Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 37

Why are "Anonymous" comments reliably worthless?

Q: Why are "Anonymous" comments reliably worthless? 

A: Because of their provenance...

That is to say; Anonymous comments are worthless because of the kind of people who comment Anonymously. 

Which is why this blog is set-up to delete Anonymous comments unread. 

Example: Just yesterday I noticed that there was an Anonymous comment in the deleted files of my blog  - intended for a short post, which I ended by writing: 

"If you want to comment (but not anonymously!)"

Furthermore, at the top of the sidebar of this blog, the first paragraph opens with the statement, or warning: 
"Anonymous comments are deleted without being read."  

On top of which, as part of the actual form used for submitting each specific comment for moderation, is the phrase: 
"Comments are moderated. "Anonymous" comments are deleted without being read."

Just think about it - someone who commented Anonymously on yesterday's post had to ignore three statements Not to comment Anonymously - two of which made clear that to do so was futile.  
Consider that despite All This, someone commented Anonymously. 
This example says a great deal about the people (or entities) which comment Anonymously; and why it is that Anonymous comments are deleted without being read. 

What is our civilization's transitional situation, by analogy with Middle Earth - commentary on an essay by Tree of Woe

Over at the Notion Club Papers blog, I have discussed an interesting essay from the Tree of Woe website, in which the author draws analogies, and inspiration, from the example of Elendil in rebuilding Arnor and Gondor from the remains of Numenor. 

If you want to comment (but not anonymously!) - it is probably better to leave socio-political comments here, and Tolkien-related comments over at the Notion Club Papers. 

What is our civilizations transitional situation, by analogy with Middle Earth - commentary on an essay by Tree of Woe

Over at the Notion Club Papers blog, I have discussed an interesting essay from the Tree of Woe website, in which the author draws analogies, and inspiration, from the example of Elendil in rebuilding Arnor and Gondor from the remains of Numenor. 

If you want to comment (but not anonymously!) - it is probably better to leave socio-political comments here, and Tolkien-related comments over at the Notion Club Papers. 

"The internet is no longer meaningfully searchable" - True: but does it "really" matter, when we can't do anything about it?

WmJas Tychonievich:

The exact figures will vary depending on what you search for, but on average Google delivers 0.0001% search results and 99.9999% censorship. You think those numbers are exaggerated, but they’re not.The Internet is no longer meaningfully searchable. It’s time to start relying more on serendipity and word of mouth.

I began to realize the extent of global totalitarianism when I realized that, despite that Google's 30 year old search engine had objectively gotten much much worse in functionality over the past 20 years - G. is still the best search engine (overall), by some margin. 

Our choice as of 2025 is between a crap, and getting ever crappier, search engine - or something even worse. 

Somehow, apparently, from what the masses are allowed to access; nobody in the world has been able to do better than a three decades old search algorithm, despite that the functionality of that algorithm has been deliberately all-but destroyed. 

This is impossible - if the world of technological development and market competition is truly anything like it is supposed to be, as it is portrayed in public discourse. 

Therefore, the catastrophic decline of Google Search and the failure to develop/ make available anything better; is conclusive  evidence of the top-down political power of The System to control global usage of one of the most important single pieces of modern technology. 

And if The Establishment controls this - then it must also control many other things. 

Any yet, and yet... the vast majority are oblivious/ indifferent to all this!

Fatalism "we can't do anything about it" - leads on to nihilism "it doesn't really matter anyway" - then to a kind of denialism that refuses even to think about such things. 

The reason is obvious, and the reason is atheistic materialism; which has it that we you and I understand and know is of zero significance to the world; because understanding and knowing are (of themselves) merely subjective things, going on privately inside our skulls. 

And the conclusion is that understanding and knowing does no good. In fact, they do harm, by making us miserable.

The conclusion is therefore: best to go-with-the-flow, don't even try to understand; and make the best of... whatever is the current situation.

But if we inhabit a Christian divine creation; and if our personal understanding really makes a difference to objective spiritual reality --- Well, then it is well worth noticing, thinking, and trying to understand stuff.  

So does it matter that the internet is no longer meaningfully searchable? 

Yes it matters! Even though you and I can do nothing about it.

Because there is a life-lesson concerning the nature of this, our reality; there is some-thing that we ought to learn, and which it is good to understand. 

Asking/ Giving "advice" - the example of Newcastle upon Tyne

Dog Leap Stairs, running up from the Quayside towards the Norman "New Castle". Evocative of Newcastle as The Raven King's magical capital city, in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.   

