Part of my Teaching

After I read a batch of papers, I write a summary focusing on the main general problems in the students' arguments. Thus...

Dear writers,

I have finished the music drafts and am working on the fairy tale papers now. Interesting to note that most of you argue against limiting expose to music but for limiting exposure to fairy tales. I would be interested to know what accounts for this? The fairy tale princess more dangerous than the misogynist rap song?

    Be that as it may. With respect to the music papers, many of you argue for not limiting exposure but integrating this openness with rational discussion to enlighten the young about the nature of the music. I would point out that this might beg an important question of the critical reader: the ability to think well and be influenced by sound arguments already presupposes emotional intelligence. So to take an example outside music, a person who thinks like Woodruff might argue that a person accustomed to hardcore pornography may find it difficult to see the degradation and dehumanization inherent in it. If their emotional responses have been trained to see it as a harmless pleasure rather than as a corruption of human dignity/sexuality, they will likely reject rational arguments about its moral and psychological harm. Their failure to feel appropriate shame and reverence—emotional dispositions that recognize human dignity—renders them blind to the truth that reason seeks to reveal. Thus to argue for allowing adolescents to use it with the proviso that therapists, say, enlighten them on its dangers fails to account for the necessary precondition that allows them to recognize the depictions as dangerous: an emotional disposition to see men and women as souls rather than objects. A person’s emotional meaning-blindness to this will lead to an ability to be convinced by rational argument. How can you respond to this, if you want to make the appeal to reason argument?

Also concerning the ‘people respond to music subjectively’ arguments – same point. How a person responds depends on upbringing. That a person like trump responds differently from a loving, decent person is clear – say to people who have fled civil war and poverty. But Woodruff’s point is to raise loving decent people requires training emotional responses – partly through music (and stories for the fairy tale people). How would you writers who lay stress on the subjectivity of response reply to this key point? (Not all subjective responses are equal.)

The issue is whether emotional intelligence (loving the good, true, and beautiful; responding with aversion to the vicious, ugly, distorted) is a precondition for rational understanding – or? 

Also beware of the ad populum fallacy: just because x calls certain aspects of contemporary society into question is no argument against x. If x is true, then it is contemporary society that is in the wrong. The only question is whether x is justified – assuming x is a matter of truth and not taste. 

If you think x is a matter of taste and not truth, and your reader thinks x is a matter of truth, then the burden of proof is on you. So Woodruff thinks education and music are matters of truth: that music can objectively express good or bad values, and making certain kinds of music a part of a young person’s life can move them in one direction or the other.

I have been enjoying the papers so far. Very interesting!

 Reflections on Reality and Imagination

                                                                          Strattford Caldecott (1953-2014)

Have been reading The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, by Stratford Caldecott. Good read. Among the many themes is the “elvishness” or “fairy,” as indicated in this passage:

The desire to see Elves, like the desire to see a dragon, is not merely a desire to see a particular kind of exotic creature but a desire for Faërie, the world, realm, or state in which such creatures have their being. If we really found a fire-breathing lizard in a zoo, that would be very boring: not what we were looking for at all. The other realm is desired precisely because it is “imaginary.” It is desired because of something we find there, of which the very substance of that world is somehow composed. Some have called this “magic” but…Tolkien prefers the word “enchantment.” It is not an escape from reality.

 

Then he quotes a passage from Tolkien’s essay on fairy tales: 

Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all the things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.

 

The point is all these things become enchanted. Faërie makes more luminous the things of our world. Like Plato’s archetypes: they are perhaps a deeper form of the archetypical than Plato’s abstract ideas, for the imagination reaches far deeper than the mere intellect. Again, Tolkien is quoted:

 

By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root ant stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.

 

Thus Tolkien relates that it was first in fairy-tales that he “first divined the potency of words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.” And now I will let Caldecott continue the thought:

 

The realm of Faërie is an imaginary world, which is to say that it is made from images of real things as a pot is made of clay or a painting is made of paint. Yet we go there seeking a light that we cannot find in the primary world. The action of making or experiencing such a world is in part a creative act; we are in fact claiming our birthright to “make by the law in which we’re made”; made, that is, in the image and likeness of a Maker.” The imaginal is where we sense most strongly the essence of creativity, of the divine imagination that conceives and gives life to the primary world. It is where words are born. It is the world where things could be other than they are, or time, because it is seen against a background that looms much closer in Faërie: the background of pure light, or pure darkness.

. . .

I remember going into the forest of Eastern Kentucky (Red River Gorge) after not really having entered a real forest since childhood in the Smokey Mountains. I was struck by a kind of joy and said – “just like Fanghorn Forest!” My first thought was of Tolkien’s ‘fairy’ woods. I could only see the forest in the primary world as “enchanted” in the light of the imaginary forest I had imagined so vividly as a reader of Tolkien. (I read the Lord of the Rings practically every summer from 18 to 26, and thereafter whenever I felt “depressed.”) I don’t think my feeling that the forest in Red River Gorge was enchanted was a subjective projection onto “natural resources” or “raw material”; there was nothing sentimental about it. I think Fanghorn allowed me to see the reality of the forest in the primary world I would otherwise have been blind to. The meaning, moreover, of “fallen” becomes clear: to see the world cut off from the light that I found in the imaginative work of Tolkien. I know what sin is because of this experience.

 Peter Kreeft makes the same point in his book about Tolkien: The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings.

In The Lord of the Rings everything seems to be more itself, more Platonic. The earth is more earthy, nature is more natural, history is more historical, the genealogies more genealogical the tragedy more tragic, the joy more joyful, the caverns more cavernous, the forests more foresty, and the heroes more heroic.

