Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Inward Christian Soldiers!

Interesting that early Christianity spread in part by virtue of the sadistic violence visited upon its adherents. This is in conspicuous contrast to Islam, which metastasized primarily as a result of sadistic violence perpetrated upon others.

Even today, we have no real way of knowing how many actual Muslims there are in the world, for how many would remain Muslim if given the choice? Obviously true conversion can only take place in the heart, not at the end of a sword. How rapidly would Christianity spread in China or Saudi Arabia or Iran if the authorities allowed anything like a free marketplace of religion? But the spiritual customer can only be sovereign in a place free of religious or secular totalitarianism.

Islam also differs from Christianity, in that Christian martyrs were (and are) victims of mass murderers, whereas Muslim martyrs perpetrate it. According to Birzer, the actual Christian martyrs of the second and third centuries were "an inspiration to a decadent population, devoid of any higher understanding, but still seeking something higher than itself." He cites the example of St. Perpetua, who, "when a gladiator approached her in the arena... took the gladiator's trembling hand and guided it to her throat."

Repeated countless times, these saints "became the dying witnesses to a purpose in this life and the life beyond. Their blood led to mass conversions among a lost Roman people." But do people actually convert to Islam as a result of its "martyrs" killing and maiming thousands of innocents? Where is the appeal, except to eternal hatred?

Once Christianity became the state religion and the era of persecution ended, a new kind of "interior martyrdom" emerged, as serious seekers fled to the desert in order to find God in the solitude of the heart. These souls engaged in a kind of extreme seeking that is also difficult for us to comprehend. I mean, it's one thing to join a monastery and become part of an interior community, but they didn't exist until much later.

Then again, perhaps there are spiritual challenges and temptations in our day that people from even one hundred years ago couldn't imagine. Most of us will never know what amounted to constants among pre-modern people, including hunger, disease, war (up close and personal, not in a distant land), chronic pain, constant loss, and early death.

Thus, for any thinking person, the utter futility of the world must have seemed quite obvious. It's the same with the Buddha's advice -- it wasn't nearly as difficult to detach from the world when the world had so little to recommend it. What was one giving up, really? Few had any possessions, any private property, any aspirations, anything to read, or anything to do except subsist.

So in an odd way, the present world undoubtedly requires its own kind of spiritual athleticism in order to transcend it, since the temptations and distractions are so much greater. In a way, the more fulfilling the world is, the more pain there is. How did people in the past endure the routine loss of a child? I would guess that infant mortality was so high, that the vast majority of parents had lost at least one child. Nowadays, this constitutes a tragic minority. Indeed, even a miscarriage is an occasion for grief, whereas I can't imagine premodern people giving it a second thought.

As I speculated in the book, this must have affected the way the premodern psyche grew and developed. We now know that the psyche is formed on the basis of attachment to early objects, and that any kind of disruption in the attachment process leaves emotional and cognitive scars for life.

Of course we can never know with certainty, but there is good evidence that prior to modernity, parents didn't invest a lot of emotional energy in their children until there was a good chance they'd survive infancy, so I don't see how this could not have resulted in what we would call schizoid (i.e., detached), depressed, or paranoid personalities (i.e., bitter, distrusting, and angry people) on a widespread basis.

For us, the modern world is so alluring that we can forget all about transcendence. It gives the illusion that it can fulfill us, but this is a promise that it can never keep. Unconsciously, this attachment to the world probably just makes us feel less secure. In a perverse way, the more secure we actually are, the less secure we may feel, because we expect things to go perfectly. We can come enticingly close to controlling most of the variables in our lives -- which only makes it more maddening that in reality we are promised nothing.

I am sure this is what animates the angry and hysterical control freaks of the left. They always wants to make things "better," with no appreciation of what a miracle it is that things work at all. They have no earthly conception that the optimal will never be perfect, and that in pursuing perfection, they will only engender the sub-optimal. Their attempts at control always generate chaos, for which they recommend more of the same. Today we have roughly the same percentage of the population living "in poverty." But I know of not a single leftist who is prepared to declare the 45 year "war on poverty" a failure.

Similarly, the housing bubble clearly wasn't caused by the free market, but was a direct consequence of massive federal intervention in the mortgage industry for four decades. It is the same with healthcare and the cost of higher education. Both operate outside any rational system of actual market prices. You can only know how much something actually costs when you allow the market to set the price.

Likewise, leftists whine about the treatment of homosexuals and other minorities, when they have literally never had it so good. Without a doubt, 21st century America is the best place there has ever been to be black, female, or homosexual. Water and air are the cleanest they've been since it has been possible to measure them, and one of the reasons healthcare is more expensive is because there are so many drugs and procedures that didn't even exist a generation ago.