Some of the people who ask for advice do not intend to take it - they may even be intending to react against it. 

Or they may be seeking to avoid responsibility by saying (to themselves, if not to others) that they are only doing what they have been told -- although this doesn't make sense; since the advice was sought, and the decision to follow it was made. 

Some people (especially immature ones) are keen to give advice - and some of these actually expect others to follow it! 

So there is potential for some pretty pathological interactions here. 

It can be flattering to the inexperienced to be approached for advice; and this approach "for advice" may therefore be a method of manipulation. 

The whole business of advice assumes a generalizability from the individual to the group - the assumption that what is the case for me-her-now, is (or ought to be) the case for somebody/everybody else, in other circumstances. 

It was only in my middle twenties that I (finally!) began to realize that I was apparently highly atypical - such that most other people saw the world very differently, and wanted very different things. Until then I had assumed that such differences were due to other people not knowing about stuff - and if they knew what I did then they would think like I did. 

But eventually the reality dawned that this was not the case. I was, indeed, an extremely unusual person; and therefore what worked for me, would not necessarily work for others - because others wanted something very different, and were gratified by (and found aversive) very different places and people and situations. 

I can only talk about the past, because things will surely change in the future; but I have realized that the place for me has been Newcastle upon Tyne. I assume that this is somewhat due to family history, personal history and stuff like that - and therefore I have not assumed that what suited me and what I was up to, would suit other people. 

I would not be likely to advise people to live here; just because it suits me. (And not just me; also my family - which is, of course, decisive.) 

After all, I dis-like a great deal about this place and its people, and indeed I don't like very much of Newcastle. Probably most of the city and people I find aversive, and avoid. 

Other aspects I love in a way that goes very deep and has provided an unique sustenance. Nonetheless, I'm always a bit surprised when other people want to live here; and by the gravitational pull that some other people feel towards it. 

I think one great advantage of Newcastle is that it has been more real and coherent than most places. I felt this in contrast to the city of my childhood - Bristol. 

That reality may be unpleasant or simply alien to some people, and it is always dissolving in response to the depredations of totalitarian materialism. And there may come a time when I feel a need to move elsewhere. 

But, for me, it is important that the place I live has an objective kind of solidity, to which I personally am connected. No matter how pleasant some other places may be for most people with their different natures and goals; if that place feels not-real to me, or I am not inwardly-connected; then life feels arbitrary - and that is (for me) so bad - that it seems to spoil everything else. 

Or, to put matters positively; I have been very fortunate to find and (mostly) live somewhere about which I feel "romantic" and in which participation has been attainable for much of the time. 

But still, I would not be likely to advise anybody else to live here. 

What is the meaning of "Romantic" in Romantic Christianity - and how does it differ from "pleasure-seeking" or psychotherapy"?

We need clearly to distinguish between, on the one hand, the "psychotherapeutic" aspects of spirituality and religion; and, on the other hand, participation. 

Romantic Christianity is primarily and essentially about participation, not pleasure or therapy. 

(Although Romanticism without Christianity usually devolves into pleasure-seeking and/or therapy.) 

Therapy focuses on emotions and feelings; while participation is a fact about reality. 

Participation is the fact that we are involved-with reality; including that our "inner life" is involved with reality. 

In other words; we are not separate from reality, we are not cut-off from reality, even in our innermost thinking and feeling - even though most modern people feel that they are cut-off; even though we wrongly believe that we are observers rather than participants in "the universe". 

So, participation means that we Just-Are (like it or not, know it or not, want it or not) participants in divine creation. 

The felt-need of Romanticism is to be aware that we are participants in reality. 

Thus, Romanticism is a good impulse for Christians - it is spiritually positive - because it is the aspiration to become more spiritually-developed, more God-like in our consciousness of reality. 

**

Psychotherapy is not only distinguishable from Romanticism, but also the two can be separated and dissociated; so that we can have one without the other: we can have therapy without participation, and participation without therapy. 

Obviously, there can be therapy without participation - and this is the normal, mainstream and dominant form of therapy in modern Western civilization. 

(It is also what historically happened to Romanticism when it rejected Christianity - we got the pleasure-seeking of Byron instead of the participation-seeking of Coleridge; and a century later, we got the therapeutic intent of Jung instead of the participation-seeking of Steiner and Barfield.)

