Why I am Not a Christian Apologist

The fool says in his heart, "and why not?"

[nonapologia]

I understand you're trying your best to do a good job, but if the job you're trying to do is a bad job, I can only wish you weren't doing it half so well.

from the War for the Lost Property Office

[nonapologia]

Liars, Dupes, Monsters... or something else

I do not like to blog about politics because it is distracting, but a lot of politics is happening these days. I will say as much:

The time has passed when one could join a morally upright team-effort and do a good job of contributing. Those who are consumed by politics and think of their future actions in terms of this-worldly effectiveness to aid this or that faction have the choice of becoming one of the following:

- A liar who deceives others about ends and means.

- A dupe who permits himself to be deceived by others.

- A monster who is honest about this-worldly goals he is pursuing and the means required to pursue them. If this-worldly goals are pursued honestly, the various situations in the world have reached the point that only monstrous means suffice.

To become something else, one must find a creative task, a purpose, and ascribe to that purpose a supernatural significance in changing the future -- if the future is what one cares about. If what one cares about is living uprightly in the eyes of God now, the choice becomes even simpler.

If one cannot find a creative task, one must adopt ascesis, and clear out the cluttered space in one’s life. There is thousands of years of wisdom about how to do this. And there are notes on how to adapt this wisdom to the distractions of the modern world.

If one cannot adopt a full measure of ascesis, one can certainly adopt half measures. How much of my news reading is sufficient to learn what’s in the news and be prepared for possible events in the real world? How much of the rest of my news reading is emotional onanism?

Here is a major source of hope: this imperfect life we are living is under sentence of death. Therefore we do not have the ability or the need to make it a life worth living indefinitely. Whatever we accomplish that is meaningful, must be meaningful in light of an eternal life, and any order that was founded on ignoring this was doomed to crumble away.

[nonapologia]

“Then it all will fade to white...”

http://nonapologia.tumblr.com/post/127181257836/in-the-meantime#comment-2367723091

I get the impression from them that repentance is the obliteration of one's current person, not the expulsion of a poison alien to one's true being, the correcting of one's own lies towards God. It gives the impression of a lose-lose situation: someone else may be in Heaven or Hell, but not me.

It is worth mentioning that I am not the only one to express this sort of trepidation.

Touhou - Bad Apple!!

Japanese lyrics -- https://www.animelyrics.com/doujin/alstrec/badapple.jis / literal translation -- http://www.animelyrics.com/doujin/alstrec/badapple.htm

English lyrics -- http://www.lyricsreg.com/lyrics/cristina+vee/Bad+Apple+English+Version/

Will tomorrow ever come? Will I make it through the night? Will there ever be a place for the broken in the light? Am I hurting? Am I sad? Should I stay, or should I go? I've forgotten how to tell. Did I ever even know? Can I take another step? I've done everything I can All the people that I see, I will never understand If I find a way to change, if I step into the light Then I'll never be the same, and it all will fade to white....

[nonapologia]

Fallacies of Fungibility -- Karma and Judgment

"Then the tollhouses weigh your deeds and decide if your bad deeds outweigh your good deeds?"

"Do they?" frowned the Judge.

A vision presented itself to us: out of the darkness loomed a dizzying structure of scales and balances. Gleaming brass pans held precious gifts and blasphemous mockeries alike -- interlinked with a myriad chains of cause and effect -- set about with ladders -- and attended with an host of servants trying to keep them into balance. It was futile: whenever a deed was added or removed to one of the pans, the pans would resume motion. Each one, itself shifting, brought yet others out of balance; the effects cascaded down, impossible to predict, and sent yet further servants scrambling to rebalance the structure in other places, which served only to initiate even more futile motions.

These motions would have readily continued into eternity....

Eiki* stopped the madness by forcing a finger down on one of the pans, and demanded of me angrily:

"What does it mean for one deed to outweigh another? How many alms are given to soothe a vile and lying conscience? How beautiful a painting must you paint to ransom a broken family? How many trees planted will outweigh the taking of an innocent life? An evil deed destroys; a good deed creates, but something different from what was destroyed. No thing under the sun is exactly like any other thing; how, then, can one thing pretend to outweigh another? Is that the Truth, to pretend to weigh vice and virtue as a merchant weighs measures of oil and barley?"

