The Palette
I would like to continue on with the idea that the universe contains absolutes, though we humans may be only partially aware of their true nature. While this may seem eminently reasonable to all and sundry, the conclusion I draw may not be!
Once we admit the absolute everything is colored by its existence.
It is futile to attempt to wriggle out from under these laws. “Can a leopard change its spots?” - an eminent sage once rhetorically asked: the fact is, we cannot.
Were we to somehow become supermen we would still be bound by these laws. If we, as supermen, appeared to break free from the constraints of men’s ordinary lives this would be because those constraints were only an incomplete understanding of the actual laws of the universe.
In an opinion piece titled “Is ethics possible without religion?” In an online column at www.malaysiakini.com Sim Kwang Yang writes: “We are all condemned to be moral agents. When we choose a course of actions, we make the decision according to whether it is morally good or bad.” This constraint comes from what I will call the “palette of colors” we possess: this is all we have with which to describe reality.
Immediately upon mentioning morals I am plunged into a greater whirlpool of opinion than I care to paddle my way through. Mores, folkways & taboos are believed by some to be simply byproducts of the religions, cultures & societies we have been steeped in. On the other hand there are quite a few “reasonable” atheists who believe that there is some kind of absolute moral truth in the universe. I mention atheists because they would seem to be the demographic most invested in denying any kind of underlying moral code in the universe, so their opinion counts here!
For my part and for the purposes of this post I am comfortable confessing that there are common elements which appear consistent (absolute) across the moral palette used worldwide. This will be our starting point - by extensional bargain: if you wish to argue we can do it elsewhere!
One beloved quote along these lines is from G.K Chesterton, in “The Innocence of Father Brown”:
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
"Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?"
"No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason."
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe--?"
"Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth.
..."Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, `Thou shalt not steal.'"
Terry Pratchett (who I will discuss more further on in this post) in his book “The Color of Magic” suggests an 8th color, octarine. This is of course the titular ‘color of magic’. I’m not in any way quarreling with his book, which among his many others I thoroughly enjoyed - it is after all fantasy and as such all sorts of strayings from the rules are permitted and even expected. But it is a good example of the limitation of which I speak: for in the book the color octarine cannot really be described despite the attempts - in the end one understands it to be (my words) a kind of purple - just one we can’t imagine. You see the problem.
(We habitually divide the spectrum of visible light into 7 colors in a fairly arbitrary way, but I am rather talking about seeing something which hasn’t been seen before: something outside our familiar spectrum.)
Similarly, in the realm of sexuality there is an increasing panoply of attempted descriptors, but they all appear to use the same limited palette. Here is a very basic list of just a few of them (I’m very probably wrong about some - not being a subject matter expert!):
Male: no further descriptor attempted for the purposes of this article.
Female: no further descriptor attempted.
Hermaphrodite: not found so far (as I know!) in humanity, in nature this is the functional inclusion of both female and male entities in one organism.
Gay: male attracted to male.
Lesbian: female attracted to female
Trans: what looks like a female / male is actually a male / female
Bi: male / female is attracted to male & female
The list goes on and on from here but there never seem to be more than two colors being painted with. Nowadays there is put forward the idea that there may be around 30 naturally occurring variations of chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals. (And you have the confessing “Non Binary” who are a bit like the “Non Denominational” churches I discussed in an earlier post.) But to the casual observer these attempts have the flavor of “methinks he (it/she/they) doeth protest too much” and stray from what appears very much to be the “Intent of Nature” (ie what procreation was evolved for) - avoiding for the purpose of this paragraph the mention of any “Intent of the Creator”.
Of course the argument could be made that any number may be represented using binary. But the underlying question would then be “why use binary to represent”?
I say all this, but there is a strong current nowadays of “thought” (I use quotes because it becomes plain on further examination that thinking is not involved) that advocates the abandon of reason and the acceptance of something else instead. There is a strange article in The Federalist about a philosopher, James Lindsay, who tweeted as a joke “2+2=4: A perspective in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values”, and about how this tweet was taken up seriously by a certain group of woke people, educators & enthusiasts. It seems that once the hammer of “racial injustice (or whatever else) must go” is in the hand, reality just becomes so many nails. I find it very hard to believe that such ideas can actually gain traction in “the real world” where corporeal children are taught in concrete classrooms - but apparently they do. Becoming mainstream is another step, but certainly “The Great Awokening” has taken many educational citadels by storm, and if the next generation imbibes too much of such royal jelly who knows what they may develop into.
