I've almost finished reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which is a history of the world over the past 13,000 years. Diamond asks why the Conquistador Pizarro was able to march into the middle of the Inca empire, kill 7,000 Inca soldiers in battle, kidnap their king and extract a vast ransom, and eventually subjugate its entire people, with only 168 Spanish soldiers. Why, to put it the other way, was it not the Incas who sailed across the Atlantic and subjugated Spain?
The short answer is that the Spanish had guns and steel weapons and, most importantly, they carried germs that wiped out 95% of the native population. To read more click below ...
The book explores how civilizations evolve. The first and most difficult step is the development of food production, which enables higher population density. Everything else follows on from this - writing (enabling information to be shared more widely), bureaucracy (to organize a society), standing armies (for which large surpluses must be generated), metal tools, etc. The germs incubate in cities, whose inhabitants develop resistance, or die off leaving only those genetically resistant.
Spain was able to subjugate the Incas and the Aztecs not because of innate racial differences (genetically the native Americans are Chinese, who were ahead of Europe until 500 years ago) but because of disparities in the resources and geography of their respective continents. Maybe the single most important factor is that the settlers who crossed to the Americas from China around 10,000 BC exterminated virtually all of the large domesticable animals. We had sheep, cows, pigs, horses and goats - they had llamas and alpacas. The other crucial factor is that we (meaning the supercontinent of Eurasia) had a huge variety of plant species, including wheat, barley, rice and oats, while they had only maize corn and little else. These factors, among many other less significant ones, meant that the evolution of civilization in the Americas would be much slower than in Eurasia.
In the discussion we've been having about science, spirituality, tradition and modernity we've been missing something crucial, I think, which is that 500 years ago the civilizations of Europe, the Ottoman Empire and China were already way ahead of primitive cultures elsewhere in the world. One estimate in the book is that the native North Americans would have developed steel by 5500 AD, had they been left alone. (There's also a great story about a Cherokee who invented writing just by hearing about this invention of the white man, neatly illustrating that intelligence is the same everywhere.) The rise of modern science and technology, which gets going from the 18th Century onwards, is an acceleration of the rate of change, but the inevitable outcome of Eurasian cultures vs the rest was decided thousand of years ago.
So the rise of technology and complex modern societies is inevitable. Again and again the same pattern has been followed independently in different locations around the world - only the pace of change differs, determined mainly by environmental factors. Since we evolved from the apes, we have been moving in one direction - towards complex, technologically advanced civilization.
The law of natural selection determines that this must happen, because if I have a stone axe and you have a bronze spear, you are going to kill me; if I hunt deer for food and you farm wheat, your family are going to be bigger than mine; and if I am a hunter-gatherer and you live in a town, no matter how nice a chap you are I am almost certainly going to die shortly after meeting you from typhus, TB, smallpox, influenza, syphilis, bubonic plague or HIV-AIDS.
Anyone who wants to believe that the story of human history is a 'running down' from fine to coarse, must argue with this evidence. In the end, I think that this view can only be sustained if the spiritual is entirely disconnected from the practical. That's to say, that the inevitable rise of civilization - with all its learning, art, religion, philosophy, science - is the running down of consciousness.
If one believes that there is a 'plan' for the world, or alternatively that there are laws in operation that govern human beings and societies, then surely one must accept that the inexorable rise of modernity (with all its violence, conflict and frightening pace of change) is part of our unfolding destiny?
I would like to propose an alternative idea to the glum logic of the yugas. This is it: we are born with our first innocence, but our second innocence must be earned.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Second Innocence
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Kevin, you (and/or Jared) claim (para 4) that civilizations arise because of material factors, such as a development in food production. This is pure Marxism. It is like saying that music arose because there was a glut of musical instruments which for some reason someone found just lying around.
I think it far more likely that, as for instance may be accurately traced in the early history of Islam, Christianity etc., civilization begins with an Idea, and it is this that then gathers to itself the material means, the outer details being almost a random consequence of the force and potency of the initial inner aspiration.
It is possibly true, however, that the precise place that the great man, the founder of the civilization, chooses as suitable to be born at is somewhere with the sort of promise and conditions you speak of.
I also tend to think that such things as the invention of steel, the development of industry and the other ‘advances’ you speak of, are rather signs of civilizational demise and wrong turnings than true evolution. The whole modern and fashionable ideal of perpetual ‘progress’ which you seem to espouse is to my mind crude and really quite sad. These things got going because the real progress (cultural, spiritual and ethical) wasn’t happening. People’s minds, due to weakness of intellect, idleness and delusional desires, latched on to superficial aims instead, forgetting the true direction of human life, i.e. self-knowledge, etc. I certainly don’t think that change necessarily equals advance as you seem to suggest in paras 5/6/7.
