The Power of Prophecy

What makes prophecy such a compelling narrative device in fantasy and myth, and a psychological fixation?

Humans have been obsessed, from the beginning, with the future. As the only animal conscious of the future, its inscrutibility quickly became a frustrating obsession. One wikipedia page lists 372 forms of divination. Some of the earliest far Eastern writing we have is from divination using bones with wishes or questions written on them. How natural is it, then, to imagine that there is someone on the other end to tell us the answers, or some people gifted intrinsically or through some divine possession or shamanic training to foretell the future? My newspaper still publishes the daily horoscope, a sadly watered-down echo of these most fervent longings to peer into the unknowable.

It has been a fixation in drama, from Oedipus to Harry Potter. The Greeks went to Delphi and received dramatically cryptic answers, which could be famously misinterpreted. Oedipus fell into this trap, fulfilling precisely what he had strained every nerve to prevent. When used in fiction, prophecies are relentlessly fulfilled, since otherwise, why bring them up? Like for the more generic foreshadowing technique, the magic only works when the portents are true, and the characters, while twisting every which way to evade or fulfill them, find in the end that fate has spoken with one voice out of the timeless dimension.

The Harry Potter series makes generous use of prophecy, both in its main plot lines, where Harry is marked in advance in various ways for his extraordinary fate, including the special symbol tattooed on his face, and in one particular episode, where the characters fight it out in a hall of phophetic orbs, climax of the fifth book. The bible, of course would hardly be the book it is without a flood of prophecies. The new testament was in large part composed around the supposed fulfillment of various prophecies made in the old, with some squeezing and patching required. The king of the Jews who came to save the world  bears hardly any resemblence to what the old prophets were expecting! Yet, mysteriously and gloriously, the fulfillment came about in the least expected way, etc... Then the New Testament closes with another round of even more feverish prophecies, in the form of revelations where the mundane world will finally receive its just deserts and be swept away in favor of a new and perfect dispensation.

Stonehenge, in part an astronomical prediction machine.

Obviously, it is empowering to feel even a little in control of fate, a little gifted with insight into the future. Why else are countless people betting on sporting events? Why else make such a fetish of astronomy and the prediction of what can minimally be predicted- the steady progress of the days and seasons? It is endlessly maddening to know that the future is coming, but know so little about it. But the tide has turned a bit over the last few centuries as a new mode of thought came to the fore- science. The successful analysis and prediction of Halley's comet showed on a poplular level the power of Newton's system and its ability to predict the future. Now we can predict the weather with startling accuracy, at least a week or so in advance, and can likewise predict the climate decades into the future, somewhat to our horror. Yet there is so much that still eludes prediction. Even in the physical world, earthquakes remain a frustrating challenge, apparently fundamentally unpredictable. And despite the "end of history", human affairs remain not just unpredictable, but irrational, as our current political regime so amply demonstrates.

In its humbler incarnations, prophecy is merely evidence of intelligence- a keen imagination or intuition that is able to discern where things are going sooner than the next person. This is where sports betting and stock picking get their acolytes. But beyond that it is clearly a fictional device- one that we love in its fateful foreshadowings and tragic struggles, but one that has never risen above that level to divine inspiration, reading the mind of god. Naturally, that is because such a thing does not exist. We are trapped within the plodding arrow of time, as we are under the spatial light-speed limit, as we are under our own mastery of fate, such as it is, having no other to turn to.

• Like we need more billionaires running things, and preaching about the national debt.
• Wealth is the problem, far more than income.
• And we have the candidates to solve it.
• George Will does something good.
• Protect your and your country's health- leave facebook.
• Treason and corruption, continued.
• Income tax rates have no effect on economic growth.
• But what do economists know, anyway?

Psychodrama of the Reformation

Luther's personal demons drove the split of European Christendom. A second post from "Fatal Discord", a double biography of Luther and Erasmus, by Michael Massing.

It is hard to believe, but Martin Luther was ridden with self-doubt. That is what drove him to become a monk, to confess his sins for hours a day, and to search for a way out through the scriptures and other theological writings. When he came across Augustine, he underwent a sort of conversion experience which seems to have led to a decade-long burst of energy, rebelling against the Catholic church and pouring out a prodigious flow of theses, tracts, and books on his new evangelical theology, including a full German translation of the Bible. (It is worth noting parenthetically that in these early days of printing, the pamphlets and books brought out by Luther and his adversaries were easily as intransigent, abusive, and uncivil as our current twitterverse, an atmosphere that may have had something to do with the brutal wars that ensued.)

"Now, in reading Augustine himself, Luther found nothing about free will, good works, or doing one's best. Instead, he found stern pronouncements about human wickedness, divine majesty, and undeserved grace. If Augustine was correct, the selfish urges and prideful thoughts that were continually welling up in him represented not simply his own personal failings, but ingrained features of human nature. As forbidding as Augustine's theology might seem to others, Luther took great comfort in the idea that his fate was not in his own hands."

The issue was free will. If god creates everything, rules all, and sees all time, then how much power do humans have? None, obviously. It was John Calvin who took Luther's position to its full extent, arguing for full pre-destination of everyone's fate, with a decided minority pre-destined (elected) to enter heaven, and all others going to hell. The Catholic church, despite Augustine's influence, took the more practical route of claiming some free will, such that prayer, putting money in the collection plate, feeding the poor, and even buying indulgences, would all be put on the sinner's tab when they got to the pearly gates.

Opening page of Matthew from the Luther Bible, 1534.

It is difficult to run a society without rewards for good behavior, so while the Catholic church did not go the whole way to Pelagianism, it did run a middle course, rewarding (in the next world, at least!) good works, while also holding god to be super-powerful, just not all-powerful. Luther's epiphany that faith alone saves, and that good works count for nothing, solved his personal dilemma, and fueled his world-shaking rebellion. But it also left his parishoners with little incentive to do good works, or even to attend church. Luther was faced with continuing apathy through his later years in Wittenberg, reduced to berating his dwindling flock for its moral and religious laxity.

It was in the peasant's rebellion, starting about seven years after his electrifying theses, that the problems of Luther's theology really became apparent, causing self-doubt and confusion to creep back in, gradually sapping Luther's confidence, productivity, and influence. The peasant's revolt was driven by a new crop of preachers more extreme than Luther. If rebellion against the Catholic church for its worldly excesses and oppression was permissible, why not rebellion against the landowners and lords whose oppression was even worse, and whose theological support far weaker? And if all believers are priests, and all can read and interpret the bible, then why listen to the doctors of theology from Wittenberg? Luther was aghast at what he had unleashed, and turned completely around to support the nobility in this bitter and ugly fight, full of unspeakable tortures and massacres.