You can call anything semantics and redefine things such that two plus two does indeed equal five. If one goes about this rationally (and for some good purpose?) then all well and good. But the way these people are going about it is so irrational that it becomes impossible to refute. They have cut away the very ground that any argument could be made from. Of course in time they will find this out - that they are falling (perhaps this is the legendary “bottomless pit”?) but for the present it does not seem to be a concern.
The abandon of reason is a natural consequence of the abandonment of the absolute.
Consequences
Irvin D. Yalom: “If you kill God, you must also leave the shelter of his temple”
Suzanna Clarke: “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
Friedrich Nietzsche: "Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?"
Men appear to have a blind spot - an inability to understand the true consequence of their actions. I am talking here about supposed experts, men who should know better: scientists, philosophers, bankers, craftsmen… I also speak for myself! Writing is a way in which we attempt to be objective - but in life we are all subjects.
Take the financial crash of 2008 for example - a summary from Wikipedia reads “Excessive risk-taking by banks combined with the bursting of the United States housing bubble caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally, culminating with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and an international banking crisis.” I listened to an analysis of the actions which led up to this event - hindsight is of course if not 20/20 at least better than real time sight! I’m fascinated by the idea that subject matter experts - whose knowledge and intelligence far surpass mine - were unable to see that the actions they were taking would end in financial ruin. True - there were a few analysts who saw it coming and even warned of the coming doom. But the fact that they were not listened to is telling. Of course we know that sometimes greed outstrips reason: the golden goose has been killed more than once in mankind's history. But by and large in the interest of self, humanity (especially the Epicurean & educated elite) has learned this lesson and tends to self limit: they understand that “goose dead” equals “no more gold”. It is the fact that this equation (ie, consequence) is hidden that leads to Anatidaecide.
Another example is Brexit. It appears that this idea was suggested in the first place for fairly simple reasons, but lurking beneath the surface was a leviathan of complication. Over time many have been strongly in favor and many strongly against, divided for the main part along partisan lines - but neither side seemed to know what it would really mean if implemented; how it would really work in practice. There were hints and allegations thrown both ways of course. I won’t dive into this subject further because it is so complex, and even now being worked out in practice. My point is simply that it hasn’t been simple to have a truly educated opinion about it.
I have watched a few videos on YouTube where people claim to have created / invented machines with perpetual motion - generating energy from nothing. What appears to be happening here is self delusion by means of artificially complicating a mechanism to the point where it is no longer clear that the input is connected to the output. At this point, and observed via a number of false measurement systems (as my physics teacher would say “What are the units? Sausages?”) it is easy to imagine that some magic is happening between the input and the output and - voila! - we have ourselves a free lunch.
This matter of obscuring the connection between input and output is, after all, how all magicians work their craft. Penn & Teller’s job is to penetrate the obscurity - which they do rather well.
The current Conaviris situation is another instance. Global Warming is another. Who the next president should be is another. These are all systems of belief that are complicated enough that it is difficult to “prove” some thesis about them: in other words there is room enough for doubt such that subject matter experts disagree wildly about facts and predictions. These are not simple physics problems - “if ball A is hit by a force of B newtons in a direction of…” (Side note: however, refer back to the article about 2+2=4 above!) You will find people on both sides of the fence who will tell you with assurance “of course global warming (or, insert other example) is (true / false / serious / completely laughable). Look at x, y and z.” Their assurance is laudable I am sure, but the experts cannot all be right since they contradict each other.
After some time has passed analysts will look back at these bumps in the road and opine about what exactly made them tick. They will mostly get it right if their intent is honest.
If God exists he has similarly not chosen to show himself in a simplistically provable way. There are necessary reasons for this in my opinion which I don’t wish to go into in this post. But there is the promise - threat? - of a coming day when “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess”. The obscurity will be made plain. This does not presuppose that all will be delighted with the final proof.