Hey, if you want to save on healthcare, just limit yourself to the treatments that were available in 1975. But this is about as likely as wealthy liberals voluntarily giving more money to the government, instead of forcing others to do so.

Because of their materialism, the left frets over the natural environment when the greater threat comes from the psychic environment. Dawson felt that (in the words of Birzer), history involved a "battle for possession of the human soul," and that "to protect the order of the culture and the polity, one must first protect the order of the soul. Without the order of the soul, all will fail." What he wrote in the 1940s would apply with equal force today:

"England and the whole world are passing through a terrible crisis. We are fighting not merely against external enemies but against powerful forces that threaten the very existence of our culture. And it is therefore vital that all the positive intellectual and spiritual forces of Western culture should come together in defense of their common values and traditions against their common enemies.

"The defeat of totalitarianism... 'depends in the last resort, not on the force of arms but on the power of Spirit, the mysterious influence which alone can change human nature and renew the face of the earth.'"

But preservation and destruction are constants in history, always occurring simultaneously: "to the Christian the world is always ending, and every historical crisis is, as it were, a rehearsal for the real thing."

In this regard, it is critical to bear in mind that evil ideologies are never truly creative, and therefore ultimately subject to the entropy and degeneration of the world:

"The tyrannical ideologue can neither be creative nor imaginative," and is "merely a shadow of the true Enemy, himself just a creature, albeit a very powerful one within time." Islamism on the one hand and leftism on the other are "blind powers which are working in the dark, and which derive their strength from negative and destructive forces."

I don't worry at all about the things that consume liberals, such as what the weather might be like in 100 years, whether we are mean to terrorists, or why open homosexuals can't serve in a military the left despises anyway. What concerns me is whether we can continue to nurture a psychic environment capable of sustaining the human soul, and whether, because of various technological developments, man will blind himself to the deadly consequences of his spiritually self-destructive behavior.

In short, the spiritually "dangerous and treacherous" have "been made artificially safe," so that "the distinction between wisdom and folly would seem to be an irrelevance." As Bolton writes, "high forms of culture can usually continue for at least another generation after traditional moral restraints have given way, creating the impression that a society can have the best of both worlds." But this is only a fool's paradise, for the bill eventually comes due.

If there ever was a widespread conversion to truth as a vocation, most of the problems of society would solve themselves, since it would remove the basic evil of aimlessness. It was for this reason that Pascal said that the whole calamity of mankind was owing to the fact that a man cannot remain quietly in one room for any good purpose.... [T]he security of any society depends on the presence in it of minorities and individuals who are spiritually alien to it, who have a mission which goes far beyond the basic practicalities which rest on everyone. --Robert Bolton, Keys of Gnosis

Suffice it to say that none of us would be who or where we are had it not been for the existence of such impractical men -- interior and exterior martyrs of various kinds. So let's be thankful these magnanimous fleshlights passed through these parts and illuminated a narrow teloscape for the rest of us.

42 comments:

julie said...

Today we have roughly the same percentage of the population living "in poverty." But I know of not a single leftist who is prepared to declare the 45 year "war on poverty" a failure.

Or even, in some respects, a massive success given the standards of living of "the poor" in America today. While living in actual squalor may be on the rise if this recession continues, still there are relatively few living at the hardscrabble subsistence level. To see real poverty on a widespread scale, for the most part one must still step outside the borders of the developed world.

What we call poverty today would have been luxury for a great many, even just 100 years ago.

ge said...

minorities and individuals who are spiritually alien to it, who have a mission which goes far beyond the basic practicalities which rest on everyone...

Voluntary Poverty anyone?
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/05/12/living-well-vs-doing-well/

Alan McCann said...

Happy Thanksgiving all and extra thanks to Bob and the regular commenters.

JP said...

"But this is about as likely as wealthy liberals voluntarily giving more money to the government, instead of forcing others to do so."

I don't think that you CAN do this. I think the IRS will simply refuse to accept your money. This means that only the government can tell you how much money you can give to it.


Julie says:

"Or even, in some respects, a massive success given the standards of living of "the poor" in America today. While living in actual squalor may be on the rise if this recession continues, still there are relatively few living at the hardscrabble subsistence level. To see real poverty on a widespread scale, for the most part one must still step outside the borders of the developed world."

It's not material poverty that's the problem. It's severe cultural, intellectual, and spiritual poverty that's the problem with "the poor".

So, "the poor" will always be among us no matter how much money they have.

julie said...

Let me try that again...

So let's be thankful these magnanimous fleshlights passed through these parts and illuminated a narrow teloscape for the rest of us.