There is no reason to believe that the development of learning, art, religion, etc (para 8) requires the sort of ‘complex, technologically advanced civilization’ that we at present enjoy, although this doesn’t mean that I couldn’t envisage a technologically advanced civilization which was not a ‘running down’, a decline from goodness.
Why should we deduce that ‘modernity, with all its violence, conflict etc.’ was the universal ‘plan’ (para 9)? I think it more likely, as is hinted in the legend of the Fall, that at some point we took a wrong turning and the consequence is the appalling human world we now live in, which is not a predetermined destiny, or evolutionary progress, but a rather dreadful mistake.
The ‘second innocence’ might rather be the turning our backs on the current addiction to excess and an urgent adoption of a path of renunciation and self-restraint.
I don’t know where your closing quote comes from, but one poet said similarly, "The first innocence is given, the second is chosen”. Is there still time for mankind to choose a different path, a path reflecting the first innocence? So many things in art and nature remind us of this lost innocence, poignant reminders calling us home, signaling to us our own primal goodness. Perhaps it was just this sense of loss and homesickness that gave rise to the myth of the four ages, which I think rather tells us of an inner return than a historical sequence.
Could it be, as many traditions affirm, that, despite the inconclusive and mixed evidence of our bodies’ rise from apedom, our souls have ‘fallen’ from higher worlds and long to return, and that this is the origin of the idea of a golden age?
Starting from the last point you make, I think it is entirely feasible that the idea of a Golden Age reflects an inner truth, rather than an outer reality. The main aim of my post was to demonstrate that yugas, golden ages, etc, are not factually true, in the way that the invasion of Britain by William the Conqueror is true - and so I'm happy with your analysis.
However, the logic in your second paragraph is circular. You define civilization as something that begins with an idea, and then you look at movements that are not civilizations, but ideas. Plainly "Christianity" is an idea, in a way that "Aboriginal Australian" is not.
When I used the word civilization it was purely descriptive, and not intended to reflect (or contradict) any grand Kenneth Clark-type thesis.
But if the invention of steel is a 'sign of civilizational demise', how far are you prepared to carry that logic? Was the invention of the wheel a 'wrong turning'? Animal domestication? Fire? Stone implements?
I think Kapila's quotation from Einstein is excellent. There's nothing wrong with curiosity and nothing wrong with invention.
The curious and the inventive are closer to God (IE consciousness) than many another without these qualities. If they happen to devise something that makes it easier to avoid starvation, averts disease or aids communication (EG the web) - then I think that is divine and not demonic.
We cannot love consciousness and hate its products. But I don't think you really do hate them ... tell me more about the divine technocracy you say you can envisage?
Dear Kevin, perhaps we have different concepts of the meaning and scope of the word civilisation. In the School I was brought up to distinguish between civilization and culture. We live, for example, in the Christian civilisation, but in the modern Western culture (Actually, I would correct this to say half way into the post-modern culture).
Nonetheless, the word civilization, to me, implies the production of ‘civilised beings’. This, increasingly, is not quite what is happening nowadays in our own culture (although I would possibly pre-empt you in acknowledging that a discussion on the nature of a civilized being would be a useful prerequisite in this context).
As for my apparent repudiation of industrialized society, I think one sign of true civilization is harmlessness, which would mean non-violence to humankind, other beings and the planet itself. It is surely self-evident that our own form of industrialization is potently harmful in all these spheres. It is in this sense that I call it a wrong turning and a demise. There is no reason to make the same caveat regarding the other advances you mention – the wheel, fire etc.
Our form of industrialization exiles men from the land, destroys the resources of the planet, poisons the air, dehumanizes the labour force etc., etc.
I expect this bad behaviour is self-correcting and the race of men will be mainly wiped out in the not too distant future- ‘Justice will be mine, saith the Lord’.
As for the ‘divine technocracy' I envisage, I agree with what you say about inventiveness etc., but always taking into account beauty, dignity, the true well-being of all and also what I see as the primary virtue needed in our age, that of self-restraint.
As to whether there is any hope of such a natural and wholesome approach being resurrected, I would say not as long as ‘solutions’ like uncurbed capitalism and command-centre socialism remain the only alternatives on the menu.
Incidentally, although I have reservations concerning many of the out-dated approaches of the School in its present form, I think there could be a lot of mileage in its Economic teaching of land-value taxation in this regard.