Luther continued to collaborate closely with the temporal authorities for the rest of his career, and the Lutheran church became a state-affiliated chuch, ridden with many of the same compromises and theological perplexities that characterize the Catholic church, and which Luther had originally thought he had escaped. The energy of the reformation would re-emerge in the Calvinists, Puritans, Methodists, Quakers, and countless other sects of which there are now many thousands. Purity is always energizing, but neither practical nor defensible in what is, in reality, a godless and complicated world. In the end, the attentive tolerance of humanism regularly turns out to be the better solution.

• Machines are winning.
• Think of the bees.
• Paul Ryan- a fraud, just not a very good one.
• The story of abortion.
• More on Russia and our sleazebag in chief.
• Apparently lying isn't so easy.
• Coding is not for everyone, and is not the same as literacy.

The Problem With Atheism

Bernard Mandeville and the impossibility of getting along without lying.

We live in a little cloud of lies. From the simplest white lie and social protocol for hiding unpleasantness, to the universal belief that one's own family, city, country are better than the other ones, untruth is pervasive, and also essential. Vanity, optimism, a standard set of cognitive biases.. are opposed to the reality principle. The economic commonplaces which are, as Keynes noted, unknowningly derived from some defunct economist. Our unconscious is resolutely irrational. Euphemism, humor and swearing are ways to refer to truths that are difficult to bring up in straightforward fashion. But more serious truths are the more deeply hidden. Such as death, the final stop on everyone's trip. Full-on honesty and truth? No one wants that, or could live with it.

Many thinkers have plumbed these depths, from Machiavelli to Freud. Bernard Mandeville was one, profiled in a recent BBC podcast. His most enduring (and brief) work was the Fable of the Bees, which portrays a society much like Britain's, rife with greed, ambition, corruption, and crime. Due to moralist complaints, god decides to make this hive moral and good, upon which everything promptly goes to pot. The economy, previously held up by a love of luxury, collapses. Courts and lawyers have nothing to do, clothing fashions fail to change. The traders leave the seas for lack of demand, and the military succumbs for lack of population. The hive ends up resembling one truly composed of bees, and goes to live a hollow tree, never to be heard from again.

"Those, that were in the Wrong, stood mute,
And dropt the patch'd vexatious Suit.
On which, since nothing less can thrive,
Than Lawyers in an honest Hive."
... 

"Do we not owe the Growth of Wine
To the dry, crooked, shabby Vine?
Which, whist its shutes neglected stood,
Choak'd other Plants, and ran to Wood;
But blest us with his Noble Fruit;
As soon as it was tied, and cut:
So Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by Justice lopt and bound;"

His point, naturally, was that vice is both natural and to a some extent the underpinning of national greatness and economic vitality (given some beneficial management). Greed is good, as is irrational optimism and ambition. Mandeville was also a famous anticlericalist in his day, but that is another story. It was a classic contrarian point, that what we fight tooth and nail to vanquish or hide has, in reality, a role to play in the national character and success, for all its embarrassment. And that we routinely lie, to ourselves above all, to hide the truth of reality so that we can go on our way from one day to the next.

"My aim is to make Men penetrate into their Consciences, and be searching without Flattery into the true Motives of their Actions, learn to know themselves."
- Bernard Mandeville, in Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness.

What is our most florid and communal lie, but religion? This is the salve of social togetherness, moral self righteousness, and imaginary immortality. It is the finely tuned instrument that addresses alike our private fears and social needs. And atheists know it is completely, utterly wrong! But what is the point of saying so? Religions have been corrupt, abusive, greedy and murderous from time immemorial- they have many faults. But untruth is not a flaw.. it is the reigning feature of this imaginative confection, providing the credulous a full belief system to support a positive and hopeful self-image, (not to mention conventional authority!), so important to happiness, providing the more skeptical an endless labyrinth of theological puzzles, while providing even the most skeptical or apathetic a social institution to call home.

So why go around ripping the clothes from believers, crying that their cherished narratives of meaning are senseless- that they should go forth theologically naked? It is a serious question for atheists, going to the heart of our project. For Freud, after all, repression had a positive function, and was not to be comprehensively cleared away, root and branch, only pruned judiciously. Lying is indeed integral to mature social functioning. Clearly, untruth is not, by itself, an unacceptable portion of the human condition. This implies that atheists need to be generally gentle in approach, and selective in what they address directly- the most significant outrages and injustices perpetrated by religions, of which there is no shortage. When religions invade the territory of science, making bone-headed proclamations about biology and geology, that clearly crosses such a line. And likewise when religions insinuate themselves into governmental institutions, bent on seeking power to foist their beliefs and neuroses on others.

The so-called arrogance of atheists consists of their opposing / exposing the cherished verities of others as false. Such arrogance is of course not unknown among religious believers and zealots either, and for much more modest cause. The secular state settlement of the West has forced religions to forego armed conflict and state violence in the pursuit of their truths and enemies. Atheists should take a page from this success to lead by example and humor, rather than frontal assault, even rhetorically.

• BBC to continue spouting religion.
• Silicon valley has its religion as well- a sort of Stockholm syndrome.
• But lies in politics.. is there no limit?
• Hate is in the textbooks, in Saudi Arabia.
• Euro countries are not independent.
• 5G to rule them all.
• Heredity counts for a lot.. more than parenting.
• The labor market could run much, much better.

Fight For the Biosphere

The Story of the Earth Liberation Front: If a tree falls.

What is sacred? No one lives without deep values, whether conscious or unconscious. When I recently travelled to a small midwestern town, I was struck by its devotion to its institutions of reproduction- the high school, the church, the football game, the picket fences. Small town American is under perpetual siege from the outside, from the Amazons, Wallmarts, cheap drugs, bombarding media, and changing values. From capitalism in general, though no one would put it that way. Getting young people to stay instead of heading out to the big city or the coast is one challenge. Another is facing a flow of poorer immigrants who do want to come, but who drop the bottom out of the local labor market and are difficult to assimilate. The FOX and Sinclair propaganda channels harp constantly on "traditional values", as though applying a magic incantation against change (even as they and the right end of the political spectrum work to remove what fetters are left on capitalism, and to destroy the public goods & institutions that these communities rely on). No wonder Trump found a fearful and responsive electorate.

But everyone has their god- communists worshipped the sacred revolution, into whose maw millions were fed. And into the bargain had their trinity of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. To others, capitalism is a glowing, sacred value, and to some extent for good reason. The adoption of capitalism in China has brought about the most massive and rapid transition out of poverty, ever. (Even though the means to get there has been ecocidal technology.)