In the book "Nietzsche Wept" by Irvin Yalom (which I greatly enjoyed; the author attempts to put himself in both Nietzsche's shoes and those of his (fictional) therapist) Yalom has Nietzsche say "If you kill God, you must also leave the shelter of his temple". I admire the way that Yalom has distilled into this pithy sentence the spirit of what Nietzsche (himself the master of aphorisms!) appears to have believed - perhaps again here, fiction is clearer than reality? Nietzsche understood that the temple was a product of the god: that when the baby went the bathwater should be thrown out also. Others have seemed to think that humanity's boat could now proceed as always - only more peacefully without this irritating God, constantly wanting to get his oar in. Nietzsche on the other hand appeared to understand that we were up the creek without a paddle and possibly also without a canoe. “Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness” his fictional version aphorizes - and his real self writes of a similarly balanced equation:
What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”? (Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science")
Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman)
In practice, a temple may be used for many generations after the exorcism of the god; the bathwater may be used for subsequent children, though it becomes certifiably more dingy with the progress of time. All Nietzsche was pointing out is that it is not truly honest to do so. I admire his thoroughness but question his retention of the virtue called honesty: it smacks of incense and soap.
Nietzsche’s death is often used as an object lesson by those who disagreed with his philosophy. I wish to avoid this since even those who do not want to make a religious or moral object lesson out of him cannot agree about what caused his death. (As he himself said “there are no facts, only interpretations.”!) It appears fairly clear that his life, however, was one of some torment. I believe he viewed this as a necessary toll on the journey to a greater goo... - no, of course not: a greater... Man. The hope being I think that we humans are larvae, and only need a kick in the right direction to metamorphose into our true form - the superman. I love this idea - having often wished for a radioactive spider or industrial accident to supply what I personally feel the lack of. “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” (Job 14:14)
Some of the greatest mistakes made are wrong turning on the road to truth. I believe the acceptance of despair as the price for truth is in itself a lie. That this juxtaposition of truth and despair was borne out empirically in Nietzsche's life is no proof of the pudding. But I would suggest that truth known without knowing the person who is truth may perhaps indeed be the road to despair. It is a wrong question; it is the illicit grasping of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil:
Come in by the gold gates or not at all
Take of my fruit for others or forbear, For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.
...
There, only a few yards away from him, stood the Witch. She was just throwing away the core of an apple which she had eaten. The juice was darker than you would expect and had made a horrid stain round her mouth. Digory guessed at once that she must have climbed in over the wall. And he began to see that there might be some sense in that last line about getting your heart’s desire and getting despair along with it. For the Witch looked stronger and prouder than ever, and even, in a way, triumphant; but her face was deadly white, white as salt. ("The Magician's Nephew", C.S. Lewis)
Note that it is not that truth, or the knowledge of good, or the discernment of evil, are wrong things to want, to have & to hold. But there is a route & intent (route & intent are closely tied together) which is wrong. The path to Eden is not obvious.
Gratitude & Worship
Any man that stands surrounded by nature in all its glory - magnificent fall colors gilding the hillsides; the infinite blackness of space impacted by the light of distant galaxies; unimaginable power and beauty in the curled fist of a wave - and feels thankfulness has already let something past his guard, though he knows not what. My belief is that such thankfulness is the thin end of a wedge sufficient to let in the Creator.
G.K. Chesterton says “The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. The posture of the idol might be stiff and strange; but the gesture of the worshipper was generous and beautiful. He not only felt freer when he bent; he actually felt taller when he bowed. Henceforth anything that took away the gesture of worship would stunt and even maim him for ever. Henceforth being merely secular would be a servitude and an inhibition. If man cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons.” (The Everlasting Man, G.K.Chesterton).
This is my Father’s World
“This is My Father’s World” is a hymn which expresses much of what I am trying to convey here. There are some lines which come back to me again and again - “I rest me in the thought”; “He speaks to me everywhere”; “O let me ne'er forget / That though the wrong seems oft so strong, / God is the Ruler yet.”
The fact is that the Ark, the Absolute, the Temple - is all but impossible to abandon completely despite the best attempts of humanity. “He speaks to me everywhere.” As it says elsewhere: “The heavens declare…”
One example that I find somewhat amusing is the “Dark Materials” series by Philip Pullman. This was intended to be an antidote for what Philip saw as the poison of Christianity; a rebuttal to the false postulates of Narnia. Indeed, as one reads it there is plenty that could be quite offensive. The church (though it is perhaps more the Catholic church that is targeted - Protestants all may breathe a sign of relief!) is set up as the enemy of all that is reasonable & good. God himself is a weakling figure, dying out and pitiable. However throughout the series (which I really enjoyed - it is a rollicking story and well written to boot) Philip has completely failed to avoid the theme of good & evil. He has, to be sure, painted everything with opposite colors (“Opposite day!” - as my 8 year old son loves to proclaim). But - his palette is limited to that which we all know innately: good vs evil. Justice triumphing eventually over injustice. Two plus two does after all turn out to be four. There has been a magnificent creative struggle, but no new colors have been created. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent” - but when all is said and done the triumphant line rings out “This IS my Father’s World”. It is inescapable, and if we are ignorant we are willingly ignorant.
