Francis Berger's Blog, page 34
January 23, 2024
Painting the Devil on the Wall
Here in Central Europe, if you come across as overly pessimistic about something, you may have someone tell you that you are painting the devil on the wall, or you may be asked not to paint the devil on the wall. In either case, the core message is simple — stop talking about it so negatively/stop being so negative or it may come true.
I say Central Europe because many nations — including Germany, Austria, and Hungary — have claimed the idiom as their own; however, the expression also appears farther to the east, in places like Latvia and Russia.
Don’t jinx it is the most analogous and simplest, idiom I can think of in English, at least as far as implied meaning goes, but in English it is usually reserved for keeping some positive prediction to oneself to avoid attracting bad luck or misfortune that brings about the exact opposite of the optimistic expectation.
In this sense, the English idiom and its Central/Eastern European counterpart involve the notion of cursing something by the mere act of speaking about it; however, there is a big difference between jinxing an optimistic expectation and being wary of a negative one manifesting in real life. For example, the Hungarian version of Don’t paint the devil on the wall sometimes includes, or he will come off the wall/he will appear!
Some English-language interpretations claim exaggeration of the negative, often excessive or unwarranted, to be the idiom’s core message. For example, Don’t listen to Jack when he gets all gloomy about the economy; he’s just painting the devil on the wall.
I don't know if this meaning within the idiom exists in other Central/Eastern European countries. It does in Hungary, where painting the devil on the wall sometimes refers to prophesying bad things that are untrue or unlikely to happen. However, in my experience, don’t make a bad thing even worse by talking about it is the more frequently implied meaning.
I am no prophet, and I rarely make predictions. Although I share negative views, I keep the bulk of my this-worldly pessimism and foreboding to myself because I wish to avoid accusations of painting the devil on the wall.
I don’t want to hear that my negative this-worldly views are excessive and unwarranted, and I would rather not be accused of making a bad situation even worse by simply talking about it.
Look closely -- no paintbrush. You see, I’m generally cheerful, daring, and optimistic, yet an unmovable earnestness underpins this positivity — and this informs me that most people have no sense of just how bad the situation in this world is .
I say Central Europe because many nations — including Germany, Austria, and Hungary — have claimed the idiom as their own; however, the expression also appears farther to the east, in places like Latvia and Russia.
Don’t jinx it is the most analogous and simplest, idiom I can think of in English, at least as far as implied meaning goes, but in English it is usually reserved for keeping some positive prediction to oneself to avoid attracting bad luck or misfortune that brings about the exact opposite of the optimistic expectation.
In this sense, the English idiom and its Central/Eastern European counterpart involve the notion of cursing something by the mere act of speaking about it; however, there is a big difference between jinxing an optimistic expectation and being wary of a negative one manifesting in real life. For example, the Hungarian version of Don’t paint the devil on the wall sometimes includes, or he will come off the wall/he will appear!
Some English-language interpretations claim exaggeration of the negative, often excessive or unwarranted, to be the idiom’s core message. For example, Don’t listen to Jack when he gets all gloomy about the economy; he’s just painting the devil on the wall.
I don't know if this meaning within the idiom exists in other Central/Eastern European countries. It does in Hungary, where painting the devil on the wall sometimes refers to prophesying bad things that are untrue or unlikely to happen. However, in my experience, don’t make a bad thing even worse by talking about it is the more frequently implied meaning.
I am no prophet, and I rarely make predictions. Although I share negative views, I keep the bulk of my this-worldly pessimism and foreboding to myself because I wish to avoid accusations of painting the devil on the wall.
I don’t want to hear that my negative this-worldly views are excessive and unwarranted, and I would rather not be accused of making a bad situation even worse by simply talking about it.
Look closely -- no paintbrush. You see, I’m generally cheerful, daring, and optimistic, yet an unmovable earnestness underpins this positivity — and this informs me that most people have no sense of just how bad the situation in this world is .
January 22, 2024
Chalk It Up to the Rooster
My first flock of hens numbered twelve, of which three perished — one to what I presumed to be heat stroke and the other two were victims of predation. Last spring, I purchased fifteen new hens and added them to my existing flock of nine.
I am happy to report that the nine remaining hens from the original flock are still around, as is every one of the fifteen “newcomers.” All twenty-four girls are laying eggs and appear healthy.
I haven’t lost a single hen in nearly a year, which is quite an achievement considering how vulnerable chickens are to predators and how susceptible they can be to mysterious illnesses, pests, and parasites.
A part of me wants to chalk this up as a testament to my improved chicken-keeping skills, but another part suggests it might just be good fortune.
Or…it could have much to do with Richie Ricardo — the oddball rooster my next-door neighbor gifted me in the spring by throwing him over the fence. Richie had a tough time with the girls at first, but after a month or so, he established his domain and has been a vigilant guard and caretaker since.
The rooster’s presence has greatly reduced aggression among the hens. Moreover, Richie is forever on the lookout and is quick to alert the flock of any potential risks or dangers. I witnessed this once when a bored hawk swooped down the hens toward the end of the summer.
And he does all of this without exhibiting aggression or pugnacity toward me. To claim that he enjoys my presence would be an overstatement, but he has yet to ruffle his feathers or attack me the way some of my neighbors’ roosters attack them.
For example, last summer, a hostile rooster chased a terrified four-year-old boy over a hundred meters down the street here in the village. Rumor has it that the poor fellow ended up in a pot the very same evening — I am, of course, referring to the rooster, not the boy.
So, here’s to you, Richie! May you live long and never see the inside of a pot!
I am happy to report that the nine remaining hens from the original flock are still around, as is every one of the fifteen “newcomers.” All twenty-four girls are laying eggs and appear healthy.
I haven’t lost a single hen in nearly a year, which is quite an achievement considering how vulnerable chickens are to predators and how susceptible they can be to mysterious illnesses, pests, and parasites.
A part of me wants to chalk this up as a testament to my improved chicken-keeping skills, but another part suggests it might just be good fortune.
Or…it could have much to do with Richie Ricardo — the oddball rooster my next-door neighbor gifted me in the spring by throwing him over the fence. Richie had a tough time with the girls at first, but after a month or so, he established his domain and has been a vigilant guard and caretaker since.
The rooster’s presence has greatly reduced aggression among the hens. Moreover, Richie is forever on the lookout and is quick to alert the flock of any potential risks or dangers. I witnessed this once when a bored hawk swooped down the hens toward the end of the summer.
And he does all of this without exhibiting aggression or pugnacity toward me. To claim that he enjoys my presence would be an overstatement, but he has yet to ruffle his feathers or attack me the way some of my neighbors’ roosters attack them.
For example, last summer, a hostile rooster chased a terrified four-year-old boy over a hundred meters down the street here in the village. Rumor has it that the poor fellow ended up in a pot the very same evening — I am, of course, referring to the rooster, not the boy.
So, here’s to you, Richie! May you live long and never see the inside of a pot!
January 21, 2024
Winning the Information War Entails Losing the Spiritual War
“How can the public, regulators, and social media companies better collaborate to tackle disinformation, as information pollution spreads at unprecedented speed and scale?”
The quote above comes from The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation , a characteristically insufferable WEF panel discussion from last year citing misinformation and disinformation as the “biggest short-term global risk the world faces.”
As expected, the proclamation, repeated emphatically at Davos again this year, has sparked scoffing outrage among bloggers, independent media types, free speech defenders, and the like.
Though perfectly justified, the bulk of the sneering emanating from such circles amounts to little more than offering a different way to look at the situation without acknowledging that the core crisis, the clear and present danger, resides in the situation itself — that is, in how nearly all information pollutes the current state of human consciousness and how merely being informed only exacerbates this problem.
Before wading into the issue, it is worth considering what it means to be informed.
Inform stems from the Latin in (meaning into) and forma (meaning to form). Joined together, these become informare — to shape, fashion, give form to, describe. This eventually entered into Old French as enfourmer, which meant to instruct in some specific subject.