But these major ideologies and religions are weakening in our time. People are becoming disaffiliated with the cultural structures and institutions that used to cultivate sacred values, whether those of explicit religion or of its various modern ideological substitutes. The balance is often made up, on a personal level, by "nature". This is our instinctive and "natural" religion- the groves of the pagans, the auspicious birds and other animal spirits, the awesome scale and impurturbability of the surrounding vista, not to mention our own mystifying biology.

A fairy ring in a wooded grove.

The dedication to conservatism that pervades small town America is deeply in conflict with respect to this deeper set of values, as well as being counter-historical. A mere six or seven generations back, these lands were peopled by Native Americans, before being invaded by pioneers. These pioneers found, in their westward expansion, an undreamt-of natural abundance of game, fertile soil, and plant and wildlife of all sorts, which they promptly set about chopping down, shooting, poisoning, and generally extirpating. The illusion of stasis upon which rural Americans are so intent on staking their politics belies tectonic shifts to their natural surroundings and supporting ecosystem.

For the world is on fire. It is not just the loss of wolves, and the invasion of exotic species, and the relentless spread of pesticides, and countless other piecemeal assults that are degrading what we imagine to be perennial nature. It is global warming that is making nature itself a shadow of her former self. California has been literally on fire the last couple of years. Seasons are palpably shifting. Droughts are spreading. The Arctic sea ice is dwindling. Corals are dying en masse all over the world. Wildlife has been halved over the last half-century. Forests continue to be burned and clear-cut.

Those who see the sacred in nature are deeply appalled and affronted by all this. In the late 90's and early 00's, the Earth Liberation Front formed to take direct action against this desecration, not just by protesting, but by attacking those responsible for the clear-cutting, especially of old growth forests. The Northwest is full of roads that have a thin screen of trees to shield the innocent driver from vast clearcuts hidden behind. What are called "National forests" are in reality more tree farms than forests.

El Dorado "national forest"

The documentary "If a Tree Falls" is a moving story of a fight in defense of sacred values, against the modern Maloch of the timber industry. Whether this fight is noble or not is one of the themes of the piece. But the timber cutters have another set of values, more in line with the conventional property and rapine program of American capitalism, and get to brand the ELF activists as "terrorists".

The irony of the ELF actions is sadly unmistakable, using fossil fuels like diesel oil to burn down the buildings of the forest destruction complex, (i.e. the forest service and the timber companies), which will be immediately rebuilt using yet more timber. The bulk of the film profiles one of the last holdouts from Federal investigation and prosecution, Daniel McGowan. A pudgy, unprepossessing terrorist indeed, he gradually comes into focus as unshakable in his deep sense of sacred values which are in total opposition to the established order. Likewise, the prosecutors and investigators are profiled at some length, embodying their dedication to the values of law and order under the existing system. Yet they are visibly uncomfortable with what those values ultimately stand for and accomplish in this case.

Capitalism is fundamentally amoral, and exists to serve whatever we as private people want to have. It is a tool, not a value system. If we want houses made of wood, it supplies that wood, no matter the incidental cost to public lands and the animals and plants that live there. If we want electrical power, it will burn the coal to supply that power, and transmit it over fragile lines that regularly cause devastating conflagrations in high winds, abetted by global climate heating. We can not blindly trust capitalism to safeguard our long-term interests, let alone our sacred values, from our short-term needs. That is the work of government. And the last people to whom we can entrust that government are those who own and benefit from the capitalist system.

• Conservation vs conservatives.
• Pakistan shows who its friends are.. the Taliban.
• "Free speech" in Europe is a little different than in the US.
• The media is not so great in Britain, either.
• Facebook remains a cesspool. 
• Burn it up. The destruction of social trust favors Republicans.
• Fellow sleaze, in a completely illegal appointment.
• The US excels in diagnosing and treating rare diseases.
• Economic graph of the week... Left cities are economically more equitable, which is perhaps not saying much.

Economic mobility in various cities, vs overall employment growth.

The Quest For Meaning

We spend our lives searching for something that does not exist. And then realize that we have been fighting over it the whole time.

The meaning of life: 42? Or something more profound? Religions have been founded, and wars fought, over what by definition is most important to us, but on which no one seems able to agree. One advance in the philosophy of meaning was Maslow's hierarchy of values, which starts with basic sustenance, and rises through the more refined social values to self-actualization (possibly a dated concern!). If one does not have enough to eat, nothing else means much. But whether these form a true hierarchy is unclear, since many people have died for some of the more esoteric levels of this hierarchy, indicating that we are mixed-up beings, not always valuing life over some principle or ideology. It turns out that propaganda, social pressure, and decent odds, can make people kill and die for the most arcane propositions. Also, that winning means a lot to us.

Meaning is not given or objective. There is no star or cloud telling us that we mean X, while people in the other tribe mean Y. Quite the other way around. I think we can safely say at this point that we have constructed religions (as one example of indoctrinating human institutions) as complex machinery to propagate meanings that we (or at least some) have devised, using gods as fronts for desirable social hierarchies, idle speculations, melodramatic ruminations, and elevated emotions. That these machineries are passed off as objective and profound is critical to their function, elevating their impressiveness (and oppressiveness). If your meaning and values can be dictated by me, who wins? If god says you should have a beard, how can you complain, and to whom? This is the quest of propaganda generally- to instill meanings into, and thus lead, masses of people.

So we have been fighting over meaning and values all along, through our social relations. There is nothing to seek, but rather a world to win, for as far as others share one's meaning, one gains power. For example, a recent post told the story of Arthur Kornberg, eminent biochemist. One of his leadership qualities was an absolute conviction of the importance of what he was doing. If his team members were not willing to be tied to the bench at all hours and have midnight phone calls for urgent updates, their tenure was short. How much of this was willing? That is hard to say, and is one of the mysteries of personal, charismatic, leadership- the diffusion of meaning to others. Parenting is the same story, naturally, as is politics. Parents promote respect for elders and the elderly as a core societal virtue ... and no wonder! Advertising is another big example in our culture. The alchemical transformation of a natural desire- for status, sex, safety- into a value and meaning structure that renders some product essential. We are far more what we buy than what we eat.

Meaning turns out to be more of a fight than a quest. Meanings are swirling all about us, and are up for grabs. There is no grail to find, but only a social contest between those who seek to tell other people what is most valuable and important, others who promote other, maybe contrasting, values, and innocents in the middle, caught in the cross-hairs of domineering social warfare. Even Buddhism, whose doctrine revolves around the illusory nature of existence, the non-self, and the dampening of one's attachments, seems eager to propagate those very doctrines, promoting the somewhat ironic meaning of meaninglessness.