Son of Moses,
In that case, you are using "civilization" in a special way that would not be understood by most people. By that definition, if you took the view that the Aztecs were not "civilized beings", then the phrase "Aztec civilization" is meaningless. I think you probably need to define your terms before you use a word in this way, because there is a lot of judgement going on in the background that your readers (including me - 20 years in the School this week) don't really have access to.
I think that this is a general problem with the School - we use heavily loaded terms without explanation of the loading. It's like a code, and anyone who isn't privy to the code isn't in on the secret. It's one reason we can't communicate well.
One of the things that Jared Diamond's book illustrates is that there is no such thing as a 'neutral' or 'harmless' technology. By far the biggest killer of indigenous people over the past 500 years has not been violence, but disease. If I domesticate cattle, then my village will be able to support more people. The close proximity of people and animals leads to disease, and the numbers of people present create epidemics. Eventually the town-dwellers get resistant, but they carry germs that are deadly to those they meet.
But I think that the definition of 'harm' needs to be broadened out when one looks at large populations. We are in the realm of Shiva, here, the destructive aspect of the Absolute. The forces at play are not in the control of individual human beings.
The Christian missionaries who wanted to bring civilization to the heathens (following your logic, I note) ended up killing a lot of them with the diseases they carried. That wasn't their fault, or the fault of Christianity. They could not have known.
Now we know the consequences of contact with 'uncivilized' peoples, and we handle it better. We don't interfere.
Dear Kevin, in this conversation, as often, we seem to be going round in circles. I keep feeling that you have not answered my points and, I suspect, you feel exactly the same about me. So let’s take a few steps backward and start again, perhaps a little more carefully.
Let us take one point at a time. You initially make the statement, presumably extracted from the pages of your present Marxist tutor, ‘The native North Americans would have developed steel by 5500 AD, had they been left alone’.
To me there is a tremendous amount of unjustified assumption here. It seems to assume that there is a preset path that all ‘evolving’ civilizations must take, presumably one that leads from caves to skyscrapers, with the portentious discovery of steelmaking as a crucial point somewhere in between.
It further seems to assume that the discovery of the way to produce steel is necessarily an advance for mankind, a sort of milestone in its history of evolution.
I, on the other hand see this as a pretty neutral event, with just as much potential for demise as for advance.
On the other hand, if we had discovered a way to establish forgiveness or self-restraint in our personal being this to me would be a true advance, although it would be a discovery that each human being would have to, to some extent at least, make on their own, through their own efforts.
I know that I am probably setting myself up as an Aunt Sally for incurable romanticism, but why should not the native American have been, in this respect at least, just as civilized, if not more so, than the steel-sworded Spanish adventurer?
Over to you.
SOM
I don't feel the same as you - I'm really happy with this discussion, because I think it's illuminated quite a few issues for me.
So far as Marxism goes, though, I think you're completely wrong. I personally think Marxism is completely false. All I am saying is that there is such a thing as material cause and effect, whereas you appear to be very close to denying it. To that view, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" or "what goes up, must come down" is 'pure Marxism'.
There is no reason why the native American should not be as spiritual as the Spanish adventurer - remember, I am not using "civilization" as a morally-charged term. Nor "advance". You are apparently reading what I am saying through 45 years of school thinking.
Nor am I claiming that material advance equates to spiritual advance. All I am saying is that the view that they are necessarily opposed is mistaken.
In much of what I've said, I'm simplifying a long and complex work of research (which won the Pulitzer Prize). Of course the native Americans would not necessarily have invented steel in 5500 AD - it is just that by observing the history of a number of different separate cultures, that is about how long it takes to get from nomadic hunter-gatherers who are just beginning to farm, to steel-making.
Your earlier statement about the likely self-extinction of the human race interested me. I don't know about incurable Romantic - If I'm a Marxist, you're a Malthusian!
SOM,
It seems to me that I have been making a lot of statements, at which you've been taking pot-shots. That's fair enough, but I'd like to ask you to have a go yourself at explaining your position logically.
If the rise of civilizations is due to 'an idea', and not at all connected to environmental or geographic factors, then why is there a total coherence between favourable environment and the rise of civilization-ideas?
We would probably agree that the great civilizations of the world (by either your or my definition of 'civilization') are the Abrahamic (the 'West'), Indian and Chinese. All of them arose in geographically favourable environments with plenty of food crops and domesticable animals (India imported most of these from the Fertile Crescent, but it had a suitable environment to do so).
Why is it that neither the Americas, Australia, Africa or Oceania gave rise to a great civilization?
Dear Kevin, I’m glad you’re happy about our postings, but I do think that we are looking through different metaphysical glasses. So I’ll try again.
