A half truth is a whole lie.

Barry Goldwater once wrote, in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative,” that “Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being.” He went on to say: “Conservatism’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”

For those of us who consider ourselves conservatives (with a small ‘c’), a certain degree of independence and privacy is essential to enable us to become “artisans of (our) destiny.” POPULORUM PROGRESSIO (On The Development Of Peoples) Pope Paul VI. Where we would disagree with Barry Goldwater is that we instinctively realise that the idea of ‘maximising‘ our freedom is completely at odds with granting an equal level of freedom and respect to others. When his philosophy is acted out in the day to day world, it becomes one where the strong do what they wish and the weaker are forced to acquiesce.

In any case, what his viewpoint overlooks is, that this individualistic description of human nature does not reflect the reality of the human person as we know it. We are not completely self-sufficient supermen. We are relational creatures, deeply, deeply interconnected with one another. Every decision we make is influenced by its social context — by those around us, by culture, and by history. In fact, the classical economic model of society is based on fantasy people. Who do we know, or who have we ever met, who is completely efficient, rational, or utility-maximizing - to use the economic jargon?

We are defined by bonds of family (even where we try to reject them), by our attachments, and by our social networks, to name but a few influences which shape us. Inevitably our individual behaviour reflects the dynamic impact of all them. We do not create ourselves. We are not "free"; we are autonomous, deeply interconnected individuals, dislike it and deny it as we might.

There was a time - and it wasn’t that long ago - when the majority of people regarded themselves as part of a greater unity of country, culture and history to which they willingly gave their allegiance, even though they may well have disagreed over many internal aspects. It was regarded as natural to feel comfortable with the idea of being British, or French, Italian - or European. People felt that it was perfectly normal to love ones country, and to appreciate the sophisticated checks and balances of democracy, which enabled them to live in relative security.

But the two world wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam war and all the endless string of modern conflicts have disheartened us and made us feel increasingly insecure and uncertain of our place in the world. The greatest challenge to our sense of who we are is the loss of the idea of Truth in social and political discourse. To speak out in support of even the idea of virtue is now regarded as naïve and unsophisticated, or as a cover for our private selfish agendas. “Spin” is the final killer blow to all that we held dear, because it magically transformed our world into a horrific hall of mirrors, where sleight of hand and cynical manoeuvring has left us in a permanent state of disorientation.

Spin is everywhere. Once the prerogative of political parties, it is now the prevalent newspeak of our modern, technological world. Everything has become some form of propaganda - biased, manipulative and deceptive, and this is a real problem for all democracies because it masks untruth and feeds us with the poison of distorted information. How does it work? There are certain rules:

Incorporate unclear phrasing into every statement, written or spoken, so that its exact meaning becomes hard to pin down.

As a matter of course, manipulate the words of your opponent and misrepresent what has actually been said.

Speak in euphemisms to sound less offensive, disturbing or troubling. When you call up 30,000 additional troops for your war, don't call it an escalation. Use the word "surge," or “peacekeepers” which dampens concern.

As the news media usually repeat the wording from a press conference / press release verbatim, without questioning the aptness of the phrase, it is a very useful way of perpetuating both your message and whatever preconceptions you might wish to embody within it. Constant use of a phrase or a word legitimizes it.

Of course, we are all guilty to some degree, and we all do this to a greater or less degree. We simply call the process "lying", or "bending the truth". But now that the very existence of truth is questioned in so many fields, many begin to wonder if is it really possible, or even worthwhile, to identify which body of knowledge should be transmitted? Society as a whole has lost its confidence that it has anything worthwhile to protect and pass on to future generations. So schools and universities have taken the easy solution and have decided to opt out of the very purpose for which they were originally created. Now they teach students to 'learn how to learn' rather than deal with the difficulties and challenges of teaching traditional subjects or encouraging skills of critical appraisal and discernment. Some even consider that ‘places of learning’ should take on the role of simply delivering the values of the 'Big Society' we now live in, and thus become policing agents of political correctness?

What to do? I think that our only hope is courage and endurance. We must find a way to always speak the truth, and then endure the inevitable results. Instinctively we know that this is the only way - but to do so is to set oneself up to be demonised. But it must be done if there is to be any change in the world and if we are to be ‘children of the of the light and… not the darkness’.

I do not agree with everything that Henry David Thoreau wrote, but I do with this:

“In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they (citizens) put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. ….. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.
A very few ….serve the state with their consciences also, and so … they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”

Today tolerance means that nothing is intolerable but the truth.

