Blog Posts

Resisting the Fire of Temptation

5/17/2020

I have reached the reluctant conclusion that good weather equals bad blogging.

The Ice Saints and Cold Sofia brought some unseasonably cooler temperatures to Hungary earlier this week, but the weather has bounced back in the last couple of days, which means I have spent most of my time outside finishing my chicken coop or going for long walks with the family. As great as the fine spring weather has been for my outdoor activities, it has been anything but conducive to my blogging. Well, life involves trade offs at times, I guess.

In any case, while I was plastering the coop today, an old Bruce Springsteen song inexplicably filtered into my thoughts. I've never really been a huge fan of "The Boss." Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike his music. In fact, I know many of his tunes and would never think of turning the radio dial if he happened to pop up on the airwaves. Yet I have never purchased any of his albums or ever had any particular interest in him or his music beyond the mere pleasure of happenstance.

"I'm on Fire" was the song that came to mind as I was working outside today. The tune is a short, salacious confession of libidinous lust for another man's woman - a real no-no as far as Christian morality goes. Of course, nearly every rock and/or pop song ever written is an affront on Christian morality in some regard. Merely mentioning that Springsteen's lewd little number addresses something sinful seems superfluous, to say the least. As is readily apparent, the lyrics themselves offer nothing redeeming.

Hey little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go away and leave you all alone? Mhmm
I got a bad desire

Oh oh oh, I'm on fire

Tell me now, baby, is he good to you?
And can he do to you the things that I do? Oh no
I can take you higher

Oh oh oh, I'm on fire

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley
Through the middle of my skull
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head

Only you can cool my desire

Like nearly every rock and pop songwriter that has ever existed, Springsteen forgoes Dante's wind imagery from Inferno and chooses instead to capture the essence of sexual lust and indecent desire through the use of trusty old (and worn) fire imagery. In fact, whenever I hear "I'm on Fire", I can't help but think of the Doors "Light My Fire" with Springsteen's song basically elaborating on the state of lusty desire that consumes a person once they have given into the spark of temptation. Put another way, "I'm on Fire" is just another take on Elvis Presley's "Burning Love", or Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire", or Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" complete with allusions to losing self-control, burning, and the brain being set aflame.

Of course, the other songs mentioned above are merely about the spark of sexual attraction and being consumed by the subsequent passion the spark ignites, presumably for a woman who is both single and available. Springsteen's song, on the other hand, is about a "bad desire" - licentious attraction to a married woman.

Why am I going on about all of this? Well, as I was working in the yard today, I happened to also remember the video for this song. Though the song itself offers nothing redeeming, the video - surprisingly - does. I'm not sure if the video was Springsteen's idea or someone else's, but I feel the decision to pair this brief visual narrative of resisting the temptation of lust the song communicates was not only a good one, but also perhaps a somewhat brave one.

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Our Atomized Future?

5/15/2020

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Students playing outside at a nursery school in France. Note the chalk boxes meant to enforce social distancing drawn around each individual student. Students are not permitted to leave the boundaries of their respective boxes.

This has to be one of the saddest and most infuriating images I have ever seen. Cruelty. That's what this is. I mean what's the point of even allowing the kids back if they are forced to endure this?

Still think the System is merely corrupted?

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The Feast of The Ice Saints

5/14/2020

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My father always reminded me of the arrival of the Ice Saints every May 12, 13, and 14 as I was growing up. The Ice Saints are St. Pancras, St. Servatius, and St. Boniface and their feast days fall on the three aforementioned dates. The saints in question are referred to as the Ice Saints because their feast days tend to coincide with a brief spell of unseasonably cold weather, often resulting in frost. Of course, I grew up in Canada; so having the three frigid saints show up in mid-May would not be considered unusual, but in Hungary, where the folklore surrounding the Feast of the Ice Saints is still very much alive and active, cold weather and frost in mid-May is akin to a national catastrophe.

Though my father always referred to Ice Saints when I was a kid, I had more or less forgotten about them for the better part of two decades, and they did not bob back to the surface of my life until I moved to Hungary about five years ago. Needless to say, Hungarians agonize over the arrival of the Ice Saints every year. And who can blame them? Spring starts early in this part of the world. By mid-April, winter is but a distant memory and nearly everything is in full bloom. Regardless, most Hungarians simply refuse to plant frost-sensitive vegetables or flowers in their garden until the Ice Saints have come and gone.

This year I made a point of focusing on the weather as the Feast of the Ice Saints began. May 11 was a warm and balmy day with temperatures in the mid-twenties (Celsius). I spent the better part of the afternoon outside working on my chicken coop wearing only a pair of shorts, sweat dripping liberally from my brow. Then, at around six in the evening, a strong wind began to blow, signaling the arrival of a cold front. The next morning, May 12, it was a crisp four degrees Celsius. Though it warmed up a little over the course of the day, the temperature barely broke double digits. May 13 also proved to be unseasonable cool. As for today - well, the morning was cool (5 degrees), but the day warmed up nicely as it progressed. Nevertheless, the forecast is calling for cooler temperatures until the weekend.