Returning to Maslow's hierarchy, many of our meanings are objectively based. We need to eat, have room to live, and have the other necessities of our current technological status. Social status is another need, biologically based. Since most of these are subject to scarcity, we are immediately thrust into competition with our fellow humans. These objective necessities can be woven into much larger ideologies of competition and tribalism. On a theatrical basis, they are portrayed in sporting events, game shows, and reality TV. But they become more grounded in the business world- that merciless competition that ends in bankruptcy and homelessness. Which is in turn only a slight step above the level that characterizes the ultimate competitive test of meaning: warfare, massacre, and murder.

We are bombarded from earliest childhood with values and messages of meaning, many of which conflict. The confusion can be difficult to deal with, leading many into the arms of simple solutions- taking meaning from those who shout the loudest, or who simplify most audaciously. It is up to us to choose, though our basis is necessarily the choices we have made already and which have been made for us earlier on in our lives. Meanings build on each other. But they also have a rational aspect. If compassion is part of our value system and self-meaning, that will not sit well with projects of tribal pride and dehumanization. It is complexity that requires careful thought, which is why morality is not just a matter of feeling, but also of reason.

The meaning of life is not hard to find, but it is hard to decide on, from the myriad choices and influences surrounding us. That is why sticking with positive influences and avoiding cesspools like Facebook / Fox news is so important. It is also why "big question" discussions are often overblown, shills for the dissemination of some particular and parochial set of meanings.  The quest is not for some elusive single meaning, but for ways to chose among the vast numbers of them we meet along the way of life.

• Imagine ... if Trump ran Hollywood.
• We are in the middle of propaganda warfare.
• More lies.
• Automatons have long been used to fake the work of gods.

Was Jung an Atheist?

Short answer: yes. Understanding religion, and believing in it, are two different things.

Jung was highly sympathetic to religion- Christianity in particular- seeking to explain its psychology and origins, and even to replicate it. There is an old joke among Jungians. A child asks her Analyst parent.. are we Christians? And the parent answers: "heavens no, we are Jungians!" While Freud was a rather vociferous atheist, Jung took a much more ambiguous, understanding approach to religion. Rather than a pack of lies, it was a truth, just not about the cosmos. What makes Jungians distinct is their respect for the power and psychology of religion, which they are generally obsessed with, and devoted to understanding. They are more anthropologists of religion than disparagers.

It is common for god and religion in general to embody the psyche of its practitioners. Even atheists take god's name in vain, to express strong emotions. Intellectuals customarily make of god whatever most interests them. Einstein and Spinoza took god to be the universe. Jung took it to be the self. While religion touches on many archetypes and psychic complexes, the nexus around which it all revolves is the self. Am I saved? Will I live ever after? Am I good? Is anyone? What is the meaning of my life? Jung took these questions to be significant and deep, not just the superficial reflections of repressed sexuality. Indeed, his view of the unconscious was much more positive than Freud's, seeing it as a fount of deep insight and healing, whose therapeutic power is not just the exposure and extinguishing of childhood traumas and instinctive conflicts. The unconscious has its own perceptual apparatus and methods of communcation (symbols, images) which can be seen as an autonomous entity within ourselves. I.e. god.

This is why symbology and ritual are so much more important in religion than is theology. All the Western attempts to rationalize the concept of god are so much wasted effort, not only because they are intellectually bankrupt due to the non-existence of the cosmic god they posit. They operate on a typically intellectual level that is totally inappropriate to the subject at hand.

An image painted by Jung, from his Red Book. The unconscious holds dark shadows as well as  compassion.

God is indeed real and an autonomous thing, at the same time it is a psychological construct, arising from our own selves and depths. The psychological concepts that Jung fostered, about an immense and fertile unconscious, which partakes not only of individual concerns, but of communal and cosmic ones, represents a significant and irreversible step in our understanding of religion and its panoply of symbols, motivations, gods, and other artistic paraphernalia.

Late in his career, Jung offered an interpretation of the evolution of Christianity, in "Answer to Job". God, as the manifestation of Israel's unconscious longings and strivings, is in the Pentateuch a thin-skinned, and fickle tyrant. He is immature, and when Job calls him to moral account for the Trumpian way he has toyed with his devoted subject, all god can do is blow up in an insulting twitter-esque rage. This exchange raises to consciousness the primitive nature of the god-concept in this culture, and rankles for several hundred years, at which point the solution becomes to make a better man of god by making him (notionally) into a real man. So, Pinocchio-like, he comes to Earth as Jesus, does good deeds, expresses some compassion, (though unimaginable ego seeps through in the commands for followership and claims of overlordship), and then ritually offers his self-sacrifice to assure us that he has really changed his ways and is now meek as a lamb.

Another self-explanatory image from the Red Book.

Obviously, this made a pretty modest impression on Jews at the time and since. But the combination of monotheism and a quasi-charitable, egalitarian form of god, leavened by Greek gnosticism and other intellectual additions, spread like wildfire through a West enervated by the relentless brutality of Roman civilization, and its fractured spiritual resources.

Many gods have come and gone, as cultures evolve and elaborate new images of themselves and their ideals. While Jung dabbled in some mysticism along the way, and was frustratingly ambiguous and unscientific in his writings on the subject, he laid what we can take as a very trenchant foundation for understanding religion as a psychological phenomenon. In this he followed the lead of William James, who recognized that it is a special area, so heavily subjective that philosophy has little hold. Like other freelance religious practitioners, Jungian analysts today split their time between writing books of uplift and psychological insight, and listening to clients bring up their difficulties, whether shallow or deep. They provide spiritual solace to the lost, while trying to heal the larger culture by bringing to consciousness the powers, compassion, and insight that lie within.

• The planet is burning.
• Workers, citizens, unite!
• An emotion in every chord.
• How China beat the recession- classic Keynes.
• What makes unemployed farmers so much better than other unemployed people?
• And why is the Labor party giving up on labor?
• Resignation- an excellent precedent!
• A difference between just desserts and business models.

Work-a-Day Addiction

We are all addicted to the normal hormones of motivation.

I am watching the World Cup from time to time, and wonder- why? Why do we get so involved in competition, why are men particularly motivated to participate and watch, why do whole nations believe themselves to be "represented" by a sporting team, and feel emotional loss or gain by their fate? It is all very odd, from logical perspective- even a grand waste of effort, money and time, second only to that wasted on religion!