Amen.

JP said...

Bob says:

"Once Christianity became the state religion and the era of persecution ended, a new kind of "interior martyrdom" emerged, as serious seekers fled to the desert in order to find God in the solitude of the heart. These souls engaged in a kind of extreme seeking that is also difficult for us to comprehend. I mean, it's one thing to join a monastery and become part of an interior community, but they didn't exist until much later."

Apparently one of the problems of the Desert Fathers was that some of them teneded to go a bit insane, based on my conversations with my ex-roomate (now ex-priest). You have to have community, whether you want it or not.

Although St. Patrick seems to have done ok with the entire forced solitude thingy. The exception that proves the rule. Or was it that he longed for community again and eventualy got it.

"Your hungers are rewarded. You are going home."

mushroom said...

Unconsciously, this attachment to the world probably just makes us feel less secure. In a perverse way, the more secure we actually are, the less secure we may feel, because we expect things to go perfectly.

I've noticed this in myself. I am more prone to feel angry that everything doesn't work exactly as it "should". As you say, I've allowed myself to become conditioned to expect a perfection in the derived world that can exist only in the Real.

It does appear that perhaps more people are at least considering simplification and minimalism these days.

JP said...

Mushroom says:

"I've noticed this in myself. I am more prone to feel angry that everything doesn't work exactly as it "should". As you say, I've allowed myself to become conditioned to expect a perfection in the derived world that can exist only in the Real."

If you dealt with the federal bureauracy long enough you will quickly lose that conditioning.

Nothing goes right and everything moves very slowly.

It's like that in litigation, too, only there you can't tell who's actually telling the truth about anything.

Part of the problem is that mechanically things seem to work wonderfully, because we've put all of our energy into mecahnical constructs. Everything else is suffering because we spend way too much time doing things have already reached the point of diminishing returns.

I think we've done enough mechanical development for now.

julie said...

GE & Mushroom, I've always liked that idea. I still think, should I ever get the chance, that I might someday get a little gypsy wagon of some sort and just take to the road.

Gagdad Bob said...

Sing with me!

This gland is my gland, this gland's not your gland
From m'belly button, to m'nether regions
From the hips on inward, to the thigh on upward
This gland was made for me alone

As I was walking, toward my gate there
I saw before me, an endless wait there
Then I saw below me, a pair of hands there
Sayin' this gland was made for you and me

But this gland is my gland, this gland's not your gland
Not Barak Obama's, or Napalitano's
You better beware sir, that's my underwear sir,
This gland was made for me alone

mushroom said...

In short, the spiritually "dangerous and treacherous" have "been made artificially safe," so that "the distinction between wisdom and folly would seem to be an irrelevance."

We might have to think about the word "artificial" in that quote. It does not mean that it is not genuine, but rather that is not the default position. It is maintained only by very high expenditures of wealth, energy, and time.

JP said...

Mushroom says:

"We might have to think about the word "artificial" in that quote. It does not mean that it is not genuine, but rather that is not the default position. It is maintained only by very high expenditures of wealth, energy, and time."

No, it means that it's not genuine in the sense that it's not sustainable. It can only be maintained by expenditures that will ultimatlely decline, resuling in an overshoot in the other direction.

Julie, you can go with voluntary poverty by simply increasing your savings rate to 50% and decreasing all expenditures wherever possible.

mushroom said...

Yes, JP, I agree. I was mainly referring to mechanical things. Most of our contracts are with government entities. We make lots of money off stupidity and fixing what ain't broke.

julie said...

Bob - :D

For anyone who's hitting the airport today, you have my deepest sympathies. Also, in light of all the glandular handling, you may want to bring some hand sanitizer as a special gift to your fondle-y TSA agent...

And I do hope the turkey and family time makes up for the sexual harassment.

julie said...

JP, I get that. Believe me, I know how to live poor, and the prospect doesn't bother me much these days. I was referring as much if not more to a nomadic sort of life.

mushroom said...

No, I don't think it's sustainable in its current configuration.

We might use an airplane for an analogy. Flight for humans is artificial, and we can do it only by using the laws of aerodynamics along with sufficient energy to overcome gravity.

I guess the question is whether we have a controlled and "safe" landing or make a big hole in the ground.

mushroom said...

"a nomadic sort of life"

A wondering ewe.

julie said...

:D

Just so.

Gagdad Bob said...

New verse:

Well the LAX now, is rated X now
And the TSA sir, is for T & A sir
And there's no separation, 'tween crotch and nation,
This gland was made for me alone

Van Harvey said...