For instance, people can be made to feel happier or less-miserable, by distraction from reality (as by the mass and social media), or by suppression of awareness (by inner-materialism and bureaucracy). 

Distraction-from and suppression-of awareness of the fact of participation both diminish participation and are anti-Romantic. 

And there can be participation without therapy. 

This happens when recognition of our involvement with reality makes us feel more miserable here-and-now. 

This might be through a recognition of evil in our situation; or by recognizing the tragic quality of a life that ends with death (tragic even when death has "lost its sting" from resurrection); and of a mortal earthly world of endemic degeneration, disease, and loss.

In sum; Romanticism is not some form of pleasure-seeking; but is instead a recognition of the benefits, indeed I would say necessity, of consciously recognizing the fact of our continuing-participation in God's created reality.  

 

"Good Intentions" - Yes, but...

In a world where there are too many interacting and unknown causes for effects to be predictable from actions; then Good Intentions are crucial... So long, that is, as the intentions are Real (not merely excuses for self-interest or spiteful destruction), and are really-Good (and not double-negations, for instance).

Because genuinely Good Intentions, is a way of describing being consciously on the side of God and Divine Creation... 

And because it is only GIs that will take into account how things are working out in practice (which may be very different from what was hoped) and can made adjustments, and will (because genuinely Good in Intent) continue monitoring the developing situation. 

(That this is so rare, is indicative of the rarity of genuinely Good Intentions.)

So, real Good Intentions are vital - they are, in this meaning, the only way of doing-good in this world. 

Yet if intentions are good only when God-aligned; then genuine GIs are pretty-much restricted to situations when love is the motivator - actual, real love, between particular persons (or beings), and therefore not some generalized abstraction of love. 

General but vague benign-attitudes towards individuals or groups, or the favouring of abstract causes - do not suffice. 

Which analysis wipes-out almost all (but not all) of what passes for Good Intentions in public discourse. 

What is the relevance? Well, it is intended to explain the wrong-headedness of a good deal of the kind of thing that "groups of spiritual people" (whether in a church, or some other society, whether Christian or not) get up to. 

For mainstream Christians, this refers to group-prayer, when it it directed to specific personas and worldly outcomes - but when those persons and outcomes are not loved - for instance when they are remote and abstract. 

Group prayers can and may avoid such things - but there is a prevalent idea that a group of people can, by pooling their "good intentions" in prayer (or indeed some other form of ritual activity), achieve positive results in the world-at-large - for instance in praying for peace, or relief of some current sufferings. 

This is part of a generally "therapeutic" and this-worldly tendency of current religion and spirituality - the basis of which is that suffering is the worst thing, and the best thing is to relieve or (better) prevent suffering...

At the end of which goal, lies a nightmare dystopia of consciousness obliteration, including suicide and murder; done with a "compassionate" rationale. Western civilization is approaching this situation with considerable rapidity. 

I think it is worth remembering that thoughts are actions, and thoughts therefore have consequences; so such ideas as group interventions by prayer are not absurd. However, it is not true that groups are more powerful than individuals, nor is it true that the intentions of groups are usually genuinely good.

The point to remember is responsibility. 

Who is spiritually responsible for the outcome? The big problem is that groups almost never accept, or even consider, this matter - and (in this modern era) there is apparently no genuine way by which most groups can learn from what happens as a consequence of group intentions and actions. 

As usual, the conclusion seems to be that the individual is primary when it comes to genuinely Good Intentions - and (here-and-now) truly loving groups are rare outside of the family situation. As of 2024 in The West; it is nigh impossible for an institution (including a church) to be Good.  

And that part of goodness is a continued and responsible engagement with "the loved" - so that what we supposed to be Good does not, instead, turn-out to emanate in evil. We need to love, and continue to love - if we want to do good. 

Good Intentions cannot be plucked from the branches of external public discourse - but need, instead, to be derived from our own capacity and direction of love. Only that kind of Good Intention will align us with divine creation, and have the best chance of doing actual Good. 

My "top posts" of 2024 prove only that bots rule Blogger Views stats

According to the data provided, the most-viewed post of 2024, with c 259,000 views, was this: which is a short and obscurely titled musing from 2015 that attracted no comments. Presumably the bots liked it for some unknowable bot-reason...

The other highest ranked posts are more plausible, being on socio-political (i.e. not religious/ philosophical) themes, and having attracted some comments - but the number of total views (i.e. for the whole blog, not any particular post) last year was 1,780,000. 

