"The devil’s own tragedy is he is the author of nothing and architect of empty spaces."
This quote strikes a chord in me; When considering contemporary art, music or design/achitecture I'm often left thinking "but ... there's nothing there!" There is an emptiness, a hollowness to much of what is 'created' -- or rather: generated. Like interacting with an AI chat-bot, you realize that there is nothing there, it's empty -- it has no soul.
Good point about contemporary art. But this emptiness in the visual arts goes back a long way - to the early 20th c. Almost anyone if shown – say - Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring would think it a great work of art even if they didn’t know it was famous and valuable. But how many would think that about Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon if they’d somehow never seen – or even heard of - Cubism or any other type of abstract painting? And how many would think Mondrian’s Composition with Red Blue and Yellow - a great work of art if no one had ever told them so?
These are good questions, although I will stick up for Picasso and Mondrian, who both proved they could do beautiful figurative painting before they went in other directions. I take the broader point being made though.
A powerful piece of writing, whipping along the Satan metaphor soundly.
And yet although I agree that governments whirl away without reflection on the long march towards a totalitarian Utopia (and this is undesirable for the being of the mere mortals caught up in the gears).
But Satan is an abstraction that ignores other useful fictions, other enlightening metaphors... you could just as easily have written:
"Hence theocratic government sees no limits, and so it cannot understand the argument that some sphere of life or other is not amenable to being governed - nor that borders or jurisdictions should be any prima facie reason why the project of government as such should be disrupted or hindered. "
This would perhaps resonate more with readers if they lived in a theocratic society like modern Iran, for instance. Or perhaps, historically, look at the great size of the Abbotsbury tithe barn for an insight into earlier theocratic influence in the 14th century. Reliance on non-material worldviews is just as consequential whether the team is Godly or Demonic.
So the common element is perhaps not the demonic metaphors but the rather less semiotic obviousness of the nature of governments. Governments *must* manage - and that this leads to greater and greater control on the long path to a desired outcome, whether Heaven, Hell, or Utopia.
Well, we need to be careful - medieval Europe was not exactly a theocracy. But nobody should suggest it is possible or desirable to go back to the 13th century. We have to go onwards. The point really is that we cannot escape having a political theology as we do so - the fact that people are squeamish about discussing the matter doesn't change that fact. Why should people be free? Or equal? Or not? Those questions are ultimately theological ones, and can't be wished away.
Theocracies are no more spiritual / non-Worldly than modern secular societies. The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time were every bit as authoritarian and controlling as the ayatollahs of Iran or the wahabi imams of Saudi Arabia, which is why he attacked them so vehemently and continuously, and paid the ultimate price.
It is important to remember your view of theocracy is coloured by a lifetime of secular propaganda from the educational and media systems of a modern western state. Living in a ‘theocratic’ society, with a nominally autocratic government, the Koran and Hadith place immutable boundaries on what can be governed that are absent in a secular regime. I can guarantee you that at no point in my time here will the government tell me I must address a woman with a penis as “Madame”. Indeed, there simply is no way such a concept could legally exist here, whatever the view of those in government, many of whom hold degrees from top woke western universities.
I so love this. It is such a learned reflection of my own thoughts on government and spirituality. Once you look through the lens of life being a spiritual journey, you cannot help but be libertarian - God gave us free will for a reason. To control and to order is to remove the journey by which humans develop spiritually. Totalitarian states not only imprison the body, worse - they trap our souls.
Very much enjoyed. Thank you, David. I found your interpretation of the knowledge of good and evil surprising and interesting: as a metaphor for ALL or everything under the sun, as it were. I'd like to add that if one is specific there, it enhances your overall reading. The knowledge of good and evil leads directly to shame as well as mutual recrimination--a whole lot of finger pointing. The fall of humanity is thus all about moralising: deciding who and what is bad and who and what is good. The world that follows is one of judgements, accusations, belonging, ejection, obedience, disobedience, reward, and punishment... a polarised world. I like to point out that the tree of life is the better tree, the one we ought to be focused on instead, the tree of creativity and spiritual growth. The ejection from Eden was to prevent our ancestors eating of this tree, lest they really did become as gods--a notion troubling to parse. What I'm after here is that the way of gossip, of judging others, and of blaming others for our condition is what the knowledge of good and evil encodes. It also describes aptly the woke enterprise of in groups and out groups, of who's righteous and who's unworthy, who has power and who has none, who is rich and who, poor, who is oppressed and who, the oppressor. The atomisation of society in other words.