Naturally, one has to look at our biology and evolutionary history. A recent article in Salon outlined an interesting contrast between hormones that drive men to their characteristic activities- testosterone and oxytocin. Success gives us a testosterone boost, while social bonding gives us an oxytocin boost. Both are powerful drugs that give us highly conditional, precise motivation. If one's success serves the group, such as a successful hunt, (or war), both systems reinforce, and we are maximally happy. If the two systems are in conflict, such as a bar brawl, civil war, or domestic intrigue, we take our bonding resources were we can- from whichever group will have us, or do without, becoming loners or outcasts living on testosterone alone, if that. That really isn't much fun, and one gets the distinct impression that oxytocin is ultimately the more significant motivator. Winning only works if you have someone to share it with.

Another recent experience was going to a concert. It was transporting, highly socially bonding, and its happy effects lasted long, long after, surely involving something like a surge of oxytocin. One might even call it "religious", a related activity carefully engineered to bring people together to get positive hits of social bonding, though with a veneer of pompous folderol. These are in some ways the poles of our culture- the incessant competition in sports, business, and politics, which divide us, versus bonding experiences that bring us back together. The latter are getting, perhaps, pushed to the margins as live music becomes rarer, religion dies a slow death, and our arts turn into violent superhero extravaganzas. Granted, that in competitive situations, we bond with our team, our party, our religion versus their religion. But the mixture of testosterone-fueled competitiveness makes such group-i-ness a mixed blessing, easily turning to mean, if not violent ends. Just look at our political system, where civility has turned into blood sport. We need to find a more consistently positive and unifying way to be.

The drugs we abuse follow a similar pattern. Cocaine is probably a fair testosterone analog, making one feel invincible- ready to take wing. On the other hand, there are downers like alcohol and opioids- what's up with them? One can speculate that they give an oxytocin kind of buzz- the comfortable, disinhibited state of reduced social anxiety, which melts barriers to some degree, though quickly becomes destructive in excess. The opioid epidemic is, as many have observed, a direct index of social malaise and atomization. One might add that 12-step programs to treat alcoholism attempt (mostly unsuccessfully) to supply the missing social bonding with a sort of regimented friendship. Most people, with robust lives and brain chemistry, don't fall for the fake pleasures of either drug, but get their fix from actual accomplishments and actual social connections, which generate the internal rewards which are just as chemical, but much more subtly, finely, and productively regulated.

(All this is terribly reductive, of course, and misses all kinds of details of how our motivation systems work. Yet it is clear that in a broad brush way, positive and negative feelings are strongly influenced by these and other chemicals that form the internal motivation and reward systems, for which drugs of abuse and recreation are blunderbuss versions. Whether we add in serotonin, dopamine, and others, to make more accurate models of the internal workings does not alter this picture. There is also no law that cognition can not generate emotions. But it seems to make sense that our general emotional tenor is shifted in rather gross ways, over many cognitive (and bodily) systems at once, which dictates the use of hormones and hormone-like neurotransmitters to create such wide-spread regulatory effects.)

But many forces are set against our happiness and bonding, sending us toward competition instead. Traditionally, the (testosterone-addled) patriarchy has been a major culprit, as we have experienced so clearly in the traditional setting of the society of Afghanistan. Scarcity in general, of course, generates warfare and competition, to which primitive cultures are far more prone than our own, despite their otherwise idyllic nature.

But our current version of modernity may be even worse. Society-wide bonding experiences, like patriotism, universal religion, and traditions in the very general sense, are all being corroded. Some of the corrosion comes from competitive market forces, which are invading every aspect of our lives with the retreat of public services, civic responsibility, and family structure. Some comes from our very prosperity, which allows us each more independence and freedom- which is to say, an escape from close, maybe suffocating, social ties. Some of it comes from sheer population growth, which makes everything more competitive, particularly space- the space to live, to not be homeless, to find a country in which one can make a future, instead of being crushed under poverty and corruption. And some of it comes from environmenal degradation, another consequence of population growth and rampant capitalism, which makes agriculture and subsistance more difficult in already-poor areas and degrades the spiritual balms of nature. The internet, which was supposed to bring us all together, has instead balkanized us into ever-smaller tribes, enabled anonymous flame-throwing and rampant bullying, including from the highest offices. And into the bargain, it has grievously wounded the music industry- that keystone of positive social bonding.

What is going to put all this together again? How will we re-establish healthy lives and communities against all these forces? Clearly, Scandinavian countries, which have followed a less strictly capitalistic model, with less testosterone and more social awareness and conscience, have succeeded in building happier societies. It takes a change in emphasis, and a renunciation of the imbalanced invasion of competition in every nook and cranny of our lives, where few win and most lose. Otherwise our only recourse is the artificial versions of social bonding reward.

• A depressing withdrawal from opioids.
• Trump is a bad drug.
• Remember that 81% of evangelicals support Trump. Because they are white and pure.
• The supreme court is the next domino to fall for our creeping Nazi-ism.
• Death of the middle class, cont.
• And the decline is gathering speed.
• Science takes a theory, and sometimes a little PR.
• Love ...

Why no Russian Renaissance?

Russia was much closer to Byzantium than Western Europe. So why didn't it feed from the scholarship of the East on the fall of Constantinople, as the West did? Books by John Lawrence and Martin Sixsmith.

OK, this is an unfair question. But if one's closeness to the learning and culture of Byzantium is supposed to be related to one's ability to assimilate it and recover the riches of antiquity that supposedly fed so much of the Western European Renaissance, then Russia was far better positioned than Florence. Russia had long-standing trade relationships and routes to Constantinople, and shared the same Orthodox Christianity. Indeed it still sees itself as the last inheritor of Byzantine culture. Some of the largest cities in Europe in 1000's were Novgorod and Kiev, of the early Rus period after Viking/Varangian invasion of the nascent Slavic areas.

But there were countless hindrances. When the scholars of Byzantium fled the Muslim takeover in the 1400's, did they want to go to Russia? Not likely. Western Europe had already gone through a mini-renaissance in the 1200's, and was incomparably more diverse, academically advanced, and wealthy than Russia at the time. Also, the Mongols invaded Russia in 1237, ruling with a slowly loosening grip till 1480. This would obviously put a serious crimp into any renaissance.

Poland, next-door, had its own mini-renaissance, roughly through the 1500's. Even in this most distant province of Europe, Italian architecture, arts, and science penetrated, and yielded the brilliant response of Copernicus, among others. It turned out that exposure to Byzantium was only a small part of the recipe- a spark, but far from the most important ingredient. Poland's great period was based on riches from trade with the Baltics, and dominion over a great deal of what is Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia today, plus quite a bit of travel to Italy. Prosperity and its consequent cosmopolitanism was perhaps more imporant than contact with Byzantium alone.