I came across this interesting short article on a website I found when browsing through the internet. It is from: Austin Hall Library (Reflections on faith, culture, books and ideas found in books)


"James V. Schall made an insightful observation in an essay I read this morning on G.K. Chesterton that was originally presented at the Meeting of the American Chesterton Society, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2005.

Schall notes that it is characteristic of our more recent times that we do not really debate anything, especially the truth of anything. He says that we avoid real debate for fear that something actually might be true and therefore put demands on our minds, polities, and morals to change our ways. Thus, we only "tolerate" things.

Schall goes on to say that debate that presupposes that truth exists and is worthy of pursuit is itself a dangerous proposition, particularly politically. Therefore, our "debates" are power struggles and number countings, not attentive and logical examinations of evidence to arrive at true conclusions and reject the untrue propositions. We don't want to actually change people's minds. We only want to understand them and let them remain as they are. To change them is to undermine the very premise of respect and tolerance.

In contrast to this recent view, Schall presents the older notion of "respect" for ideas that meant doing a person the honor of seeking to correct him if he was wrong. This came from the belief that the greatest service one man could give another was to lead him to the truth--by the route in which truth is known, that is, through argument and evidence, in courtesy and conversation.

In its original sense, tolerance meant allowing other opinions to be accurately heard without intimidation, threats, or interference. Today it means the intolerable idea of not allowing them to be heard on the basis of the evidence for them.

Today tolerance means that nothing is intolerable but the truth. "

Taken from:
http://austinhall.typepad.com/austin_hall_library/2008/12/the-credo-of-our-age.html

The secret language of architecture: Are Libraries just places for books or also symbols of something greater?

Further to my previous comments about my fondness for libraries, I recently came across an article written by the Brazilian Catholic intellectual Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.

It had previously not occurred to me to consider the spiritual, almost moral, implications of architecture. I liked a building or I did not, and thought no more about it. But, having read Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s comments, I have begun to recognise that I am much more affected than I ever thought possible by the architecture, atmosphere, and ambience of particular buildings.

There are some buildings where we cannot help smiling with delight as we enter them. We recognise its beauty, graciousness, light and comfort. Or even just its little quiet, protected spaces for solitude, and peace. But others are of such utilitarian ugliness, and functional minimalism that we simply ‘switch off‘. Increasingly, we simply do not ’see’ our environment.

But back to libraries! Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira says that there are two ways of considering a library. One can view it purely in terms of its practical function i.e. to protect books, magazines, documents, etc. from humidity, fires, and thieves. And the materials must of course be organized efficiently so that information can easily be found.

He gives as his example the building that houses the library at the University of California in San Diego - a very impressive modern building, and one which the University is very proud of. As can be seen above, it is composed of four successively taller stories, and looks like an immense 'chest' with four different-sized drawers designed to neatly organize several different types of objects.

But is this sufficient? If we compare this building to something like, say, the Library of Congress, in America - or the library of Coimbra, Portugal, to which he himself refers, we can see what Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira means when he says that there is represented in such libraries “another conception of the ideal building for a library. While it meets every practical requirement, it also satisfies a higher objective -- (it) express(es) the fundamentally noble aspect of reading and studying. The building corresponds to a hierarchy of values that places thinking at the height of human activities, preceded only by prayer. Thus, the building should have, a regal magnificence to the degree possible.”

Unlike the functional design, “the books are here splendidly bound and arranged in huge, solid bookcases, numbered so they can be easily classified and found. Employing all the modern methods of our epoch, this library is completely "functional." But, on the other hand, the magnificence of its decor makes it seem like both a palace and a church.
….
The building serves not only the practical objectives of protecting papers, parchments, and bookcases; it also fills a spiritual objective, which is to highlight the prestige of the intellectual in the natural order, and, consequently, in the hierarchy of values of temporal society.”

So, what is ’wrong’ with the University of California Library, or indeed Yale University’s Beinecke Library of rare books and manuscripts? Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira says that it is the conception behind the design. A library should be more than a place for book storage. It should, in some way, pay tribute to the intrinsic nobility of intellectual life. “Nobility is not a strictly functional value, and, therefore, it cannot be completely or adequately expressed only in terms of efficiency or bigness. Mere efficiency is suitable, perhaps, for industrial buildings, where production dictates the whole architectural design. However, it is not for buildings destined for ends that transcend the mere practical domain, even while they serve a practical purpose.”

I have spent some time thinking about his article, all the more because I had never considered the matter in this light before, and I have come to the conclusion that he is correct. Architecture surely should be more than a practical and functional process through which the most economic building possible may be constructed. Surely it is in its own way a ‘dialect of the spirit‘, and should draw our hearts and minds upward.