(* Full name being Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, where Xanadu is the paradise of Kubla Khan as reported by Coleridge. All is connected.)

[nonapologia]

Elimination of Bureaucratic Mental Tics

Schooling and modern work typically effect an education in useless mental habits such as the following:

“X is more important but the todo-list dictates that we do Y first.”

“It is better to waste time than to work on unplanned or outside tasks.”

“I should look busy so that I do not get censured.”

“I should not work on X until I’ve made an argument to my superior that X is worth working on.”

“I should work hard (at this random task assigned to me) to maintain a feeling that I am contributing to society.”

When you are doing something pointless, step one to fixing that problem is to STOP!

Eliminating these kinds of mental tics is one of the unacknowledged important goals of spiritual improvement. Failing to acknowledge these kinds of mental tics will prevent work on things that are more commonly understood as sins. (Indeed, more overt sins and temptations may be permitted to keep a person from pretending that their behaviour is within the bounds of normality.) Ritualized behaviour in a monastery or a village may be spiritually healthy, but ritualized behaviours in alienated modern societies are diseased, so most of the ancient guides on ascesis miss the technique of fighting Ahrimanic impulses as well as Luciferic ones.

If any social arrangements or institutions collapse as a result of withdrawal of mental tics, these institutions were being upheld by something false.

[nonapologia]

Audacity

There is a subtle and crucial different between Audacity and Presumption in prayer. Both ask for the undeserved. Presumption asks for something because the speaker of the prayer presumes to deserve it. Audacity asks for something that the speaker of the prayer could not expect or presume to deserve, yet asks for it nevertheless as a gratuitous offering. The emphasis is not on the speaker’s entitlements but on God’s generosity. Therefore the former is scorned by God and the latter accepted.

There is also a concept of Audacity in the sense of the audacity of creation. In this sense it is redundant to ask for something unless it has never existed before and would not have existed had it not occurred to you to ask. Therefore prayers for great things are granted far more often than prayers for small ones. It is a difficult and creative task to put one’s desires to words, to examine where one’s prayer is too small and narrow and to grow it accordingly.

For comparison, here is MG’s earlier explanation of prayer in a traditional Catholic metaphysics: http://nonapologia.tumblr.com/post/88135413611/mg-on-prayer

for the inward state of each one’s soul, God appoints whatever visible punishments and instructions must be accepted to realize spiritual progress. Therefore, if a person should accept their lot with prayer and humility, and so find their inward, spiritual life renewed, then the outward reflection of this change may well come in the form of a change in the outward circumstances of instruction, whether by the addition of earthly blessings, or earthly afflictions. And this outward change, as with the inmost change in the soul of a penitent, yet harmonizes perfectly with God’s plan.

Therefore I at once affirm that prayer can be employed, in this triple-bankshot fashion, to produce changes in the visible world, even to the point of calling down signs and miracles from Heaven;

Both metaphysics are adequate to explaining prayer, because both acknowledge changes in Man if not the Universe. Man is a microcosm and there is a correspondence between the content of Man and the content of the Universe; therefore changing one expands the other. But they will result in different kinds of prayer.

[nonapologia]

Joy & Woe

A Truth thats told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent It is right it should be so Man was made for Joy & Woe And when this we rightly know Thro the World we safely go Joy & Woe are woven fine A Clothing for the soul divine Under every grief & pine Runs a joy with silken twine 

-- William Blake, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence

Most people operate under the assumption that ‘Man was made for Pride & Shame’ -- Pride in one’s merits, Shame at one’s sinful inadequacy, with the task of Religion being to decrease the relative quantity of Pride (by proving the merits nonexistent through honest introspection) by increasing the relative quantity of Shame. Pride & Shame drive out Woe and therefore also Joy, a cursed bargain if there ever was one.

