Social norms thrown out in godless society - we suffer as 'don't-tell-me-what-to-do-itis' takes over

Augusto Del Noce (died 1989) was an Italian philosopher and political thinker. Regarded as one of the preeminent political thinkers and philosophers after the Second World War, he described the sexual revolution as the essence of the “Occidentalist heresy,” the radical abolition of the sacred. After that abolition, there is no objective, cosmic order of truth to which individual behavior and social norms and institutions must conform.

We can see this loss of orienation being borne out in the public disorder in Western cities with the young implicated in most instances, but also in the lack of the sense of the need to maintain self-control among older people, whether as aircraft passengers or, in the extreme cases the US often offers, in the shooting of annoying neighbours.

Stuart Heritage, writing in The Guardian, declares:

The last few weeks have seen a rash of headlines about a number of regrettable blow-ups that have occurred because people just can’t seem to remember the basic rules of cinema etiquette any more.

In Maidstone, a woman took her ticketless child into Barbie; an act that resulted in a stand-up, full-volume physical fight. A Brazilian Barbie screening ended with a similar brawl, apparently because a woman let her child watch YouTube throughout the movie. Nor is this confined to Barbie. In June, a fight broke out at a screening of The Little Mermaid in Florida, and in March the same thing happened in France at the end of Creed III. Meanwhile, Twitter is awash with tales of poor cinema etiquette, from talking during films to taking photos during films.

[...] as a regular cinemagoer myself, I’ve seen first-hand the lack of basic common sense that has trickled in over the last few months. 

While Heritage doesn't view the "chaos in the aisles" as a sign of civilisational upheaval that in fact it warrants, he does highlight how social norms have become massively degraded. His account signals the degree to which an expectation of consideration of others is low, as is that of self-restraint among those who feel offended :

They’re so used to twin-screening during films at home that it seems alien for them to not have their phones in their hands. They’re so used to talking through films at home that it seems unreasonable to be expected to remain silent in a cinema. And when this sort of behaviour meets a wall of people who have spent a considerable amount of money to just enjoy a film, of course violence is going to erupt.

It’s like [...] being on a standing room only train next to someone who has their backpack slung in an empty seat. Things are always going to kick off. 

This state of affairs ‒ the "of course" and "always" ‒ results from the lack of  our acknowledgement of  an"objective, cosmic order of truth to which individual behavior and social norms and institutions must conform," as cited above.

And there is more evidence that social norms are breaking down as the "self" takes precedence over the "social":

When Harry Styles was pelted with chicken nuggets while on stage at New York's Madison Square Gardens last summer, he took it in his stride. "Interesting approach," smiled Styles, who has also weathered kiwi fruits, Skittles and bunches of flowers while performing. But when a mystery object hit him in the eye at a concert in Vienna last weekend, he wasn't laughing but, rather, wincing in pain.

It was the latest in a string of incidents where audience members have hurled potentially dangerous objects at performers. Earlier this month Drake was hit on the arm by a flying phone. That came days after country singer Kelsea Ballerini was struck in the face with a bracelet. In May, Bebe Rexha was taken to hospital and needed multiple stitches after a phone hit her in the eye. A man, since charged with assault, told police he thought it "would be funny" to try and hit the singer. 

Bebe Rexha

It's not just live music seeing disruptive behaviour. In April, police were called to a performance of The Bodyguard musical in Manchester when rowdy audience members reacted with "unprecedented levels of violence" to staff. At other venues there has been everything from "heated arguments" to full-on brawls. And in the US, one fan's disruption of a Broadway play in December 2022 followed several other incidents of audience outbursts.

Across the cultural sphere, it feels like audiences are misbehaving. At a recent Las Vegas show, Adele weighed in, saying: "Have you noticed how people are like, forgetting … show etiquette at the moment? People just throwing shit on stage" – before warning fans not to try it with her.

The BBC report above adds that Dr Kirsty Sedgman, a senior lecturer in theatre at the University of Bristol who specialises in audience research, has book just out, On Being Unreasonable, which "explores widening divisions in society over how we use public space".

Dr Sedgman is quoted as saying that cultural spaces have always been places where spontaneous outbursts could be expected but after the Covid lockdown people are behaving with more abandon:

"I work with a lot of people throughout the cultural industries, and the message seems to be pretty much unanimous that since lockdown ended, the situation has fundamentally shifted."

That is borne out in a report by the UK's Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union, which found that 90% of theatre staff had witnessed bad behaviour – and 70% believed things had got worse since the pandemic.