   Indeed, the four forests mentioned in The Lord of the Rings have more character, more identity than most human characters in most novels. You could not possibly confuse the Old Forest, Lothlorien, Fanghorn, and Mirkwood with each other. If you found yourself in any one of them, you would instantly know which. When we read The Lord of the Rings, why do these forests seem “real” or “true”? Why do we believe them? Not because they are like the forests we have walked through in this world, but because the forests we have walked through in this world were a little like them. Tolkien’s forests do not remind us of ours; ours remind us of his.

 

That is just how I experienced it.

 

. . .

 

I have to think of babies in this light. Amazing how defenseless babies are. If a man murders a lover to protect his reputation or whatever, it's murder and he can be punished. If it is a baby, he can want it killed with no worldly consequence, and if he is godless anyway he won't care about the death of his soul. Only the mother in the end can protect the life of an unborn child. Amazing when you think about it. Power over life and death. Makes all the difference whether she sees babies in the light of love or in the darkness of the capitalist-liberal-godless world. Christmas before capitalism destroyed it provided an archetype of the human baby – very much as Tolkien’s forest provided an archetype of the Kentucky forest I walked in. And Mary provides an archetype (not stereotype!) of woman. Feminists of a certain type will cringe here; woman and men who could only think it sentimental to see an unborn baby in this light, ruin one’s career or personal “happiness” over an unintended, unwanted pregnancy. If a tree is blocking my view, cut it down. For me that is the difference between living in sin, which is to say being cut off from reality, truth, and living in sin while longing for reality and truth, which is to say love of the world. There is an unbridgeable chasm between a person who sees a baby in the light of a pure love (such as Mary’s) and one who sees it as an unwanted biological part of a woman’s body that can be easily removed. Different incommensurable alternative universes. In my view light and darkness.

. . .

None of us live in the light. We can glimpse it on special occasions – during Mass, reading Tolkien, walking in a forest, witnesses the birth of your child. But we are all human; we get drawn back into the prosaic state of mind, and cannot see the enchantment of the world. As Max Weber said, modernity disenchanted (entzauberte) the world. Here is the thought expressed in the 7^th Elegy of Rilke, who bravely fought against this disenchantment.

 

To be here at all is a glory.

You knew it, maidens,

even those of you seemingly

passed over, sinking into

the city’s meanest streets,

festering alleys choked with

trash and stinking of excretions.

Each of you had her hour,

or if not an hour,

an instant, at least,

between two moments when

life burst into flower.

Every blessed petal.

Your veins throbbed with it.

But we so soon forget what

our laughing neighbor neither

applauds nor envies.

We desire that they be admired,

but even the most visible

of joys cannot be seen

until transformed-within.

Nowhere, beloved, does any

world exist save that within.

 So sinner though we are, to long for the world as it was made, to suffer that kind of Sehnsucht, defines a certain type of human possibility. It is not a desire to flee the earth for a purely spiritualized Heaven but to be in the world as originally created in all its glory. It is a way of staying “true to the earth” much different from Nietzsche’s. To lose this longing is to be condemned in a prison house and forget there is a world outside the prison. But it is the same world, a prison or a paradise. It depends on whether it is “transformed-within.”

     C. S. Lewis described in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy this painful longing for transcendence within the world as joy: 

I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?... Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.

 

And in his essay “Three Ways of Writing for Children,” Lewis connects this joy to imaginative works that open the doors to Faërie: 

Do fairy tales teach children to retreat into a world of wish-fulfillment— ‘fantasy’ in the technical psychological sense of the word— instead of facing the problems of the real world? Now it is here that the problem becomes subtle. Let us again lay the fairy tale side by side with the school story or any other story which is labeled a ‘Boy’s Book’ or a ‘Girl’s Book’, as distinct from a ‘Children’s Book.’ There is no doubt that both arouse, and imaginatively satisfy, wishes. We long to go through the looking glass, to reach fairyland. We also long to be the immensely popular and successful schoolboy or schoolgirl, or the lucky boy or girl who discovers the spy’s plot or rides the horse that none of the cowboys can manage. But the two longings are very different. The second, especially when directed on something so close as school life, is ravenous and deadly serious. Its fulfillment on the level of imagination is in very truth compensatory: we run to it from the disappointments and humiliations of the real world: it sends us back to the real world undividedly discontented. For it is all flattery to the ego.

    The pleasure consists in picturing oneself the object of admiration. The other longing, that for fairyland, is very different. In a sense a child does not long for fairy land as a boy longs to be the hero of the first eleven. Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale?—really wants dragons in contemporary England? It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, Tar from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new ‘dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing. The boy reading the school story of the type I have in mind desires success and is unhappy (once the book is over) because he can’t get it: the boy reading the fairy tale desires and is happy in the very fact of desiring. For his mind has not been concentrated on himself, as it often is in the more realistic story.

 

 

 Depression

Psychiatrist: Judging by your lab results and the circumstances of your life, you must suffer from depression.

Me: How can I be depressed when I feel fine? That is an idee fixe in you, trying to persuade me of that. People get depressed because their lives lack love, meaning, purpose, and beauty. None of those things are missing in my life. Yes, a lot of bullshit and evil to deal with in this world, that gets a man down. That only means I am sane. Please stop trying to brainwash me that I have some psychic disease. You would have more luck getting me to believe in leprechauns. That is a modern superstition, an ideology masking the lack of love, beauty, purpose, meaning - God! - in people's lives. It is a social effect of capitalism and the lives it trashes. I honestly think – logically – your profession is analogous to the witch doctor.

 

Psychiatrist: The levels of substance xyz you have has been empirically correlated with depression. That is an objective fact.

 

Me: The correlation might be a fact. That the levels cause depression as a tornado causes a house to be blown down is not a fact. You see what you have been conditioned to see. “Reality” for you has truly been socially constructed.