And to those who respond with the argument that such ideas are too idealistic to put into practice, I have also included above a couple of pictures of very ordinary little ‘places where books are stored’ but where you would have to have a heart of stone not to feel instinctively that you would like to spend some time there.

Post-modernism: Be scared. Be very scared!

'Postmodernism' - we all use the phrase, but do we really understand what it means? It sounds so 'cool' so trendy, so 'on message'. It sounds as though we ' our finger on the cultural pulse'. In short, it shows we are intellectual heavyweights, worthy of esteem and respect!

I am sure that I am in good company when I find that much of what is labelled ‘postmodern’ in art, sculpture, philosophy, poetry or film is often totally incomprehensible. One has the sneaking feeling that the ’artist’ is deliberately using language and semantics to disguise the fact that there is very little in the way of logic or content in their work. Indeed, the more incomprehensible it all is, the more ‘artistic’ we are made to feel that it must be. The unmade bed, the dead animal in formaldehyde, the graffiti, or the deconstructed syntax that passes for poetry MUST be incredibly clever BECAUSE we cannot understand it! One may have a deep suspicion that it is all ‘smoke and mirrors’, but one can never quite pin down the actual source of our inner confusion.

This is why I was delighted to come across a very interesting article on the website of ‘Classical Home Schooling’ on the whole subject. (By the way, the only person I home school is myself - but I thoroughly recommend this site, as it is full of very challenging - but accessible and interesting - articles by many modern philosophers and writers.)

The emphases are mine - and this is only a small portion of the whole article, but it helped me to articulate, even if only to myself, what is wrong with Relativism.

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Excerpts from:
POSTMODERN IDOLS OF THE EDUCATION TRIBE: THE ABOLITION OF EDUCATION by Curtis L. Hancock

Read the full article on: http://classicalhomeschooling.com/?page_id=176

Postmodernism … implies a radical scepticism, of course, because consciousness cannot grasp reality. ….postmodernism asserts that knowledge, including awareness of goodness, rightness, and the human subject, is a cultural construction. Since there are no objective standards, nor human nature to establish natural law to dictate how human beings ought to behave, reason is a rule for self-invention.

(According to philosopher ) Richard Rorty, postmodernism represents the last stage of the Enlightenment Project, which has already passed through Rationalism and Romanticism. We are now in a third stage, bringing to a close the Enlightenment Project. This last stage he labels “ironic,” because, while philosophical claims to objective truth are empty, each self has its best opportunity to live autonomously on the pretence that talk about truth matters. ….. Rorty believes that there are no standards of justification for our narrations…. “Truth,” to the extent the word should be used at all, is relative to social consensus. ….

… Accordingly, philosophy is not bound by objective standards, nor can it pursue public truth …. In such a state of affairs, the aggregate “we” trumps the individual.
Since one cannot ultimately justify one worldview or moral behavior over another, one must demonstrate unlimited openness. For postmodernists intolerance is added to the original list of deadly sins. Social dialogue, along with institutions that support it, is a social priority. …

Postmodernists disagree whether tolerance is negative or positive. For Richard Rorty, tolerance is a condition for liberal democracy. But for other postmodernists, such as Michel Foucault, tolerance requires that we make the world safe for tolerance. This view calls for a liquidation of all cultural bases of intolerance. Intolerance is defined as wilful perpetuation of our self-imposed immaturity, to use Kant’s language again, and something we must transcend, perhaps with the aid (or coercion) of others, as enlightened participants in historical progress, to use the language of Rousseau. Hence, curiously, postmodernism is, for some, supportive of democratic politics; for others, collectivist politics.

… postmodernists themselves do little more than assert their views. … Of course, this will not do. By this strategy, postmodernists find themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, if they argue for their position, they contradict themselves. On the other, if they do not, what reasons do we have philosophically for accepting their worldview?

….Richard John Neuhaus makes this criticism effectively:
(The postmodernist) knows that people do and do not fear, he knows that Freud has given us a way to understand human behaviour that is more adequate than earlier descriptions, he knows the course of history toward maximizing freedom, goodness and truth will take care of themselves. He even knows that “scientific discoveries” have discredited belief in an immortal soul. The ironist’s final vocabulary turns out to be not so formal as it appears; it is filled with contents that other people call facts, and about which, contra the first article of his ironist’s creed, Rorty gives no indication of having “radical and continuing doubts.”