"It's not all audiences by any means, but for a lot of people, there's a growing sense of what I call 'don't-tell-me-what-to-do-itis'," says Sedgman. She believes we're seeing a breakdown in social contracts – the behavioural norms and rules of engagements that keep us all ticking along together nicely.

People are thirsty for live entertainment again, but increasingly want it on their terms – especially when ticket prices are soaring. "People are coming with actively competing ideals about what they want that experience to be like," says Sedgman. "Some people want to not be disturbed by others chatting or eating or drinking, or have phones blocking their way. Other people want to maybe take a step backwards to the time when the arts were a more sociable experience. The difficulty is that those pleasures are irreconcilable." 

Meanwhile though, [Dr Sedgman] thinks recent incidents could be a bellwether for deeper issues. "Live performance has always been a laboratory space for figuring out what it means to be together," she explains. "Pretty much every time society goes through a big period of unrest, that unrest starts to ferment and explode in live performance first. Audiences are a kind of canary in the coal mine for much bigger frustrations and divisions starting to bubble over. It's important that we pay attention to what's happening in the cultural sphere. It's an indicator of what's happening to us as a society."

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Radical subjectivity fuels intolerance

Radical subjectivity for me but not for thee. It is an emblem of the moral confusions of the Woke Revolution that it is considered self-evident that one’s gender is determined exclusively by the imperatives of one’s own subjectivity but that one’s race is an immutable fact in whose determination subjectivity has no role to play whatsoever. Thus, the bedrock claim of gender identity politics that, say, one has never felt like a man but always like a woman and thus one is a woman, full stop, is something that decent people are expected to treat as a simple matter of fact, and unimpeachable as such in the context of trans.

But to say that one has never felt white but instead has always felt oneself to be black, Native American, etc., is to commit both a form of moral fraud and to inflict great psychological trauma and in many cases material harm on blacks or Native Americans, and as such should self-evidently — as self-evident of the authority of subjective regarding gender — always to be denounced and repudiated.

— Author and cultural observer David Rieff in his Desire and Fate Substack newsletter. See also this link on the trend of trying to change one's race based on the principles of gender ideology.

In like vein, writer Walter Kirn on the absurdities of the American cultural transformation. This from an interview in Palladium magazine:

If America is a story, then who better to diagnose its ills and prescribe a treatment than a novelist? Walter Kirn was born in 1962 in Ohio and grew up in Minnesota. After Princeton and Oxford he embarked on a literary career in New York media, reviewing books and writing for New York Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Time, The New Republic, and Harper’s.

Kirn’s 2001 novel Up in the Air was made into the critically-acclaimed 2009 film starring George Clooney. His memoir Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever chronicles his own adventure going from rural Minnesota to the Ivy League. Lately, he co-hosts the podcast America This Week and is the co-founder of County Highway, a new print magazine about America in the form of a nineteenth-century newspaper.

 And so to the interview:

There seems to be a growing chasm between the real-life experiences that people have and the grand narratives about our common story—about what we suppose is normal. How did we get here?  

I’m 60 years old. I went to grade school in Minnesota, in very small rural public schools. I was aware from maybe the fourth or fifth grade, through film strips and prepared lesson plans from textbook companies, that we lived in an endangered world. Outside of basic teaching, we were given the overriding message that we should be optimistic about things like computers and space, but there was a louder drumbeat about pollution, racial division, and the Cold War.

Because I was an ambitious kid who wanted to succeed in school, I was always attempting to discern the lesson behind the lesson. What I saw was that I was being asked to be very concerned and anxious about mankind’s stupidity and selfishness. That seemed to be the lesson underlying the pollution lectures—that people in their cars and their desire to have too many things were dirtying up the world.

The Cold War lesson was more sophisticated and went on even longer into junior high and high school. It centered on books like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, and other depictions of the dangers of a totalitarian world. We were asked to congratulate ourselves as young Americans on our freedom and clarity and basic goodness compared to this lurking threat from the Soviet Union, in which the citizens were all forced to think alike, act alike, and be alike.

But a totalitarian-style political atmosphere has arisen, alarming this writer—artists and writers are usually the first they come for: 

Over the years, it has caused me great consternation that the heavy aversion to totalitarian, dictatorial, and top-down systems that was implanted in me is now kind of useless—and even dangerous. As I discern trends in our society that seem to resemble those I was warned against and raise my hand to say that I don’t like this, I’m told that, somehow, I’m out of step, I’m overly alarmed, and I’m maybe even on the wrong side.

But, I want to reply, this is only what a seventh-grade Minnesota public school student was taught to fear, taught to be on the lookout for, and now you’re telling me it constitutes some kind of dissident position to be afraid of these things?