Holy investiture

One could also imagine getting too much of a good thing. Byzantium itself was Orthodox Christian, and inheritor of Greek and Roman learning, but had itself nothing we would call a renaissance. There was something about Greek Orthodox Christianity that seems to have been, and still is, stultifying to free thought and scholarship.

Was Islam an influence? In the West, Islam was a transmitter of ancient texts and a source of independent scholarship, via the lengthy occupation of al-Andalus, as well as trade throughout the Mediterranian. This was at least as influential as the recovered treasures of Byzantium. But, being present at the very gates of Constantinople, and as a significant part of the Mongol empire, the Islamic influences must have been at least as strong in Byzantium itself as well as in Russia- but to little avail.

It is not a big point, but the historical irony is that Russia inherited the strong ruler model, the love of ornate ceremony, iconography, architecture, and the deeply entwined church-state model of Byzantium- some of which were rather retrograde characteristics- leaving the West to gain from some of its other, more positive achievements, or perhaps rather, transmissions from a deeper past.

• Taliban poised for success. Despite hearts and minds operation... while the American military seems delusional, like in Vietnam.
• Librarians- on the front lines of homelessness and drug addiction, and community.
• Lawless organization ... our border system.
• Fake news / warfare from Russia. Or Trump. Or Fox.
• Some problems with Bill Clinton.
• "As much as 54% of present high-seas fishing grounds would be unprofitable without large government subsidies."
• Who really owns the jobs issue?

Heroes, Superheroes, and Saviors

What do we see in the hero myth? With apologies to Joseph Campbell.

I was watching the TV version of Dune, which, while much better than the movie, hardly matches the book. Seeing it again made it painfully clear how this story, so gripping to my younger self, is a formulaic hero tale, just as Harry Potter would be for the next generation, Frodo Baggins was for the one before, and Arthur, Beowulf, Jesus, Buddha, Rama, and Odysseus have been since antiquity. What do we see in them, and why are they so riveting?

Obviously, these tales speak to the meaning of life, in a direct and comprehensive way. Though mostly for males- Heroes and their students are, as a rule, male. They go on adventures, lead others, resolve mysteries, and ultimately solve communal problems. What they achieve is status, renown, and perhaps the hand of the princess, who is the typical hero of the female archetypal tale (though see also Dorothy, Alice, Mulan, et al.).

These qualities have relatively little to do with one's purely individual path through life, judged by, say, happiness, or one's success in earning a living, attending to the humdrum affairs of personal life, comfort, and family. Rather, it is a wider social role and service that is the point, and fame is the coin of this realm. The hero slays monsters that have terrified the people and despoiled their crops. Or he retrieves the chalice that gives everlasting life and salvation. Or he uses a mysterious force to lead a rebel alliance against the totalitarian galactic empire.

Horses? This quest needs no horses!

Hero tales are formative for those in formation- the maturing child, who instinctively yearns to accomplish something significant, which is the path to status in the collective, and thus to relative power and reproductive success. But what defines success and significance? It is necessarily the collective that must define what is important, via its bards who recite its problems both perennial and topical, provide the grist of heroic adventure and conflict, and award fame for their successful conclusion. Whether it is raging beasts in the countryside, Orwellian tyranny, taunting goddesses, or a world-wide conspiracy of death-eaters, the threat is not individual, but collective, and thus the hero serves the collective, something "greater than himself", as many people express their seeking behavior. Success of any kind is attractive, but to be truly compelling, success needs to resolve big problems and be valued by others. (Though in fairness, the hero may toil in obscurity and only be recognized in retrospect, perhaps long after his death, to have solved the momentous problem. Such a tale may have additional romance, and happen in reality all too often, but is not typically what a reader wishes to emulate for her or his own life path.)

One characteristic element of the standard hero tale is the reckoning with the father. Luke Skywalker finally meets his maker in a climactic scene. Jesus naturally has mixed emotions about his father, whoever that might be, who has left him up on the cross. The father represents the existing system, which has formed the hero, but which also perpetuates all the problems that he exists to solve. The father must be transcended for the tale to conclude successfully. Paul Atreides has spiritual and temporal powers far beyond his father's, and succeeds where the father had failed. More interestingly, Jesus, while always respectful of the father and putatively acting in his service, ends up totally upending the father's theology and bringing a new dispensation, whether that was "in reality" his intention or not.

Sometimes the goal of a quest is so abstract and theologically attenuated as to be absurd. Maybe the quest was the important thing after all.

More complicated is the role of the special gift. Harry Potter has the mark of the lightning flash, and special powers of leadership and magic. All the Marvel heros have some special power. Heroes are typically born of noble houses, though they may be unrecognized or abused for some of the story. What is the function of all this apparatus? Isn't the point of the hero tale to inspire normal boys to seek glory for themselves from/for their collective? Why start with abnormal heroes? The quest needs to be done in a noble way, morally upright. But that hardly requires a particular form of birth.

I think much of this has to do with the inner quest, which is another aspect of the hero tale. In order to seek outer glory, the hero needs first an inner quest, to find the confidence, knowledge, and personal resources to do extraordinary things. Jesus grappled with satan in the desert, while Paul Atreides grapples with sandworms in the desert (always an epic setting; Lawrence of Arabia grappled there with a recalcitrant, but noble, Arab culture). Each person has some special gifts and skills, and an important aspect of life, particularly adolescence, is to find what those might be. The ability to be clairvoyant, or to accumulate The Force are symbolic of momentous discoveries about the self which happen during growth to adulthood. While few of us will find nirvanna, or that we are the son of god, nevertheless whatever we do find will be the key to our ability to differentiate ourselves from the crowd, while earning its respect. Each person follows this archetypal path, and it is typically a difficult and uncertain one, thus the universal interest it evokes.

The noble house and lineage aspect seems more atavistic. One of the hero's special gifts / typical traits (which is key to the story's cultural and pedagogical significance) is to be naturally noble in deportment, morals, and martial prowess. Given our instinctive racism and appreciation for inheritance of traits, it is then natural to make this occur by having the hero some secret child of the king, or an acknowledged child who breaks out of the mold and takes a different path (Buddha). Or who comes both from a noble family and from the planet Krypton. Surely we could come up with a more modern way to handle this! Even the Black Panther is of noble birth. Tolkein gets points on this score for his low-class heroes in the Lord of the Rings.

But there is also a superstitious element. Luck is one thing the hero needs to have on his side, and this has traditionally been bound up with cosmic forces and mysteries, instinctively (and animistically) personified. Special forms of communication with these forces, or at least encouraging signs from them, would by this primitive instinct, be essential to success. One can take this in more rational way, however, to indicate a certain humility and appreciation before the complex and often inscrutable real forces that form our basis of operations, including the social forces that may not be ready for the hero's revolutionary work and need to be brought along by way of their primitive beliefs, whatever their nature and value.