I don't completely endorse Mr. Pullman's works as harmless. He takes deliberate aim at many things which I hold to be sacred, and the fact that he does not succeed overall does not mean he does not succeed at all. Not wishing this to be a book review, I will simply point out that you cannot relax into his world as you would into a story by someone you trusted completely.
I do sympathize with Philip and others like him. Many of the things he attempts to tear down in his books are accurate representations of the many horrors the church has indeed perpetrated through the ages. But what remains unnoticed and appears unknown by these men is the fact that:
“I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me,
and none which is not vile can be done to him.”
(The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis).
Terry Pratchett is a favorite author of mine who is a good example of what I am talking about. I enjoyed the posthumous article about him penned by his friend Neil Gaiman titled 'Terry Pratchett isn’t jolly. He’s angry'. I couldn’t agree more. Some of my favorites volumes in the series involve Samuel Vimes, a scrappy individual who rises from the self immolation of alcoholism to head what passes for a police force in Ankh-Morpork (the greatest of the cities of the Discworld). Sam is a heroic figure, standing up despite his human frailty against “what's wrong with the world”. Terry was also an atheist, but in my opinion very much failed to “leave the shelter of His temple”.
Many of Terry’s most beloved & iconic characters are witches. He is obviously aware of the various injustices against them through history - Salem perhaps most famously but also the general persecution of older single women living alone with their cats, based on the biblical “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” But in Terry’s books he is not claiming that evil witches are heroic: instead, they are reinterpreted as midwives, sages in herbal lore, self confident and self assured, with some magic thrown in for good measure - and are always standing up against evil when it rears its ugly head. You might say (as people have similarly claimed regarding the records of Mr. Potter’s career) that this will teach our children to love witches; witches are evil; therefore our kids will love evil. I don’t believe this for a moment. Instead I would say the object lesson might be rather “how to recognize, and fight against, bullies”. I would not love Terry’s work if he had actually succeeded in writing books where evil was heroic and triumphant: where cowardice was magnified and injustice praised.
There are a whole string of such folk - Richard Dawkins for instance - who rail against the injustice of God and the moral transgressions of the church, while failing to see that they are judging these institutions while standing on the foundation on which they are laid. “This IS my Father’s world”. Yes: there is much to judge and there will be little mercy for those who build perversions on such a foundation. But if we step off the foundation we may not judge at all; everything becomes relative.
If then there is an absolute, and if we are all born able to some extent to recognize it - that is, via some small part of it which is integrated in us - this changes everything. “...the truth is that if you once experience this - put your hand just once on the alien surface of The Artifact - a complete inversion, a turning inside out, of your understanding will assuredly take place…”
There are hints of this through the history of humanity. Every society has either been feeling after or deliberately turning their backs on this... something. St. Paul understands this when he speaks to the Greeks on Areopagus:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ b As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ c
(Acts 17, NIV)
b From the Cretan philosopher Epimenides
c From the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus
In other words Paul isn’t sharing something new, but rather pointing towards something that has been hinted at all along. He says “you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you”. There is of course a difference (of responsibility, but also of quality) when you know what and whom you worship, but even without knowledge worship can take place. As in the case of the person who, awed by the beauty of nature, is thankful. And in the case where any person (they do not have to be a Christian!) chooses to do something they know to be good.
Myth & Reality
This was the crux of what Tolkien, Lewis and Dyson were talking about during that famous walk in Addison’s way: the fact that all myth points towards a definite end - rolling towards some overwhelming question… Lewis at that point in his life was of the opinion that myth was “lies - breathed through silver” yet lies nonetheless. In his poem “Mythopoeia” (written just after and inspired by this conversation) Tolkien writes:
“I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.”
For Lewis, coming to an understanding that all myth has hints of truth in it (“image blurred of distant king”) and that Christ was the one true myth - the absolute incarnate - the myriad puzzle pieces he already had in hand finally clicked together. His hand touched the Ark: recognition.
G.K. Chesterton writes more on this theme, and much better than I - for those interested I would very much recommend reading “The Everlasting Man”.
“Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.”
(Mythopoeia, J R R Tolkien)