 

Psychiatrist: What I do is science.

 

Me: No, you use the scientific method appropriate to a material, mechanical aspect of reality to study an object – the soul – that is not mechanical at all. I am not an organic machine but an embodied soul. True, my diseases take away my energy. But not my love of life, my boys, my books, trees, God, etc. I feel blessed - as long as I can forget what capitalists are doing to my sons, what has happened to my country, Ukraine, the state of the world -  and other more minor bullshit.

 Psychiatrist: I see.

Me: When our spiritual antennas are turned towards particular embodiments of truth, goodness, beauty - God - we are healthy as souls, even when our bodies fail. That is what I believe to be true. "I feel blessed, my life is meaningful, I love and am loved, I have joy over the life of the mind, I love teaching, (etc.) - but I am 'depressed.'" That makes no sense. “Depression” is a myth I have no use for. I think "depression" is a mask for the absence of purpose, beauty, meaning, and above all love - or the hope for love. It is the (despairing) belief that one is unlovable, one's life unworthy. Depression is the absence of hope, a modern mask of despair. Am certain of that as I am of loving our boys.

I don’t doubt that the absence of these things often results from childhood traumas, the absence of love in the family. Of course, these leave measurable traces in the brain – we are not pure spirits but bodily creatures who are also spiritual. But sometimes, it is the effect of a false, materialist belief system. And that materialist belief system encloses those who are victims of adults in a cage. Drugs or "therapy" cannot replace the absence of love (God) - the only "medicine" that helps.

Technology and the Body

 

   To summarize what I said before: the machines that corporations build have the technological mindset built into them.  The salesmen of these machines tell us that their technologies have no purposes other than the ones we give them – that we, not the machines, are the masters. But the truth is that the machines do have purposes of their own, purposes hidden from most of us by the pervasiveness of the mindset those purposes express. Technology is not neutral but embodies the hidden purposes of the regime that produces them and that their technologies perpetuate. Whoever does not understand this truth is defenseless.

   This mindset conditions our attitude toward nature – and thus toward our bodies. The same matrix of metaphysics and values embodied by capitalist technology permeates our thought and feeling about the human body. To quote from an article written by someone who understands this truth:

The very act of refashioning (or attempting to refashion) the world technologically also refashions (or attempts to refashion) the conditions of our bodily existence. It is already a first technological assault on our bodily existence. By de- or re-naturing the world in which we have to live as bodies, we de- or re-nature our bodies themselves. How we treat physical nature is by definition, and in the same act, how we treat ourselves, and the modern attempt to become “masters and possessors of nature” has always aimed at making us masters and possessors of our own human, bodily nature. We thus come to the deepest reason for the vague unease that the latest technological gadgets arouse in many of us: technology is the project of erasing the distinction between artifice and human nature. To put it provocatively, technology has always been biotechnology, and biotechnology threatens the irreplaceable uniqueness and inviolable sanctity of the body. (Not Neutral: Technology and the “Theology of the Body,” Adrian Walker.)

Our minds, spirits, or consciousness – ala Descartes – is a radically different kind of thing from our physical bodies, which are experienced as containers of the mind – the mind being like a ghost in the machine. Or: our minds are themselves part of nature, thus raw material like the rest of the body to be programmed and reprogrammed by those who control the programming technologies. The food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the abortion industry, the fertility industry, the fitness industry, the fashion industry – in short, industry – all see the body as a miner sees the forested mountain. Technology-driven attitudes prioritize efficiency, scalability, and profitability – dissolving personal fulfillment, aesthetic depth, and communal bonds. People see their bodies as billboards upon which they advertise their identities. They see it as a house they can decorate according to taste. They see it as property, unborn child as well. They see themselves as an autonomous sovereign ruling over their body as a king did his kingdom, determining what happens to it even to the point of making their natural sex something constructed, assigned, changeable. 

I will list some phenomena that I would understand in the context of this thesis (not original to me) about technology, illustrating how the technological mindset attempts to dominate even the deepest and universal aspects of human existence.

·        Smartphones are extensions of our senses but also filters that dictate what we perceive. Augmented reality applications, for instance, overlay artificial constructs onto physical environments, blending the boundary between the "natural" and the "designed."

·        Wearable devices reduce bodily experience to metrics (e.g., steps taken, calories burned, sleep cycles) encouraging users to view their bodies as data-driven projects to optimize, rather than as holistic, lived realities.

·        Biotechnological tools like CRISPR offer the promise of eradicating diseases but also reflect the human aspiration to "perfect" nature, making the human genome a canvas for technological manipulation.

·       The cosmetic surgery industry allows individuals to sculpt their bodies to align with socially constructed ideals, reflecting the commodification of physical identity.

·      The transformation of agriculture into a mechanized process not only alienates humans from the land but also alters dietary habits, health, and perceptions of nourishment. The nature of domestic animals is violated in a way I can only think of as Satanic.·        

·        Video games, metaverses, and digital platforms offer immersive worlds that challenge the primacy of the physical body and natural environment as the center of human experience.

·        The body and mind are commodified further in a digital age, as behaviors, thoughts, and preferences are captured, analyzed, and monetized.

·        Technology often seeks to maximize efficiency, reducing human labor to repetitive, task-oriented processes. Assembly lines and automated systems alienate workers from the creative and fulfilling aspects of their labor, turning them into "cogs in the machine."

·        Apps like Uber and TaskRabbit transform labor into an on-demand, fragmented service. Workers are less likely to identify with their craft or trade, as technology prioritizes convenience and speed over skill and mastery.