From the perspective of human consciousness, being informed involves receiving and internalizing external information in representational configurations, i.e., symbols, images, and language, and using these to augment or construct a sense of reality.
Form, from the Latin forma, is interesting because it communicates image, likeness, shape, appearance, outline, or pattern. One theory suggests forma may be from or cognate with the Greek morphe meaning form, beauty, outward appearance, and that it entered into Latin via Etruscan and the name Morpheus, who, according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is a son of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, who in turn, was the brother of Thanatos, the god of death.
According to Ovid, Morpheus populates dreams with human forms and his brothers Phobetor and Phantasus — two more of Hypnos’s thousand sons — are responsible for filling sleeping people’s heads with the forms of animals and inanimate objects, respectively.
Note that in all cases, the stuff of dreams is not internally self-generated, but enters externally, implanted by dream gods. Like language and symbols, the Greeks believed that even dreams came from the outside and were implanted, shaped, and formed by external divine forces rather than from within man himself.
But what existed before the advent of representational? In terms of human consciousness, Owen Barfield posits that early man existed in Original Participation, a state in which man was absorbed in and part of reality. Secondary thinking via symbols and language was all but absent or rudimentary. Though primary thinking dominated Original Participation, it emanated from a faint sense of self.
As we emerged from that form of consciousness, symbols, and language began to dominate, but that representational "world" was still infused with and supported by some semblance or vestige of primary thinking.
The use of symbols and language allowed man to participate in Reality differently. Secondary thinking separated man from Reality and granted the “space” needed for world discovery, self-discovery, and self-formation.
The alienation of modern man represents near-total submersion in the representational world, made all the more acute by the ever-increasing disconnect between Reality and representations of Reality.
This disconnection marks the virtual obliteration of primary thinking in favor of secondary thinking. Put another way, for modern man, secondary thinking via externally received symbolic information is reality because he is virtually incapable of connecting with reality in any other way.
Modern man now regards the symbols, language, and other representations used to shape, fashion, give form to, or describe as reality itself, both de facto (as in matter of fact) and de jure (as in legally and officially recognized).
Simply put, information used solely at the level of secondary thinking is now synonymous with reality. Whoever controls information at the secondary level of thinking also controls reality.
The fine folks at the WEF and the rest of what is often referred to as Clown World understand this explicitly, which helps explain why they seem so eager to eradicate any information challenging their web of symbols, images, and language, all of which aims solely at manipulation to shape thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
Like Morpheus and his brothers, Clown World aims to keep human consciousness dormant, implant shapes and forms into sleeping minds, and demand everyone accept these implanted shapes and forms as reality.
Those who oppose the totalitarian aims espoused by organizations like the WEF recognize the information manipulation and seek to counteract it with truthful information. Though far more noble in intent and motivation, the aim of disseminating such truth-seeking information misses the mark concerning the bigger picture of human consciousness and its relation to reality.
In short, the war we are in is fundamentally a spiritual war, not an information war .
Many recognize and understand the totalitarian push to control the narrative. They fail to discern that the core problem is the exclusive and obsessive focus on engaging with narrative through secondary thinking, thereby keeping consciousness firmly entrenched in representational reality as reality (or, in keeping consciousness locked in the Information Age and its related thinking).
Clown World is not simply striving to control information and secondary thinking; they want to ensure human consciousness remains trapped in a state of information overload and secondary thinking.
Though they claim otherwise, I suspect that at the deepest, most fundamental level, Clown World and the demonic forces it serves welcome information opposition to their secondary-level information manipulations because it keeps human consciousness firmly fixated on representations as reality rather than on Reality.
Thus, keeping people engaged in information wars not only helps to distract from the spiritual war but also helps to hinder the further development of human consciousness.
I am not implying that those waging the information war against Clown World are intentionally entrapping people at the secondary level of thinking. Unlike the WEF — which deliberately uses information to enslave people in secondary-level thinking via representations that are directly opposed to God and Creation — information warriors on the side of good share representations that often can and do act as intermediaries to Truth and Reality; however, many information warriors treat the intermediaries themselves as Truth and Reality, and this is where the problems set in.
The information warriors who utilize representational intermediaries or the people who engage with the intermediaries the warriors produce — be it in the form of writing, symbols, spoken language, art, video, etc. — contribute virtually nothing to the spiritual war or the development of consciousness if they go no further than the intermediaries in terms of thinking and knowing or, worse, regard the intermediaries as Reality.
Winning the spiritual war and connecting with Truth and Reality does not and cannot boil down to being informed, an essentially passive state in which one allows the external to shape, fashion, give shape to, and teach reality via representations presented and accepted as Reality.
Being informed in that manner keeps one asleep and the plaything of Morpheus and his dream-forming brothers. Informed people who regard representations as Reality are dreamers living in a dreamland.
I am not implying that the representational is dispensable.
On the contrary, it is vital, but only when we understand that it serves as a go-between and not a final destination. In this sense, the representations the good info warriors provide are far superior to the information promulgated by the likes of the WEF, which serves more as a go-nowhere rather than a go-between. Yet representations on the side of good can only do good if they are treated as intermediaries — that is, used to orient and/or connect to Reality.
That connection to Reality happens beyond the representational, in the realm of primary thinking — the realm of non-representational direct-knowing originating from and connecting to the primal self. Although representational, secondary thinking can inspire, motivate, and guide individuals toward primary thinking, it cannot substitute for primary thinking.
Berdyaev observed that “truth has two meanings: truth as knowledge of reality, and truth as reality itself.” In this sense, information via representations (language, symbols) is truth as knowledge of reality, while direct-knowing is truth about Reality itself.
Berdyaev offers another way to think about it, “I wish to know, not actuality, but the truth about actuality. And I may learn what this truth is, only because in me, the knowing subject, there is a source of truth and because I may communicate with this truth.”
Communicating with this source of truth goes well beyond the state of “being informed”, i.e., of knowing actuality. It requires locating an innate, internal source of truth that can connect with Reality directly, moving beyond the realm of representations.
Information is intended to serve as a bridge to Reality, not substitute Reality.
Information as reality is, at best, only partial reality. We see the bridge but do not understand what it is for or mistake it for something else. Like all bridges, information provides a means to get across from one side to another. Their purpose is distorted if they remain uncrossed or if the other side into which they extend is disbelieved or denied.
As Berdyaev notes, “Truth is not something given objectively, but rather a creative achievement. It is creative discovery, rather than the reflected knowledge of an object or of being. Truth ... is the creative transfiguration of reality.”
That creative transfiguration of reality occurs only in direct knowing, in utilizing secondary thinking to transcend secondary thinking and approach coherent metaphysical assumptions.
Barfield's Final Participation anticipates a state of human consciousness that is once again immersed in Reality, only this time with a fully formed and active awareness of self that stretches far beyond the realm of representation.
I don't think we are close to achieving that at any sustainable level now; however, I do believe we can experience direct knowing intermittently if we work at it, and that such experiences offer more for the spiritual war and divine providence than a thousand databases of information ever could.
Thus, winning the information war is not and should not be a primary concern. We will surely lose the spiritual war if we focus exclusively on the information war.
The war we need to win is on the other side of information . That is where we should be focusing and "fighting."
The quote above comes from The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation , a characteristically insufferable WEF panel discussion from last year citing misinformation and disinformation as the “biggest short-term global risk the world faces.”
As expected, the proclamation, repeated emphatically at Davos again this year, has sparked scoffing outrage among bloggers, independent media types, free speech defenders, and the like.
Though perfectly justified, the bulk of the sneering emanating from such circles amounts to little more than offering a different way to look at the situation without acknowledging that the core crisis, the clear and present danger, resides in the situation itself — that is, in how nearly all information pollutes the current state of human consciousness and how merely being informed only exacerbates this problem.
Before wading into the issue, it is worth considering what it means to be informed.
Inform stems from the Latin in (meaning into) and forma (meaning to form). Joined together, these become informare — to shape, fashion, give form to, describe. This eventually entered into Old French as enfourmer, which meant to instruct in some specific subject.