I do not believe, at the end of the day, that the material world can be a cause, except perhaps in appearance. Ultimately the effect (and this would include all so-called natural, human and non-human phenomena) is determined purely by the resolve of the mind; and this might include human and para-human mind (I use the singular because, in the end, there is only one Mind).
If pushed, I would even go so far as to admit the possibility that the particular resolve under discussion may have taken place in previous lifetimes.
As I understand the Teaching, nature gives way to intention. It is consciousness that decides, not matter; indeed, how can it, being mostly insentience?
In your first post on this subject you spoke of China etc. being ‘way ahead’ of other ‘primitive’ cultures and you attribute this to natural selection which is a totally unconscious process.
(By the way, all this and most of your subsequent references to civilisation, evolution, advance etc. remind me of the Blairite invocation of the word ‘progressive’ which is always wheeled out to make New Labour policies seem positive, benign and inevitable while at the same time portraying those who wish to retain proven standards or traditions that stand in New Labour’s way as Luddites or, at best, Tonbridge Wells wrinkly-grumps.)
Again, in your last post, you speak about ‘how long it takes to get from nomadic hunter-gatherers who are just beginning to farm, to steel-making’. This still makes the assumption that this mechanical process is the only route available for evolution. I am simply not convinced.
It is all very well to sling mud about me sounding like a Blairite (which I imagine is supposed to be fantastically rude - keep it coming!), but you have avoided several direct questions - opportunities to demonstrate what relation your philosophy bears to the observable universe.
We can all recite principles, but maybe we don't really understand them.
The School does have an unfortunate habit of false reasoning, as follows: "consciousness is the only reality; the Teaching is conscious; therefore any apparent contradictions in the Teaching are unreal".
Or "the School is a conscious organization; the World is mired in the Kaliyuga; the World is rejecting the School; ergo, we're getting it right! Full speed ahead, Scotty!"
I presume you can see the logical flaws.
Do you want to answer some of the questions? Or may I conclude that there is nothing in the universe that would call your ideas into question?
Dear Kevin, I have to apologise, I did not see your post beginning ‘It seems to me…’
I have been out all day and I simply missed it. I was looking forward to getting back and having some time to answer your previous posting, and tried to do just that, not realizing that you had slipped in an extra one, out of turn –a sneaky trick.
So here goes.
‘If the rise…’ Put like that, it looks like you may have a point. I retreat from an absolute position that there is no connection at all between physical conditions and the rise of civilisation. All the same I disagree that there is a ‘total coherence between favourable environment and the rise of civilization-ideas’. There had to be other factors, otherwise a) there would have been other incidences; these were not the only favourable sites, b) the development would have been parallel which it is not.
Where, by the way are the Babylonian, Cretan and Egyptian civilisations (perhaps the Abrahamic, Cretan and Greek can be seen as an extensions of the Egyptian. No, I’m not going to wheel in Atlantis, so relax)?
Legend has it (You can see I’m getting worried now) that where people had settled and seemed to have time free to devote to non-purely-survival activities, that men from the inner circle ‘which has always existed’ and always keeps watch over our silly ways, visited and instructed the primitive people in arts, science and philosophy etc.. Hence we see the sudden jump in Egypt about 3000 BC, etc.
To be frank, I have no more time tonight to tackle the task you give me, and so I will ruminate at odd free moments and, I hope, get back to you…
Ha, ha - well you've kept your sense of humour!
I didn't mean to be sneaking things in. It was out of turn, but like all good conversations we get carried away.
As regards 'total coherence', I do not mean that the advance of material civilization is in lock-step, or that it is totally dependent on environmental conditions. There are idiosyncratic factors - for example, China had the world's largest navy in the 15th Century and was beginning to explore the world (on 400-foot long galleons!). Then infighting at the court meant that the navy-building faction lost out, and their victorious opponents declared that there would be no more ships. Thereby China lost its chance to be the major military-colonial power of the coming centuries.
Having said that, the idiosyncratic factors even out over vast stretches of time and space. China didn't lose its inherent wealth and favourable conditions, but it set itself back somewhat.
Again, with the 3 civilizations idea I am being really broad-brush. I'm not insisting that 'this is how it is', but I think that those civilizations stand out as being the richest philosophically. Egypt and Babylon are tributaries. I suppose that one could call the Abrahamic civilization Greek, or 'Western', if one were less keen on the religious aspect.
If you want the detail, you could read the book. There is almost no politics in it, left or right - although he does oppose racialist theories, which could be because they are untrue.
Yes, I do think you are getting worried when you bring in inner circles etc. Do we need such an explanation?
It sounds a bit like what people used to say about royal jelly holding the secret to why bees could fly, apparently against the laws of physics. Then someone noticed that they exhaled through holes under their wings, and the bottom fell out of the market for this 'magic' panacea.