·        Skilled trades that once required years of apprenticeship—like woodworking, blacksmithing, or tailoring—are replaced by mass-produced alternatives, eroding the intrinsic satisfaction of creating something unique.

·        The digital age commodifies art through platforms like NFTs and algorithm-driven art generation. Art becomes less about personal or cultural expression and more about market trends, clicks, and monetization. Books of permanent value, for example, are lost in the drive to generate the ever-new and fleeting. What Nietzsche wrote about newspapers applies to all art now: “There is nothing deader than yesterday’s news [art, literature].”

·        Globalized technologies disseminate a narrow range of aesthetic ideals, pressuring artists to conform to trends dictated by algorithms and consumer preferences.

·        Platforms like Instagram turn artistic and craft processes into spectacles for consumption rather than practices of personal or cultural enrichment.

·        Apps like Tinder commodify romantic and sexual relationships by transforming the search for a partner into a game-like experience. The focus shifts from intimacy and connection to instant gratification, often reducing individuals to curated profiles and swipes.

·        The proliferation of pharmaceuticals like Viagra or surgeries aimed at enhancing sexual performance reflects a technological mindset that sees the body as a machine to be optimized for addictive pleasure rather than a subject of mutual human experience.

·        Technologies like IVF and surrogacy are framed as empowering, but they also reflect a shift toward treating procreation as a controllable, commodifiable process. Eggs, sperm, and embryos become resources to be frozen, stored, and used on demand.

·        The ability to select traits in embryos represents a profound technological redefinition of parenthood, where children may be seen less as gifts and more as customizable projects.

·        High-speed internet and streaming platforms have made pornography a pervasive presence, normalizing its consumption and shaping cultural attitudes toward sex. The immediacy and abundance reinforce a detached, consumerist approach to sexuality. Pornography often reflects the values of industrial production (efficiency, scalability, and objectification), reducing human bodies to mere instruments of pleasure and normalizing depersonalized or violent interactions. Widespread pornography consumption fosters unrealistic expectations, undermines real-life intimacy, and often leads to addiction-like behaviors that prioritize instant gratification over meaningful connection. Pornography is what happens to sex when commodified.

·        Technology enforces the notion that all aspects of sexuality, fertility, and reproduction can and should be controlled. This mindset mirrors the technological domination of nature and echoes the industrial ethos of efficiency and predictability. The natural processes of attraction, conception, and intimacy, once imbued with mystery and ethical weight, are increasingly reduced to technical problems with technical solutions. [The much maligned and ridiculed sexual teaching of the Catholic Church reflects a technological fundamentalism.]

·        Advances in medical technology have shifted death from a natural, communal event to a highly medicalized and institutionalized process. Death is often treated as a failure of systems to be delayed or prevented rather than an inevitable human reality.

·        Technologies that promise to "defeat death," such as cryogenic freezing or research into radically extending the human lifespan, treat death as a solvable technical problem, rooted in the belief that nature, including mortality, can be mastered.

·        Projects that seek to upload human consciousness to the cloud or create AI avatars of deceased individuals attempt to erase the finality of death, presenting an artificial form of continuity that reflects the technological ambition to transcend human limitations.

·        The funeral industry increasingly relies on technology, offering livestreamed funerals, digital memorials, and even eco-friendly "green burials." While some of these innovations respond to practical needs, they often reflect a broader trend of commodifying the rituals surrounding death.

·        While hospice movements push back against the technological framing of death, they also highlight how far removed many people have become from the natural process of dying, often experiencing it as a clinical event rather than a shared, existential passage.

·        Technological advancements enabling assisted dying shape debates around autonomy and control over death, reflecting a desire to master even this most final and mysterious of human experiences.

·        The technological mindset seeks to control and deny the inevitability of death, reinforcing a disconnection from the natural cycle of life and death. Death is increasingly seen not as meaningful (painfully so) but as a mechanical failure or a data point to be managed, extending the industrial mindset into the realm of the ultimate.

 

I am sorry – this list is too long and yet I could go on and on. As Philip Sherrard wrote: “There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and as mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment.”

. . .

Iris Murdoch once said we are animals that make pictures of ourselves and the world, and then become like those pictures. We have replaced a picture of the universe as sacred, of ourselves as embodied souls created in the image of God, with the picture of autonomous selves coexisting with a meaningless nature (which includes our bodies).

   I am aware of and am grateful for some of the technologies that Science-Technology-Capitalism has spawned, but technology has been at least until now a total package: you don’t get modern dentistry without the Internet and the automobile. Perhaps we can figure out a way to keep those truly valuable technologies – much fewer than most people suppose – in a more humane regime once Science-Technology-Capitalism has been overcome. Or ends in catastrophe.

I will end with two quotes from Philip Sherrard:

“We are treating our planet in an inhuman, god-forsaken manner because we see things in an inhuman, god-forsaken way. And we see things in this way because that is basically how we see ourselves. How we see the world depends above all upon how we see ourselves. Our model of the universe – our world-picture or world-image – is based upon the model we have of ourselves, upon our own self-image.  When we look at the world, what we see is a reflection of our own mind, of our own mode of consciousness. Our perception of a tree, a mountain, a face, an animal or a bird is a reflection of our idea of who we think we are. What we experience in these things is not so much the reality or nature of these things in themselves as simply that which our own limitations, spiritual, psychological and physical, permit us to experience of them. Our capacity to perceive and experience is stereotyped according to how we have moulded our own image and likeness.” – Phillip Sherrard, The Rape of Man and Nature

 

