Phamous Philsophical Phailures

Phirst:
"During 2011, Americans spent more at commercial casinos than they did on music, movies, and outdoor equipment combined."  My wife, who took a friend to a casino at the frined's request as an "outing," found it an exceedingly grim place.  No bells or cherries; people are so hooked that they just feed numbers into a kind of calculator. No one smiles and even the occasional "winner" goes right back at it with doubly serious intensity. The handicapped spaces are always filled up first thing when they open.

I think this is the ultimate irrationality of Darwinism--a grim place where greed proceeds and precedes and outvotes everything else, and it's every person for him/herself. And what's the key word? Not even such  pleasurous sounding words as "luck" or "Dame Fortune," but now the idea has been reduced to a no-frills "random chance." Luck ain't no lady no mo'.

  As one atheist said of the human race, "We got lucky." and won the cosmic lottery.  But from chance-no-dance it quickly degenerates to the raw question, what did we win?  The Responsibility for the Planet, as most now acknowledge, this being common knowledge from Genesis onwards until the Mighty 19th Century came along. Most people have abandoned Manifest Destiny as leftovers from the Divine Right of Kings. This of course tends to drain life of all purpose and meaning if not replaced by something at least as compelling--so how are we supposed to conjure up the energy or organization to deal with our self-made greed problems when we have undercut all telos? So that "existence" is all there is?

Which is only to say, isn't it "speciesist" to even try to save ourselves?  Suppose we are just like the very successful species of dinosaurs, doomed to extinction?  Why wouldn't we succumb, eventually to supposedly sinless, neutral or hostile nature?

It has struck me in particular that white Americans have lost most of their reasons for existence, now that public philosophy is not only a mere clone of existentialism but "value neutral" at that.  It may be that the "Global South" may go on to greater things, if they learn from us--but chances are they won't.  There is no way to globally prop up a  human world like ours except on Darwin's terms; esp. since since Darwinian philosophy is what we have exported to the world most successfully.

There is the  the added consequence that, just like a colony of mold or bacteria, we are limited after all in our growth by the toxic wastes that we produce. This being so, any given species can eliminate itself, and success seems to be particularly deadly, and success by rapid succession even worse.  We don't learn fast enough to exceed our grasping nature.
 
Some may see this as hopeless--and of course it is, in itself, whether we speak of the species or the individual. But this is simply failure of philosophy which leads to an unbalanced failure of will to live or especially to reproduce. Philosophy is usually a late development in any given civilization but it is not an entity in itself and so cannot balance itself in the face of its own inner contradictions, certainly not enough to face up to the unseen capacities of Reality as seen more thoroughly than we can yet imagine. At worst it is simply an excretory toxin specific to our species.  At its best it could serve as a corrective to the more extreme kinds of human behaviors but it soon busies itself, like all other human institutions, in becoming a self-justifying entity with a professional elite who compete amongst themselves but have no use for the rest of us except as appalling demonstrations of ignorance. But since human ignorance is universal, the kind of hubris that increasingly oozes from department "chairs" et. all, all are poorly armed to be able to point fingers at others on the basis of mere human wisdom and our 15 second rushes to judgement.  Of, say, "the wrong sort of white people"

One might call this musing a kind of prose Psalm--I wouldn't want to set it to lyre music--and only in that David often thought similar thoughts, and then turned to God at the end.  But in other Psalms, God is much more than an addendum; so I will devote more time next time to the Parallel Universe of God.

"BIRD OF HEAVEN" --IONA

"Catch the bird of heaven.
Lock him in a cage of gold.
Look agaBellin tommorrow
but he will be gone.

Lock him in religion
gold and frankincense and myrrh
carry to his prison
but he will be gone...

All the things that man has made
cannot hold him anymore.
Still the bird is flying as before.

Temple made of marble
beak and feather made of gold
bell book and candle
but he will be gone.

Bell book and candle
cannot hold him anymore
still the bird is flying
as he did before."