I believe think that if we look for material causes for material effects, we are 'rendering unto Caesar'. It does not delimit the sacred, but it does refine our understanding of what is really sacred, and what superstition. Although the Truth may be unchanging, we are dealing with human understanding, here - ever-fallible, ever capable of development.
Dear K., I called the inner circle story a legend (although it comes from sources in Gurdjieff and certain Sufi teachings, and it also fits in with some half-remembered statements of His Holiness about men in caves who sacrifice their lives for work dedicated to the human race as a whole) but my true current take on this is something to the following effect (hold onto your seats):
There is in the physical world a long drawn out process of developing the human body by a sort of guided evolution (Guided by whom? By higher beings, sometimes called angels). When this is sufficiently advanced, the human soul is able to take its residence in these now-developed bodies for the purpose of rectifying imbalances in their own being and in the creation as a whole.
This new race is thenceforward guided by inner connection with the governing agencies by some form of mediumship, as well as direct descents of higher beings, avatars.
O.K. this may sound completely flaky, but now its time for you to answer the following questions from me:
Where in the mechanical, completely materialist story of evolution of human civilization (natural selection, appearance of warm conditions, inevitable discovery of steel etc. etc.) that you and Jared describe is there room for consciousness, free-will, or divine guidance? What is the difference between this and the Dawkins worldview?
Divine guidance: we have what we need - IE Atman, consciousness.
Consciousness - ditto
Free will - we are better able to exercise our free will if we understand that which is outside of our control, are we not?
I see no contradiction between using intelligence to understand 'material' processes (such as how disease spreads or how to drive a car) and using intelligence for 'spiritual' ends. I think that if the universe makes sense, then reason is applicable in all situations.
The Shankaracharya says that there are two aspects to buddhi. One is viveka, which is discrimination between conscious and inanimate; the other is reason and common sense. I don't see what the great problem is with using both, so long as you don't get them confused. One intelligence, two functions.
You'll need to explain a bit more clearly where the big contradiction is.
NB I am not a "materialist". Materialism is the belief that reality is merely matter in different forms.
Dear Kevin, your answer suggests that you have not understood the context of my question. Doubtless my fault - cross-purposes again.
Let's ask in a different way.
a) Divine guidance: Yes, as you say, we have consciousness. But how did this work at the molecular level in the famous primal soup pond, before we arrived on the scene? Was there guidance then? How did this operate?
b) Consciousness: Why would consciousness be required for the story if natural selection and its unconscious playmates were able to look after the wholesituation on their own?
c) Free will: If the whole thing rolls out through mechanical processes, where is the need for free will. And why is free will not an illusion as Dawkins & Co. would assert?
(a) Divine guidance
The Jesuit philosopher and palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin says that consciousness is in all matter, and that therefore evolution is a matter of consciousness gradually concentrating itself in progressively 'higher' and more complex forms.
With the arrival of the human brain, which is the most complex object in the universe, he says that consciousness has the opportunity to become a self, and to become self-aware. Thereafter evolution is not necessarily a painful process of millions of years to produce a single modification, but one of perhaps hundreds or tens of years, in which technology, or a political system, or a cultural tradition, can be developed. Thought is the deliverance of evolution.
According to Teilhard, in the future there will be a convergence of the 'noosphere' or the envelope of mind that surrounds the earth, into a single consciousness which he calls the Omega point. Since Omega is beyond time (being fully conscious) it influences the present, drawing consciousness towards itself.
(b) Natural selection works, as we know. But its outcome is increasingly conscious beings. Therefore, perhaps the system of natural selection is intended to evolve consciousness - so that apparently unconscious matter can come to know itself.
I find this philosophy attractive because it accepts all reality as single, over all time. It would not have been possible without the discovery of evolution and of the history of 'deep time'. That is why Teilhard says the discovery of evolution is the single most important moment in history. It is the first time that a creature has been able to turn round and look at its own origins.
This is a very recent discovery to me, but I would be interested to hear what anyone else thinks of "The Phenomenon of Man". Have you read it? I think it was very fashionable in the early 60s, and then it went out of favour. It appears to be making a comeback as we face up to planetary issues requiring a united approach, such as global warming. Also the internet is seen by some as a kind of physical reflection of the noosphere.
(c) I don't know whether there is ultimately free will, but I do believe that a philosophy in which ordinary reason, creativity and inventiveness is allied with (and not opposed to) higher spiritual reason provides the individual with the greatest latitude for self-realization. Faith, hope and love - as opposed to doom and gloom. If we have doom and gloom - dark age, kaliyuga, "these young people with their new-fangled ways", mumble grumble - then the horizons close down. As a friend of mine remarked acidly, "The SES: daring souls, looking backwards".