“The industrial and technological inferno we have produced around us, and by means of which we are now devastating our world, is not something that has come about accidentally. On the contrary, it is the direct consequence of our allowing ourselves to be dominated by a certain paradigm of thought – embracing a certain human image and a certain world image – to such a degree that it now determines virtually all our mental attitudes and all our actions, public and private. It is a paradigm of thought that impels us to look upon ourselves as little more than two-legged animals whose destiny and needs can best be fulfilled through the pursuit of social, political and economic self-interest. And to correspond with this self-image we have invented a world-view [GL: conditioned by capitalist life a world-view has been imposed on us] in which nature is seen as an impersonal commodity, a soulless source of food, raw materials, wealth, power and so on, which we think we are quite entitled to experiment with, exploit, remodel, and generally abuse by means of any scientific and mechanical technique we can devise and produce, in order to satisfy and deploy this self-interest. Having in our own minds desanctified ourselves, we have desanctified nature, too, in our own minds: we have removed it from the suzerainty of the divine and have assumed that we are its overlords, and that it is our thrall, subject to our will. In short, under the aegis of this self-image and world-view we have succeeded in converting ourselves into the most depraved and depraving of all creatures upon the earth.” – Phillip Sherrard, Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology

 

 The Problem of Technology and the Mechanization of the Flesh

Part One: Technology as Ontology 

You can see technology as a society’s stock of tools and machines, which are made to serve particular purposes. Thus although you can judge the goodness or badness of the purposes, the tools themselves are neutral. “It is not a rifle that kills but a hard heart.” A rifle is a tool for killing but there are times when killing is justified or even necessary (e.g. hunting game to survive, defense of family), and times when killing is evil. Still, the purpose belongs to the tool, and not all purposes are equal. To that extent at least, not all technology is equal. The few varieties of tomatoes available in supermarkets are connected to their ability to be harvested by a certain kind of machine, which itself was invented to replace dependence on human workers: that machine is not a neutral tool but part of capitalist rationality. The Amish – to their credit – would have no use for it. Technology is always embedded in economic-social-power arrangements, supporting or undermining these. The Internet left in the university world would function differently than it does in corporate capitalism, though the basic technological idea is the same. Capitalism develops the complex of Internet technologies in radically different ways than would a non-profit university Internet. Again, the Amish have no use for it at all. Technology is an interplay of power, purpose, economics, and social form.

   A mechanical clock may seem like a neutral device for measuring time, but it imposes its own logic and purpose on how we experience and structure life. The purpose of a clock is to divide time into uniform, measurable units—hours, minutes, and seconds—transforming our subjective experience of time into a quantifiable resource. This shift is far from innocuous. By breaking time into discrete, measurable parts, the clock subtly changes how humans perceive and engage with the world:

1.    Loss of Organic Rhythms: Before clocks became ubiquitous, human life was structured around natural rhythms—sunrise, sunset, the seasons. The clock replaces these organic rhythms with mechanical regularity, detaching us from the natural flow of time.

2.    Efficiency Over Wholeness: The clock’s division of time encourages a mindset focused on efficiency and productivity, where time becomes a commodity to be used, saved, or wasted. This can fragment our activities and relationships, reducing the sense of wholeness or integrity in how we live.

3.    Dehumanizing Labor: In workplaces, the clock regulates activities into shifts and breaks, turning work into a set of timed tasks. Workers themselves may start to be seen not as whole persons but as units of labor measured in "man-hours."

In essence, the clock shapes how humans experience life by treating time not as a holistic continuum, but as a heap of interchangeable moments, much like the computer’s treatment of information. It has a purpose—measuring and dividing time—that influences not only what we do with it but also how we think about time, ourselves, and the world.

   The clock conditions us to think of time as a series of interchangeable units. This affects how we structure our lives—prioritizing schedules and productivity over the organic flow of life. Similarly, the photo conditions us to see representations (images) as interchangeable with reality, making it easier to forget the uniqueness and immediacy of the original experience. When you view a computer-produced digital photo, your perception of the image as a whole is indeed intact. You see the sunset, not the pixels or binary code. However, the critique is about the conditions that made the digital photo possible and how those conditions influence your experience, replacing or colonizing the original experience. The richness of the sunset as a lived, embodied experience (its warmth, its fleeting quality, its context in your life) is reduced to visual data. A computer captures only what it can quantify—not the subjective, emotional, or relational dimensions of the moment. The digital photo can be copied, resized, and edited endlessly. This undermines its singularity. Unlike a painting or a physical photograph, it no longer exists as a unique object tied to a specific time and place. The sunset has been reduced to parts (pixels, data points), which the computer assembles into an image. While you perceive the whole, the underlying process reflects a fragmented view of reality. The computer had to transform the sunset into data—discrete, measurable packets of information. This transformation emphasizes what can be measured and replicated over what is inherently unique or unquantifiable. The sunset itself, in reality, is a singular, unrepeatable event. The digital image, however, is a representation, created through a process that has prioritized its technical replicability over its uniqueness. [Plato’s allegory of the cave!]

   In all these cases, the mechanistic process doesn’t just transform the specific object (time or the sunset); it subtly changes how we think about time itself or experience itself. Time becomes something to measure and control, rather than something to live through or celebrate as part of Creation. The world becomes a collection of data points to manipulate, rather than a mystery to encounter as a whole. Both examples illustrate the same underlying colonization of the spirit: that technological systems tend to impose their own logic of fragmentation and mechanization onto our understanding of the world, subtly reshaping – or re-wiring – how we live and think.

     The action of  “processing information” is always the purpose of the computer itself. It is thus one that every user necessarily makes his own, even if implicitly, by the very act of using the computer. You may use the computer for evangelization or for selling porn. You may be trying to convey ideas, and not reduce them to bits of machinery. Nonetheless, by turning on the computer, you are just so far accepting the purpose of the computer itself. To achieve your purpose, you have got to let the computer achieve its purpose of processing information.

. . .

