, and it would be true, that some people living in tents do not want a proper apartment. Offered shelter, they refuse to move. 

That is because they fear being trapped by “the system.” They want to opt out.

In other words, get them out into the countryside. These tent people are doing their best to simulate that in the city. Give them a bus ticket, and a permanent room in a motel at the edge of some small town, and leave them alone, and they will be delighted.

Consider Tom, in the play. He understands the imperative need to get away—he imagines joining the merchant marine.

Laura, by contrast, seeks to escape into her imagination, with her “glass menagerie.” This is the path to “psychosis”; to imaginary things becoming real. An opting out of the world as a whole.

The immediate need is more specific: generally to escape from a manipulative and narcissistic parent, who views their children as extensions of themself. This, however, develops into a mortal fear of “the system,” as with Tom, or, in Laura’s case, a mortal fear of life in general.

The need is to “get away from it all.”

We used to know this; and we used to have many fewer mentally ill. The original asylums, built at the beginning of the 19th century, were intended to be in tranquil rural settings where the agitated could simply have a restorative rest. In other words, true “asylums.” The New Brunswick Asylum, put up on the 1830s near where I write, was a prime example. It was on a piece of high ground outside the city, within soothing earshot and sight of the scenic Reversing Falls. It had an attached farm which the inmates worked; others did handicrafts. The spot is now a park. In Kingston, the asylum was built along the waterfront, again away from the city. The site is now, again, a park.

These original asylums had a cure rate of something like 80 to 90 percent within a year. Yet they devolved into the supposed “snake pits” that we closed down in the 1960s, in favour of throwing all our Lauras out in the street to freeze or starve.

What happened?

In the mid eighteen hundreds, “scientific” psychiatry began to emerge and to take over the asylums, turning them into “mental hospitals.” Rather than being left alone to sort out their troubles, the inmates of these institutions began to be poked and prodded and ordered about, experimented on and, in effect, tortured, in accordance with the latest “scientific” methods. We got the horrors of hydrotherapy, lobotomy, straightjackets, shock treatments, and the rest. The patients were subjected to the very same sort of bullying, objectification, and manipulation that had driven them mad in the first place. Mental illness became, for the first time in history, incurable. 

Because people stopped getting well, these “hospitals” grew overcrowded, and conditions further deteriorated. As the cities spread to surround and enclose them.

Granted, simply getting people homes out in the countryside is not necessarily going to be enough. This is only removing them from the source of the problem. They will be left with trauma. 

But why did we need to build these large asylums in the 19th century in the first place? What happened to the mentally ill before then?

Before then, we had monasteries and convents in the countryside. A child from an abusive family, or a child rejected by their family, could go there.

Picture Laura again: isn’t this the one plausible happy ending for her? To become a Carmelite nun?

A monastery can replace the faulty programming by a narcissistic milieu with new programming, true programming.

And the postulants are otherwise left alone to sort things out.

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

Tumbling Walls

 

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho; and the walls came tumbling down.

No doubt the Biblical story is not literally true. But it presents a spiritual truth: obstacles that seem insurmountable can and often do suddenly disappear. And when they fall, they fall from moral force. 

We saw it in the Nineties when the Berlin Wall came down. We saw it in the Sixties when the British Empire withdrew from every dune and headland without a war.

We are seeing it now with the Trudeau Liberals. 

A year ago, they seemed frustratingly invincible, no matter what the scandals or incompetence. The Conservatives seemed always to hit a vote ceiling; and the NDP would support the Liberals if they fell short. And the Liberals were taking full advantage of their power to stifle dissent.

Then suddenly this summer, something clicked. Were a vote held tomorrow, Poilievre is projected to win the third-largest majority in Canadian history.

I think we are seeing the same phenomenon with wokery in general, aka postmodernism, DEI, gender ideology, SOGI, etc. We saw the sudden collapse for Bud Light, which was the biggest beer brand in the States. Now a collapse for Disney, which only a few years ago seemed to be buying up everything in entertainment. I think we’re about to see a similar collapse in China, touted for years as the inevitable future world hegemon.

It even seems the biggest, most formidable-looking things are most likely to collapse. 

Marshall McLuhan used to call it the “dinosaur effect”: that a thing reached its apparent largest extent just before collapse.