The Ice Saints did not succeed in casting a sheen of frost on anything this year, but they did manage to drop the temperature in Hungary significantly, which makes me wonder if there is more to the Ice Saints than just mere folklore.

In any event, the Feast of the Ice Saints inspired me to think about the past, about those centuries when everyone - from the richest lord to the humblest peasant - knew the feast day of practically every saint in existence, not just the dreaded Ice Saints. Though it seems like trivial knowledge to a modern mind, I can't help but feel that waking up innately knowing which saint was being celebrated on a particular day made life richer and more meaningful.

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It's Not Only God Men Have Forgotten

5/12/2020

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When contemplating the root cause of all the catastrophes that had occurred in the twentieth century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn emphatically stated that it all came down to men forgetting God. Solzhenitsyn's well-known statement garnered a great deal of attention, but otherwise had little effect on modern people who, upon hearing the prophet's words, merely nodded their heads and then continued barrelling headlong into atheistic, hedonistic materialism.

The twentieth century is now history, and as we inch farther into the early decades of the twenty-first century, it is becoming readily apparent that modern people have not only forgotten God, but have also forgotten about the existence of metaphysical evil.

Failing to remember God renders life meaningless. Losing sight of metaphysical evil casts people into utter bewilderment and confusion, especially in times of 'crisis'.

Don't believe me? Stop and take a look around.

Note added: By metaphysical evil, I am not specifically referring to Leibniz's conception, which Voltaire roundly criticized, but rather to the existence of supernatural evil that is unrepentantly and purposefully opposed to God's will and creation. In light of this, supernatural evil may have been a better choice than metaphysical evil. Supernatural evil works to turn people against God's will and creation for the purpose of soul damnation. Modern people find the existence of such forces laughable and tend to callously dismiss any notion of evil operating at the supernatural level, which helps to explain why they rarely recognize true evil and even more rarely manage to 'make sense' of it whenever they do detect it or become aware of it.

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Sincere Hope or Crafty Soft Pedaling?

5/11/2020

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The Hungarian government has been running this public relations clip for a week or two now. The clip is worth watching for the beautifully-shot Hungarian landmarks it contains, and you don't need to understand the lyrics of the accompanying song to get the overall message the authorities are conveying. The title of the clip is "We're taking care of each other, and it'll succeed!"

Here's the million-dollar question though - is the ray of hope the government is broadcasting daily sincere? Or is it merely soft pedaling?

I'll let you decide for yourself. What do you think?

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A Work In Progress Requires a Meaningful Why

5/10/2020

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I have neglected this blog a little as of late - partly because I have been spending the majority of my free time on my chicken coop renovation project, but mostly because my interest and inspiration for blogging has been waning over the past two or three weeks. More about that later; for now, let's focus on a current work in progress - the chicken coop.

As you can see from this previously posted photo, the building was in quite a ramshackle state when I began the project: broken windows, a rickety door, non-existent plaster, deteriorating brick work, and a leaky roof to boot.

I fixed the roof first and then proceeded to reinforced the brick walls. My original intention was to simply replaster the exterior brick, but I soon discovered that the walls were not straight, neither horizontally nor vertically. The middle of the front wall around the windows was particularly troublesome; it bulged out gently like the belly of a woman in her fifth month of pregnancy. Hiding the bulge would have required several coats of plaster, which also entails a great deal of drying time waiting for the plaster to set between coats. In the end I decided to forgo this option and chose instead to cover the building exterior with 4 cm polystyrene insulation (essentially styrofoam).

This proved to be a far more costly option (and a seemingly pointless one at that because the building will not be heated in any meaningful way in the future), but I feel the extra expense will be worth it, both for aesthetic and practical reasons. From a practical perspective, it is far easier to 'straighten' out wayward walls with polystyrene than with plaster. In addition to this, the polystyrene will not crumble from the brick the way plaster might (at least not with the silicon-based 'plaster' I will eventually apply to the exterior of the building). In this sense, the outer shell will be far more durable and weather-resistant. Not only that, but it will be far more aesthetically-pleasing as well. Yeah, I know this is just a chicken coop, but since I'm going to have to look at it every day for the rest of my life, I want to ensure it becomes somewhat pleasant to look at.

Anyway, I finished putting up the foam and the light plaster coat yesterday, which means I am at about the midway point of the project; otherwise known as the work in progress stage.

I am pleased with the result thus far. The only other major alteration I have had to make are the window sizes. As I mentioned above, the former windows were broken (and rotted through). I didn't want to spend money buying new or used windows. Luckily, I have quite a few old windows, but none matched the sizes of the windows that needed to be replaced. Consequently, I selected two smaller windows and bricked up the openings on the building a bit. So, things are progressing well on the chicken coop front, but I still have a great deal of work ahead of me. Regardless, I estimate I should be done in a week or two (depending on the weather and the amount of 'real work' I receive from my job in the meantime).