    It is also located in a society’s scientific, engineering, and economic infrastructure. Technology presupposes all of these. The form technology takes in capitalism is a function of a high level of scientific knowledge and engineering know-how put mostly in the service of corporate pecuniary interests. The rise of technology is one with the rise of science and capitalist industrialism.

Within this system the military power of a country is a function importantly of technology such that countries that are not part of this system would not be in a position to defend itself against an aggressor that was (all things being equal).

But modern technology can also be seen as the physical embodiment of a worldview, a way of seeing the earth (nature) and the human world, a was of seeing the human relationship to nature, to other human beings, to the past and future (i.e. to time), and even to God — as Marx, Mumford, Heidegger, and others have seen it despite differing philosophies. Technology is the filter, or lens through which those of us condemned to live in capitalism – whether in the liberal or autocratic-fascist versions – experience and conceptualize the very being of things. Technology is not just a metaphor for our take on reality but the most literal expression of it: that is, of the “modern project,” the project of mastering nature ostensibly to better the lot of Man but really to increase the power of the masters of technology (the corporation and the state) over man.  Technology is another name for the enterprise of becoming “masters and possessors of nature,” as Descartes put it. But as C. S. Lewis put in The Abolition of Man (a necessary read): “What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

      If nature is amoral, an indifferent, meaningless collection of stuff – as it is seen through the lens of technology – better, the regime of Technology-Science-Capitalism (one complex) – then there is no such thing as violating nature; there is just the raw transformation of the raw material of the world. If human making is unbounded by any pre-given moral order written into the heart of nature, then anything goes. The results are clear to see. I don’t just mean the Earth has been tormented to its limits but also our humanity. This is the fruit of the ontology and its corresponding epistemology of Technology-Science-Capitalism.

   Many of us worry about the Internet or biotech but our worries are often blunted by the bland assurance that the problem with technology isn’t technology itself but how we choose to use it. But this faith in the neutrality of technology expresses the essence of technology itself – the fundamentalist conviction that nature herself sets no limits to what we should do. What can be done is done as long as some corporation profits. Only at the extreme fringes where humanity is cancelled does the State try to impose limits (e.g. cloning) though increasingly that attempt seems like a relic from a pre-modern culture.  The belief that technology is a set of neutral instruments, like technology itself, is one with the conviction that there is no moral order in physical nature, just brute matter whose only meaning we put into it through our transformative making and doing. To say “technology is neutral” is to say “making, as making, is amoral, but you can add morality to making – if you wish.” Thus the human will is seen as the only source of moral value in the universe; technology is the instrument of this radical freedom.

     Technology becomes what Marx called a “form of social consciousness” that determines our largely subconscious “common sense.”

1.    The technological order cannot be changed or qualitatively altered. To refuse the fruits of technological “progress” is a form of madness or delusion.

2.    The existing technological order is morally good. Technology makes life qualitatively better. The past has nothing to teach us.

3.    What does not comply with the technological order is blameworthy. We can disagree about all kinds of issues as long as we don’t call into question the mainframe of Technology-Science-Capitalism (in its corporate form).

4.    What promotes this order is praiseworthy. People who serve it get Noble prizes – and lucrative jobs and social prestige.

5.    Whatever rank individuals hold in this order represents their intrinsic worth. Billionaires, scientists, engineers, etc. are worth more than the family farmer or traditional craftsman.

6.    The technological order represents the common good. To all appearances we all consent to it – or rather, it is so deeply ingrained in us we take it for granted, never occurs to us to question it.

7.    Corporations represent the interests of society as a whole. They are engines of employment and technological development.

8.    Capital (the power of those who control it to command labor and nature) is represented as a self-moving power that “creates jobs,” “brings prosperity,” etc.  

9.    Ultimate social agency rests in a non-human entity. Thus instead of “fate” or “divine plan” we get “technological progress” as the agency of history.

If you in a difficult rebellion manage to think outside this… not box but cage, you will be considered unhinged and ignored in liberal democracies; perhaps imprisoned or killed in the capitalist autocracies.  

   This molding of consciousness goes deep. The word “technology” sums up the historical shift from a concern with work according to nature and human nature – work that can intelligibly be a vocation –  to the taken-for-granted attitude that there is no nature, no reality to conform to in the first place. It is shorthand for the shift from the ideal of the craftsman to the ideal of the technician. And since this shift has affected how we make what we make, the technological mentality behind the shift is bound to be “wired” into our gadgetry itself.  Most of us cannot find meaning in work or a community of workers or in making well what needs to be made but only in the stuff (little of which you really need) you can buy with the money you make, if indeed you are lucky enough to make any money. It is a poor trade. Trading the real world for a digital Cave (referring to Plato’s allegory).

 

 

Grammar in the Thought of Stratford Caldecott

                                                        Stratford Caldecott (1953-2014)

 

In spite my brain energy being at an all-time low, I have been reading Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word. His understanding of grammar interests me, partly for its contrast to conventional, formal grammar and Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar.

   For Caldecott, grammar transcends its conventional definition as a set of rules governing language structure. He views grammar as the foundational act of human understanding and expression. It is not merely formal but is deeply connected to recognizing, remembering, conceptualizing (seeing as), and articulating reality. Grammar, in this sense, relates to the first act of the mind: the formation of ideas – there is a certain logic or structure involved in reality disclosing itself to our experience (senses, emotions, intellect).