One of the things I truly appreciate about your equation of good and evil with measuring things is the linkage to God's use of the word *good* in Genesis. Each day of creation, God looks over his works and declares, "and it was good." Therefore *good* isn't only a moral value, it's also an assessment of whether or not something works and is well made. I think this observation helps support your reading and I'm intrigued by the implications. I hadn't thought of that angle before.
But this doesn't prohibit judgement, as if it were an 11th commandment; it only warns the would be judge that in our judgements we are judged. Apart from anything else, the judgement that judgement is wrong would be self-contradictory.
So do government and corporate capitalism, which also swallows up everything in its path and seeks hungrily for more until it most likely has to eat itself, go hand in hand? Is the former using the latter or is it the other way round?
The short answer is yes (Alan Moore actually speaks to this point). As to the question of which is using the other.... No doubt there is a big amount of crossover and regulatory capture is real.
I don't know if you are missing something! To elaborate, I'm curious as to whether government in itself is pushing the expansion and using corporate capitalism to do so, or the economic forces of the latter are using the state as their instrument. Where does the parasitic impulse originate? Do they need each other in symbiosis? Is it a chicken and egg situation? When I think about it a bit more, I guess both could be instruments of more shadowy players.
This is one way of looking at it. We've certainly allowed ourselves to be strung along for a long time, though I can't personally say I've literally wished for it - quite the opposite!
Is it not the case that the supernatural is the creation of human beings trying to understand the natural world? As our capacity to understand more and more of the natural (physical, material) world has grown, it should not be surprising that ideas of the supernatural have receded. We’re still stuck with the question of where it all come from in the first place but that does not justify a return to myths of creation.
How human beings should live in society raises another set of questions which both religion and simple pragmatism try to answer, traditionally with a series of prohibitions. Murder is punishable because man is god’s creation; or because forbidding it is beneficial from everyone’s viewpoint. Humanity seems to have a notion of the common good, irrespective of how it be expressed.
To this extent it doesn’t seem to matter whether we ascribe these rules to God or anything else. The motivation to pursue self-interest or that to pursue the common good seem both to be embedded within us and we still haven’t negotiated a settlement between these two contending forces, and probably never shall.
Which leaves us prey to anyone who puts up a convincing case that he knows the answer. Just do as I tell you, and all will be well, said the Lord - or more specifically, said the man who claimed to be his spokesman. Politicians and priests: what would we do without them?
I understand your perspective. It is the notion that 'it doesn’t seem to matter whether we ascribe these rules to God or anything else' where we part company. To my eye, it matters a great deal. Hence this post.
Also: a quibble. 'Just do as I tell you, and all will be well' is absolutely, positively not the message of Christ or the essence of Christianity!
This is really good - I wasn't expecting to find such things here! (=theology) All I would mention is that McGilchrist (rightly in my view) insists on the importance of metaphors, that they are in fact the fundamental building blocks of our understanding. So to say this is all a metaphor isn't really to diminish it... but I think you know that ;)
As I once put it to my somewhat woke sister: What leads to a better world? One where we all have inherent worth because we are made in the image of God and contain spark of the divine? Or one where we are all lumps of meat?
You say the 'devil', the government of all things, the micro management, cannot 'create', yet it does create mayhem, creates diversions, creates the apparatus to control people ( the digital health platform being promoted by WHO and individuals like Blair, creates superficial personalities for media and public consumption, creates weapons for the military to bomb civilians ( thereby creating orphans and fractured families), creates 'emergencies' to keep people fearful and to 'toe the line', to the detriment of the people.
I would say by such 'creations' the 'material' and/or 'devilish' nature of government is eventually revealed, or slowly (now) being revealed as rotten and corrupt creations. Such a system of 'government' is anathema to societies' values, religious beliefs (long held if not long attended to) - it must therefore burn itself out, especially as it resorts to ever more extravagant agendas, ever more authoritarianism.
There is an argument, I suppose, that the Govt , and its people who put together the Manhattan Project, or NASA, might bring to you. And look at what they "created" : a bomb, and a moonshot, (assuming it really occurred)....
Ironically, although the internet is (mostly) in English, and now with automated translation it doesn’t really matter, actually it is a perfect exemplar of people not communicating, not listening, not understanding, talking past each other. And thus the tower falls.
Deeply interesting essay, and brave.
"The devil’s own tragedy is he is the author of nothing and architect of empty spaces."
This quote strikes a chord in me; When considering contemporary art, music or design/achitecture I'm often left thinking "but ... there's nothing there!" There is an emptiness, a hollowness to much of what is 'created' -- or rather: generated. Like interacting with an AI chat-bot, you realize that there is nothing there, it's empty -- it has no soul.