Fashionable principles derived from a Marxist school of thought now beguile academia and, as a consequence, so too the graduates forming the elite of media, corporate and political life. The mentality abroad in society is reflected in the statistics that young people increasingly support the use of violence or direct protest to censor speakers (See here and here).

Kirn finds that the decline in acknowledgement of the virtues that maintain civility, and the aggressive nature of the new Critical Theory ideology in its forms of neo-racism and gender self-invention are taking their toll:

Since the fall of 2016, it has gotten worse and worse. More American institutions have been cast as dubious, unpatriotic, and perhaps manipulated from abroad. More American attitudes, whether they be religious, cultural, or even intellectual, have been redlined as dangerous. More individuals from citizens to media figures to authors and artists have been cast in the role of dangerous dissenters.

The sum total, to bring it right up to the present, is that we now live in an age of profound anxiety. The political emergency, the environmental threat, and later COVID, were all globbed together as one giant example of our need for vast controlling authority that would keep us from dying. No longer could the citizens be trusted to make their own decisions, associate freely, speak openly, and spontaneously carry out their lives. All the risks had risen to the ultimate level, DEFCON 1. Our communications had to be monitored—and even manicured. Politics was too dangerous to be left in the hands of the population. Very suddenly, on every front, there seemed to be a rationale for total control and also a scenario in which, should we fail to yield to that control, doom was certain.

The narrative from the elite is that "some nascent revolution [is] about to break out" where dissent arises— "... the fact that it is imputed so often has started to scare me".

In America today, if you are having experiences going about your day that run counter to the mega-narratives on the news and social media, you have a choice. Do you compare notes with other people? If you do, you have an instinctive sense that somehow you are endangering yourself. Because you’ve seen other people be mocked for it and examples made of famous figures who have stepped out of line.

Therefore, signalling adherence to the elite-approved virtues is in full play in most Western socieities, along with unquestioning submission to the subjective decrees of those trying to control the narrative. It's hard to stand firm against the powers of those in the commanding heights of society in light of the social sanctions they wield, and it cuts no ice to point out that questioning something doesn't make you phobic of that item.  

Still, Rieff and Kirn, by personally running against the tide of the cultural elite, encourage us to highlight the absurdities of the ideologies thrust upon us, and to stand firm in defence of reality.

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Suffering: a fresh perspective offered

Little James with Jesus. From The Chosen

Why haven't you healed me?

Because I trust you.

What...?

Dialogue in The Chosen provides many insights, but the exchange when Little James asks Jesus why he does not offer to heal James' deformity that handicaps his walking is particularly fit for reflection in that it sheds light on the mystery of human suffering.

In the Father's will I could heal you, right now, and you'd have a good story to tell.

Yes, that you do miracles.

And that's a good story. But there are aleady dozens who can tell that story, and there will be hundreds more, thousands. But think of the story you have if I don't heal you — to know how to proclaim how you still praise God in spite of this; to know how to focus on all that matters so much more than the body, to show people that you can be patient with your suffering on earth because you know you are spending eternity with no suffering. Not everyone can understand that. How many people do you think the Father and I trust with this? Not many.

Little James is in tears over his frustration at slowing the twelve as they trek from place to place, and the challenges likely to be thrown at him as he joins the others in travelling by way of outreach under Jesus' orders to spread news of the Kingdom of God, to cure disease, and to drive out demons.  

Weeping, James compares himself to the others:

But the others are so much stronger..., better at this.

James, I love you, but I don't want to hear that ever again.

But James presses his case, stating that he is a burden:

I know how easy it is to say "I am wonderfully and fearfully made", but it doesn't make this any easier.

You a burden? First of all, it's easier to deal with your slow walking than to deal with Simon's temper. Just trust me. Are you fast? Do you look impressive when you walk? Maybe not. But these are the things the Father doesn't care about! You are going to do more for me than most people ever dream. 

As James takes heart from what he is hearing, Jesus continues: 

So many people need healing in order to believe in me. Or they need healing because their hearts are so sick. That doesn't apply to you. But many are healed or not healed because the Father in heaven has a plan for them which may be a mystery. And remember what Job said: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord! 

They have a moment of quiet, and then Jesus tells James:

When you pass from this earth and meet your Father in heaven, Isaiah promises you will leap like a deer. Your reward will be great. So hold on a little longer, and when you find yourself discovering true strength because of your weakness, and do great things in my name in spite of this, the impact will last for generations.

Thank you, Master.