From the perspective of human consciousness, being informed involves receiving and internalizing external information in representational configurations, i.e., symbols, images, and language, and using these to augment or construct a sense of reality.
Form, from the Latin forma, is interesting because it communicates image, likeness, shape, appearance, outline, or pattern. One theory suggests forma may be from or cognate with the Greek morphe meaning form, beauty, outward appearance, and that it entered into Latin via Etruscan and the name Morpheus, who, according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is a son of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, who in turn, was the brother of Thanatos, the god of death.
According to Ovid, Morpheus populates dreams with human forms and his brothers Phobetor and Phantasus — two more of Hypnos’s thousand sons — are responsible for filling sleeping people’s heads with the forms of animals and inanimate objects, respectively.
Note that in all cases, the stuff of dreams is not internally self-generated, but enters externally, implanted by dream gods. Like language and symbols, the Greeks believed that even dreams came from the outside and were implanted, shaped, and formed by external divine forces rather than from within man himself.
But what existed before the advent of representational? In terms of human consciousness, Owen Barfield posits that early man existed in Original Participation, a state in which man was absorbed in and part of reality. Secondary thinking via symbols and language was all but absent or rudimentary. Though primary thinking dominated Original Participation, it emanated from a faint sense of self.
As we emerged from that form of consciousness, symbols, and language began to dominate, but that representational "world" was still infused with and supported by some semblance or vestige of primary thinking.
The use of symbols and language allowed man to participate in Reality differently. Secondary thinking separated man from Reality and granted the “space” needed for world discovery, self-discovery, and self-formation.
The alienation of modern man represents near-total submersion in the representational world, made all the more acute by the ever-increasing disconnect between Reality and representations of Reality.
This disconnection marks the virtual obliteration of primary thinking in favor of secondary thinking. Put another way, for modern man, secondary thinking via externally received symbolic information is reality because he is virtually incapable of connecting with reality in any other way.
Modern man now regards the symbols, language, and other representations used to shape, fashion, give form to, or describe as reality itself, both de facto (as in matter of fact) and de jure (as in legally and officially recognized).
Simply put, information used solely at the level of secondary thinking is now synonymous with reality. Whoever controls information at the secondary level of thinking also controls reality.
The fine folks at the WEF and the rest of what is often referred to as Clown World understand this explicitly, which helps explain why they seem so eager to eradicate any information challenging their web of symbols, images, and language, all of which aims solely at manipulation to shape thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
Like Morpheus and his brothers, Clown World aims to keep human consciousness dormant, implant shapes and forms into sleeping minds, and demand everyone accept these implanted shapes and forms as reality.
Those who oppose the totalitarian aims espoused by organizations like the WEF recognize the information manipulation and seek to counteract it with truthful information. Though far more noble in intent and motivation, the aim of disseminating such truth-seeking information misses the mark concerning the bigger picture of human consciousness and its relation to reality.
In short, the war we are in is fundamentally a spiritual war, not an information war .
Many recognize and understand the totalitarian push to control the narrative. They fail to discern that the core problem is the exclusive and obsessive focus on engaging with narrative through secondary thinking, thereby keeping consciousness firmly entrenched in representational reality as reality (or, in keeping consciousness locked in the Information Age and its related thinking).
Clown World is not simply striving to control information and secondary thinking; they want to ensure human consciousness remains trapped in a state of information overload and secondary thinking.
Though they claim otherwise, I suspect that at the deepest, most fundamental level, Clown World and the demonic forces it serves welcome information opposition to their secondary-level information manipulations because it keeps human consciousness firmly fixated on representations as reality rather than on Reality.
Thus, keeping people engaged in information wars not only helps to distract from the spiritual war but also helps to hinder the further development of human consciousness.
I am not implying that those waging the information war against Clown World are intentionally entrapping people at the secondary level of thinking. Unlike the WEF — which deliberately uses information to enslave people in secondary-level thinking via representations that are directly opposed to God and Creation — information warriors on the side of good share representations that often can and do act as intermediaries to Truth and Reality; however, many information warriors treat the intermediaries themselves as Truth and Reality, and this is where the problems set in.
The information warriors who utilize representational intermediaries or the people who engage with the intermediaries the warriors produce — be it in the form of writing, symbols, spoken language, art, video, etc. — contribute virtually nothing to the spiritual war or the development of consciousness if they go no further than the intermediaries in terms of thinking and knowing or, worse, regard the intermediaries as Reality.
Winning the spiritual war and connecting with Truth and Reality does not and cannot boil down to being informed, an essentially passive state in which one allows the external to shape, fashion, give shape to, and teach reality via representations presented and accepted as Reality.
Being informed in that manner keeps one asleep and the plaything of Morpheus and his dream-forming brothers. Informed people who regard representations as Reality are dreamers living in a dreamland.
I am not implying that the representational is dispensable.
On the contrary, it is vital, but only when we understand that it serves as a go-between and not a final destination. In this sense, the representations the good info warriors provide are far superior to the information promulgated by the likes of the WEF, which serves more as a go-nowhere rather than a go-between. Yet representations on the side of good can only do good if they are treated as intermediaries — that is, used to orient and/or connect to Reality.
That connection to Reality happens beyond the representational, in the realm of primary thinking — the realm of non-representational direct-knowing originating from and connecting to the primal self. Although representational, secondary thinking can inspire, motivate, and guide individuals toward primary thinking, it cannot substitute for primary thinking.
Berdyaev observed that “truth has two meanings: truth as knowledge of reality, and truth as reality itself.” In this sense, information via representations (language, symbols) is truth as knowledge of reality, while direct-knowing is truth about Reality itself.
Berdyaev offers another way to think about it, “I wish to know, not actuality, but the truth about actuality. And I may learn what this truth is, only because in me, the knowing subject, there is a source of truth and because I may communicate with this truth.”
Communicating with this source of truth goes well beyond the state of “being informed”, i.e., of knowing actuality. It requires locating an innate, internal source of truth that can connect with Reality directly, moving beyond the realm of representations.
Information is intended to serve as a bridge to Reality, not substitute Reality.
Information as reality is, at best, only partial reality. We see the bridge but do not understand what it is for or mistake it for something else. Like all bridges, information provides a means to get across from one side to another. Their purpose is distorted if they remain uncrossed or if the other side into which they extend is disbelieved or denied.
As Berdyaev notes, “Truth is not something given objectively, but rather a creative achievement. It is creative discovery, rather than the reflected knowledge of an object or of being. Truth ... is the creative transfiguration of reality.”
That creative transfiguration of reality occurs only in direct knowing, in utilizing secondary thinking to transcend secondary thinking and approach coherent metaphysical assumptions.
Barfield's Final Participation anticipates a state of human consciousness that is once again immersed in Reality, only this time with a fully formed and active awareness of self that stretches far beyond the realm of representation.
I don't think we are close to achieving that at any sustainable level now; however, I do believe we can experience direct knowing intermittently if we work at it, and that such experiences offer more for the spiritual war and divine providence than a thousand databases of information ever could.
Thus, winning the information war is not and should not be a primary concern. We will surely lose the spiritual war if we focus exclusively on the information war.
The war we need to win is on the other side of information . That is where we should be focusing and "fighting."
January 19, 2024
Bonald Offers Some Insights Regarding the System Living Between Us
Well, just when I was about the throw in the towel on anyone learning anything from the birdemic or offering anything incisive regarding relationships, someone like Bonald comes along and has me fold the towel up and put it back in the closet.
If anything, I believe Bonald’s post is at least pointing in the right direction, which is more than I can say for a lot of Christian blog posts I have read in the past six months.
Excerpts from private cultures (bold added):
Two observations. First, I believe many of us have had experiences like the following. I look back on the objective facts and accomplishments of my life to date, and I at once intuit “there’s so much more to me than that”. What though? Perhaps my unactualized potentials? A young man might naturally think this, but one with more years behind than ahead no longer flatters himself for having worlds of unrealized potential and is driven to suspect that the problem is more metaphysical, rooted perhaps in some gulf between the subjective and objective.