Maybe a little self-flagellation would help?

It is particularly pathetic when a hero is so venerated and his boons are so attractive that his devotees make a fetish or even religion of him, employing a priesthood to retail third-hand boons of a studiously invisible nature. Generally, the emulation of nobility, and inner quests modeled on that of the hero, are not a bad thing. But the whole point of the tale was to find and develop one's own self and one's own resources- one's unique gifts and path in life- rather than to adopt another's wholesale, or worse yet, to fantasize about fictional powers and benefits that can be cadged via supplication and abasement. That would be to fundamentally misunderstand the point of the hero archetype, going so far as to reverse it as an engine for the most unheroic behavior. Thankfully, such overblown renditions have been relatively rare over the recent centuries (though Scientology, and before that, Mormonism, stand as significant and unfortunate counter-examples). Yet overall, absurd hero-religions, mostly stemming from more distant epochs, remain all too common.

The quality of the hero story plays an important role in its society, of which it is a gauge and exemplar. Just think of the pervasive influence of Homer's epics, or of Christianity. It defines not only the archetypal problems to be faced, but the standard of morality / nobility the aspiring hero must have to engage in its quest / solution. Star Wars cast the enemy as a Stalinist totalitarianism, while Buddhism cast the enemy as Maya and attachment to outer and fleeting things. While moral good and bad are perennial problems of the human condition, other aspects can change. The balance between inner and outer quests is a key indicator of a tale's maturity and spiritual content. Our current tales seem to center on the Marvel universe, of which I know very little. But it seems generally dedicated to extravagant violence and justice, with a somewhat infantile/regressive tone, overall. There is limited inner focus. They seem on the level of the Bond franchise, but without the understatement or style. It was extremely disturbing when, after 9/11, there was a rash of corner-cutting hero tales that supported the use of torture.

John Cleese strikes a heroic pose.

At this time when the actual culture is run by those fitting an antihero archetype, (technically, the heel), and the planet truly in peril, it is even more imperative that the stories that form our hero mythology and guide our questing youth be well-constructed, compelling, positive, and timely in their selection and portrayal of problems. Vietnam was a watershed in this regard, sending us from the morally simple comforts of the old Westerns and Hollywood classics, into self-lacerating work like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, and most recently, Game of Thrones. This depressing trajectory reflects changes in American culture, which has become more complicated and self-doubting, (perhaps mature), even mean. Realistic? That is hardly the point of the hero tale, frankly. Many recent film-makers have tried their hand at the saving-the-planet story, surely the one we need most of all, (from Avatar to Independence Day), but none seem to have become canonical. Someone needs to do a better job painting the deep challenges of the day for tomorrow's heroes.

• Unfit to serve on a sewer board. But then, who helped elect him?
• In praise of curated data. Sort of the opposite of Twitter, Facebook, and the other new news, but not cheap to do.
• New tech, same as the old tech.
• Liberals sometimes can't help drinking the right-wing economic koolaid.

The Sierra Club as a Religious Organization

Yes, and a good one, too.

The divides in the US have many dimensions, but a significant one is religious. Conservatives crow about their traditional religion- Christianity- and then, bizarrely, vote for Trump. What they really seem to be for is patriarchy and its traditional society-wide hierarchy (based on male-ness, but also on its accessory patriarchal religion and on race). Their model in the South shows that a bare-majority or even minority race can maintain power for decades in an ostensibly democratic society if enough levers of social, political, overt, violent, as well as covert power are used consistently. The movement against Confederate monuments is a watershed in consciousness of the thoroughgoing way the social gestalt of the South has been shaped by its treasonous and revanchist elite.

As far as rural and Southern America are concerned, the bicoastal elite live in another country entirely. In that country, we tend to think we have no narrative, no gestalt at all, but purely a functional this-is-the-way-it-is approach to reality and truth. A committment to reason, science, innovation, good public policy, social justice, etc. But of course, that can not be true. We have a narrative as well, and nothing illustrates it better than the Sierra Club.

This is the home of the shamans of environmentalism- the tree-huggers, whale watchers, and activists, inhabiting a completely different narrative from that of traditional Christianity and patriarchial conservatism. Its roots go deep into paganism and the natural reverence humans have for nature. It is a nature religion, but not animistic. There are no anthropomorphic deities or weird powers. We are the gods, but are fallen, now that we have inherited this awe-ful responsibility of taking care of a world that we have so hopelessly befouled. There is no bearded or other male figure behind the curtain. The Sierra Club conducts pilgrimiges, has its saints, sacred places and its version of the end-times, preaches to its believers, and expounds at every opportunity an ideology of love of and care for nature. It has its fetishes for untrammeled, unspoiled locations, its secret misanthropy, its revelations of human insignificance. And even jihad, if you count GreenPeace in the same sect.

A recent article by Gary Kamiya in the Sierra Club organ makes its religious nature particularly clear:

... Which takes us back to the wilderness within. No matter how refined we may think ourselves, at some level we are all still wild creatures, made up of the same materials as the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, the distant stars. "Wilderness" carries a connotation of chaos and anarchy, but that's misleading. Our inner wilderness is no more disorderly than the world itself is. A wild mind is a balanced mind. The wild world may be deeper and more heterogeneous than the city world, but the difference is only a matter of degree. The sense of wilderness is our birthright, and we can experience it anywhere. "The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning," Snyder writes. "One should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience . . . to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight." The real goal, he says, is to see all the land around us, whether in the country or in the city, as "part of the same territory—never totally ruined, never completely unnatural." 

Of course there is still absolutely nothing like a face-to-face encounter with deep wilderness. Once at Buck Lake, I was awakened by the screaming call of a pack of coyotes racing unseen through the 3 A.M. darkness, the shrill sound moving fast along the mighty granite ridge across from my campsite, then fading into the distance. That sound still rings in my memory, a quicksilver affirmation of the strangeness and holiness of the world.

The language and sentiments are clearly religious. But there is no theology, no theos at all. It suits the "spiritual-but-not-religious" mindset, whose sprituality is affective and natural, not burdened by over-thought (yet underbaked) theology and relic supernaturalism. Science isn't a problem here, but another way to appreciate the glory of what we love on so many levels- our world and biosphere.