As I've been renovating the coop, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of mortal life as a work in progress and about how the notion of progression only becomes meaningful beyond the scope of a materialist worldview. Materialists lay great emphasis on the importance of progress, development, and improvement, but I have yet to encounter a convincing argument as to why. Sure there's power and excellence and evolution and pleasure and the life force and all of that, but none it satisfactorily provides a sound reason for the why. Why should we aim to develop or improve? What sort of development or improvement is truly meaningful?

The why of a work in progress only makes sense if one believes in the spiritual - in transcendence and immanence. The why of a work in progress only becomes evident if one views this mortal life as a segment of a long, extended journey of learning toward a worthy spiritual objective.

People have essentially lost the understanding that we are, at the core, spiritual works in progress, and that our brief time in this world is a crucial part of that progression. Most moderns fervently work on materially improving and developing themselves, which is a noble thing in itself, but without the proper spiritual understanding, purely material improvements and developments end up being nothing more than stillborn babies. In other words, a great deal of time, effort, and sacrifice is invested into material goals; but the neglect of the spiritual basically renders these goals lifeless when they are finally achieved.

When I began working on my chicken coop, I imagined what it must have looked it like when it was originally constructed. I visualized the old owners putting it together, working on it diligently, and marveling at it with satisfaction when they completed it. It must have been a great little building, and it must have served the previous owners well for decades. Yet if the people who originally built the coop did so purely out of materialist motivations, whatever benefit they received from it through the years remained firmly rooted in the material; and when they died, they could not take the fruit of their labor with them. As for the fruit itself, it feel into a state of slow decay and would have eventually collapsed if no one else came along to repair and restore it.

As I look back over what I have written thus far in this I sense I am entering the realm of the ridiculous as I wax philosophically over the spiritual implications of the most banal of objects - a chicken coop - but I am building up to a larger point, albeit it in a somewhat unfocused and meandering fashion. This larger point remains affixed to the inconvenient why for which materialists can provide nothing but flimsy explanations. My chicken coop project certainly has no pressing material objectives. I do not plan on purchasing chickens in the near future; nor do I require extra storage space outside the house. In reality, I didn't really need to fix up the old building at all, not even for aesthetic reasons because very few people outside my family ever set foot into the yard. Hence, the why for my renovation project must have been rooted in something beyond material concerns.

I often follow the same line of thinking when contemplating my writing on this blog. I initially launched this space as part of a rather lame, poorly thought-out (and even more poorly executed) effort to bring attention to the novel I wrote eight years ago. Needless to say, I succeeded in garnering practically no attention for the book. Consequently, I could see no real or practical reason to maintain a blog; and I more or less didn't for the better part of four or five years. Simply put, I could see no justifiable why for the blog.

Nevertheless, about two years ago I experienced a sudden and inexplicable inspiration to begin blogging on a regular basis. Unlike my initial attempts so many years ago, my chief motivations for blogging were not promotion or marketing, but rather merely thinking aloud and sharing ideas, mostly about spiritual matters. I still occasionally published promotional-type posts at the beginning of this second blogging attempt, but as the months passed by, these dissipated. Instead I wrote about topics I held to be important; fittingly enough, most of these topics tended to touch upon that inconvenient but crucial why.

I don't know where I found or continue to find the audacity to blog about spiritual matters. I am anything but a wild-eyed mystic. Conversely, I hold no official, recognized qualifications in the field. As is the case with most things in my life, I would say my spiritual expertise is unremarkable. In other words, I'm just a regular guy scribbling thoughts in an effort to remain focused on the why, partly because I believe the word why should be the driving motivation for mortal life, and partly because so few others appear to share this belief.

Like the chicken coop, the why of this blog is not fueled by material considerations. Yes, I advertise my book on the site, but otherwise I do not seek nor do I derive material compensation for my writing here. I don't maintain a paysite or ask for tips or seek monthly subscription fees of any sort. I am not saying this out of the need to virtue signal, and I am not taking a swipe at bloggers who do seek money from their readers. I am merely pointing out that I do not harbor any incentive to make money from this blog. Nor am I particularly interested in becoming 'famous.' If money and fame were my driving ambitions, I would spend my time writing cheap porn novels for the Amazon market or crafting daily blog posts about Donald Trump, the evil democrats, or Pewdiepie or something.

In essence, this blog is part of the work in progress that is my mortal life. As is the case with all works in progress, the clarity of why needs to be maintained to ensure completion. Without this clarity, the work may stop progressing with the proper focus in mind. At worst, the project may be abandoned altogether. A big part of this work in progress involves thinking aloud and sharing ideas with that small, scattered collection of others I have been fortunate enough to encounter; those individuals - readers and bloggers alike - who also keep their minds and souls firmly focused on why. For lack of a better expression, I would refer to this as 'spiritual commerce' - the non-financial acquiring, selling, and sharing of spiritual 'goods' for the benefit of all works in progress. In this sense, my obscure little blog plays a key role in the spiritual marketplace (at least for me).

And this, above all else, is what keeps me blogging - even when the interest in doing so wanes, as it has these past few weeks. You see, like the chicken coop I'm currently renovating, I won't be able to take my blog with me when my work in this mortal life ends - but I believe I will be able to take all the learning, knowledge, communication, love, and discovery I experienced in maintaining this blog with me, and that all of this will serve me well once my work in progress here reaches its eventual end.