How does one get the reputation of being a rabble-rouser...

when you haven't roused any rabble? (not even once)

"THE FIRE NEXT TIME"

I  find it more and more amusing when authors and advertisers use Scriptural terms in a Biblically illiterate society.  But the book by James Baldwin is different in one way--he knew exactly to what he was referring. Baldwin came directly out of a Bible-soaked culture of various black denominations; and if there's one thing besides the Gospel itself that is known most thoroughly by African-American Christians, it would be the Book of Revelation. And the title is a parallel to that book, in fact, to the entire Bible, which refers throughout to a Final Fiery End, after God promised to never flood the earth again.

Baldwin was not a Christian, but like many, used Biblical terms and concepts frequently. His fire was more referring to African-American struggles and of the "judgements" of such events as the Watts riots. Far more than the South is "Christ-haunted," to use F. O'Connor's memorable phrase. 

Nonetheless, wildfires and burning heat are certainly on many minds.  It seems ironic that no matter what view you take: that of the secular scientist or that of the Flaming Prophets of God's Word, the conclusion is that same--there isn't a problem on this planet that man has not caused, directly or indirectly. 

So where is all the water going?  The heat will evaporate it quite quickly, so why so little rain? The planet was full of greenhouse gases aeons ago, and a lot hotter than now.  There were literally no polar ice caps. "Desertification" is a problem now-but if nature is by definition good and faultless, why all the fuss?  Maybe the Bible is raising its ugly head again.

I mean "ugly" from the humanistic point of view--old fashioned humanism seems to have gone extinct, replaced by a jugger-nought so fanatically materialistic it will do anything to blame others--esp. "religions,"
just so long as the finger is not pointing back at them.

The other way for the water to go, if not up into the clouds, is to the "great fountains of the deep," inaccessible to any human driller, but obviously plenty of space and shady conditions down there. I am sitting on top of millions of cubic feet of natural gas, stored there by man for man's burning desires, because the limestone and other rock below me is so incredible porous. If we didn't pressurize these pockets with our gas, they would be, well, empty. But we are talking about a mile or more down.  (No danger of it exploding under our feet.)

I would be interested in whatever material might be out there, if possible untinged by prejudice and agendas and pure speculation like mine, that might indicate what direction the planet is likely to take.  Will the waters rise in spite of higher pressure on the ocean beds, but decreased rain in more and more areas? I am on shaky ground here--but I do agree with Baldwin and the Bible that the fires kindled by man, and the sun which is increasingly less hindered by our atmosphere; will be hotter than the weather we have now.  And it will take more than Bible cliches and mocking God and spending money we don't have, to make a dent in what seems to be inexorable.

Ad Campaign, anyone?

I Will Need Some Time to Compose Myself...

I keep coming back to Walker Percy's still inimitable article, "Questions No One Asked Me So I Asked Them Myself,"  a mock interview that makes many of his views crystal clear, in a self-deprecating and very clever way. Turns out that we have much in common besides being, technically speaking, primarily scientists. What is really pitiful is to hear the majority of commentators who have no idea what he means and do their best to quash the Spirit, as in all their other public output, for the masses who consider themselves a cut above the "wrong sort of" masses.

In a way this blog is a bit like that.  It is quite certain, at least, that no one in my family or among my acquaintances and  a few friends would dare to or even think to ask me about the material I choose to cover,.  That's why this will never go viral in any way shape or form.  It doesn't qualify as publishable; varies too much from post to post (when folks say, "Surprise me," guess a percentage on how much they mean that...then imagine them really surprised,...) and often tries to achieve a balance of views that isn't even possible on this heated-up planet, and our white-hot culture.

I have come to see this blog, and more especially my journals, as Manna."  That is to say, bread from heaven.  To clarify:

Many if not most blogs are written for the writers own entertainment or as a habitual way of thinking things through. In fact, it would be hard to understand most blogs being read if it not for the social ties that they already have.  It's like all those business cards they give you when you start a new job: "Here, Mom, take one for Dad too."  I even made up business cards for my last blog!  Guess how many people started reading as a result of those cards, eh? I use them as bookmarks and small to-do lists.