Second, we sincerely believe that the most important things in our lives are our relationships with loved ones and with God, that our communion with them is more important than solitary pleasures, however elevated (e.g. thinking, creativity). However, we cannot just be with friends and family. For short periods of time, it is enough to be silent in each other’s presence. On dramatic occasions like a reunion after long separation or a deathbed, expressions of love and gratitude are in order, but again quickly run their course. If one is to enjoy the presence of a beloved friend or kinsman for any length of time, one must turn with him to some other subject; one must turn to chatting–about shared memories, hobbies, politics, fiction, or some other subject admittedly of less importance than the bond of the two discussing it–or to some sort of activity. “Well, we can’t just sit and stare at each other!” you’ll say. Still, I find it interesting that the bond of the two requires a shared attention to a third.
Each human soul is a whole world unto itself. But each family, as well as each deep group of friends, is also its own private world. This became especially clear to me during the pandemic years. My wife and daughters and I have always spent a lot of time together, but then we spent little time with anyone else. With what ingenuity we had turned inward, the stories and games (our games being mostly stories acted out) we made up for each other became ever more elaborate, with ever more layers of character development and backstory to our imaginary world, a dramatic collaboration that continues to this day. My wife and I were and continue to be the main conduits of the larger culture to our children. Some of what we read to them I’d consider great literature; some of what we exposed them to were television shows from our childhood for which I’d make no claim to objective greatness. Either way, carrying these books, movies, and television shows from the wider culture to our family’s culture meant them becoming parts of a new whole (for example, the game my wife and I have of trying to stump each other with obscure Star Trek quotes), probably taking on new contextual qualities. I know other families who had similar experiences of the lockdown years.
And later…
Totalitarian Leftism is devouring the public culture, replacing everything with itself. Those of us who have not internally submitted to Leftism find the public culture increasingly loathsome. At some point soon, we may cease to see any value in participating in it at all. That is, even the idea of contributing a great novel, musical composition, or scientific discovery to the wider culture will lose any sort of appeal (even supposing one had the talent to do such a thing); how could I desire any creation of mine, anything into which I have mixed my self, to be recognized by and incorporated into that? Leftists may still wish to contribute to the public culture that they own, but however talented they are, the requirement that their work serve the hegemonic ideology will make it more a simulacrum of true art or science than the real thing. The rest of us will come to prefer our audience of a few.
I encourage you to read the whole post over at The Orthosphere.
As for me, I’ll add to Bonald’s thoughts by including some excerpts from a post in which I argued that we must not allow the System to live between us and our relationships (bold added):
As I noted in a post the other day, the experience of relationships between Beings is a fundamental purpose of Creation.
Beings are not limited to people but encompass every Being in Creation. One of the ultimate aims of these relationships is the kindling and expansion of love – not because love is a spiritual activity that serves life but because love suffuses life with its highest meaning and value – which entails that the motivations driving relationships ought to be rooted in the primacy of the spiritual – a primacy in which all Beings participate, whether consciously or not.
A simple and easy way to describe a relationship is to call it a connection or the state of being connected that arises after initial contact. Relationships are essentially exchanges. From these, communication, correlation, and correspondence emerge.
If relationships between Beings is a fundamental purpose of Creation, then Creation must be acknowledged as the "medium" for relationships.
The powers aligned against God and Creation appear to be acutely aware of the ultimate significance of relationships in Creation – our relationship with God foremost among them – and one of their all-encompassing goals lies in the disruption and destruction of relationships between Beings, primarily by firmly wedging their System in-between Beings and Creation and insisting that the System be the only medium of relational exchange and communication between all Beings in Creation.
The 2020 global birdemic coup offers a recent and vivid example of this motivation to live between Beings and control relationships in Creation.
For about two years, the powers opposed to God and Creation succeeded in severely curtailing, disrupting, forbidding, and diminishing relationships.
Not only that, but they also dictated the rules of relational engagement. They monitored, recorded, surveyed, micromanaged, manipulated, supervised, controlled, and regulated all relationships at all levels.
Relationships became contingent upon the System’s bureaucratic machinations. Terms like social distancing suddenly became acceptable and common in human discourse, as did notions of transformed societies in which none are safe until are safe.
And let’s not forget that the churches – meant to serve as a direct social and spiritual connection to God and Creation – eagerly and actively allowed the System to eclipse Creation and live between congregations and God in 2020.
The birdemic was the most tangible exhibition of the dark powers’ yearning to have their System live between Beings and Creation. In many ways, it represents the culmination of an insidious and seemingly ubiquitous stratagem to obscure Creation as the foundation of all communication between Beings and replace it with the System.
Most of my interactions with most people amount to little more than System interactions. People everywhere relate to each other only through the System.
And this is not limited to interpersonal relationships between humans. It extends to all Creation. I struggle to remember the last time I heard someone speak about nature or the weather without referring to the climate crisis or environmentalism. Virtually all of organized, institutional Christianity has reduced itself to broadcasting System-dictated agenda items, issues, and talking points.
The System only lives between us and Creation because we allow it to. No, more than that. We actively desire that the System live between us and Creation.
Relationships in Creation require free, autonomous, thinking agents motivated by and capable of love and creativity. Only such agents can know Creation directly and form knowing relationships in Creation.
Very few people appear interested in forming relationships in Creation because most people seem utterly uninterested in freedom, autonomy, and thinking, to say nothing of love and creativity. It’s far easier to permit the System to live between us.
A few years ago, I made a case for something I referred to as system distancing by emphasizing that such distancing was primarily a spiritual movement motivated by the mostly internal aim of drawing away from the System and closer to God and Creation.
Such a spiritual movement within individuals remains imperative. Although it is largely an internal movement, it is impossible alone.
It requires relationships with other Beings in Creation. Above all, it requires a relationship with Christ because the only we can ever hope to reconnect to Creation now is through Jesus.
Everything else is just the System living between us.
If anything, I believe Bonald’s post is at least pointing in the right direction, which is more than I can say for a lot of Christian blog posts I have read in the past six months.
Excerpts from private cultures (bold added):
Two observations. First, I believe many of us have had experiences like the following. I look back on the objective facts and accomplishments of my life to date, and I at once intuit “there’s so much more to me than that”. What though? Perhaps my unactualized potentials? A young man might naturally think this, but one with more years behind than ahead no longer flatters himself for having worlds of unrealized potential and is driven to suspect that the problem is more metaphysical, rooted perhaps in some gulf between the subjective and objective.
Second, we sincerely believe that the most important things in our lives are our relationships with loved ones and with God, that our communion with them is more important than solitary pleasures, however elevated (e.g. thinking, creativity). However, we cannot just be with friends and family. For short periods of time, it is enough to be silent in each other’s presence. On dramatic occasions like a reunion after long separation or a deathbed, expressions of love and gratitude are in order, but again quickly run their course. If one is to enjoy the presence of a beloved friend or kinsman for any length of time, one must turn with him to some other subject; one must turn to chatting–about shared memories, hobbies, politics, fiction, or some other subject admittedly of less importance than the bond of the two discussing it–or to some sort of activity. “Well, we can’t just sit and stare at each other!” you’ll say. Still, I find it interesting that the bond of the two requires a shared attention to a third.
Each human soul is a whole world unto itself. But each family, as well as each deep group of friends, is also its own private world. This became especially clear to me during the pandemic years. My wife and daughters and I have always spent a lot of time together, but then we spent little time with anyone else. With what ingenuity we had turned inward, the stories and games (our games being mostly stories acted out) we made up for each other became ever more elaborate, with ever more layers of character development and backstory to our imaginary world, a dramatic collaboration that continues to this day. My wife and I were and continue to be the main conduits of the larger culture to our children. Some of what we read to them I’d consider great literature; some of what we exposed them to were television shows from our childhood for which I’d make no claim to objective greatness. Either way, carrying these books, movies, and television shows from the wider culture to our family’s culture meant them becoming parts of a new whole (for example, the game my wife and I have of trying to stump each other with obscure Star Trek quotes), probably taking on new contextual qualities. I know other families who had similar experiences of the lockdown years.