And it also helps bury that pesky why, once and for all.

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The Road To Hell Is Paved With Bad Intentions Masked As Good Ones

5/8/2020

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Everyone has heard the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The logic behind the saying implies that although most projects, directives, initiatives, and action begin with good intentions, the good intentions ultimately end up creating bad outcomes, usually in the form of unintended consequences, unforeseen side effects, or incompetence in performance of said good intentions.

Judging by comments and discussions I have come across on blogs in the past month or so, most people assume the axiom to be true, particularly in reference to the birdemic. Regardless, the very notion of good intentions leading to hell has never made much sense to me; not even when I offhandedly used the expression myself in the past.

A good way to test the soundness of any axiom is to reverse it or consider it from the opposite perspective. If the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions, then this implies that the road to heaven must be paved with bad intentions. In other words, if hell is a guaranteed outcome of good intentions, then we should simply abandon good intentions altogether and focus instead on bad ones in the hope that these would lead us to somewhere other than hell.

Saying good intentions eventually lead to hell essentially amounts to little more than a materialistic cop out, one based on wrong assumptions about what defines good as good and bad as bad. Let's reduce these definitions to their simplest possible forms: good is anything and everything aligned with God and Creation; bad is anything and everything that is unaligned or misaligned with, or directly opposed to God and Creation. It really is that basic.

No good intention completely aligned with God and Creation can ever end in hell. Not one. Sure, the intention might not yield the expected result, or it may create perceived unintended side effects, or the action the intention inspired might fall short, but none of these outcomes, regardless of how negative they appear, can be interpreted as hell. Spiritual learning forms the core of our mortal lives in this world; thus, any 'unsuccessful' result of a wholly good intention, one aligned with God and Creation, must be understood as an opportunity for learning. As such, its general direction, movement, and potential is geared toward heaven rather than hell.

On the flipside, 'good' intentions not aligned with God and Creation are bad by default through the elementary error of failing to account for basic metaphysical realities. For instance, many modern people regard twentieth-century communism as a prime example of good intentions leading to hell. Although most modern people are averse to communist methods and means, they are, at the same time, sympathetic to the 'good' intentions that drove communist murder and terror. That is, modern people regard things like equality and social justice as inherently 'good' things that would make the world a better, fairer place. Unsurprisingly, modern people do not question the 'goodness' of these failed good intentions, despite the hellish results. Instead, they tend to view the good intention failures as learning opportunities, very much the same way serious Christians view the outcomes of good intentions as learning opportunities.

But here's the catch - 'good' intentions like the ones that inspired communism were never good - they only appeared to be good. And they only appear good once God and Creation - once Truth, Beauty, and Virtue - are taken out of the equation. Reinsert God and Creation into the mix, and the badness of well intentioned socio-political-economic movements and philosophies are immediately exposed. Yet modern materialists vehemently refuse to take Truth, Beauty, and Virtue into consideration when estimating the morality and virtue of their good intent. As long as materialists believe in a good outside of God and Creation, they will be incapable of learning. As a result, their intentions are fueled by Lies, Ugliness, and Vice; that is, the motivations can never achieve their desired objectives because they are always pointing in the wrong direction, right from the very beginning.

Good intentions aligned with Truth, Beauty, and Virtue are always aimed at the proper objective - and that objective is ultimately heaven. It makes little difference if the intentions do not create the expected outcomes or achieve the desired objective at the temporal level. What matters is that the intentions move us closer to heaven spiritually. All serious Christians know heaven is not to be found and cannot be found on earth. Simply believing it can be is a grave sin. Thus, a perceived temporal failure will always result in spiritual success if the intention driving the intent was sincerely good.

Materialist good intentions are never aligned with Truth, Beauty, and Virtue and are always aimed at a bad objective. Of course, material motivations may contain flecks of Truth, Beauty, and Virtue, but at their core, they align with Lies, Ugliness, and Vice. Unlike Christians, materialists believe they can create heaven on earth. In fact, they not only believe this to be true, but also believe it to be man's duty on earth to do so. This sinful attempt to create heaven on earth rests at the core of all materialist 'good' intentions. By perpetually attempting to do the impossible for the sake of their noble motivations, materialists all but ensure that every single one of their good intentions will inevitable create hellish conditions on earth.

Materialist 'good' intentions automatically preclude any chance of spiritual gain. What spiritual gain can be had if one's intentions oppose God and Creation? In addition, they also preclude any chance at real learning. Materialists will never surrender their misguided 'good' intentions to create heaven on earth, regardless of how many disastrous attempts it takes. Consequently, every pursuit of heaven based on their 'good' intentions will indeed inevitably lead to one place and one place only, but the final destination is not a result of 'good intentions', but rather the result of bad intentions masquerading as good ones.

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Gold

5/7/2020

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If religion does not bristle with vitality, it is not religion. If you cannot sense God burning within you, igniting fury and fervor in your soul, then you are not with God. If you experience nothing but blandness and banality in your life, then you are not alive. If your spirituality stops at timid, non-offensive contemplation, then you are spiritless.