[nonapologia]

Ahriman Incarnation Attempt #5702

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/researchers-scared-by-their-own-work-hold-back-deepfakes-for-text-ai/

They keep trying but Ahriman always comes out brain-damaged.

Human writing prompt: “Legolas and Gimli advanced on the orcs, raising their weapons with a harrowing war cry:”

Ahriman’s attempt: “The orcs’ response was a deafening onslaught of claws, claws, and claws; even Elrond was forced to retreat. ‘You are in good hands, dwarf,’ said Gimli, who had been among the first to charge at the orcs; it took only two words before their opponents were reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the night. The battle lasted for two hours until two of the largest Orcs attempted to overwhelm Aragorn. When they finally stopped, they lay defeated and lifeless for miles and miles.”

[nonapologia]

Altruism and Egotism are personality traits, not moral qualities

Some people are naturally egotistic and perceive the world in terms of their personal gain or loss, remaining indifferent to the fate of others. This is a personality trait but not a personality flaw. However, inaccurate perception of one’s own gain or loss leads to pathological egotism. For natural egotists, Christianity is a religion of personal salvation or theosis and offsets the negative qualities of egotism by demanding a strict attitude towards the self’s failings and a high standard of charity towards  one’s neighbour as a condition of self-redemption. The charity of natural egotists will inevitably be somewhat dispassionate, “not for the sake of people but for the sake of Christ”. Natural egotism corresponds (loosely, not absolutely) to the First Great Commandment to love God, since to love God means to desire what is best for God, and the personally actionable part of that is to become the person that God desires to create. This is a very self-oriented aspiration.

Some people are naturally altruistic and perceive the world in terms of other peoples’ gain or loss. This is a personality trait but not a morally positive trait; indeed, the most common forms of altruistic reasoning nowadays (e.g. utilitarianism) are pathological because they are based on people perceiving the Good inaccurately. Altruism corresponds loosely to the Second Great Commandment to love neighbour. To love neighbour means to desire what is best for the neighbour, and such desire is distorted into evil by an inaccurate perception of the Good. By helping neigbour, a person whom God has given altruistic inclinations is true to what God desires to create, and also fulfills the First Great Commandment.

There are many spheres of life, and a person may be egotistic or altruistic in different spheres.

People tend to mistakenly elevate egotism and altruism into moral absolutes. The moralizing current age has a strong preference for altruism -- that much is obvious. But egotism can also be elevated into a moral absolute. For example, many traditional Christians all but advocate for absolute egotism in the matter of salvation, with impersonal/dispassionate charity as the consequence. Indeed, passionate charity is frowned upon as a luxury that the soul under judgment cannot afford. But it is good to remember that God desires to create a variety of different people, and one person may take an attitude that lets them be true to themselves, while another person betrays themselves with the same attitude.

[nonapologia]

99th Post - Important Reading

I have been away too long.

For my 99th post I’m adding a page with books (and other media) I found important for the development of my soul thus far. Eventually there will be 99 such books (or other things).

[nonapologia]

Completed through a meditation on the water crisis in Cape-Town:

Long ago, in another age, He Who Is looked on the plain As the dark sun of Babylon Rose upon the citadel.

And its gardens of the air Did not wait for the summer rains: Though at His hand the skies were dry, The reservoir was well-maintained.

What scant and varied evidence it is By which our archaeologists must trace The mores and outlines of that alien race! As day by day and layer by layer They sift its sins and bottle its prayers.

The motions of that cursed people's days Were known to rise and fall In strict obeisance to some grim logistic god Recorded under countless shapes and names, Some of them indecipherable to this very day....

Their streets were clean, their trains Were known to run on time, While far afield unto the desert sands And northern ices their priests Ordained their strange and wicked sacrifices; Documents stamped with death and woe Until their sun less brightly shone.

And yet

That self-same dark sun's rays Descended through a tattered curtain And awoke young Yeshua, beloved of the LORD: A man whose name foretold That long-anticipated day When the two realms believed forever sundered Would at last begin to cross

And all our strife and toil would be revealed As preparation for some grander show Which we before our television-screens Will foolishly ignore, for we believe Present prosperity and ruin Depicted in our documentaries To be the end and total of our history.