"Repeated countless times, these saints "became the dying witnesses to a purpose in this life and the life beyond. Their blood led to mass conversions among a lost Roman people." But do people actually convert to Islam as a result of its martyrs killing and maiming thousands of innocents? Where is the appeal, except to eternal hatred?"

Truth, love and beauty, naturally integrate and spread geometrically in doing so and require no outside force, only inward development; whereas attempting to spread through force, disintegrates and in the absence of force being used to contain what has been taken, would scatter in a blink.

"We can come enticingly close to controlling most of the variables in our lives -- which only makes it more maddening that in reality we are promised nothing."

Sisyphus calling, hello? Anyone there?

"I am sure this is what animates the angry and hysterical control freaks of the left. They always wants to make things "better," with no appreciation of what a miracle it is that things work at all. They have no earthly conception that the optimal will never be perfect, and that in pursuing perfection, they will only engender the sub-optimal. "

The ironic truth of the 'reality based' left, is that they are control freaks seeking to escape reality and desperately attempting to force it to conform to their desires. Everything they do is an effort to make 2+2=5... and reality takes no notice of them. Nihil.

So pitiful and such a confession of weakness... breaks your heart to see.

JP said...

This morning, the TV was on (I don't know who turned it on) and it was a bible-ish show on some basic cable talking about those various quotes I mentioned the other day.

Kind of a "most people don't talk about these verses presentation."

Don't love the world, hate everyone including yourself, etc.

I love synchronicity.

walt said...

One of the real pleasures of maturity has been the taking of less and less of, well, everything "for granted." And the Thankfulness that has sprung from that has been a welcome surprise.

I count this blog as a great blessing -- heh, it's like water wearing away stone! Thanks for all your efforts!

Hope you have a T-Day muy delicioso!

JP said...

Van says:

"whereas attempting to spread through force, disintegrates and in the absence of force being used to contain what has been taken, would scatter in a blink."

My favorite example of this is when Napoleon invaded Russia and acquired Moscow, at which point his army dissolved.

Napoleon is a general example of how using mass consription armies to overrun Europe doesn't result in an organized and inetgrated Europe.

julie said...

LAX? I always liked Ontario better. Hardly anyone flies there, and if you're going to be fondled at least the line is shorter...

Van Harvey said...

"Similarly, the housing bubble clearly wasn't caused by the free market, but was a direct consequence of massive federal intervention in the mortgage industry for four decades. It is the same with healthcare and the cost of higher education. Both operate outside any rational system of actual market prices. You can only know how much something actually costs when you allow the market to set the price. "

ObamaoPelosiKrugman says: 'But... but... wait... we can make it work this time... just get this group to juggle those figures, and this group to keep these costs... well here, add this to it too, These costs, keep 'em all juggling and twirling, and turn three times in a circle while clicking your toes together, THAT will make 2+2=5 and 4-3=0! Let me make this perfectly clear, it's incontrovertible!'

Sigh.

Van Harvey said...

"What he wrote in the 1940s would apply with equal force today:

"England and the whole world are passing through a terrible crisis. We are fighting not merely against external enemies but against powerful forces that threaten the very existence of our culture. And it is therefore vital that all the positive intellectual and spiritual forces of Western culture should come together in defense of their common values and traditions against their common enemies.

"The defeat of totalitarianism... 'depends in the last resort, not on the force of arms but on the power of Spirit, the mysterious influence which alone can change human nature and renew the face of the earth.'"

Ah... crud. Ok, I give. Another book to buy. Sheesh.


"In short, the spiritually "dangerous and treacherous" have "been made artificially safe," so that "the distinction between wisdom and folly would seem to be an irrelevance." As Bolton writes, "high forms of culture can usually continue for at least another generation after traditional moral restraints have given way, creating the impression that a society can have the best of both worlds." But this is only a fool's paradise, for the bill eventually comes due."

Exactly so. Look around... exactly so.

"Suffice it to say that none of us would be who or where we are had it not been for the existence of such impractical men -- interior and exterior martyrs of various kinds. So let's be thankful these magnanimous fleshlights passed through these parts and illuminated a narrow teloscape for the rest of us."

Amen and Thanks.

(Someone pass the gravy please?)

Van Harvey said...

JP said of federal bureauracy "Nothing goes right and everything moves very slowly."

Au contrair, everything goes exactly right, which is why it move so slowly - trying to act on the presumption that 2+2=5 tends to gum up the works. That they claim it's not what they supposedly intended, is besides the point.

Rick said...

RE ..converting to Islam, "Where is the appeal, except to eternal hatred?"

Where is the appeal in socialism, communism, leftism?

Anyway, great post as always. And, as always, ThanksforGiving it!