I think that at the bottom of the doom and gloom there is something worth saying, directing us to look beyond the apparent and the material. But I think it is just part of the story. We need the whole story.
More Teilhard:
There is a communion with earth, and there is a communion with God, and there is a communion with God through earth.
Dear K.,
I have not posted these last couple of days, not, as you may have assumed, because you have silenced me with the unanswerable correctness of your words (although I must admit I was quite impressed with some of what you said) but for at least three other reasons:
1) You seemed to be trying to cast the net wider and invite others to join in (invoking ‘anyone else’). Whether this was because you had had enough of me or because, like me, you wanted to find out if there was anybody at all even listening – still not much sign it seems - I don’t know);
2) I have been very busy leaving School and then joining again;
3) It was not clear to me at first how to take the conversation further.
Nevertheless, having now given others ample opportunity to step in, I have a few points to make, one or two of them serious.
First of all, in a spirit entirely ad hominem, the few Teilhardians I have met have been very obviously left-brainers, serious, bespectacled scientific types, giving little evidence of contact with the emotional or physical worlds. To a right-brainer like me (equally imbalanced, I freely grant) they were so, so sanitized and bor-r-r-r-r-ring. Thus, if my small sample quota was at all characteristic of the breed, be careful, you could be about to regress.
Equally ad hominem, I have read accounts of Mr. T’s involvement in the Peking Man fraud, out of which he does not appear to emerge with clean hands.
I read T’s book many years ago, so I don’t remember much about what it says in detail, but some of your throwaway statements like, ‘consciousness gradually concentrating itself in progressively 'higher' and more complex forms’ and ‘the arrival of the human brain’, seem, like all Darwinian accounts, rather in the nature of ‘handwaving’. No doubt you will tell me to read the book if I want to know exactly how these things suddenly appeared, but I must point out that it is generally assumed nowadays there was far less ‘deep time’ available than was originally thought, due to the time it would have taken the earth to cool etc.
Perhaps more to the point - the point, that is, of our non-meeting of minds, which often feels to me like two swordsmen sparring in a fog, with only the most infrequent clash of true steel - you, Jaiswal and Teilhard seem to me to be unanimous in trying to hygienise, sanitise – that word again - the local and non-abstract into a scientific, vaporous, cleaned up version of the truth, the equivalent in words to a Mondrian or a 1930’s modernist kitchen, which now, incidentally, looks so dated, in a quaint sort of way.
Where are the demons, the heavenly hosts, Jesus Christ incarnated amidst the mud, dust and straw of the stable?
Where is the harrowing of hell, the miracles and dream of Joeph?
This is a real question, Kevin, not meant as an attack as you so often seem to take my postings.
What does Mr. T. say of the physical incarnation and all the talk of angels and devils in the New Testament? Is it all put there for the primitive people of the time?
And what of re-incarnation, Samskara, and the incredible suffering of the many beings as they gradually ascend in consciousness? Is there continuity of an individual soul that travels the journey to the Omega Point? If not, how is the suffering of the apparent individuals justified and to whom? How does Mr. T deal with these issues?
As you must have gathered, I have my own take on these matters, but I do try to kid myself that I am willing to learn.
Dear SOM
Well, I'm glad you have made it back after the brief silence/School exit.
I certainly wasn't getting tired of our discussion, but it would be nice for more people to be involved. There are quite a few who read the site, in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Possibly some will take courage at some point. I was more concerned that others don't feel left out by this two-hander.
I have been rather disappointed by what I have seen of the various Teilhard societies on the web, but I'm not put off by that. I would make a couple of points:
- hand-waving ... what do you expect in a brief blog posting? 50,000 words? Even if I was capable ...
- You mean Piltdown Man. There are numerous accounts referenced on the Wikipedia page, and one very detailed one which looks at all the possible suspects. Most people now believe that Teilhard was probably innocent, although Stephen J Gould (who spins a good yarn) wrote one of his barnstorming essays about it, with several inaccuracies. My impression from reading him is that he was far too serious in every way to get involved in a "student prank" in his mid-20s.
He was involved many years later in the discovery of Peking Man, which is still regarded as one of the key finds, as I understand.
- 'like all Darwinian accounts' Can you be serious? I can't think of anyone less prone to handwaving than Darwin. He was as methodical a person as anyone that ever lived. Are you sure your involvement with intelligent design/creationism hasn't clouded your judgement?