But the better analogy is, again, in the Bible: the Tower of Babel. Given success, people are prone to become over-confident and over-extend. Prestige and momentum lets them live on fumes for a while. But when it catches up with them, it is sudden.

And I think wokery has been overreaching enormously. Sudden collapse is inevitable. If we are not there yet—the fog of war makes it hard to be sure—we will be there soon.

This segues naturally into a second great truth, that I always repeat to my students: if you never give up, you never lose. No matter how formidable the obstacles, failure is always a choice you make. Sooner or later, every wall falls.

It was this secret that built the Roman Empire. Pyrrhus of Epirus soundly beat them twice; and then, because the Romans refused to accept these defeats, was forced to withdraw. In the Punic Wars, the Romans built a fleet to challenge Carthage at sea; the whole fleet was sunk. They built another fleet. It was sunk. They built a third, and won command of the sea. So Hannibal crossed the Alps on land, and defeated the Roman army repeatedly on their own soil. He wiped out the entire army. The Romans retreated behind their walls, mustered another army, then sallied forth.

But they won because they crossed the sea, landed army, and threatened Carthage. Carthage sued for terms. In the same situation in which the Romans would not surrender.

It was this same secret that built the British Empire. As at Dunkirk, their superpower is retreating in good order. It has been said, “the British lose every battle but the last.” 

The British took Quebec when they should not have, and the French lost Quebec when they should not have; because, when the British lost the Battle of Carillion, and most of the other battles early in that war, they did not give up. When, in their first attempt on the citadel at Quebec, they lost the battle at Montmorency Falls, they did not give up. When, after taking Quebec, they lost the Battle of Ste.-Foy, they did not give up. They just tried again.

 But when the French lost the relatively smaller Battle of the Plains of Abraham, they broke in disorder, surrendering the crucial strongpoint.

This is also how Ulysses S. Grant won the Civil War. At Shiloh, he was defeated on the first day. He counterattacked on the second, and won. On his progress through Virginia, towards the end of the war, he fought battle after battle indecisively at best—and just kept advancing.

It’s a simple trick; and it works. As Woody Allen put it, nine tenths of success is just showing up.

The only problem is, it may not seem or be worth it. Surely it is often not worth it if it is just a matter of getting something for yourself. This is where moral force matters. Rome stuck it out because the Roman method of battle reinforced moral consciousness: each man defended his neighbour, not himself. By contrast, Carthage was fighting under the heavy guilt of ritual child sacrifice. As were the Canaanites in Jericho.

The British were historically buoyed by being relatively democratic and egalitarian; they were therefore able to fight as a team. The Empire faded, in turn, when they began to doubt the rightness of their cause, under the moral force of Gandhi.

Something worth remembering in life; and something worth remembering in these times when the world around us seems to have gone mad.

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

The Burning Times

 

A propos of Hallowe’en, the following appeared yesterday in my Facebook feed, titled “Let’s have fun, but not forget about history”:

“Annual reminder about where the ‘ugliness’ of witches comes from. That ugliness was the result of beatings and torture by animals. This is why I deplore the green face witch caricatures. 

Each year they parade her about, The traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, A toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this is abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature, I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.

Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, in route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.

The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.

I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.

Each year I shed tears of respect.”

Author unknown

This post illustrates the general point that most people seem unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Both the poster and comments on the post take this as “history,” while it is clearly speculation. “I believe this…” There is one fact in the entire piece: “most witches were women.” The rest is imagined.

There is not a great deal of documentation, but witches were safer in Medieval Europe than in pagan societies. For the Catholic Church did not believe in witchcraft. Pagan societies, on the other hand, like Canadian “First Nations” before Christian conversion, or pre-Christian sub-Saharan Africa, believed in witchcraft. Sorcerers were commonly tortured to death for cursing. If you believe in witchcraft it follows, just as you must prosecute someone for stabbing another to death with a knife. If cursing works, it is the most serious crime imaginable.

Witchhunting in Europe, a pagan practice, revived with the Reformation, and was more common in Protestant lands. This because, the authority of the Church having been thrown in doubt, folk beliefs resurfaced. In this “anything might be true” atmosphere, the witches of fairy tales, who were imaginary supernatural creatures like trolls or fairies, were taken by many to be real, and possibly in the neighbourhood.