Is all this good? People are naturally religious, creating and needing frames of meaning beyond mere subsistence and reproduction. The Republican Party and current administration shows what can happen when such a frame becomes completely moribund, paying lip service to Catholic and generally Christian dogmas while throwing any semblence of actual moral principle to the wind and practicing shameless greed. It is a revolting spectacle on every level. True religion fosters empathy and puts us in touch with our core values and commonality, not just among males, or with fellow countrymen, or even with humans, but with all beings.

• Silent holocaust.
• More lies.
• Are human desires endless, and therefore work endless? Only if money is distributed equitably.
• Does all our productivity get channelled to the top, or to those doing the work?
• How to design drugs with knowledge and computers.

Grumpy Catholic Loses Culture War

Grappling with "truth"- a review of Charles Chaput's "Stranger in a Strange Land". 

Charles Chaput is archbishop of Philadelphia, a Benedict appointee and thorough conservative. In this book he bemoans what has become of America and offers an extended homily of Catholic platitudes and scripture to gird his flock for their swim against the tide of cultural depravity. A theme he returns to repeatedly, if not obsessively, is court decision Obergefell, which made gay marriage constitutionally protected and is evidently the final straw in Chaput's recognition that the culture war is lost, and his people are now wanderers in a hostile wilderness. All this despite the outsized dominance of Catholics on the Supreme Court and other institutions of public life. Add a sprinkling of disparaging references to Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky, and the "state" in general, and his position on the political spectrum is clear.

As a study in the vicissitudes of social power, and the remarkable rhetoric of self-serving institutions and world views, it is an interesting book. One topic Chaput hammers on, ironically, is truth. We all know that truth has taken a beating over the last few years. Between the internet and its unusual avatar who is now our president, we have had a lesson in an unmoored and uncurated media landscape, where each person can hide from unpleasant views, and descend with ever more certainty into a comfortable world view. But it was ever thus, and the Church is surely one of the most amazing examples of relentless and effective propaganda for a truly bizarre version of reality.

"These problems are the outward signs of deeper issues that implicate us as citizens. The weakness of the individual citizen is only partly coerced by democracy's structure. It's also freely chosen, because we find it convenient. It allows us to assign blame to others and escape our own responsibility. It's easier to accept lies by invoking the misguided alibi of tolerance and mutual respect than live outside the cone of public approval. This is clear in every recent national debate ober abortion, marriage, family, sexuality, and rights in general. Many of us are happy to live with half-truths and ambiguity rather than risk being cut out of the herd. The culture of lies thrives on our own complicity, lack of courage, and self-deception."

Very true in principle, but what are these truths being alluded to? He tries to be as diplomatic as possible, but his truth is that gay marriage is completely immoral, and disastrous to society, as is abortion and contraception, that Christianity is true in every particular, and that the Church, as keeper of all these truths, should have far more power over its own adherents and, logically, over society in general, if it were, ideally, to adhere to "truth".

"There is no justice, no beauty, no goodness, without truth, because truth is the voice of God's authentic reality." 

"Simply put, once a higher purpose and standard of human behavior are lost, moral judgements are nothing by personal opinions. In a nation of sovereign individuals, nobody's opinion is inherently better than anyone else's. All moral disagreements become rationally irresolvable because no commonly held first principles exist."

How convenient it is for Chaput to think that his and his church's opinions are "truth"! What a simpler and better world that was when that was the common definition of truth! And what a remarkable ploy to insert God into every possible crevice of one's argument, making of reality and of our human and moral natures a superstitous ghost-ridden confusion.

The fact of the matter is that religions such as Catholicism have never proven their many propositions, either on a philosophical level or a social one. The Holy Spirit, the resurrection, and the second coming, which Chaput refers to with some anticipation, are all phantasms of once-fevered, and now institutionalized, imaginations. They are prime examples of "fake news" parading as "good news", not to mention "truth". And the societies which have most completely thrown off these fantasies, i.e. European nations such as France, and the Scandanavian countries, are also evidently the most rational and happest places to live.

Heaven, by Fra Angelico

But all the same, I sympathize with a great deal of what Chaput writes. American society has significant problems, one of which is the loss of social cohesion. Religions are, at core, ways for people to connect and found institutions based on humanistic and moral ideologies. We are communal beings, despite the relentless propaganda, particularly strong in the US, of individualism. We have not thought deeply enough about giving our society over to corporations as the primary unit of social organization. Corporations which have no moral scruples or humanistic ideology, and have flooded our communal media with lies, (which is to say, advertisements), and are rapidly taking over our government as well.

Must all social groups be founded on an ideology that is fundamentally untrue, a narrative that puts meaning into the otherwise empty vessel of "truth"? The answer to that is probably yes, but with the caveat that different narratives can have wildly different levels of untruth. The Western secular narrative of technological and moral progress, based on rights that we award to each other and a vision of human dignity and prosperity, is hardly "true" in an objective sense. Our technological development has plunged the Earth into an almost irremediable crisis of biosphere-wide destruction. And our moral development took some seriously wrong turns in the 20th century, which have taken a couple of generations to recitify. Only to run into critics like Chaput who take the view that, morally, things have been going downhill every since the so-called enlightenment!

That may simply be the self-serving view of an instution that has been battered by modern skepticism and individualism, but it can not be discounted as "false", either. For all the objective measures of violence going steadily down over the recent centuries, and health and well-being going steadily up, judgements on our moral condition are, intrinsically, subjective.

Other ideologies like communism were much farther afield from reality, putting the utopian cart before the horse of present-day charity and humanity. And religions, such as Catholicism, take the cake in their profusion of extra-terrestrial doctrines, saints, relics, rituals, transfigurations, trinities, and other claims they force their believers to swallow. The enlightnment has thankfully forced most of this material into safely supernatural precincts, where it does little harm to "God's authentic reality", such that Catholic scientists can, for instance, press on in good faith with their endeavors. As long as there are skeptics around to dampen outrageous claims, and an educational system that trains children with a modicum of rationality, (and scandals which religious institutions regularly self-inflict), the problems of religious ideologies going to social and philosophical extremes will be minimized, while the social good of religious bonding preserved.

But as Chaput notes and as many have observed, that religious bonding is in general decline. What are alternative forms of social capital, with which we can fight for our communal, human interests, against the amoral leviathan of the corporation? Chaput, as a hard-line conservative, is dismissive of the state filling this role, as its moral ideology is little more than a weathervane of public sentiment. Even the non-profit sector has been taken over by an army of rich people setting up their vanity foundations, with little coordination or rationale. Organizing grass-roots activities around various grievances is also not a promising or durable approach. Something like educational institutions as a life-long hub of relationships and activism might fit the bill, but I do not have a good answer yet to this deep and troubling issue.

• Another view of Chaput.
• Thank you, Pakistan!
• What happened to truth, and good faith?