As for the heavenly hosts, stable, etc. ... I don't really understand your question. I'm quite happy for you to enjoy these things and for them to be your route towards the truth; but it's not my way. I have never seen heavenly hosts, nor have I wished to. I don't see the need for there to be an incarnation that changes the rules of the universe. I don't believe in original sin, or many of the other tenets of Christianity. The stable could do with a good mucking-out - but that's just my view.
The thing about Jaiswal that I find so attractive is not only that he's clever, but that he takes a compassionate and supportive approach to students. I haven't found that with most tutors - even a nice guy tutor still wants to knock down the student because of his training, and (if he's not so nice) because he wants to keep his position of superiority. Jaiswal doesn't want that - he wants to bring people up to his level, and that is unusual, sad to say.
I think that kind of loving approach (albeit that he climbs up the jnana side of the mountain) is more important than all the theology and poetry in the world, if delivered without real love. I'm not saying that is where you are coming from, but I've seen enough of it to put me off. It's not where I'm coming from, and I don't see it in the path ahead.
As well as that, I think that there is a persona that comes out in this blog which is there to drag preconceptions into the light. The provocation is deliberate, because without it nobody will talk. When I am with students, I almost never interfere with their beliefs or opinions, or impose my own.
I feel a proverb coming on:
Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox, and hatred thereby.
Dear Kevin,
I am interested to hear that this site is being read abroad. Yes, let’s hear from some of you out there.
I rejoined School partly with the thought that it is somewhat cowardly to desert rather than to stay and perhaps help effect necessary change from within. Of course, such change must be orderly, but if it doesn’t start happening more obviously I suspect there will either be some sort of disorderly revolt or a mass walkout.
It seems to me that there are several levels of principle, some more open to change than others. Most need to adjust in response to circumstance, which in the present situation is very quick-changing indeed, probably never so fast-changing in the whole history of our race. Only the transcendental truth can ever stay the same and even that, I very much suspect, rather than being unaltering in a rigid and unyielding sense is the same in a way quite beyond our comprehension, a way that includes entire freedom of movement and no fixity whatever.
There is, I sense, some acknowledgement at ‘the top’ that change is necessary, but it always seems to me ‘too little, too late’, usually after the horse has bolted.
As for Darwin, I suppose I should have said ‘Neo-Darwinian’. Darwin himself viewed the cell rather as a glob of jelly. Had he realised it to be the bustling city of varied, incredibly intricate and complex activities with a central information centre and an incredibly subtle weave of intercommunication with other such cities, I think he would have thought twice about attributing this to random and rogue modifications.
I do not think you quite got my point about sanitisation. It is a rather subtle point still rather inchoate in my mind and I am not totally sure that I can properly express it.
The so-called Enlightenment of the 17-19th centuries was a movement to abstract and clean up our understanding, to free it from superstition and enthrone impersonal science.
It was of course led by the head-brigade and, in my opinion, wiped out any real and natural understanding of human relationship, intuition, connection with reality, baby, bathwater and all. One of the losses was the sense of the unique status and dignity of the human in the relative scale of consciousness. Hence we get all this nonsense about the equality of animals etc (Singer et al).
By the time of the First World War all respectable art had become abstract, due to the loss of any true vision of mankind or any respect for the beauty and divinely ordained order of creation. God had become a sub-personal and abstract ‘life-force’ a bit like electricity (There is a difference, by the way, between the sub-personal and the impersonal or supra-personal, the nirguna).
When I listen to Mr. J. I hear a 1930’s Bertrand Russel type, abstract, sanitised version of reality that I, personally, find oppressive and claustrophobic. I have challenged Mr. J. on the issue of his sidelining of the Divine World and, when I can possibly help it, I no longer attend his talks for that reason.
So this is the sanitised and dated vision of reality that I refute and which I get the feeling that you, Mr. J. and Father T. may be trying to sell us.
I'm giving a talk in Brighton tomorrow AM about this whole topic you mention, if you can get along. I will be looking at the Renaissance, early science and Descartes as aspects of a single phenomenon - the rise of the modern conception of self.
There is a shift of 180 degrees in the conception of "reality". Previously the real was what was above the natural and visible; after the Renaissance it was the natural and visible. If I say "realistic" art, by that you would understand "imitating the senses". In the Middle Ages "Realism" meant exactly the opposite - the belief in "real" ideas/forms. Ergo following the senses (figurative art) was suspect then, as now.
This is the first of six in a series called A History of 'Me'. I wouldn't mention it but our interests seem to have coincided here.
http://www.sussexphilosophyschool.co.uk/events.htm
Neo-Darwinians ... we have been over this ground a bit, but I think the nettle you don't want to grasp is that maybe the divine order involves 'chance' occurrences over millions of years. After all if evolution really is uni-directional, from simple to complex, then it would only take a tiny loading of the dice in favour of consciousness for it to rise, and rise again. Then we would get a divine comedy, with all kinds of setbacks, wrong turnings and dead-ends, with full universal realization at the end as the curtain comes down.