And later…
Totalitarian Leftism is devouring the public culture, replacing everything with itself. Those of us who have not internally submitted to Leftism find the public culture increasingly loathsome. At some point soon, we may cease to see any value in participating in it at all. That is, even the idea of contributing a great novel, musical composition, or scientific discovery to the wider culture will lose any sort of appeal (even supposing one had the talent to do such a thing); how could I desire any creation of mine, anything into which I have mixed my self, to be recognized by and incorporated into that? Leftists may still wish to contribute to the public culture that they own, but however talented they are, the requirement that their work serve the hegemonic ideology will make it more a simulacrum of true art or science than the real thing. The rest of us will come to prefer our audience of a few.
I encourage you to read the whole post over at The Orthosphere.
As for me, I’ll add to Bonald’s thoughts by including some excerpts from a post in which I argued that we must not allow the System to live between us and our relationships (bold added):
As I noted in a post the other day, the experience of relationships between Beings is a fundamental purpose of Creation.
Beings are not limited to people but encompass every Being in Creation. One of the ultimate aims of these relationships is the kindling and expansion of love – not because love is a spiritual activity that serves life but because love suffuses life with its highest meaning and value – which entails that the motivations driving relationships ought to be rooted in the primacy of the spiritual – a primacy in which all Beings participate, whether consciously or not.
A simple and easy way to describe a relationship is to call it a connection or the state of being connected that arises after initial contact. Relationships are essentially exchanges. From these, communication, correlation, and correspondence emerge.
If relationships between Beings is a fundamental purpose of Creation, then Creation must be acknowledged as the "medium" for relationships.
The powers aligned against God and Creation appear to be acutely aware of the ultimate significance of relationships in Creation – our relationship with God foremost among them – and one of their all-encompassing goals lies in the disruption and destruction of relationships between Beings, primarily by firmly wedging their System in-between Beings and Creation and insisting that the System be the only medium of relational exchange and communication between all Beings in Creation.
The 2020 global birdemic coup offers a recent and vivid example of this motivation to live between Beings and control relationships in Creation.
For about two years, the powers opposed to God and Creation succeeded in severely curtailing, disrupting, forbidding, and diminishing relationships.
Not only that, but they also dictated the rules of relational engagement. They monitored, recorded, surveyed, micromanaged, manipulated, supervised, controlled, and regulated all relationships at all levels.
Relationships became contingent upon the System’s bureaucratic machinations. Terms like social distancing suddenly became acceptable and common in human discourse, as did notions of transformed societies in which none are safe until are safe.
And let’s not forget that the churches – meant to serve as a direct social and spiritual connection to God and Creation – eagerly and actively allowed the System to eclipse Creation and live between congregations and God in 2020.
The birdemic was the most tangible exhibition of the dark powers’ yearning to have their System live between Beings and Creation. In many ways, it represents the culmination of an insidious and seemingly ubiquitous stratagem to obscure Creation as the foundation of all communication between Beings and replace it with the System.
Most of my interactions with most people amount to little more than System interactions. People everywhere relate to each other only through the System.
And this is not limited to interpersonal relationships between humans. It extends to all Creation. I struggle to remember the last time I heard someone speak about nature or the weather without referring to the climate crisis or environmentalism. Virtually all of organized, institutional Christianity has reduced itself to broadcasting System-dictated agenda items, issues, and talking points.
The System only lives between us and Creation because we allow it to. No, more than that. We actively desire that the System live between us and Creation.
Relationships in Creation require free, autonomous, thinking agents motivated by and capable of love and creativity. Only such agents can know Creation directly and form knowing relationships in Creation.
Very few people appear interested in forming relationships in Creation because most people seem utterly uninterested in freedom, autonomy, and thinking, to say nothing of love and creativity. It’s far easier to permit the System to live between us.
A few years ago, I made a case for something I referred to as system distancing by emphasizing that such distancing was primarily a spiritual movement motivated by the mostly internal aim of drawing away from the System and closer to God and Creation.
Such a spiritual movement within individuals remains imperative. Although it is largely an internal movement, it is impossible alone.
It requires relationships with other Beings in Creation. Above all, it requires a relationship with Christ because the only we can ever hope to reconnect to Creation now is through Jesus.
Everything else is just the System living between us.
January 18, 2024
Ahriman is Not and Never Was Essence
The System is Ahriman — a soulless, oppressive, totalitarian bureaucratic force aiming to extinguish all vestiges of spiritual freedom in the name of collective safety, utility, and happiness. The System has eclipsed the West in much the same manner the West eclipsed what was once known as Christendom (also a system in its own right).
Neither Christendom nor the West exist anymore. The System — the Machine, the Matrix, the Black Iron Prison, or whatever other names you call it — has absorbed both.
Perhaps the only interesting thing about the System is its active undermining of its own operability. Although predictions are difficult, processes are readily discernible, and the process the System has initiated will inevitably lead to its self-destruction. It’s a matter of time — when, not if.
When the System implodes, it will take with it all the institutions it has corrupted and absorbed, including institutionalized (System) Christianity.
The seemingly inevitable death of System Christianity will strike most as the death of Christianity itself, just as the death of the System will strike most as the death of everything that has spiritually and historically comprised the West.
These deaths will occur. Yet, they will only mark the death of the Ahrimanic force that has hijacked, oppressed, and smothered the essence of the West and Christianity. That essence is not Ahriman, and it cannot reemerge at the collective level unless Ahriman collapses.
Yet the essence can emerge at the individual level regardless of whether the System collapses or whether the essence emerges at the collective level, but this requires spiritual, mostly internal, System-distancing at the individual level.
System-distancing entails the deep understanding that Ahriman is everything but a necessary evil. It is simply evil.
Spirit is the only way out of such evil. Spirit resides in the essence. We cannot find the essence if we remain fixated on Ahriman.
Neither Christendom nor the West exist anymore. The System — the Machine, the Matrix, the Black Iron Prison, or whatever other names you call it — has absorbed both.
Perhaps the only interesting thing about the System is its active undermining of its own operability. Although predictions are difficult, processes are readily discernible, and the process the System has initiated will inevitably lead to its self-destruction. It’s a matter of time — when, not if.
When the System implodes, it will take with it all the institutions it has corrupted and absorbed, including institutionalized (System) Christianity.
The seemingly inevitable death of System Christianity will strike most as the death of Christianity itself, just as the death of the System will strike most as the death of everything that has spiritually and historically comprised the West.
These deaths will occur. Yet, they will only mark the death of the Ahrimanic force that has hijacked, oppressed, and smothered the essence of the West and Christianity. That essence is not Ahriman, and it cannot reemerge at the collective level unless Ahriman collapses.
Yet the essence can emerge at the individual level regardless of whether the System collapses or whether the essence emerges at the collective level, but this requires spiritual, mostly internal, System-distancing at the individual level.
System-distancing entails the deep understanding that Ahriman is everything but a necessary evil. It is simply evil.
Spirit is the only way out of such evil. Spirit resides in the essence. We cannot find the essence if we remain fixated on Ahriman.
January 16, 2024
Better When They're Not Around
Barfly. A mediocre film about a mediocre poet, but it did have some good lines in it, like this one. I confess, the older I get, the more I echo the sentiment expressed.
January 15, 2024
Decide What to Do with the Time Given to Us
I started rereading The Lord of the Rings recently and was struck by a set of simple yet profound lines Gandalf speaks to Frodo in the second chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring:
“I wish it need not happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black…”
It would be overly generous to say that our time, here and now, is beginning to look black because the beginning part is already far behind us.
Our time is black. Full stop.
Like Frodo, we may wish it had not happened in our time, but it has, and this in and of itself is more significant than most dare contemplate. We had no decision about being alive during this time, but we have the immense power to decide what to do with the time we have been given.
Curse or blessing goes far deeper than a matter of perspective.