A man like you healing others — oh, what a sight! And James, remember, you will be healed. It's only a matter of time.

Wishing each other "Shalom", they separate, and trusting Jesus, James moves off to begin his ministry to the people of the regions who haven't heard the word of God addressed directly to them.

Little James will have an important message to bear: The joy of the kingdom comes through focusing less on the body, and our immediate needs, less on what we can't do, but, instead, to view our predicament with the perspective of the value of patience within a short life, whereas our destiny of eternal happiness is to meet Jesus, our lord and God, in the fulness of love. 

Ω The Chosen, Season 3, Episode 2, Two by Two.

Ω Job Chapter 1:21; Isaiah 35:6.

Jesus and Little James, from The Chosen

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Astrophysicists' humility sets appropriate tone

A notable headline in The Guardian a few days ago: "The big idea: Why the laws of physics will never explain the universe".

Notable is the humility of  the author of the piece, Andrew Pontzen, Professor of Cosmology at University College London (UCL), in what is presumably an excerpt from his new book The Universe in a Box: A New Cosmic History. This acceptance of the complexity of the world as beyond our grasp, both in the immediate and long term, may arise from his and other astrophysicists' struggle to comprehend the unseen dark matter. Of this he writes on the UCL profile:

My work focuses on understanding dark matter – a mysterious component of the universe that is hypothesised to drive the formation of galaxies and other structures. While little is known about the nature of dark matter, the basic idea of an invisible sector interacting through gravity with what we can see has been highly predictive. Over the last 20 years, the dark matter hypothesis has generated a huge number of correct predictions about both the present day universe and the ancient "cosmic microwave background" light.

Until the true nature of dark matter is identified, the resulting picture will remain tentative. My team's work focuses largely on using the visible universe to help us to understand better how the invisible sector operates. This is essential if we are to connect our expanding knowledge of the night sky to fundamental physics experiments performed here on Earth. Ultimately this work should point us to a fuller understanding of the basic building blocks of reality.  

The science of the stars is young so it is to be expected that we struggle to achieve "a fuller understanding of ... reality". That struggle is expressed also in the title of  a recent book by the prominent cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, titled, The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos.  

In this text Krauss writes:

I think that key to the humility of these leading scientists, who put many others to shame, is this from Krauss just quoted: "The imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of humans".

Ponzten, likewise, is captivated by the immensity, but also the subtlety, of what we find in our domain:

It is hard to come to terms with the sheer scale of space: hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and, at a minimum, trillions of galaxies in the universe. But to a cosmologist there is something even more intriguing than the boggling numbers themselves, which is the question of how all these stars and galaxies were created over a period of 13.8 billion years. It’s the ultimate prehistoric adventure. Life cannot evolve without a planet, planets do not form without stars, stars must be cradled within galaxies, and galaxies would not exist without a richly structured universe to support them. Our origins are written in the sky, and we are just learning how to read them.

It once seemed that, for all its immensity, the cosmos could be understood through the application of a small number of rigid physical laws. Newton encapsulated this idea, showing how apples falling from trees and planetary orbits around our sun arise from the same force, gravity. This kind of radical unification of earthly and heavenly phenomena survives in modern teaching: all the innumerable molecules, atoms and subatomic particles in the universe are expected to obey the same set of laws. Most of the evidence suggests that this assumption holds true, so it should follow that perfecting our understanding of these laws will resolve any remaining questions about cosmic history.

Yet this is a logical fallacy. Even if we imagine that humanity will ultimately discover a “theory of everything” covering all individual particles and forces, that theory’s explanatory value for the universe as a whole is likely to be marginal. Over the course of the 20th century, even as particle physics revealed the secrets of atoms, it became clear that behaviour at the macro level cannot be understood by focusing exclusively on individual objects.  

Pontzen refers to insects, ants in particular, as failed models of the way the universe operates because their sophisticated cooperation is not repeated in the highest macro level:

The solar system, seemingly the epitome of clockwork predictability, has an uncertain long-term future for this reason. In isolation, a single planet around a single star would orbit indefinitely but in reality there are multiple planets and they each tug, albeit very subtly, on the others. Over time a series of tiny nudges can produce a major effect, one that takes an inordinate amount of calculation to predict.

Solar system simulations disagree because no calculation can perfectly account for all the influences, and even the tiniest disagreement about the individual nudges leads eventually to a completely different outcome. It is an example of the phenomenon known as chaos, and it is simultaneously exciting and worrying. Exciting, because it shows that planetary systems can exhibit much richer behaviours than the cold, lifeless law of gravity might suggest. Worrying, because if even the solar system is chaotic and unpredictable, we might fret that attempting to understand the broader universe is a doomed enterprise.