…Of course, sceptics have to deride common sense. Once the consensus among intellectuals is to accept beliefs that are counterintuitive to people untrained in departments of philosophy, their criticism and bemusement can be dismissed as the doubts of the unsophisticated. This fosters a Gnostic culture, as Eric Voegelin explains, in which modern and postmodern intellectuals seek to create a Magisterium of secular intellectuals. This is the consensus of Enlightened intellectuals who qualify for what Kant called “public speech,” by which even common sense is criticized. In this way, modern and postmodern intellectuals can use education and other arms of culture to monopolize discourse about their definition and interpretation of the social contract. They can protect public speech from intolerance. They can root out intolerance wherever it occurs. People who are not qualified for “public speech,” that is, those who live by the guidance of common sense, can be forced to be tolerant, just as Rousseau said Enlightened leaders can force citizens to be free. In education and in practice, this is political correctness….

Intellectual rigour - powerful shield against political correctness and cultural relativism.

Picture from :http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com

“Even if the wounds of this shattered world enmesh you,

and the sea in turmoil bears you along

in but one surviving ship,

it would still befit you

to maintain your enthusiasm for studies unimpaired.

Why should lasting values tremble

if transient things fall?”
—
Prosper of Aquitaine

"The Last Man in Europe" Part 2

Images from :http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/index.html

NOTE: George Orwell's original working title for the novel '1984' was "The Last Man in Europe". This is an excerpt from a larger article, written by George Orwell on the subject of Newspeak. I thoroughly recommend that anyone interested in the subject of corruption of language should read the full article which can be found at http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

For Part 1 see: http://becomingheralds.blogspot.com/2010/02/last-man-in-europe-part-1.html
From "The Principles of Newspeak" by George Orwell [Pt 2] (Italics mine)

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one's knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable.

….. In practice this meant that no book written before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole. Pre-revolutionary literature could only be subjected to ideological translation -- that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government. . .

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.

A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of (the age). Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed.

George Orwell


An example of Newspeak/English Translations from Orwell's novel :

Original English : "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that thy are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government....."

Newspeak Translation : Crimethink

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From the same website http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/index.html
see also this page:from which I have taken the following excerpt:

"This page is inspired by the language of Newspeak from George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Newspeak was the official language of the totalitarian state of Oceania. In the totalitarian politics of Oceania, the state possessed control over every aspect of its citizen's lives. The way they dressed, who they associated with, what they did with their free time... and most importantly - their thoughts. To achieve this goal, the government set out to construct a "perfect" language... a language in which all concepts that went against party policy were removed.

The state wanted to destroy every idea that conflicted with Ingsoc (English Socialism). The concepts of freedom, liberty, love, privacy, and democracy went against basic party principles, and therefore, had to be stamped out. And, since these concepts were becoming non-existent, there was no longer any need to have words to describe them. By destroying the words themselves, the state would be able to destroy the concepts they represented.

Once the language had been cleansed, there would be no way to form any resistance against the government. The communication of heretical ideas would be impossible, since the words to describe any "unorthodox" ideas would not be available. Any would-be revolutionaries would be robbed of the words that were necessary to spread their ideas. Moreover, it prevented anybody from even thinking any "dangerous" ideas in the first place.
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How thought provoking that Jesus Christ,
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
chose to be called
'The WORD'
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
(Douai Rheims translation) http://drb.scripturetext.com/john/1.htm

"The Last Man in Europe" Part 1

NOTE: George Orwell's original working title for the novel '1984' was "The Last Man in Europe". This is an excerpt from a larger article, written by George Orwell on the subject of Newspeak. I thoroughly recommend that anyone interested in the subject of corruption of language should read the full article which can be found at http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

From "The Principles of Newspeak" by George Orwell [Pt 1] (Italics mine.)

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits ….., but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of (the established political order) -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

To give a single example - The word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day.
…………….
The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. ……..
.
But the special function of certain Newspeak words, of which oldthink was one, was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them.

As we have already seen in the case of the word free, words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word crimethink, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink. Greater precision would have been dangerous.

So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation.

This was not done solely with the object of saving time. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. ….. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. ….This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

…. what was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker's mind. …. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. …

So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all.

The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. These resembled the scientific terms in use today, and were constructed from the same roots, but the usual care was taken to define them rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings. …..

From the foregoing account it will be seen that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very low level, was well-nigh impossible. ….The concept of political equality no longer existed… . A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of 'politically equal', or that free had once meant 'intellectually free', than for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook.

To continue to Part 2 see here: http://becomingheralds.blogspot.com/2010/02/last-man-in-europe-part-2.html

Something to think about?

“Contact with writers of genius procures us the immediate advantage of lifting us to a higher plane;

by their superiority alone they confer a benefit on us even before teaching us anything

….they accustom us to the air of the mountaintops….

In that world of lofty thought the face of truth seems to be unveiled;

beauty shines forth…”

The Intellectual Life, A.G. Sertillanges, O.P.