Real religion can no longer provide refuge for the weak and the tired; the limp and lifeless; the feeble and flat.

Real religion demands passionate intensity. Aggressive solemnity. Energy. Enthusiasm. Fearlessness. Danger. Real religion is cosmic fire. A binary orbit. Two stars dancing in the heavens, drawing ever closer to each other. The dancing stars meet and light up the sky. The blinding flash fades, but the evidence of the contact remains.

Gold.

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Hungary Eases Its Lockdown - Sort Of

5/6/2020

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Hungary went into lockdown mode about two months ago. Since then, the birdemic plague has caused a startling 3,111 infections and a staggering 373 deaths in the country. I have no doubt the government will use these low numbers to prove the astuteness of their lockdown measures. I mean, think about it. If they hadn't locked down the country, cases and deaths could have been double or triple the current number. The horror!

In all fairness, saving lives was not the lockdown's main goal in Hungary - at least that's what the government maintains. No, the chief purpose of the lockdown was to buy time to 'flatten the curve' to prepare the poorly-equipped and poorly-staffed Hungarian healthcare system for a potential, apocalyptic mass infection scenario.

Well, it took seven weeks, but Hungary has proudly announced that its healthcare system is now ready, willing, and able to handle anything the birdemic can throw at it. Seems like the perfect time to end the lockdown to see if the potential mass infection event really does happen. No worries though. If it does, Hungary is ready. If it doesn't, hmmm . . . then that means the lockdown worked gooder than anyone could have predicted.

If keeping people at home kills viruses, then I'm never leaving the house again. The problem is I can't do that anymore. You see, yesterday the government announced it was easing its lockdown measures . . . sort of. Though the capital Budapest remains in strict lockdown (I guess the hospitals there aren't ready yet), the rest of country can leave the house and get its butt back to work (if the work hasn't disappeared during the birdemic). I guess the rural hospitals are better equipped or something. Or maybe its a density thing. Or maybe rural folk are simply favored over urbanites because, let's face it, most rural people vote for the government while the lefty city types don't.

Though many non-essential shops, stores, and services in the countryside will be allowed to open and operate again, each will obliged to do so under a tangled knot of industry/service-specific rules and regulations. The bulk of the rules and regulations are arbitrary, contradictory, and confusing - so much so that even the government itself appears somewhat mystified by them. But logic be damned! Millions of Hungarians are still potentially at risk.

Schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year, but churches will open again, albeit with many catches and stipulations. No peace handshakes or communion or gossiping in groups after the service. Oh yeah, and everyone has to keep a two-meter distance and wear a face mask in church as well.

Apparently, face masks are now a mandatory fashion accessory - unless you have asthma. Qualification for this humanitarian exception requires a stamped doctor's note. The only way to get a note is to visit a doctor. You can't visit a doctor unless you are wearing a face mask. Apparently doctor's notes are fairly cheap. I may invest in one because my face is far too handsome to be covered by a surgical mask. If I wore a mask all the time, I would be depriving the world of beauty, and I simply refuse to be that cruel!

All kidding aside, the easing of the lockdown is happening exactly as I imagined it would - a return to normal with plenty of strings attached (conditions which, ironically, nullify any sense of normal). I suspect the same return normal with extra heaps of regulations and bureaucracy has occurred or will occur elsewhere. Hungary's problem is it does not possess the manpower to enforce the bureaucracy, especially not in rural areas, which might help explain why it is giving the countryside the qualified green light first.

Whatever the case, the country has its work cut out for it. All things considered, the economy was doing quite well before the lockdown. Now? Who knows? Two months of economic freeze is a long time. In addition, Hungary is not an isolated island. The country has an export-based economy that relies heavily on the viability of its trading partners. As far as I can tell, Hungary's trading partners are not doing too well, which means Hungary will inevitably not do well.

Nevertheless, the government has guaranteed it will replace every job the birdemic wipes out. Perhaps the bulk of those new jobs will be in the "making sure people follow the post-lockdown rules" industry because I can't for the life of me envision any other industry where workers will be in high demand after life returns to sort-of normal.

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The Wrong Turn And Its Ending

5/3/2020

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The wrong turn the West took about two or three centuries ago is a subject I have addressed many times on this blog. By wrong turn I am referring specifically to the West's gradual and, eventually, sudden abandonment of the Divine in favor of materialism. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly where and when this wrong turn took place. In fact, it would be more accurate to think of the larger wrong turn as a series of smaller wrong turns spread over the course of many political, social, religious, and economic events beginning some time after the collapse of the feudal system and the waning of the Catholic Church's authority in the West.