Good point about contemporary art. But this emptiness in the visual arts goes back a long way - to the early 20th c. Almost anyone if shown – say - Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring would think it a great work of art even if they didn’t know it was famous and valuable. But how many would think that about Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon if they’d somehow never seen – or even heard of - Cubism or any other type of abstract painting? And how many would think Mondrian’s Composition with Red Blue and Yellow - a great work of art if no one had ever told them so?
These are good questions, although I will stick up for Picasso and Mondrian, who both proved they could do beautiful figurative painting before they went in other directions. I take the broader point being made though.
One of Us....great song by the way.
The Ungoliant metaphor works very well for AI.
A powerful piece of writing, whipping along the Satan metaphor soundly.
And yet although I agree that governments whirl away without reflection on the long march towards a totalitarian Utopia (and this is undesirable for the being of the mere mortals caught up in the gears).
But Satan is an abstraction that ignores other useful fictions, other enlightening metaphors... you could just as easily have written:
"Hence theocratic government sees no limits, and so it cannot understand the argument that some sphere of life or other is not amenable to being governed - nor that borders or jurisdictions should be any prima facie reason why the project of government as such should be disrupted or hindered. "
This would perhaps resonate more with readers if they lived in a theocratic society like modern Iran, for instance. Or perhaps, historically, look at the great size of the Abbotsbury tithe barn for an insight into earlier theocratic influence in the 14th century. Reliance on non-material worldviews is just as consequential whether the team is Godly or Demonic.
So the common element is perhaps not the demonic metaphors but the rather less semiotic obviousness of the nature of governments. Governments *must* manage - and that this leads to greater and greater control on the long path to a desired outcome, whether Heaven, Hell, or Utopia.
Well, we need to be careful - medieval Europe was not exactly a theocracy. But nobody should suggest it is possible or desirable to go back to the 13th century. We have to go onwards. The point really is that we cannot escape having a political theology as we do so - the fact that people are squeamish about discussing the matter doesn't change that fact. Why should people be free? Or equal? Or not? Those questions are ultimately theological ones, and can't be wished away.
Theocracies are no more spiritual / non-Worldly than modern secular societies. The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time were every bit as authoritarian and controlling as the ayatollahs of Iran or the wahabi imams of Saudi Arabia, which is why he attacked them so vehemently and continuously, and paid the ultimate price.
That's a really important point.
It is important to remember your view of theocracy is coloured by a lifetime of secular propaganda from the educational and media systems of a modern western state. Living in a ‘theocratic’ society, with a nominally autocratic government, the Koran and Hadith place immutable boundaries on what can be governed that are absent in a secular regime. I can guarantee you that at no point in my time here will the government tell me I must address a woman with a penis as “Madame”. Indeed, there simply is no way such a concept could legally exist here, whatever the view of those in government, many of whom hold degrees from top woke western universities.
Where is 'here'?
I so love this. It is such a learned reflection of my own thoughts on government and spirituality. Once you look through the lens of life being a spiritual journey, you cannot help but be libertarian - God gave us free will for a reason. To control and to order is to remove the journey by which humans develop spiritually. Totalitarian states not only imprison the body, worse - they trap our souls.
Yes. Why should people be free if they don't have a soul?
Yes. Do animals have souls? If not, why does it matter if they are treated badly?
Very much enjoyed. Thank you, David. I found your interpretation of the knowledge of good and evil surprising and interesting: as a metaphor for ALL or everything under the sun, as it were. I'd like to add that if one is specific there, it enhances your overall reading. The knowledge of good and evil leads directly to shame as well as mutual recrimination--a whole lot of finger pointing. The fall of humanity is thus all about moralising: deciding who and what is bad and who and what is good. The world that follows is one of judgements, accusations, belonging, ejection, obedience, disobedience, reward, and punishment... a polarised world. I like to point out that the tree of life is the better tree, the one we ought to be focused on instead, the tree of creativity and spiritual growth. The ejection from Eden was to prevent our ancestors eating of this tree, lest they really did become as gods--a notion troubling to parse. What I'm after here is that the way of gossip, of judging others, and of blaming others for our condition is what the knowledge of good and evil encodes. It also describes aptly the woke enterprise of in groups and out groups, of who's righteous and who's unworthy, who has power and who has none, who is rich and who, poor, who is oppressed and who, the oppressor. The atomisation of society in other words.
One of the things I truly appreciate about your equation of good and evil with measuring things is the linkage to God's use of the word *good* in Genesis. Each day of creation, God looks over his works and declares, "and it was good." Therefore *good* isn't only a moral value, it's also an assessment of whether or not something works and is well made. I think this observation helps support your reading and I'm intrigued by the implications. I hadn't thought of that angle before.
Really interesting observations - thanks. This is all in That Hideous Strength, a book that I'd like to write more on.