 Grammar and the First Act of the Mind

     In classical philosophy, the first act of the mind involves grasping the essence of things and forming simple apprehensions or ideas. Caldecott’s concept of grammar aligns with this process. Grammar, as the study of words and their relations, reflects the structure of reality itself. Words are not arbitrary; they signify deeper realities, pointing beyond themselves to the essences of things. For example, consider the word “sun.” It does not merely denote a celestial body but evokes its role in sustaining life, its symbolic meanings across cultures, and its centrality in human experience. A sentence like “The sun is rising” builds upon this by framing the sun within a relational structure—the act of rising, the observer’s perception, and the rhythm of day and night. This act of naming and structuring captures something of the order and meaning inherent in creation, showing how grammar connects our perception to the essence of what is perceived. Its essence is not a formal logical definition but its range of possible meanings – importantly also poetic meanings (genuine poetry is language at its most essential). The word sun is like a spring that continually flows as long as there are people with hearts and minds to drink from it.

   Caldecott’s view of grammar connects to the magical moment when the human mind first apprehends the essence of a being. This act is not simply a conceptual or definitional task but an intuitive grasp, akin to what the classical tradition called the first act of the mind. In this moment, the mind perceives a reality—not in isolation but as part of a larger order—and forms an idea of it. Take the example of the "sun." When a person first encounters the sun, whether through direct experience or reflection, they intuitively recognize its existence and significance. This recognition does not arise solely from reasoning or formal analysis but through an imaginative and sensory encounter: the warmth on the skin, the interplay of light and shadow, the dawning realization of its life-giving role. The word “sun” emerges as a name for this reality, but it carries with it layers of meaning that extend far beyond a mere label. These meanings come to include its physical properties, symbolic resonance, and relationship to human life and time.

     This moment of conceiving an idea is guided by a “logic” that Caldecott might associate with the grammar of being itself—a natural harmony between the mind’s capacity to name and the intelligibility of creation. Naming, then, becomes an act of participation in the deeper structure of reality. Grammar, in this sense, is not just about syntactical rules but the underlying principles that allow the mind to connect with, articulate, and remember what is true. It is a poetic grammar.

 

 

Grammar and Remembering

    Caldecott emphasizes the role of remembering in grammar. To name something is to bring it into conscious awareness, to recall its place within the order of things. This remembering is not merely a cognitive process but an act of reconnecting with the essence of what is named. It involves engaging with reality as something meaningful and intelligible. For instance, the word “tree” carries more than its physical attributes; it evokes its role in nature, its symbolic meanings, and its connection to human experience. Grammar enables us to hold these meanings in tension, preserving and transmitting the memory of what has been perceived. There is a connection between poetic language and memorability. This is clearly very Platonic-Christian. The Ideas of things are of God's mind. When the being of a tree discloses itself in us, we are distantly receiving a part of God's mind. Our minds are finite (and fallible in our fallen world) images of God's. When the tree discloses itself to us, it is like remembering in the sense that the soul already has access to the eternal truths of God and the divine order — it has simply forgotten them due to the effects of the Fall. True education, therefore, is not so much a process of external learning as it is an act of recovering or rediscovering the deeper knowledge that the soul inherently possesses. 

 

Grammar and Music

     Caldecott’s vision of grammar is also connected to music. He views the structure of language as inherently musical, reflecting harmony, rhythm, and proportion. The relational aspects of words mirror the relational nature of notes in a melody. Grammar, like music, engages both the intellect and the imagination, drawing us into an encounter with meaning that transcends the merely propositional. For example, poetic language—which relies on rhythm, meter, and metaphor—demonstrates how grammar and music work together to evoke truths that are felt and intuited rather than strictly defined. This I need to think about more.

 

Grammar and the Trivium

    In the classical trivium, grammar is the foundation upon which dialectic and rhetoric are built. Dialectic analyzes and discerns truth through reasoned argument, while rhetoric communicates truth persuasively. Dialectic is what Socrates does. It is what I try to teach. It presupposes grammar. Grammar, however, provides the initial act of naming and structuring that makes thought and communication possible. Without grammar’s grounding in the order of reality, dialectic risks abstraction and rhetoric risks manipulation. Caldecott’s view restores the primacy of grammar as a formative, integrative discipline. It shapes the way we perceive and articulate the world, grounding our reasoning and persuasion in the recognition of meaning and order.

 

Implications for Education

     Caldecott’s understanding of grammar has implications for education. Teaching grammar in this sense involves more than imparting technical skills; it requires cultivating an awareness of language as a means of encountering reality. This can be achieved through using literary or poetic texts, for example: Using poetic and literary texts that reveal the structure of reality, such as descriptions of nature or meditations on universal themes. Integrating grammar with imagination and memory helps students see language as a reflection of the world’s harmony. Consider these lines from Old English poetry (how I wish I knew Old English!):

 

        "Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtast, / ofer middangeard monnum sended."

 

        ["Lo! Eärendel, brightest of angels, / sent to men over middle-earth."]

 

Here, the sun (Éarendel) is addressed as a herald of light and hope, revealing not only its physical presence but also its symbolic resonance as a source of guidance and life. The grammar of the text—its subject-verb-object structure and the evocative address—reflects a deeper structure of reality, where the sun serves as a bridge between the heavens and the human world. This poetic engagement deepens the act of apprehending the sun’s essence, merging its physical, symbolic, and relational dimensions. It shows the role of language in preserving and transmitting the shared memory of human experience. 

   So for Caldecott, grammar is far more than a technical discipline. It is an act of remembrance, a participation in the musicality of language, and a foundational means of engaging with the world. By naming and structuring reality, grammar connects us to the essence of things, laying the groundwork for thought and communication. He challenges modern, reductive views of language, offering instead a vision of grammar as a gateway to truth and beauty. I don’t pretend to fully understand what he wrote about grammar. This is my best attempt.