By the way, good news/bad news/circle of life:
Good news is, the boy got accepted into the college of his hoping... The psych program. Bad news is, I'm gonna be his first patient. Good news is, he tells me my first visit is free...

Tigtog said...

To: Julie
Re: "I still think, should I ever get the chance, that I might someday get a little gypsy wagon of some sort and just take to the road."

If memory serves, I believe Mr. Toad attempted this form of escape, and nothing good came of it whatsoever. If you pursue this endeavor beware of weasels, ferrets and stoats taking up housekeeping in your abandoned residence. Cleaning the little buggers out of a home requires muscular activity and the liberal use of weapons. Should you need assistance in expelling the little squatters please feel free to call. (BTW, Randy Quaid seems to have similar problems)

Happy T-Day

julie said...

Thanks, Tigtog - I'll try to remember. Though I do hope I'll take more after Mole than Mr. Toad. :D

That's another book I'll need for the boy's library...

And a happy T-day to you, too!

Tigtog said...

To: Julie
Re:"That's another book I'll need for the boy's library..."

If the boy is less than 6 years old, would recommend "Tales from The Wind in the Willows", retold by Stella Maidment and Illustrated by Graham Philpot. It is a large format book with the stories themselves abbreviated and the illustrations enlarged. My son knows each story by heart. He especially liked "The Wild Wood". Be sure to read it to him with a right proper British accent. It really sets the mood.

"Believe me, my friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - like messing about in boats."

julie said...

I actually had a right proper British accent, once upon a time. Guess I'll have to dust it off and see if it still works.

True story - trying to show my mom how I had learned to sound out some new words at school, I moved my 5-year-old finger across "water" and pronounced, somewhat laboriously, "wooo-tah." My mother doubled over in laughter, and my next-door neighbor, a proper upright British fellow, was scandalized.

"Julie," he scolded, "you must never speak with a gutter accent. Tsk tsk tsk. Very improper!"

Tigtog said...

To: Julie
Re: British accents

I have provided a sampling of quotes to hone your accent. Enjoy.

"Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit? "

"Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well."

"Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!"

"The Durango '95 purred away a real horrowshow - a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts. And soon it was trees and dark, my brothers, with real country dark."

"Naughty, naughty, naughty! You filthy old soomka!"

julie said...

Now that's a story I'll be saving until he's just a wee bit older.

It was, however, remarkably accurate in predicting Britain's decline.

Tigtog said...

It's one of the real classics from our age. A powerful and lasting a story of moderns to post moderns. Yes, very prescient.

NoMo said...

Greetings, all!

There’s been no time in human history during which it has been harder or easier to receive the Truth. This is not so odd when one considers the sovereignty of God.

“So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” In context.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Julie's right: Ontario is definitely the way to go. Plus, only an hour from Palm Springs.

Three years ago I was at John Wayne the time they had snow on the runway for the first time in about 35 years.

We now know that the psyche is formed on the basis of attachment to early objects, and that any kind of disruption in the attachment process leaves emotional and cognitive scars for life.

Aside from the obvious, what are some examples of such disruption (i.e., things to watch for when home life is generally quite good to start with)?

ge said...

H-A-P-P-Y
a greatly strange song

the mood vs the message
T-H-A-N-K-S G-I-V-E-N

Van Harvey said...

An interesting OT item, "Michaelangelo Hid an Image of the Human Brain on the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
"


"“We propose that Michelangelo, a deeply religious man and an accomplished anatomist, intended to enhance the meaning of this iconographically critical panel and possibly document his anatomic accomplishments by concealing this sophisticated neuroanatomic rendering within the image of God,” write medical illustrator Ian Suk, BSc, BMC, and neurosurgeon Rafael Tamargo, MD, of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore."

wv:losing
Nah!

Tigtog said...

To: Van
Re: Michaelangelo's Brain

It could also be a jelly fish, bird ditty on a windshield, or tobacco juice spit on the gutter during a shift change at Cannon Mills. Note, you can not smoke when working in a cotton mill. There was a whole lotta of recently used "Railroad" snuff populating the sidewalk outside the plant when I was a kid.

Nice image for T-Day. No?

Van Harvey said...

Tigtog, I though it was amusing that the reality based society was so eager to find what they wanted to in a shape, even extending lines within the shape, to show how much Michaelangello agreed with them.

But like they say, we are pattern finders.

Gotta love it.

Van Harvey said...

Oldest got home last night just before the storm hit. One good thing that comes of your kids growing up and leaving home... is that while away they get in the habit of cooking, and come back home & cook you an awesome breakfast in bed!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!

(Still gotta work on those dishes though... I'd hate to see his kitchen)

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