This would average about 4,500 views per day - which seems too high to be real, although maybe a few people re-viewing a selection of the c 8,000 old posts might be able to reach that level (one or two views of an old post here, half a dozen views there, multiplied by a few hundred old posts viewed that day...?). 

And people looking at old posts would be unlikely to comment, so I would not know about it. 

I have no idea what the real numbers of views by human beings of the blog as a whole would be for each day but modal average day's blog post accumulate between 200-500 views - mostly within the first couple of days. 

But the fact that the first of October last year is listed as the peak day, having 316,790 views (!) must surely be those bots at work again, somewhere in the backlog of old posts - rather than sudden massive enthusiasm for the post of that day. 

 

How the Establishment have become both rulers and victims in the New Left era (post-middle-1960s)

Not many people realize that the Left underwent a major re-orientation through the 1950s and 60s, which was largely completed in the USA by the late 1960s - spreading from there (via the mass media, finance and the economy, and the mass media) to include the Anglosphere, Western Europe, and the globalist/ multi-national institutions. 

This was the re-orientation away-from Old Left socialism - with its focus upon class, with the Proletariat/ Working Class (of native-born men) as its core virtue-group; and towards ruling class personnel who are defined in terms of membership in a variety of virtue groups. 

The New Left was what has come to rule the world; and the new orientation was based on a proliferating collection of virtue groups; based upon not economic divisions but instead race, sex, and sexuality. 

This had the great advantage that the "oppressed", "victim", virtue-group could now be members of part of the upper class, the ruling class. 

It had been a disadvantage of Old Left socialism that the ruling class - who managed the whole thing - were always under pressure to favour and incorporate lower class people into the "elite"; where the New Left routinely framed ultra-privileged, ultra-wealthy Establishment figures as their new deserving class - to be accorded legal protection and promotion.

So we have, by now, become used to the idea that the exemplary assumed-intrinsically-virtuous persons of the modern Left, are drawn from ruling class backgrounds. 

Many have wealthy and powerful parents, and a high proportion have experienced grooming via Establishment educational establishments. 

Others are from among the very wealthy and powerful ruling families.

In sum: the New Left virtue-group are mostly extremely privileged individuals, locked into Establishment power structure - who are nonetheless defined as victims simply by categories relating to race, sex, or sexuality - or some other national, social or ethnic feature*.

The old socialist virtue group (native-born working men)  have indeed been demoted so low, that the situation is inverted. The privileged classes are a non-working benefits-dependent client underclass, any immigrant from anywhere-else, any race other than those native to The West, any religion other than Christianity, and any sex/uality other than men with families. 

To this has been added "environmentalism" - which favours some conceptualization of "planetary benefit" (currently almost exclusively the atmospheric concentration of CO2) to replace human beings as the proper focus of concern. It is important to recognize that what is defined as "good for" "the environment" is now conceptually controlled entirely by the ruling class - via ruling-class controlled social institutions.  

Of course, New Leftism is oppositional hence incoherent by it very nature; so that there is still "lip service" paid to Old Leftism - but that is all it is - there are words, but never actions, to help the Proletariat.

In actuality; the New Left is an expandable collection of double-negative imperatives; which are focused upon in rotation; and according to expediencies. 

Where is this going? There is no imaginable utopia; and public attention is instead focused upon the avoidance of an expanding range of projected dystopias.        

 

The difference between Old and New Left is therefore profound. 

The Old Left was based on coherent but untrue positive assertions about class and economics, and aimed for a describable (albeit in-practice impossible) socialist utopia.

The New Left now functions almost-entirely using ruling class personnel - who are also designated victims. 

And it had made itself the only recognized spokesman and representative for those other virtuous entities that are not included in the ruling class - such as those human individuals and groups that are incapable of leadership; as well as animals, plants, and The Planet. 

The great triumph of New Leftism has been to create a socially dominant morality by which the ruling class are encapsulated as both uniquely virtuous, and uniquely powerful. 

This explains A Lot...

 

*This always makes me think of a comment made by an old friend, the author Frank Kuppner, who was reading some feminist journalist in The Guardian (someone like Polly Toynbee) - one who had been born to rich and famous parents, with all the advantages of nepotism, top status boarding school, Oxbridge  etc - raging about the oppression of "women"... Frank quietly summarized her rant as: "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!". 