Traditionalist-minded Christians are keenly aware of the spiritual/historical wrong turn the West took sometime during the Renaissance, and they quite correctly lament the de-spiritualization brought about by the abandonment of medieval hierarchy and authority. In light of this it is little wonder so many traditionalists hunger for a return to some kind of localized feudal structure held together and inspired by the unifying and stabilizing power of a strong church. And who can blame them? After all, despite its many flaws, faults, and shortcomings, medieval Europe was an inherently Christian society; that is, Christianity permeated everything and formed the foundation of all aspects of European civilization and culture, to the point that the term Christendom was not only accurate, but also made complete sense at every level of analysis. It is the loss of Christendom traditionalists lament most; and what many desire, above all else, is a return to a time of Christendom - the realignment of civilization and God. Achieve this, many traditional Christians argue, and re-spiritualization will be assured.

Though I am inclined to sympathize with visions of a revived Christendom, I believe traditional Christians who long for a return to such an arrangement are missing the bigger picture when it comes to the wrong turn and the cascading negative consequences it has unleashed. Christendom was thoroughly Christian, but this thoroughness had its limits and, to a certain extent, had already served its purpose by the time the first Renaissance blossoms flecked the medieval landscape.

Traditional Christians correctly identify the wrong turn, but the limits of the traditional Christian mindset become evident in how it defines the wrong turn. Feudal medieval Christendom was a civilization built upon the promise of salvation from sin through obedience to an external authority. For traditionalists, the wrong turn culminated in the rejection of external religious authority as the guarantor of salvation from sin. According to them, all modern sins can be traced back to that point when Western people turned away from the church, which was the guarantor of God's will and the implementer of God's plan for creation on Earth. By the same token, the sins of the modern world would be vanquished the very instant modern Western people repented their egregious material sins and willingly embraced external religious authority once again. Put simply, the only way forward would be a return to the past - to a rigid social structure stressing and enforcing the primacy of spiritual with the aim of mass salvation from sin.

Once again, I sympathize with this outlook to a certain extent. Given the choice between our modern, perverted world and Christendom, I would likely choose Christendom, but this choice immediately raises a very pertinent question: Where would that put us spiritually? Well, if my estimations are correct, it would put us right back at the point before we took the wrong turn, which means we would be facing the same dilemma our ancestors faced when they gradually but ultimately willingly chose materialism over the Divine - when they actively began turning away from the deeper promise of everlasting life in favor of the shallower promise of never-lasting life.

The problem of Christendom is a problem of freedom and authority. Traditionalists tend to idealize the stability and congruity of the past without considering the obvious limitations the past enforced on human freedom. Christendom's Christianity was mostly an enforced top-down arrangement in which being a Christian was largely a matter of default. Rigid social structures, the lack of social mobility, and limited material means to which most people had access created a civilization in which personal salvation was largely a matter of knowing your place and obeying the rules.

In this sense, Christendom was a phase of spiritual childhood, but it was a spiritual childhood marred by incessant physical and material limitations that made life difficult, grueling, and short for the vast majority of the population. As far as I can tell, Christendom offered no concept of spiritual maturity or development in this world. At the risk of sounding flippant I would argue Christendom's spiritual mission was to ensure all Christians remained good little boys and girls in this world in order to make it to the next world after physical death. Thus, as far as Christendom was concerned, spiritual adulthood was not a matter for this world, but the next. As a result, any return to Christendom would likely entail a step back into that spiritual childlike state - a veritable Never-Neverland populated by Peter Pans and other eternal kids whose sole purpose in life would amount to little more than making sure they did not end up on Santa Claus's naughty list before Christmas Day.

Concepts like spiritual childhood are largely a matter of consciousness. The Renaissance and the other subsequent movements away from Christendom reveal a shift of consciousness in the West. People were no longer content to be spiritual children. They began to sense they could do more in this world and that their lives in this world required more from them in return. This shift in consciousness is what traditionalists identify as the wrong turn, but I would argue that the wrong turn is not to be found in the consciousness shift itself, but in the choices made after the consciousness shift occurred.

The collapse of feudalism and fading of church authority marked the beginning of our spiritual adolescence. Like physical adolescence, our spiritual adolescence was marked by increasing personal autonomy, the desire to improve one's material situation, the inclination to explore the world, the eagerness to test newfound abilities, and the inspiration to reinterpret the meaning and purpose of life, both mortal and eternal. Part of this shift in consciousness entailed improving material conditions for the majority people in this world. The campaign to make the world more comfortable and livable was present throughout history, but the shift of consciousness out of spiritual childhood into spiritual adolescence provided the momentum needed to secure the complete alteration of human life. This alteration included the Industrial Revolution and all the political, social, and economic transformations that stemmed from it. Our spiritual adolescence vastly improved standards of living; Western people generally became richer and freer.

These developments suggest that the purpose of spiritual adolescence is mostly preparatory. Like physical adolescence, spiritual adolescence is an in-between phase during which the foundation for adulthood is meant to be created. In physical adolescence this includes biological strengthening and ripening (which is mostly innate and unconscious) and active preparation through education or the acquisition of certain skills that will allow for certain degrees of autonomy and success in the world. Our spiritual adolescence also contained a great deal of mostly innate and unconscious strengthening and ripening, but we have come up gravely short in terms of education and skills preparation. Material progress is perpetually condemned as the chief cause of Western Man's spiritual malaise, but I would say the fault lies not in the progress itself, but in our attitude toward the progress. That, in essence, is where the wrong turn happened.

