Coal Biting

Apparently, when you spend copious amounts of time lingering by the fire, you are biting coal. So I guess I would say that has been my primary activity of late. I've also spent a lot of time reflecting on the Civil War. It's not an past time I'd recommend, since it has led in my case to headache upon headache, general confusion, and a loss for words. It is rare for me to struggle to form a definite opinion; however, this particular historical dilemma has me completely flummoxed. Here are a few of my unresolved problems: 1. Slavery. It seems to me that the typical Conservative response is that legislation on "domestic institutions" belongs to the State and not Federal legislature. But isn't that unacceptable? Maybe you could allow States to determine the punishment for trafficking in human beings; but surely it is morally defunct to leave the determination of absolute moral standards up to the whims of a legislative body. Moral apathy is not healthy. Nor is it healthy to let people assume that it is up to them to decide good and evil. 2. Secession. Lincoln says that he does not dispute "the right of revolution" but claims a long train of abuses is needed for a right of revolution to exist. Of course he would insist the South had nothing to complain of; it must have looked much more threatening from their point of view down there. This situation becomes unbearably confusing since of course you cannot get a consensus on who is getting oppressed and if they are being oppressed. Lincoln's two more interesting point was that the Union existed prior to the States and that a State has no right to withdraw without asking the permission of the Federal Government and the rest of the States. This does make sense when you consider that secession affects every State in the Union. Seen from the South's point of view, however, this excludes any possibility of escape...of course the North would never let them get away. There is also the inconvenient fact that the debt on the Louisiana Purchase was still being paid off. Quite a few of those Southern States were taking off to become their own country while allowing the Federal Government to continue paying for their land. This seems (to me at least) to be a case of inexcusable fiscal irresponsibility. 3. Geographical Faction. After assessing the situation through the Lincoln Douglas debates, all I could see was George Washington with his head buried in his hands. His farewell address was one long admonition against factions forming on a geographical basis, and then it went and happened anyway. I seem to remember Jefferson delivering a morose line about the "current generation" throwing away with careless ease all that their fathers fought and died to earn. And in the end, the feeling I most often carry away from studying the situation is intense frustration. They could have worked out their differences without the histrionics, hysteria, and ultimate bloodshed. After reading some of those ridiculous speeches (the Cornerstone Speech comes to mind) all I could say was "Oh, come ON!"

The Winter of Our Discontent

I refrained at first from posting on the results of November's election from a desire to adopt quiet resignation in the face of what I felt to be rather bombastic elation and despair. Surely there have been greater catastrophes in the history of the world and this nation. But now I feel impelled to address the expectation of those others who seemed poised on November 4th for the explosion of an inevitable Glorious Summer. There could be entire essays and books on the relative merits of and problems with Obama's policies at home and abroad. His Progressivist and Socialistic leanings certainly bring me no joy. But the insurmountable problem has little if anything to do with an emasculate foreign policy or ineffective medical system. These and other issues do not just pale, they fade into meaninglessness in the face of his flagrant pro-abortion position. This country was founded upon a certain principle: that just rule was derived from the consent of the governed because all men were created equal. Considering that Obama is our first African American President, it would be logical for him to be a champion of the rights of disenfranchised citizens. Granted, the unborn child is not a citizen of the United States of America because he or she has not yet been born. But the Declaration of Independence does not say that all men are "born" equal. It says we are all "created" equal. If we discard this principle and decide that certain individuals among us are not equal because they are not as developed, intelligent, or capable as we are, we risk all the rights we ourselves hold dear. If we deny the humanity of the fetus because he is less intelligent, we forfeit our right to life to the first person we meet with a higher intellect. If we deny the humanity of the fetus because he is less developed, all children forfeit their right to life to the first adult they meet. Once one member of society's rights are thus threatened, the rights of all are threatened. This is why abortion, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research are the paramount issues. If we as a nation can no longer rise up and declare that the Founding Fathers were right and the equality of man pertains to all men, that abortion is murder of the cruellest and most heinous nature, then we have ceased to exist as America. We have become the ghost of a beautiful idea. This applies to those who concede that abortion is morally wrong. Those who do not believe that embryos and fetuses are human are at least not betraying the founding principles of the country; they are merely deceiving themselves. But those who will both say abortion is murder and then vote for a man like Obama are hypocrites and traitors of the blackest kind. They committ treason against their country and act as accomplices in the passive submission the ultimate moral evil of our day. At least the citizens of Nazi Germany could protest that they didn't know; these villains have no such excuse. They were staring straight into the eyes of the Innocents as they voted. No promise of a bright new future for America is worth the cost of your soul. This phenomenon of nominally pro-life voters throwing morals and ideals to the winds in order to participate in a hopeful love fest with change knows no parallel in America's history. It was both an act of suicide aginst themselves and an act of treason against the hopes and expectations of the world. With Jefferson, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

Whodunnit?

Watch carefully.

The Abyss of Madness: Acatalepsia as Horror in the Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

In his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, H. P. Lovecraft declared,“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Not only does this thesis establish the basis for Lovecraft's literary approach, it also, in the end, sheds light on the manner in which he dealt with his own philosophical premise; belief in an absolute mechanistic materialism.

The themes and elements this essay is primarily concerned with occur most often in what has become known as Lovecraft's 'Cthulhu Mythos'. These are the interconnected stories concerned with Lovecraft's invented cosmology of bizarre, pre-human races, and a pantheon of supremely powerful, extra-dimensional beings such as Cthulhu, who slumber beneath us, waiting for the day they will be awakened to ravage the world. Lovecraft's tales tend to follow a simple framework; a level-headed, sceptical scholar comes across some strange bits of occult knowledge, usually related to the dreaded (fictional) tome Necronomicon, pries too deeply into realms man was never meant to see, and is promptly driven mad by the revelations it brings.