Robert Graves as an extreme instance of "projection"

I have often written of Robert Graves, because - with GB Shaw - he was the first grow-n-up writer I engaged with after Lord of the Rings had opened the door to adult literature for me. Both Graves and Shaw were recommended by my father; Graves because of I Claudius and my burgeoning interest in history. 

I have - very gradually - come to realize that Graves was almost the opposite of what he claimed to be; but that his claims were believed (by me, and many others) because he was a superb (the word is intended descriptively) non-fictional prose writer. 

Graves claimed to be primarily a poet, a lyrical poet; in opposition to those well-connected and socially-endorsed Apollonian versifiers of intellect and scholarship that Graves contemptuously dissected and vilified in his critical writings. 

But in truth, Graves was not a lyrical poet, and was instead exactly the kind of poet his writings rejected. He was an upper class, academic, uninspired clique "poet" - one of a closed circle of mutual admiration and log-rolling.

Contrary to his own claims; he expended great energy on un-poetic/ anti-poetic activities such as wire-pulling, self-promotion, image-management and the like. He acted a part of an impoverished wild and Celtic bard; yet was actually a wealthy and influential - and hard-working - bohemian Norman; doing exactly the kind of stuff that bohemian Normans had been doing for generations.     

Outside this group of not-poets, none of Graves verses have achieve the spontaneous endorsement and love of those who are a part of the (now extinct, apparently) tradition of English lyrics (i.e. the Palgrave's Golden Treasury tradition) 

Graves has several great qualities - including an unexcelled prose style. In a sense he was a great critic of historical poetry - although his judgement of modern (20th century) poetry was so wrong as to be inverted.

But Graves was fraudulent in his nature; he lived a lie. At one level (although nothing like so deep as he claimed) Graves wanted to be something he was not, a poet; but pretended to be it anyway, and worked to persuade as many others as possible. 

In this respect he resembles Charles Williams - although Williams was lower middle class, not a Norman. Williams wanted to be a poet but wasn't; and expended great energies on literary, critical and educational activity to persuade others to endorse himself as a poet. And yet also, he did not want to be a poet as much as he pretended to himself, because he dissipated most of his time and energy on hack works - apparently undertaken so that he could have extra income for a more self-indulgent lifestyle. 

In sum; Graves was himself exactly the kind of pseudo-poet, fake poet; whose verse is not divinely inspired but instead the consequence of scholarship and intelligence; skeletal structures decorated with borrowed or stolen plumage taken from real poets.  

Graves's critical strictures were therefore projection; he publicly excoriated in others his own unacknowledged faults, deficiencies. And by this means Graves concealed from himself (?) and others  - his own innate nature, origins, workings, status, and stature.  

Graves's great advantage over his fellow not-real-poets came from his prose non-fiction - works such as The White Goddess, his brilliant and calculatedly-dishonest autobiography Goodbye to All That, or his critical lectures and essays such as The Common Asphodel. 

Critical and historical prose by which Graves created a mythology of which he was arbiter, and by which he was defined as a true muse-poet. 

It is, apparently, all there, all explained, all in-place... except for some actual real poems!

**

The lesson I draw from this is general. It is, I think, easy to be misled by propaganda, including self-propaganda; and especially when it emanates from a ruling class who control so much of the social institutions, and whose members often operate in mutually reinforcing cliques and factions. This misleading can go even so far as inversion: such that what is supposed is the opposite of what is actual. 

A supposedly beautiful person, building, or piece of music may actually be soulless ugliness; an alleged truth-breakthrough of science or medicine may actually be a tissue of invention and calculated;  distortion; a promoted pattern of virtue in a person (or institution) may be actual evil of a very extreme kind.  

And such inversions are often achieved by implication and projection; by such double-negations. Those who are most self-consciously the opposite of Good, have insider knowledge of the workings of that which opposes good; and can therefore provide convincingly detailed analyses of the projected evils of their enemies.

Political leaders, for instance; very often do in actuality precisely those things that they vocally and theoretically eschew; and absolutely do not do anything effective to deter or suppress those phenomena they rhetorically oppose. 

This is why it is so often observed that those active in charities against specific abuses; often themselves engage in exactly these abuses - and indeed use the organization and resources of their charities the better to prosecute these vices. 

In such a world as we now inhabit, this phenomenon of projection is very general in the high status officialdom and media; to the point almost of universality. 

Consequently, it is vital to look behind the rhetoric; to observe what is actually done (and not done) and consciously to deploy our innate capacity of intuitive inference.