Do not judge, lest you be judged. As you measure, so it shall be measured out to you.
But this doesn't prohibit judgement, as if it were an 11th commandment; it only warns the would be judge that in our judgements we are judged. Apart from anything else, the judgement that judgement is wrong would be self-contradictory.
So do government and corporate capitalism, which also swallows up everything in its path and seeks hungrily for more until it most likely has to eat itself, go hand in hand? Is the former using the latter or is it the other way round?
The short answer is yes (Alan Moore actually speaks to this point). As to the question of which is using the other.... No doubt there is a big amount of crossover and regulatory capture is real.
good question but imo the consequences are the same whichever way. Or am I missing something in your question?
I don't know if you are missing something! To elaborate, I'm curious as to whether government in itself is pushing the expansion and using corporate capitalism to do so, or the economic forces of the latter are using the state as their instrument. Where does the parasitic impulse originate? Do they need each other in symbiosis? Is it a chicken and egg situation? When I think about it a bit more, I guess both could be instruments of more shadowy players.
The “more shadowy players” are us, collectively. What we have is literally what we wished for.
This is one way of looking at it. We've certainly allowed ourselves to be strung along for a long time, though I can't personally say I've literally wished for it - quite the opposite!
Is it not the case that the supernatural is the creation of human beings trying to understand the natural world? As our capacity to understand more and more of the natural (physical, material) world has grown, it should not be surprising that ideas of the supernatural have receded. We’re still stuck with the question of where it all come from in the first place but that does not justify a return to myths of creation.
How human beings should live in society raises another set of questions which both religion and simple pragmatism try to answer, traditionally with a series of prohibitions. Murder is punishable because man is god’s creation; or because forbidding it is beneficial from everyone’s viewpoint. Humanity seems to have a notion of the common good, irrespective of how it be expressed.
To this extent it doesn’t seem to matter whether we ascribe these rules to God or anything else. The motivation to pursue self-interest or that to pursue the common good seem both to be embedded within us and we still haven’t negotiated a settlement between these two contending forces, and probably never shall.
Which leaves us prey to anyone who puts up a convincing case that he knows the answer. Just do as I tell you, and all will be well, said the Lord - or more specifically, said the man who claimed to be his spokesman. Politicians and priests: what would we do without them?
I understand your perspective. It is the notion that 'it doesn’t seem to matter whether we ascribe these rules to God or anything else' where we part company. To my eye, it matters a great deal. Hence this post.
Also: a quibble. 'Just do as I tell you, and all will be well' is absolutely, positively not the message of Christ or the essence of Christianity!
Reminds me of Sowell's "unconstrained vision."
High praise!
This is really good - I wasn't expecting to find such things here! (=theology) All I would mention is that McGilchrist (rightly in my view) insists on the importance of metaphors, that they are in fact the fundamental building blocks of our understanding. So to say this is all a metaphor isn't really to diminish it... but I think you know that ;)
Oh and also - love me a reference to Alan Moore!
Yes, and I think McGilchrist’s work is really another way of coming to this conclusion.
As I once put it to my somewhat woke sister: What leads to a better world? One where we all have inherent worth because we are made in the image of God and contain spark of the divine? Or one where we are all lumps of meat?
Indeed, as we all take hold of the means of production, the state will wither away..
Ha!
You say the 'devil', the government of all things, the micro management, cannot 'create', yet it does create mayhem, creates diversions, creates the apparatus to control people ( the digital health platform being promoted by WHO and individuals like Blair, creates superficial personalities for media and public consumption, creates weapons for the military to bomb civilians ( thereby creating orphans and fractured families), creates 'emergencies' to keep people fearful and to 'toe the line', to the detriment of the people.
I would say by such 'creations' the 'material' and/or 'devilish' nature of government is eventually revealed, or slowly (now) being revealed as rotten and corrupt creations. Such a system of 'government' is anathema to societies' values, religious beliefs (long held if not long attended to) - it must therefore burn itself out, especially as it resorts to ever more extravagant agendas, ever more authoritarianism.
It will indeed burn itself out. I've no doubt about that.
There is an argument, I suppose, that the Govt , and its people who put together the Manhattan Project, or NASA, might bring to you. And look at what they "created" : a bomb, and a moonshot, (assuming it really occurred)....
Brilliant. I think the Tower of Babel story dealt with similar themes 😊
Ironically, although the internet is (mostly) in English, and now with automated translation it doesn’t really matter, actually it is a perfect exemplar of people not communicating, not listening, not understanding, talking past each other. And thus the tower falls.
You're one step ahead of me. I've been ruminating over a post about precisely that topic for a long time.