When I look upon the massive improvement in the material living standards that occurred in the West with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, I see a force that wanted to improve physical conditions in an effort to improve spiritual conditions. I see a force that wanted to free people from material challenges, hardships, and suffering in the hope that the time and energy liberated from these developments could be invested into the higher spiritual purpose of attaining spiritual adulthood in this world. Simply put, I see a force that aspired to alleviate the pressing concerns of physical survival in order to deliver the time and focus needed to deepen our sense of spiritual survival. I see a force whose original aim was not to drive Western Man away from God, but a force that provided the material means through which Western man could move closer to God. In other words, the freeing from material concerns over the last two centuries should have led to an increased freeing for spiritually. What we have managed to achieve instead is a freeing from material concerns followed almost immediately by an imprisoning by materialism. We managed to build the ship we needed to get to our desired destination, but instead of sailing to that destination, we have decided, collectively at least, to imprison ourselves on the ship and set off on a seemingly never-ending, pointless, and destination-less pleasure cruise.

Our spiritual adolescence should have been a time of harnessing the material for the further development of the spiritual. Instead we have fallen captive to the material and have abandoned all notions of the spiritual. In this sense, we are now in a worse position than those who lived in the spiritual childhood of Christendom. Despite traditionalist arguments to the contrary, we cannot return to spiritual childhood anymore than we can return to physical childhood. Any attempt to do so would result in an absurd farce (imagine grown men and women wanting to do nothing more than recite nursery rhymes and play in sandboxes all day long). By the same token, we have lost the map that would have guided us to spiritual adulthood. As a result, we are stuck in the teenage wasteland of materialism with nowhere left to go but down.

Individually there may be hope for some, but at this stage our collective wrong turn appears irrecoverable. This phase of spiritual adolescence will not lead to spiritual adulthood at the collective level, nor will it continue on into perpetuity. This phase of collective spiritual adolescence, the wrong turn we have collectively taken will simply end.

And that will be that.

Note added: Dr. Bruce Charlton's recent post concerning the karma of materialism (Rudolf Steiner's phrase) offers some lucid insights into our current predicament. I highly recommend it.

Note added: The ending of spiritual childhood or traditional Christendom should have heralded an era that laid the groundwork for the advent of another form of Christendom founded on an era of spiritual adulthood. In this sense, Christendom should have evolved from its traditional conception into something more aligned with the shift of consciousness from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Instead, we chose to abandon the concept of Christendom altogether in favor of materialism in the spiritual adolescent phase. This makes the kind of realignment required to reimplement Christendom in the West all but impossible at this point. Materialism, which is antithetical to God, is now probably irreversible and will likely play out until it reaches its inevitable end in some form of partial or total collapse.

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The Daves I Know

5/2/2020

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Earlier this week I announced I would begin renovating my chicken coop. In that post I also explained how the rhythm of physical work helps put me in the proper frame of mind to contemplate the deeper aspects of life.

I began working on the coop two days ago and the work has indeed provided some periods of intense, immersed rumination. Nonetheless, the work rhythm has also conjured forth some fairly empty-headed reflections and memories.

For example, as I was repairing the exterior brick today, the incredibly dippy yet somehow still humorous song "The Daves I Know" by Bruce McCulloch of The Kids in the Hall fame mysteriously bobbed up to the surface of my mind.

I'm trying to have profound thoughts and what do I get? I get "The Daves I Know". I think God likes toying with me sometimes, albeit in a fun, good-natured kind of way.

So, here is the song ( if you don't already know it).

Enjoy . . . and sorry.

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The Wisdom Of Youth

5/1/2020

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I embarked on two summer-long backpacking tours of Europe when I was a teenager; once when I was sixteen, and once again when I was eighteen. Adventure was the key motivator behind both trips, but it was not a hedonistic sense of adventure. That, unfortunately, came a little later when I was in my twenties. No, by adventure I am referring to all the classic go-to's like testing your individual limits, navigating your way through foreign lands, and experiencing new situations. Of course, I was also eager to see all the cities, towns, and sites I had read and dreamed about while I was growing up.

After I returned from my second backpacking tour, friends asked me if I thought I would ever regret spending the money on a vacation rather than on something more useful like a car. My answer? I told them I had a deep sense that I had to take those trips before the busy adult world began to interfere with my life. It turns out I was on to something back then. Sure, I have taken plenty of vacations and short trips since, but I have never engaged in anything like those backpacking tours again. Turns out I was a prescient teenager. Life did get in the way after I turned eighteen. There was always some responsibility requiring my attention, some schedule to keep, or some priority to uphold.

Another notion I had as a teenager is how I might change with age. Back then I thought I would always remain a romantic traveler forever inspired by the prospect of an faraway destination or an exotic land, but when I looked around at the adults in my life, I knew this was likely a misguided. After my second European tour, I was still inspired go on other backpacking adventures. I wanted to see Asia, Russia, South America, and Africa, but I never got around to any of them. However, as the years passed, my enthusiasm for seeing the world waned. By the time I turned thirty, the mere thought of backpacking through a foreign continent left me cold. Now that I am nearly fifty, the mere thought of going to an airport gives me a rash. All in all, I am glad I took those trips when I did. Though I was a fairly mediocre teenager, I was wise to the whole travel thing. My intuition had been spot on. If I hadn't taken those trips then, I probably would not have taken them at all.