But what manna does is one thing, and when it was around, it did this one thing perfectly: it nourished a person for one day only.  And conditioned dependence on God i.e. the only possible Source of Being, Matter, Energizo, and all the rest.  If you tried to save it overnight, it got permeated with maggots (reminiscent of some plagues we have also heard about.)

Thus is it that when I look back at yesterday's journal entries, what seemed to me brilliant then becomes to seen embarrassing very quickly--on the other hand, I can look back on some blog articles and be glad I wrote or shared them. But if I go a day without Scripture reading and them verbally reflecting on it--the only way I can sustain my attention--then I feel off kilter for the rest of the day.  I don't feel that way about blogging, partly because I am a lot more careful with any given blog and often go over it several times and have my wife check it too. And there are many things that are just too personal to share; God understands me perfectly well, and the Check of the Spirit is Holy Adequate to keep it where it belongs. My harshest critics are people, not Christ, who is way more patient and forgiving than even my wife.  Maybe because He's heard it all before.  "Surprise me," is only applicable to the majority.

And as far as surprising anyone here, it has appeared to me, via not only Percy's critics but more especially through his "friends"  that friends always have some kind of naturalistic or psychological explanation for what the person is saying.  We also categorize people within less than 30 seconds of first meeting them.   Oh,well--let God be your Big Surprise then--I'll be over here munching on manna flakes--please pass the milk of human kindness--"No sugar added."

Child Issues

I just received another installment of the New Yorker magazine and I continue to notice an escalation of a campaign to discourage people from having children.  I will be the first to admit that having children is a big responsibility.  And that not all people are cut out to be parents.  But it is a different matter when an entire culture (USA Today) regularly belittles parenthood.  It's apparently not enough anymore to campaign against marriage--gay marriage being the exception--but it has become evident to most of us by now that cohabitation does not cut down on the population, but makes parenting a very casual matter, secondary to materialism and entertainment rights, with predictable results. 

All this and more was noted in 1949 by Harvard sociologist in "Family and Civilization," a book well summed up in 2 of its 800 pages of highly erudite material, observing that such campaigns are the rule not the exception in the end stages of any given culture in history and they are often run more by indolence and neglect than by intentionality--although TNY has plenty of advocacy intentions. Is this due to population pressure as noted by VSP (Very Smart People)?  Or is this still an irrational self destructive tendency found in every dying, used-up current of civilization and ethnicity at the end of its tether?

Having broken all the rules not once but twice--four children now four grandchildren--somethimes I find myself rather discouraged by the lack of general support; however, if I am looking for support from McWorld I am very much in thrall to our entertainment-insane dying culture--when I could be focusing my attention on being on the cusp of a new generation that has the sense of purpose necessary to do parenting and to do it well; according to guidelines that are not of McWorld or its entitlement mentality. That is, I can focus on new life rather than lamenting what is 3/4 dead already.

 I do lament the many people killed in the theatre yesterday; but the irony of it will escape most people. In the midst of an entertainment culture that is often anti-human or sub-human as much as the Roman "games," it is surprising to me that this has not happened before; and I suspect, like school shootings,  this will become another trademark of our time; and  that there will be a growing blurring between our entertainment offerings and its escalation of violence against people in general, not just an "enemy" but one's neighbor if s/he gets in the way of our "lifestyle," or just rubs us the wrong way.  "Society Against Itself" is becoming more and more of a reality; there will be small islands of sanity and I hope to be stranded on at least one of them--but clearly our national culture is not worth much of an investment-- and that is at least subconsciously clear to many who cannot describe the process but withdraw from the "Centre" progressively and are too bummed out to create anything new.

This topic may be worthy of more exploration in the future; if one takes care to, "strengthen those things""--people more than things-"-that remain."