Ego-drama vs. Theo-drama

 

Ego-Drama and Theo-Drama: Contrasting Milton's Satan and Shakespeare's Macbeth

                                                      Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

 

Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between the ego-drama and the theo-drama provides a framework for understanding two literary figures I find archetypical of modern man: Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Von Balthasar uses these terms to distinguish between two contrasting approaches to life and meaning. The ego-drama is the narrative of the self, where individual desires, ambitions, and autonomy take center stage. It is a drama written, directed, and performed by the ego, often to the exclusion of any higher purpose. It is all about self-invention. In contrast, the theo-drama invites human beings to participate in a larger, divine narrative, where meaning is derived from alignment with human nature as revealed in the Creation and Providence (our vocation). The ego-drama seeks self-assertion, while the theo-drama calls for the actualization of the soul in service of a transcendent good. Both Satan and Macbeth embody the tensions between these two dramas, albeit in distinct ways.

 

Milton’s Satan: The Ultimate Ego-Drama

Milton’s Satan epitomizes the ego-drama in its purest and most destructive form. From the outset, Satan’s actions are driven by his unyielding desire for autonomy and self-glorification. In Paradise Lost, Satan proclaims, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” encapsulating his self-centered philosophy. His rebellion against God is not motivated by a higher principle but by his refusal to accept a subordinate role in the theo-drama.

• Focus on the Self: Satan views himself as the hero of his own narrative. He rejects the divine order, constructing a universe where his will and ambition are supreme.
• Isolation: By severing himself from God and the heavenly community, Satan becomes increasingly solitary. His grand speeches to his followers mask an inner emptiness and despair.
• Remorselessness: Satan’s ego-drama is characterized by a complete lack of remorse. His pride prevents him from acknowledging his error or seeking redemption. Instead, he doubles down on his rebellion, fully embracing his role as the antagonist in God’s cosmic story.

Satan’s tragedy lies in his meaning-blindness, his unwillingness to recognize that his defiance is self-destructive. By refusing to participate in the theo-drama, he condemns himself to a hollow existence, defined by perpetual resistance and despair.

 

Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Divided Ego

   In contrast, Macbeth offers a more complex portrayal of the ego-drama. Like Satan, Macbeth asserts his autonomy by rejecting the moral order. Spurred by the witches’ prophecy and his own ambition, he murders Duncan to seize the throne. However, unlike Satan, Macbeth is haunted by remorse.

• Ambition and Self-Assertion: At the start of the play, Macbeth contemplates the theo-drama. He knows that killing Duncan violates both divine law and human decency. Yet his ambition drives him to act, placing his desires above the moral order.
• Capacity for Remorse: Unlike Satan, Macbeth experiences intense guilt. After killing Duncan, he laments, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” This line reveals his recognition of the enormity of his crime and his deep yearning for absolution.
• Self-Concept and the Fear of Repentance: Macbeth’s inability to repent stems not just from a lack of will but from a fear that repentance would shatter his self-concept as a man of courage and reveal the ego that acted to be a false self. To Macbeth, courage is tied to relentless action, even when that action leads to further moral decay. To fail to act because natural law forbids it is for Macbeth equivalent to showing cowardice in the face of the enemy. Acknowledging his guilt would require him to redefine his identity, something he is unwilling to face.

Macbeth’s tragedy is his divided soul. He recognizes the theo-drama but chooses to remain in the ego-drama, consumed by his ambition and paralyzed by his guilt.

Theological and Literary Implications

   Satan and Macbeth illustrate two paths within the ego-drama. Satan’s unyielding pride leads to complete isolation and despair. Macbeth, on the other hand, retains a capacity for remorse, hinting at a potential for redemption that he ultimately rejects. This distinction highlights the moral and spiritual dimensions of Balthasar’s theo-drama:

1.    The Role of Remorse: Remorse signals an awareness of the theo-drama. While Satan’s pride precludes remorse, Macbeth’s guilt reveals his recognition of a higher moral order.

2.    The Possibility of Redemption: Macbeth’s tragedy lies in his refusal to act on his remorse. His capacity for guilt suggests that he could reenter the theo-drama through repentance, but his ego and despair keep him trapped.

3.    Isolation vs. Communion: Both characters are isolated by their rebellion, but Satan’s isolation is absolute. Macbeth, by contrast, remains tethered to the moral order through his conscience, even as he distances himself from it.

  

The Existential Hero and the Ego-Drama

    Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between the ego-drama and the theo-drama finds an intriguing parallel in the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s existential hero is committed to radical freedom and self-definition, rejecting any preordained essence or divine narrative. Sartre’s hero creates meaning – a divine power – solely through individual choice and action, aligning closely with the self-assertion of the ego-drama. Like Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Sartre’s existential hero denies participation in the theo-drama, seeing it as a negation of autonomy.

     Sartre’s concept of bad faith, a denial of one’s freedom and responsibility, sheds light on the inner conflict of Macbeth. By refusing to fully confront his guilt and redefining his identity as a man of courage, Macbeth embodies bad faith, avoiding the existential hero’s demand for radical honesty about one’s actions and their moral implications. On the other hand, Satan might appear as an archetype of Sartre’s ideal of authenticity. He acts with full awareness of his rebellion and embraces his self-imposed identity, proclaiming his autonomy even at the cost of damnation. Yet, in Sartre’s framework, this too might fall short, as Satan’s self-assertion depends on his opposition to God, suggesting a paradoxical dependence on the very theo-drama he denies. I am not sure it is possible to be fully autonomous without either bad faith or simple incoherence.

   While Sartre’s existential hero seeks freedom through radical choice, von Balthasar’s theo-drama suggests a different path: freedom through participation in a higher narrative. The isolation of both Satan and Macbeth underscores the tension between autonomy and meaning. Macbeth’s guilt hints at the reality of the theo-drama, a reminder that even the ego-drama cannot entirely silence the human longing for redemption and communion.