[nonapologia]

Reflections for 2018

Inspired by: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.ca/2017/12/2017-retrospective.html, http://charltonteaching.blogspot.ca/2017/12/thinking-inside-remote-controlled-robot.html

The overall feeling of the past year for me has been one of tremendous spiritual dryness. But when I evaluate the year objectively I can identify areas where I have broken some previously destructive patterns and left myself free-er to act in the coming year. Perhaps a successful struggle to break the influence of Charlton's robot suit appears as a period of motionlessness and stagnation, when the human and the robotic are locked in mutual struggle and neither can enact any significant action. Or perhaps these were lessons I was unwilling to learn the easy way, and God opted to teach them to me the hard and painful way. Thank God for giving me what I had coming to me at a time when I could be grateful to know what I had done wrong.

One result of last year's struggle was that most of my creative ambitions and projects made almost zero progress. This is in contrast to prior years when I could complete 10's of thousands of words of story writing (albeit very rough and justifiably-kept-private up to now) and numerous public blog essays, along with attempts to branch out into further areas of creative work.

Rather than picking and joining a Church, the current stage of my search has involved seeking out more-numinous relations to people around me and avoiding or cutting-off less-numinous relations. The numinous-ness of a person can be entirely disconnected from any explicit mention of Church. For example, I am departing from academia, which eats up time and brainpower with anxieties and poorly-justified ambitions, and I am returning to a workplace that has no relation whatsoever to Christianity, but where I was previously able to develop a routine of stable and productive contemplation.

One interesting side-effect of my decision is that it will create some opportunities to meet with people whom I'd previously benefitted from talking to, but never had the chance to encounter in person. I believe this to be an encouraging sign.

The actual beginning of the next year for me will likely be January 7th, the Old Calendar Nativity.

[nonapologia]

http://www.theartwolf.com/landscapes/sesshu-toyo-landscape-ink-broken.htm

Don’t obtain contemplation in order to paint, paint in order to obtain contemplation.

[nonapologia]

There is Always a True King

Unfortunately, he may not always be in the government. Quoth la Wik:

Norton spent his days inspecting San Francisco's streets in an elaborate blue uniform with gold-plated epaulettes, given to him by officers of the United States Army post at the Presidio of San Francisco. He also wore a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette. He frequently enhanced this regal posture with a cane or umbrella. During his inspections, Norton would examine the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars, the state of repair of public property, and the appearance of police officers. Norton would also frequently give lengthy philosophical expositions on a variety of topics to anyone within earshot.

During the 1860s and 1870s, there were occasional anti-Chinese demonstrations in the poorer districts of San Francisco. Riots, sometimes resulting in fatalities, took place. During one incident, Norton allegedly positioned himself between the rioters and their Chinese targets; with a bowed head, he started reciting the Lord's Prayer repeatedly until the rioters dispersed without incident.

Norton was loved and revered by the citizens of San Francisco. Although penniless, he regularly ate at the finest restaurants in San Francisco; restaurateurs took it upon themselves to add brass plaques in their entrances declaring "[by] Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States". Norton's self-penned Imperial seals of approval were prized and a substantial boost to trade. No play or musical performance in San Francisco would dare to open without reserving balcony seats for Norton.

A rumor started by the devoted Norton caricaturist Ed Jump claims he had two dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, which were also San Francisco celebrities. Though he did not own the dogs, Norton ate at free lunch counters where he shared his meals with the dogs.

In 1867, a policeman named Armand Barbier arrested Norton to commit him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged the citizens and sparked scathing editorials in the newspapers. Police Chief Patrick Crowley ordered Norton released and issued a formal apology on behalf of the police force. Crowley wrote "that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line." Norton magnanimously granted an Imperial Pardon to the errant policeman. All police officers of San Francisco thereafter saluted Norton as he passed in the street.