I suspect we are currently at a similar point.

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

Happy Halloween

 

Halloween is here. Another round of culturally illiterate claims that it is based on the pagan Celtic feast of Samhain.

It is not. It is All Hallows Eve, part of a three-day Christian celebration in honour of departed souls; just as Christmas Eve is part of Christmas, and New Year’s Eve part of the New Year celebration. Next day is All Saints Day, and the day after All Souls Day. First a day to remember the souls in heaven, then a day to pray for the souls in purgatory.

There is no point in praying for souls in hell.

If it is all based on a pagan Celtic feast, why is it celebrated in Mexico, with no Celtic traditions to speak of, as the Day of the Dead? Why is it celebrated in the Philippines, as an evening you spend in the graveyard, burning a candle and holding a family picnic at the graves of your ancestors?

It is a reminder that the dead are still with us, and a memento mori, a reminder that for us too, this life on earth is temporary, not our final destination. And so the souls of the dead may wander the streets.

The claim that it is all Samhain is in part Black Legend, a survival of English anti-Catholicism, which wanted to portray anything Catholic as pagan. 

And it is in part an irrational fear of death.

Because we moderns are terrified of death and the afterlife, we have transferred the meaning of the festival to fear itself. Children now simply dress as scary monsters, and Hallowe’en is supposed to be scary. The real theme, death and the afterlife, is suppressed precisely because we find it too scary. We sublimate it by having children dress up as spooks, and give them candy and pretend to be scared, so we can pretend it is all make-believe.

Good people are not afraid of death; they do not whistle past graveyards. It is our conscience that makes Hallowe’en frightening to us. It implies judgement.

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

Wow!

 

This is getting serious.

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

Envy

 

It is a curious fact, in need of explanation, that much ofthe world is currently cursed by awful leadership at once. Justin Trudeau, Iwould argue, is the worst prime minister Canada has ever had. Joe Biden iscertainly in the running for worst US president. Francis is so historicallyawful as pope some Catholics wonder if he is a sign of the end times. RishiSunak in Britain is, at best, a technocratic cipher.

And why is it that, not so long ago, the US, Britain, andthe Catholic church all had outstanding leaders at once: Ronald Reagan, MargaretThatcher, John Paul II?

I am reminded of the adage, “hard times produce good men.Good man produce easy times. Easy times produce weak men, Weak men produce hardtimes.” This may be the cycle.

Reagan followed the appallingly pusillanimous Jimmy Carterand his time of “malaise.” Thatcher followed a period of labour chaos presidedover by the forgettable Jim Callaghan. John Paul II followed the notoriouslyprevaricating Pope Paul VI, the “Hamlet pope,” who seemed not to know his ownmind.

Conversely, Justin Trudeau came in following a period of tranquilityand prosperity, thanks to the fiscal discipline of Stephen Harper and, to someextent, Paul Martin and Jean Chretien before him. Although Trump’s presidencywas superficially chaotic, Joe Biden followed a period of unusual peace andprosperity under Obama and Trump. Francis was elected after JPII and theintellectually impressive Benedict XVI.

I think this tendency to elect medicrities can be put downto envy. In ordinary times, people do not want to vote for someone better thanthey are. They will actually prefer a mediocrity. They turn to impressiveleaders only in an emergency.

This is especially a problem in the US Democratic party. Theparty starts out representing the bottom half of the US IQ range: there istruth to the old saying that anyone who is not a socialist in youth has no heart,but anyone who is not a conservative once they grow up has no brain. And it ispositively founded on envy as its chief principle. So this coalition is goingto want to elect people with a lower than average intelligence. This explains alot.

Winston Churchill is the perfect example  of this envy principle. He had been ingovernment for decades—but he was not popular with his colleagues. Theypreferred to give the premiership to Neville Chamberlain, a dull mediocrity,perfectly suited, as someone remarked, to be mayor of Birmingham. He blew withthe wind.

Only once in the most desperate crisis, did his country turnto Churchill. As soon as the crisis passed, they turned away again, in favourof another cipher, Clement Atlee, “a modest man,” as Churchill described him, “withmuch to be modest about.”

The sin of envy is all-powerful; it holds us all back. ittears down statues of the great. It holds human civilization back inuncountable ways.

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