I don't really agree with your history of ideas since WWI, although I know what you're saying. I think that what it misses is that the spiritual doesn't ever go away. It goes underground when the time is against it. Uber-brain James Elkins says that the spiritual is the great unexamined subject of modern art, and I think I agree with that. Meeting people in their 20s these days, I think they are very concerned with these matters, though not necessarily in a way that might be recognised by older generations.
This is why every generation from time immemorial always says "Things are not what they used to be ..."
The reasons for the decline in conventional religions are many (and I don't celebrate that fact) but I think that a majority of people had stopped believing what they were doing by the 1960s. In that light, idealism becomes the rejection of religion.
You are continuing to bracket me with people (Russell, Marx, Dawkins) whose philosophies are the polar opposite of my own. I'm not sure what I can do about that. It seems to be "whoever is not with me is against me".
Jaiswal's view does sideline the divine world, but you must acknowledge that within the Vedanta that is perfectly valid. I really wish we had a 'broad church' approach to things instead of the absolutist view that requires everyone to agree with and salute a reified 'divinely ordained order'. His Holiness does not insist that we all follow one path, and despite his evident preference for the devotional way, he did not refuse to answer endless questions on discrimination and Vedantic doctrine.
On a final note, I respect your reasons for returning. Thank goodness - I did find it very dispiriting a few months ago when you said you had given up on the School and didn't want to rock anyone's cosy world. From my perspective, it is evident that there are a whole raft of very obvious changes that need to be implemented sooner rather than later; but at the same time I don't have all the answers, or anything near it.
A great problem in the School right now is that the older generation are not passing on their knowledge and experience. For someone like me, coming into tutoring is disconcerting because one gets no clear instruction. Evidently Mr MacLaren forgot to put the structures in place, and no one has thought to design any new ones.
The problem is compounded as one begins to recognise that one doesn't want to do things as they have been done all the time, anyway. Try to speak to senior people about things like student confidentiality and they simply deny that there is a problem.
The reason I have stayed in this organisation is because Mr Jaiswal keeps saying how special it is, and something in me believes him. Maybe because he has suffered so much racism and general neglect, it really must have something in it.
Dear Kevin, I wish you would have told me about your talks earlier since I have booked myself up to attend the Mayor of London's 'Clash of Civilisations' conference all day tomorrow.
Perhaps you could post an abstract, or something even more meaty right here at this blog. Come on, why not?
Post-Darwinianism: and the nettle YOU don't want to grasp is the statistical impossibility of the human brain coming together by unassisted chance in the time available, frankly however many millions of years you want to specify.
The spirituality of art and science in the early 20th century strikes me as really a sort of materialism. Given that the higher human attributes are reflections of the Divine, then removal of the human leaves only a sort of unconscious life-force, safe and undemanding. It has no voice for instance, so it can't tell us to order our lives; spiritual mush, if you ask me.
Sorry about the 'bracketting' you mention. I think I do it as a challenge so that you can defend yourself and we can get down to some energetic conversation. This means that I tend to overstate the case, as in the last paragraph for instance. Please don't take it too seriously. It is only a rhetorical trick (we are arguing in public, after all).
I disagree about the non-divine Vedanta. Only Western adherents would take Vedanta this way. The native system is full of myth and devotion. His Holiness practiced this every day of his life, I believe.
I personally think that 'sanitised Vedanta' can leave us in a barren land, almost selfish and chilling, certainly self-enclosed. I even suspect that strong practitioners of this nouveau spirituality will have to come back and learn to be normal so they can begin again from a proper relationship with a universe which His Holiness said was 'built on family principles'.
So much for all those self-advertising gurus that so many members of the School visit, hoping for a quick fix.
Good luck tomorrow. I hope that enough students are attracted to such a fascinating subject.
I think that the statistical question is an interesting one - you are using the language of science to attack the masters of statistical science. I suspect that neither of us really has any idea of the statistical probabilities.
Rather than take that tack, we might do better to ask how you think evolution took place? Or would you deny that it did?
I am rather interested in intelligent design, if that helps, but I'm also aware that the blasted Creationists have hijacked it for their well-meaning but ultimately nefarious purposes.
Yes I might publish some bits of the talks ... it would be interesting to get some feedback here, without going too far off the track I hope. The ideas have been a bit raw and I was reluctant to have anyone taking a rhetorical pop at them.
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