“I wish it need not happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black…”
It would be overly generous to say that our time, here and now, is beginning to look black because the beginning part is already far behind us.
Our time is black. Full stop.
Like Frodo, we may wish it had not happened in our time, but it has, and this in and of itself is more significant than most dare contemplate. We had no decision about being alive during this time, but we have the immense power to decide what to do with the time we have been given.
Curse or blessing goes far deeper than a matter of perspective.
January 14, 2024
The "Solution" to Thanatos and Eros Lies in Our Assumptions about Beings and Relationships
Thanatos was the fatherless Greek god of death, the son of the primordial goddess Nyx (Night) and brother of Hypnos (Sleep). Unlike the Keres — female death spirits who personified violent death — Thanatos was the god of peaceful death, but he was still regarded as hateful and ruthless. His indiscriminate motivation to end life included both mortals and gods.
In Christianity, Thanatos is the fourth and final Apocalyptic horseman in the Book of Revelations. Riding a pale horse, he is the only horseman given an explicit name (Death in English translations) and is the only rider who arrives without carrying a weapon.
The Romans took Thanatos from Greece and named him Mors, which remains the root English words such as mortal, mortification, and morbid. Thanatos remains in English in terms like thanatophobia, the fear of things related to death, and thanatology, the study of human death. Sigmund Freud used the name Thanatos to refer to the death instinct, which he psychoanalytically defined as the drive toward death and self-destruction.
On the flip side, the Greeks personified love as Eros, a primordial god involved in creating the cosmos with Tartarus, Gaia, and Chaos. Accounts of the Eros’s origins vary, but it remains clear that Eros primarily represented carnal love in the forms of lust, desire, and sex. Eros remains in the English language in erotic and all other associated words. Freud included Eros in his theory of life and death drives as a counterpart to Thanatos, and he associated the god of love with life and survival instincts like sexuality, procreation, and species preservation.
As interesting as Freud’s theory of life and death drives may be, Thanatos and Eros remain fundamentally spiritual “problems” requiring spiritual solutions, solutions Freud’s theories barely acknowledge, let alone address, which helps explain why his theory is virtually useless when applied to the current and ongoing collapse of the West where Eros has joined Thanatos by becoming a death drive.
Put another way, Freud’s theory of life and death instincts has become inapplicable to the West because the West is severely in the grips of a death instinct spiral in which Eros no longer counterbalances or thwarts Thanatos but serves instead to exacerbate the relentless drive to self-destruction.
Freud believed that both Thanatos and Eros were bound to life, with Thanatos being an internal force in an organism desiring the abolition of the organism’s unity to return to an inorganic state and Eros being an external force that motivated an organism to form higher unities and, in turn, become a higher unity within itself. Freud actively sought to avoid falling upon vitalist and religious explanations and supported his theory by referring to the behavior of cells. Many refer to Freud’s theory of life and death drives as the pleasure and pain principle, but it is worth remembering that Freud believed that the fulfillment of the pleasure principle is death.
As interesting as Freud’s musings on Thanatos and Eros are, they are of little help today. His dynamics of Eros and Thanatos can be summarized in the following way: Each living being has an innate capacity and tendency for self-destruction and the dissolution of its own unity. Yet libidinal (erotic) energy is injected into all living beings externally.
Once the level of this erotic energy reaches a certain level, it activates the pleasure principle, motivating the being to transfer its libido to the outside world via another living being, which it uses as its object. This process then neutralizes the object’s tendency towards self-destruction.
As noted above, I don’t believe Eros neutralizes the object’s tendency toward self-destruction. On the contrary, I suspect Eros now does little more than exacerbate an object’s tendency toward self-destruction. This “breakdown” in Freud’s theory seems to lie in his subject/object conceptualizations and the supposed transferring of energy between subject and object. I also question the notion of Eros being a primarily external force.
Thanatos and Eros are fundamentally spiritual “problems” requiring spiritual solutions; solutions each of us must strive to discover, learn, and apply as best as we can in this era of dominant death drives. It is interesting to note that Freud’s theory of life and death drives rests upon relationships. In this sense, I believe he is looking somewhat in the right direction, but his exclusion of the spiritual/religious critically limits the depth of his theorizing.
The “solution” to Thanatos and Eros lies in relationships. That much is clear; however, our assumptions about the fundamental reality and nature of these relationships ultimately determine whether we are moving toward the solution.
The current death spiral of the West suggests that we are moving away from the “solution” rather than toward it, which should prompt us to deeply re-examine our assumptions about Beings and their relationships.
In Christianity, Thanatos is the fourth and final Apocalyptic horseman in the Book of Revelations. Riding a pale horse, he is the only horseman given an explicit name (Death in English translations) and is the only rider who arrives without carrying a weapon.
The Romans took Thanatos from Greece and named him Mors, which remains the root English words such as mortal, mortification, and morbid. Thanatos remains in English in terms like thanatophobia, the fear of things related to death, and thanatology, the study of human death. Sigmund Freud used the name Thanatos to refer to the death instinct, which he psychoanalytically defined as the drive toward death and self-destruction.
On the flip side, the Greeks personified love as Eros, a primordial god involved in creating the cosmos with Tartarus, Gaia, and Chaos. Accounts of the Eros’s origins vary, but it remains clear that Eros primarily represented carnal love in the forms of lust, desire, and sex. Eros remains in the English language in erotic and all other associated words. Freud included Eros in his theory of life and death drives as a counterpart to Thanatos, and he associated the god of love with life and survival instincts like sexuality, procreation, and species preservation.
As interesting as Freud’s theory of life and death drives may be, Thanatos and Eros remain fundamentally spiritual “problems” requiring spiritual solutions, solutions Freud’s theories barely acknowledge, let alone address, which helps explain why his theory is virtually useless when applied to the current and ongoing collapse of the West where Eros has joined Thanatos by becoming a death drive.
Put another way, Freud’s theory of life and death instincts has become inapplicable to the West because the West is severely in the grips of a death instinct spiral in which Eros no longer counterbalances or thwarts Thanatos but serves instead to exacerbate the relentless drive to self-destruction.
Freud believed that both Thanatos and Eros were bound to life, with Thanatos being an internal force in an organism desiring the abolition of the organism’s unity to return to an inorganic state and Eros being an external force that motivated an organism to form higher unities and, in turn, become a higher unity within itself. Freud actively sought to avoid falling upon vitalist and religious explanations and supported his theory by referring to the behavior of cells. Many refer to Freud’s theory of life and death drives as the pleasure and pain principle, but it is worth remembering that Freud believed that the fulfillment of the pleasure principle is death.
As interesting as Freud’s musings on Thanatos and Eros are, they are of little help today. His dynamics of Eros and Thanatos can be summarized in the following way: Each living being has an innate capacity and tendency for self-destruction and the dissolution of its own unity. Yet libidinal (erotic) energy is injected into all living beings externally.
Once the level of this erotic energy reaches a certain level, it activates the pleasure principle, motivating the being to transfer its libido to the outside world via another living being, which it uses as its object. This process then neutralizes the object’s tendency towards self-destruction.
As noted above, I don’t believe Eros neutralizes the object’s tendency toward self-destruction. On the contrary, I suspect Eros now does little more than exacerbate an object’s tendency toward self-destruction. This “breakdown” in Freud’s theory seems to lie in his subject/object conceptualizations and the supposed transferring of energy between subject and object. I also question the notion of Eros being a primarily external force.
Thanatos and Eros are fundamentally spiritual “problems” requiring spiritual solutions; solutions each of us must strive to discover, learn, and apply as best as we can in this era of dominant death drives. It is interesting to note that Freud’s theory of life and death drives rests upon relationships. In this sense, I believe he is looking somewhat in the right direction, but his exclusion of the spiritual/religious critically limits the depth of his theorizing.
The “solution” to Thanatos and Eros lies in relationships. That much is clear; however, our assumptions about the fundamental reality and nature of these relationships ultimately determine whether we are moving toward the solution.