Norton did receive some tokens of recognition for his position. The 1870 U.S. census lists Joshua Norton as 50 years old and residing at 624 Commercial Street; his occupation was listed as "Emporer" [sic]. It also noted he was insane. Norton also issued his own money to pay for his debts, and it became an accepted local currency in San Francisco. These notes came in denominations between fifty cents and ten dollars; the few surviving notes are collector's items. The city of San Francisco also honored Norton. When his uniform began to look shabby, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors bought him a suitably regal replacement. Norton sent a gracious thank you note and issued a "patent of nobility in perpetuity" for each supervisor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

[nonapologia]

God is easy to forget Except in the Outer Darkness Far from family, hearth, and home Where the soul is chilled alone Stripped down to the barest bone Will I gnash or will I grieve? When there is nothing left to give And through my memories I sieve My many bitter enemies

Thou didst not make me a devil Smugly bearing suffering horn Thou hast given me a conscience Which I endlessly ignored With this pain, my fog grows thin I see clear enough to pray: Help me bear and slay my sin Though I do not know the way

See also: https://wmjas.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/george-macdonalds-vision-of-outer-darkness/

[nonapologia]

This year, things were different for me; and in the coming year, things will be different yet again. Each one of us has seasons of strength and weakness that are not told according to the seasons of the earth; one year we wax and another we wane and one year we grow and another we fade. Day and night, starlight and moonlight change their places within us, and because you have not broken me in my season of weakness, I will prevail in my season of strength.

[nonapologia]

Inner Law

"Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash." -- Kakashi

The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a man on a tightrope.

A man on a tightrope must stray neither to the left nor to the right, and this suggests tight discipline and an unbreakable inner law that produces swift punishment. A man on a tightrope is not stiff, but flexible, in order to remain in balance at all times no matter how the rope may sway. Therefore, the true doctrine is not a static, but a dynamic equilibrium. Else, statements that are understood as saving truths by one mind would refract as destructive falsehoods in a differently equipped mind, and from a single well would issue both clear and poison water. And certainly this has happened in all societies that called themselves a Church but secretly prized *words* over and above *truths*. A man on a tightrope must listen to his own sense of balance, and cannot afford to ignore it completely in favour of people shouting advice from the sidelines.

The things that are essential to mankind, are accidental to one man in particular. The things that are essential to one man, are accidental to mankind, and may be construed as imperfections from it. Therefore, to perfect mankind in a man, one must destroy the man, and to perfect a man one must destroy mankind in him. And so the Scholars have made war on man in order to perfect his mankind. Man is far beyond a lifetime's work to understand; mankind and its meager virtues can be exhausted in a Summa. Likewise have the Scholars have made war against every thing in order to perfect the archetypes of the things. And in the exhaustion that followed this war, men have declared that there is no man just as there is no mankind, there is no Inner Law, there is no up or down, that all is Chaos and we are doomed to perish in it.

A man who stays on his tightrope above the Chaos has balance, and follows the Inner Law particular to him over the Outer Law particular to mankind. The Inner Law is seen in such sayings as those of William Blake: "I was then persuaded, and remain confirm’d, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God." But what indignation is honest, and what is dishonest? Will the Book tell us? Will the Pharisees measure it? Will we settle the question once and for all? It is like asking what angle the man on the tightrope should lean. There is always a precise and objective answer, and deviation from that answer is instant death. But by the time you Scholars hurry with your measuring-tapes and spirit-levels to ascertain it, the answer will have already changed.

Therefore, in order to feel the Truth, you must by-degrees come to abandon the task of measuring it. By-degrees, because while one is still blind to Truth, the Outer Law is a measuring-stick and a blind man's cane to poke the world with, to avoid the nearby traps and temptations. But in a world where men are blind, the sighted man will appear to move in ways that are dangerous -- suicidal -- immoral, even, for a blind person to move in, even though he sees many more perils and temptations than a blind man sees and must avoid them at a greater distance.

But a blind man who pretends he sees and moves accordingly will fall off the tightrope, and therefore the Outer Law has been writ in stone and carried down on tablets from Mount Sinai unto a blind people. Thus, while they do not see the difference between stone and truth, they may follow the stone, and only when they come to see the difference can they shatter the stone at a single blow and step onto the tightrope.