Or, perhaps, the lack of revelations. China Miéville, in his introduction to At the Mountains of Madness, points out that the key to Lovecraft's horror is not an intrusion into the status quo, as in most horror, but a realization of the true nature of the universe in relation to oneself. This is true, but it ought to be noted that the nature of the realization itself is one of acatalepsia, or unknowability; Lovecraft's universe is implacable, eldrich, and incomprehensible by the human brain. The protagonists are often unhinged as much by the idea of nature as insane, as by the malicious forms it takes on. More often than not, Lovecraft omits detailed descriptions of his creations because they cannot be described at all. In what is perhaps his most effective story, The Colour Out of Space, a family comes across a meteorite with properties unexplainable by modern chemistry, and which begins to infect their farm with a strange, dim luminescence of a colour “...almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it a colour at all.”

Another common method Lovecraft employs in displaying the truly foreign is in how he describes the architecture of his inhuman races. In coming upon the nightmare city of R'lyeh, in The Call of Cthulhu, the narrator recalls the dream of a friend: “He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from our ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality.” Attempting to explore the city, the characters become nauseous and disoriented, as, “twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.” Even direction and parallelism are revoked. This is horror through incomensurability.

Beyond these and many other particulars, Lovecraft says it best when he expressed that, in properly weird tales,

“A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguards against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”[1]

Here one can see that Lovecraft considers the real essence of terror to be helplessness rather than the perception of peril. If one recognizes a threat from a certain quarter, one can prepare to meet it. Even if one is hopelessly outmatched, one can at least have the comfort of understanding the threat itself. In Lovecraft's world one cannot even do that. The terror originates from a contradiction of man's nature, the desire to know; man fears the unknown only because he fears it may be unknowable. The consequence of this is the crux of the matter; Lovecraft's horror revolves around the understanding that if the universe is not rational, then we cannot be sane. Indeed, The Call of Cthulhu opens:

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in their own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

It is only natural to speculate on why Lovecraft was driven to write along such lines. A lifelong atheist, he once wrote that, “[A]ll my tales are based in the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large...[O]ne must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate...have any existence at all.”[2] One might add to this list, perhaps, truth and falsity. In such a way, Lovecraft portrays a brutal, unflinching, and honest representation of the necessary intellectual consequences of atheism. Rather than declaring our existence to be 'beautifully tragic', 'internally meaningful' or any of the other platitudes one at times hears, he states that given an untranscendent reality, we, as a race and as individuals, are truly pointless. Rather than the deterministic, mechanical laws of the universe preserving its knowability, a universe of such laws destroys the possibility of a rational human soul, and thus possibility of rational laws. To be intellectually honest (if such a thing exists) is therefore to rebel against our nature, and to surrender to the madness of an uncaring and irrational universe.

Through his weird tales, Lovecraft leads one to the conclusion that this view of reality is nothing other than a horror story, which, true or false, remains an ultimate revolt against what man perceives to be his nature and his sanity. That many atheists, including Lovecraft himself, continued to act out their own lives as if they were in fact meaningful, only demonstrates that they have taken the advice of Lovecraft's protagonist and fled from the deadly light, stopping their ears from the sound of Great Cthulhu slumbering under their feet. Perhaps they have realized that intellectual dishonesty is a small price to pay for sanity, however illusory.

I'll tell you a tale

That week went by about as fast as any week I've ever experienced. So now I feel like discoursing on something I've had occasion to think about recently. Ever since I read The Story of the Irish Race I've felt very protective of the country whose heritage I claim. This sentiment causes extreme reactions to fake Irish accents, stereotypes, among other things. Drinking songs are one of those things about which I feel very strongly. One, once in while, I don't have a problem with. But when congregations of people who want to get together, be Catholic, and bellow out some tunes, lapse into one drinking song after another, something in me begins to smoulder. There are so many songs which are more truly Irish (all our wars are merry, and all our songs are SAD). Why would you wish to prolong the stereotype of the drunken, whiskey obsessed Irishman? Especially when it's stereotype propagated by the British to give Irish Catholics a bad name? I would instead suggest breaking out some more respectful and stirring music, a la "The Foggy Dew" or "Wearing of the Green". Just a thought.

Good Salad Day

I knew things were going well when my salad included apples, chicken, and sunflower seeds. The Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist gave a talk this evening. The sisters were so joyful and charged with positive energy, it was wonderful and inspiring. It struck me because I've talked to so many girls (recently and in the past) who want romance in their lives and someone with whom to share hopes and dreams. It can be frustrating for anyone to feel like they are the only one noticing other people; but I think it's particularly hard for girls when they don't get attention from guys. There's a sense of not being note worthy, and, above all, a desire to be the one pursued for a change. Which brought to mind these lines: "From those strong feet that followed, followed after...'Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me?'" We are all so desperate to be loved, wanted, needed, understood; and it's hard to for us to understand that there is a Terrible Lover pursuing each one of us drawing breath today. One who did the unthinkable to win us back, though it was our fault to begin with. You can find it in that small ache in the corner of your soul that's never really gone. An ache that sometimes expands to match your happiness because every joy you find is just another reminder of what we've all lost. Why else would the beauty of a sunset make us weep, if not for overwhelming homesickness? Augustine acknowledged this as our "restless" hearts. Hearts restless until they rest in what Yeats so appropriately named "The Threefold Terror of Love." It's something I know and try to recognize every day, but sometimes a talk from those who have found the truest romance helps a bit.

Valerie Plame - The Decemberists

No video, but nevertheless, a new Decemberists single is always cause for celebration.