The current death spiral of the West suggests that we are moving away from the “solution” rather than toward it, which should prompt us to deeply re-examine our assumptions about Beings and their relationships.
January 12, 2024
In Praise of Indestructible Japanese Economy Shitboxes
I am not a car guy. Although I appreciate the finer points of high-end, luxury automobiles, I have always viewed cars from the practical and pragmatic perspective of “often necessary things that transport me from Point A to Point B.” With that in mind, when it comes to cars, I have eschewed luxury in favor of economy, style in favor of sturdiness, and status in favor of serenity.
I am fifty-two years old and have owned a total of four automobiles, all of which I affectionately refer to as “indestructible Jap economy shitboxes” (hat tip to the John Goodman character in the film, The Gambler — see scene below.
My first car — a 1992 Honda Civic hatchback with a manual transmission— was also the only new car I ever purchased. It is also the first and only time I took out a loan for anything.
I bought the car in Canada when I was twenty-one and drove it until I was thirty-two. I put nearly 300,000 kilometers into it before selling it for 500 dollars in Sarasota, Florida. My Civic was extremely reliable and practical partly because I purchased it “barebones,” without air-conditioning or any other frills or extras. (The lack of air-conditioning helps explain the low price I managed to sell it for in Florida, where air-conditioning is “kind of” a necessity.)
My next car was a used 1996 Suzuki Esteem with an automatic transmission, which I purchased for 2000 dollars from a friend in Florida in 2003. The Esteem was of much lower quality and less practical than the Civic because it was a sedan, but it had air-conditioning and took me and my wife from Point A to Point B reliably and consistently.
We used the car to move from Florida to New York City in 2005 and kept the car in New York for a couple of years before the transmission froze up. Incompetent mechanics drained the transmission fluid but forgot to fill it back up again, and I ended up driving around for more than four months — four months! — with no transmission oil before the poor car finally threw in the towel. The excellent public transportation in New York City ensured that we did not need a car, so I sold the Esteem as it was instead of repairing it.
I did not purchase another car until we moved to Toronto, Canada in 2011. Once in Toronto, I bought a used 2008 Nissan Versa hatchback with an automatic transmission (I prefer manual transmissions, but my wife likes automatic and well…)
The Versa was another solid Japanese economy car, so much so that it probably transcended the economy category. We drove the car for over two years, and before moving to England in 2014, I sold the Versa to my mother for a family discount price. My mother still drives the car today!
My fourth and current car — a 2002 Suzuki Wagon R — is a veritable indestructible shitbox that ranks solidly in the “don’t laugh, it’s paid for” category. 
Although it is a monstrously cheap, clunky, and ugly little vehicle, the Wagon R is by far the most practical and reliable car I have owned. It was thirteen years old when I bought it for the equivalent of 3000 dollars in 2016, but it had less than 50,000 kilometers on it. The previous owner, an elderly gentleman, purchased the car brand new after he retired and used it to run local errands and do the grocery shopping. So, even though the car was old timewise, it was in virtually brand-new condition otherwise.
When I bought this “tin can on wheels”, I figured I would own it for a couple of years before graduating to something more “serious.” That was nearly eight years ago. The odometer currently sits at 135,000. The car has never required anything beyond routine maintenance. I can’t kill this tin can, even though I’ve used it to transport everything from a cement mixer to lumber.
At this rate, the little tin can on wheels will probably stay with me for another eight years, which will devastate my “status” among the car-owning public but elevate the “status” of my bank account in terms of money saved on car payments, repairs, etc.
Oddly enough, I adopted the advice Goodman’s character espouses in the scene below long before I watched the film from which the scene originates. Nevertheless, the F.U. position the Goodman character outlines in the scene pretty much describes my approach to material obligations and personal finance, minus the offensive tagline. Oh, and I’ve never been up 2.5 million…ever. (Warning: Strong language!)
I am fifty-two years old and have owned a total of four automobiles, all of which I affectionately refer to as “indestructible Jap economy shitboxes” (hat tip to the John Goodman character in the film, The Gambler — see scene below.
My first car — a 1992 Honda Civic hatchback with a manual transmission— was also the only new car I ever purchased. It is also the first and only time I took out a loan for anything.
I bought the car in Canada when I was twenty-one and drove it until I was thirty-two. I put nearly 300,000 kilometers into it before selling it for 500 dollars in Sarasota, Florida. My Civic was extremely reliable and practical partly because I purchased it “barebones,” without air-conditioning or any other frills or extras. (The lack of air-conditioning helps explain the low price I managed to sell it for in Florida, where air-conditioning is “kind of” a necessity.)
My next car was a used 1996 Suzuki Esteem with an automatic transmission, which I purchased for 2000 dollars from a friend in Florida in 2003. The Esteem was of much lower quality and less practical than the Civic because it was a sedan, but it had air-conditioning and took me and my wife from Point A to Point B reliably and consistently.
We used the car to move from Florida to New York City in 2005 and kept the car in New York for a couple of years before the transmission froze up. Incompetent mechanics drained the transmission fluid but forgot to fill it back up again, and I ended up driving around for more than four months — four months! — with no transmission oil before the poor car finally threw in the towel. The excellent public transportation in New York City ensured that we did not need a car, so I sold the Esteem as it was instead of repairing it.I did not purchase another car until we moved to Toronto, Canada in 2011. Once in Toronto, I bought a used 2008 Nissan Versa hatchback with an automatic transmission (I prefer manual transmissions, but my wife likes automatic and well…)
The Versa was another solid Japanese economy car, so much so that it probably transcended the economy category. We drove the car for over two years, and before moving to England in 2014, I sold the Versa to my mother for a family discount price. My mother still drives the car today!
My fourth and current car — a 2002 Suzuki Wagon R — is a veritable indestructible shitbox that ranks solidly in the “don’t laugh, it’s paid for” category. Although it is a monstrously cheap, clunky, and ugly little vehicle, the Wagon R is by far the most practical and reliable car I have owned. It was thirteen years old when I bought it for the equivalent of 3000 dollars in 2016, but it had less than 50,000 kilometers on it. The previous owner, an elderly gentleman, purchased the car brand new after he retired and used it to run local errands and do the grocery shopping. So, even though the car was old timewise, it was in virtually brand-new condition otherwise.When I bought this “tin can on wheels”, I figured I would own it for a couple of years before graduating to something more “serious.” That was nearly eight years ago. The odometer currently sits at 135,000. The car has never required anything beyond routine maintenance. I can’t kill this tin can, even though I’ve used it to transport everything from a cement mixer to lumber.
At this rate, the little tin can on wheels will probably stay with me for another eight years, which will devastate my “status” among the car-owning public but elevate the “status” of my bank account in terms of money saved on car payments, repairs, etc.
Oddly enough, I adopted the advice Goodman’s character espouses in the scene below long before I watched the film from which the scene originates. Nevertheless, the F.U. position the Goodman character outlines in the scene pretty much describes my approach to material obligations and personal finance, minus the offensive tagline. Oh, and I’ve never been up 2.5 million…ever. (Warning: Strong language!)
January 11, 2024
It's Time to Move Beyond the Corrections to Jesus' Work
To "feel for yourself" the alternative (even just as a thought-experiment) is what I realized when reading the Fourth Gospel prior to doing Lazarus Writes. There is an imaginable alternate history of Christianity and individual (and family) based religion. So there would be no status or power fights - but also no Christian societies.
The above comes from a comment Dr. Charlton left on his Notions blog. Needless to say, I am on the side of this “imaginable alternate history of Christianity and individual (family) based religion, the reality of which was brought home to me by The Fourth Gospel and, oddly enough, Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor.
It was in The Grand Inquisitor chapter of The Brothers Karamazov that I first encountered the idea of Jesus’ work being corrected, which immediately raised the question about the essence of Jesus’s work.
As Dr. Charlton points out, this essence permeates the Fourth Gospel and also appears in Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor. I present, yet again, my personal encapsulation of what this uncorrected Christianity is, with augmented parts added by yours truly in bold:
Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely into heaven , enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, and with free heart actively choose resurrection and everlasting life, having only Thy image before him as his guide.