Nevertheless, let's pretend I hadn't taken those trips, and that I was just as infected with the travel bug now as I had been back then. Well, the birdemic has made backpacking tours impossible. I couldn't go anywhere now, no matter how much I wanted to. I guess I would patiently wait for the world to open up again and for things to get 'back to normal', but the whole time I was waiting I would know 'normal' was a thing of the past.

Luckily, I have no inclination to travel anywhere at the moment, so the birdemic has not encroached upon my dreams in any way. But I can't help but think of others. Maybe a teenager out there somewhere who had been saving up for a backpacking tour of Europe this summer because he knew he would probably not get the chance to engage in anything like that later in life. For all intents and purposes, that teenager may never be able to embark on such a trip in his life. Well, that may be a bit much, but I hope you get my point.

I don't want to seem like a Debbie Downer here, but think about it. It could be a long, long time before anyone is able to travel the world freely again. And even if people are allowed to travel freely again, what will those journeys and experiences be like? I don't know the answer myself, but I can't help but think that anyone who believes our jet-set pre-birdemic world is going to kick back into high gear after the lockdown ends is probably in store for a set of rather unpleasant, mind-numbing surprises. This doesn't mean travel is necessarily over, but it will certainly be different.

Though I never could have imagined anything like the birdemic when I was a teenager, my intuitive drive to see the world while I still could has proven to be a surprisingly wise one - which is good because I was an utter mess back then otherwise.

Note added: I use the wisdom of youth in a tongue in cheek manner here. When I was young, I thought all the answers to life were out there. Now that I am older, I realize this isn't the case. Perhaps the prolonged curtailment of travel and other former 'luxuries' will get people focused on more important matters - on journeys that really count. One can only hope.

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Feeling Cooped Up? Renovate a Chicken Coop!

4/29/2020

12 Comments

I am not in the mood to write about the Coup today; nor do I feel inspired to rail on about the lockdown and its negative effects on humanity. I mean, it's good to do those things, but I don't want to talk about the Coup today; today I'd rather talk about my coop.

Before I get to that, just let me say that I now spurn anyone who even dares to explain the necessity of the lockdown, or attempts to outline various justifications for the lockdown, or insists on arguing against anyone who questions the lockdown. Most of these lockdown apologists obsess over health and safety and security and speak of models and predictions and vaccines. Well, they can keep their lockdown, their models, their predictions, and their vaccines. None of it will do them any good in the end. Just wait and see.

I'm not too bright, but I know enough to recognize that the lockdown and everything related to the birdemic is fundamentally spiritual warfare. A great many don't see this. They only see material events in a purely material world and quickly adhere to some material explanation or other. And that's how you get events like the birdemic. When you believe in nothing but the material, you put your faith in science, politics, and economics until you get to the point where you actually believe there is nothing essentially wrong with a lockdown. And you believe this wholeheartedly - even when said lockdown refuses to make sense at the most basic scientific, political, or economic level.

Anyway, since this is spiritual warfare, I have spent the bulk of my free time focusing on spiritual matters. I can't focus on spiritual matters much when I'm teaching online, but I also struggle to get in the right frame of mind during my free time. I have never been and will likely never be one for quiet meditation. Sitting in a room and concentrating on the deeper aspects of life has never been my forté. On the contrary, I tend to have the deepest thoughts when I'm out walking or fixing up the house. This means I have spent much of my free time during the lockdown staying active

Fortunately, staying active is not difficult for me. I live in the countryside, which means I can walk for hours if I so choose. Thankfully, people don't call the cops on each other out here. I also have a fairly big backyard with a garden, and these ensure there is always something needing to get done. The more the needing-to-get-dones, the more I can contemplate matters of spiritual importance, which is why I recently launched into a little renovation work called Project Renovate Chicken Coop (see photo above).

As you can see, my yard contains a brick chicken coop - one that is a little, well, dilapidated. It was in poor condition when I bought my house four years ago and has deteriorated quite markedly since then. Though I knew I would eventually get to fixing it up one day, I usually tended to find more pressing matters requiring my attention. Well, those pressing matters have evaporated; thus, my sights are locked on the coop. My intention is to make it look somewhat new again without spending a great deal of money to do so. I plan to replaster the walls, replace the door and windows, and fix the leaks in the roof. No big deal.

But it will relieve the mild cooped-up feeling I have sensed lately and provide the sort of physical activity that helps me think about spiritual matters.

And that is a big deal.

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Getting More Obvious

4/29/2020

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I rarely post memes, but this one jumped out at me the other day. Seems to sum up the here and now fairly well. Of course, the obvious has become oddly relative these days; so this meme faces certain limitations.

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While My Baroque Lute Gently Weeps?

4/28/2020

7 Comments

A George Harrison song on the baroque lute? Hey, why not?

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