For me, this exemplifies the essence of Jesus came into the world to do and the Truth he revealed.
Notice the complete absence of things like churches, society, dogmas, doctrines, and so forth. Yes, the ancient rigid law is mentioned, but it is immediately overridden.
The passage above not only communicates the core of Jesus’ work but also reveals why and how the simple truth of Jesus’ work was “corrected”, a theme Berdyaev frequently addresses throughout his works:
Truth may be dangerous to everyday life. Christian truth might even become very dangerous – might cause the collapse of nations and civilizations. Hence pure Christian truth has been distorted and adapted to man’s everyday life; the work of Christ has been corrected….
The essentiality of Jesus’ work as presented in the Fourth Gospel is next-worldly in focus. This next-worldly focus does indeed make authentic Christian truth dangerous, not to individuals and families, but to systems, that is societies and civilizations, which are very much this-worldly in focus. As Dr. Charlton notes above, no Christian societies.
Living the truth of the Fourth Gospel, the same truth Dostoevsky captures in The Grand Inquisitor through the emphasis on freedom, would be the death knell of conventional conceptualizations of this-worldly Christian nations and civilizations.
The prevention of such system failure entailed the distortion and adaptation of Jesus’ truth to the mundane reality of everyday life in this world and the development of Christian societies.
Such a development was not entirely negative because it aligned with an earlier stage of human consciousness when spirituality was far more communal. It could be argued that the distorting and adapting of Jesus’s work also preserved it to some degree.
All the same, the Fourth Gospel essence was demoted in favor of communal, societal considerations — kingdoms, nations, empires, and civilization. The rigid law was re-introduced, albeit in a different form.
But why the incessant maintaining of this correction of Jesus’ work through the centuries? Berdyaev offers the following insight:
Truth is spiritually revolutionary; so is spirit, although in a different way from that in which revolution is applied to politics. And objectivization weakens or even completely destroys this destructive, anarchic quality of truth, which is spirit, since spirit is the truth of being. Therefore, the work of Christ was corrected and adapted to the level of millions upon millions of men.
And,
Truth is not of the world, but of the spirit: it is known only in transcending the objective world. Truth is the end of this objective world, it demands our consent to this end. Such is the truth of Christianity, freed of its social adaptations and deformations...
To which I will add the following from Dr. Charlton:
It is likely that such a thing would not have been possible for the men of 2000 years ago, since they existed communally including at the spiritual level - but it seems like the Only possibility of men of 2024 - at least in the West.
It is worth noting that in this time and place, it is not Christian truth that is ending Christian nations and civilizations, but the opposite, which immediately spawns the knee jerk reaction to reinstitute Christian nations and civilizations, but such reactions sorely miss the point for the simple reason that returning to a national/civilizational focus would amount to little more than returning to a corrected version of Jesus’ work.
Moreover, reverting to a top-down, communally-based correction of Jesus’ work appears impossible given the state of men’s consciousness in 2024. Such a reversion would likely not work even if it were successfully implemented.
So, where does that leave us?
The corrections of Jesus’ work are coming apart at the seams, as are nations and the civilization founded upon these corrections. There are no Christian nations left in the West. This leaves Christians with two possible options.
The first involves saving and resurrecting the corrections to Jesus’ work, replete with all of their institutional, societal, and civilizational aspects.
The second rests upon the realization that for the first time in millennia, Christians have the opportunity to contemplate and engage in Jesus’ work in its original, authentic, and uncorrected form -- and see what develops...
As Berdyaev notes, it could be that…
...original and authentic Christianity, based upon truth which had been neither objectivized nor socialized, would be a personalistic revolution in the world.
The above comes from a comment Dr. Charlton left on his Notions blog. Needless to say, I am on the side of this “imaginable alternate history of Christianity and individual (family) based religion, the reality of which was brought home to me by The Fourth Gospel and, oddly enough, Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor.
It was in The Grand Inquisitor chapter of The Brothers Karamazov that I first encountered the idea of Jesus’ work being corrected, which immediately raised the question about the essence of Jesus’s work.
As Dr. Charlton points out, this essence permeates the Fourth Gospel and also appears in Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor. I present, yet again, my personal encapsulation of what this uncorrected Christianity is, with augmented parts added by yours truly in bold:
Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely into heaven , enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, and with free heart actively choose resurrection and everlasting life, having only Thy image before him as his guide.
For me, this exemplifies the essence of Jesus came into the world to do and the Truth he revealed.
Notice the complete absence of things like churches, society, dogmas, doctrines, and so forth. Yes, the ancient rigid law is mentioned, but it is immediately overridden.
The passage above not only communicates the core of Jesus’ work but also reveals why and how the simple truth of Jesus’ work was “corrected”, a theme Berdyaev frequently addresses throughout his works:
Truth may be dangerous to everyday life. Christian truth might even become very dangerous – might cause the collapse of nations and civilizations. Hence pure Christian truth has been distorted and adapted to man’s everyday life; the work of Christ has been corrected….
The essentiality of Jesus’ work as presented in the Fourth Gospel is next-worldly in focus. This next-worldly focus does indeed make authentic Christian truth dangerous, not to individuals and families, but to systems, that is societies and civilizations, which are very much this-worldly in focus. As Dr. Charlton notes above, no Christian societies.
Living the truth of the Fourth Gospel, the same truth Dostoevsky captures in The Grand Inquisitor through the emphasis on freedom, would be the death knell of conventional conceptualizations of this-worldly Christian nations and civilizations.
The prevention of such system failure entailed the distortion and adaptation of Jesus’ truth to the mundane reality of everyday life in this world and the development of Christian societies.
Such a development was not entirely negative because it aligned with an earlier stage of human consciousness when spirituality was far more communal. It could be argued that the distorting and adapting of Jesus’s work also preserved it to some degree.
All the same, the Fourth Gospel essence was demoted in favor of communal, societal considerations — kingdoms, nations, empires, and civilization. The rigid law was re-introduced, albeit in a different form.
But why the incessant maintaining of this correction of Jesus’ work through the centuries? Berdyaev offers the following insight:
Truth is spiritually revolutionary; so is spirit, although in a different way from that in which revolution is applied to politics. And objectivization weakens or even completely destroys this destructive, anarchic quality of truth, which is spirit, since spirit is the truth of being. Therefore, the work of Christ was corrected and adapted to the level of millions upon millions of men.
And,
Truth is not of the world, but of the spirit: it is known only in transcending the objective world. Truth is the end of this objective world, it demands our consent to this end. Such is the truth of Christianity, freed of its social adaptations and deformations...
To which I will add the following from Dr. Charlton:
It is likely that such a thing would not have been possible for the men of 2000 years ago, since they existed communally including at the spiritual level - but it seems like the Only possibility of men of 2024 - at least in the West.
It is worth noting that in this time and place, it is not Christian truth that is ending Christian nations and civilizations, but the opposite, which immediately spawns the knee jerk reaction to reinstitute Christian nations and civilizations, but such reactions sorely miss the point for the simple reason that returning to a national/civilizational focus would amount to little more than returning to a corrected version of Jesus’ work.
Moreover, reverting to a top-down, communally-based correction of Jesus’ work appears impossible given the state of men’s consciousness in 2024. Such a reversion would likely not work even if it were successfully implemented.
So, where does that leave us?
The corrections of Jesus’ work are coming apart at the seams, as are nations and the civilization founded upon these corrections. There are no Christian nations left in the West. This leaves Christians with two possible options.
The first involves saving and resurrecting the corrections to Jesus’ work, replete with all of their institutional, societal, and civilizational aspects.
The second rests upon the realization that for the first time in millennia, Christians have the opportunity to contemplate and engage in Jesus’ work in its original, authentic, and uncorrected form -- and see what develops...
As Berdyaev notes, it could be that…
...original and authentic Christianity, based upon truth which had been neither objectivized nor socialized, would be a personalistic revolution in the world.