Take in how Pontzen rejoices at the extravagance of it all, the galaxies in "lavishly varied their shapes, colours and sizes":

Consider galaxies, on average tens of millions of times larger in extent than the solar system, and lavishly varied in their shapes, colours and sizes. Understanding how galaxies came to be so diverse requires, at a minimum, for us to know how and where the stars formed within them. However star formation is a chaotic process in which diffuse clouds of hydrogen and helium slowly condense under gravity, and no computer is anywhere near able to track all the required atoms (there are around 10⁵⁷ in our sun alone). Even if the computation were feasible, chaos would magnify exponentially the tiniest uncertainties, forbidding us from obtaining a definitive answer. If we were strict in sticking to traditional laws of physics as an explanation for galaxies, here is the end of the road.

To fit inside computers, a simulation of a galaxy’s formation has to lump together vast numbers of molecules, describing how they move en masse, push on each other, transport energy, react to light and radiation, and so on, all without explicit reference to the innumerable individuals within. This requires us to be creative, finding ways to describe the essence of many different processes, allowing for a range of outcomes without obsessing over the detail, which is anyway unknowable. Our simulations necessarily rely on extrapolations, compromises and all-out speculations developed by experts. The uncertain parts cover not just stars, but black holes, magnetic fields, cosmic rays and the still-to-be-understood “dark matter” and “dark energy” that seemingly govern the overall structure of the universe.

This will never result in a literal digital replica of the universe that we inhabit. Such a recreation is just as impossible as a precise forecast for the future of the solar system. But simulations based even on loose descriptions and best guesses can act as a guide, suggesting how galaxies may have evolved over time, enabling us to interpret results from increasingly sophisticated telescopes, guiding us on how to learn more.

Ultimately, galaxies are less like machines, and more like animals – loosely understandable, rewarding to study, but only partially predictable. Accepting this requires a shift in perspective, but it makes our vision of the universe all the richer.

The richness of what we have to intrigue us as humans can't help but suggest an intelligent generosity that even incorporates the "chaos" that poses such a challenge to scientists. Moreover, what we have learnt has driven "many physicists [to] consider the supernatural design hypothesis to be just as reasonable and responsible as the multiverse for explaining the occurrence of our highly improbable anthropic universe" (Spitzer 2015). 

Spitzer, who has written deeply on science and the evidence it lends to acknowledging the existence of God, finds the works of Hawking and Dawkins, for example, no obstacle. The first said this:

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" (A Brief History of Time, p174).

Whereas the second argued in The God Delusion (p157-158) that a Creator-supernatural designer would have to be more complex than anything it could create, and therefore it was improbable, the Christian thinking is of God as pure Being, which means on Dawkins' terms that "absolute simplicity (the absence of complexity) must be the most probable of all states of affairs" (Spitzer p319). Spitzer continues that when Dawkin's argument is corrected in this fashion, "he presents us with a strong indication of God ‒ not the invalidation of God" (ibid).

A final reflection:

For the moment, we can conclude that current physical evidence certainly does not point away from God. Indeed, it comes so close to establishing a beginning of physical reality and an intelligent influence in the setting of our universe's initial conditions and constants that physicists are being pushed to the threshold ‒ and even beyond the threshold ‒ of metaphysics, into the domain of "nothing", purely intelligible realities, and the source of multiversal finetuning. This foray into metaphysics is not done out of sense of curiosity, but out of a desire to avert the implications of transphysical causation; and so it seems that physics has not explained away transphysical causation, but rather is opening the door evermore widely to an intelligent, transtemporal, causative power (Spitzer 2015 p319).

Ω Robert Spitzer, The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2015).

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Spiritual reality and near-death experience

The near-death tunnel experience. Graphic from Dr Janice Holden's website.

YouTube has a continually growing number of accounts of near-death experience. These are not accounts of what people experienced when in an extremely dangerous predicament, but where they relate what happened to them when they were clinically dead, loosely known as brain dead. Go here for the video record. However, as well, knowledge of the field is being boosted by medical research based on the latest equipment and expertise. That's what we will look at.

That this experience is evidence for the reality of the spiritual dimension of human life is the focus of a fascinating overview by journalist Lindsay Rudegeair. She quickly gets into the science:

Scientists use specific parameters to determine what incidents they study as NDEs and veridical data [data coinciding with reality] to determine the veracity of these accounts.

A near-death experience occurs when a patient undergoes clinical death. This means they have a flat EEG (electro encephalogram), indicating an absence of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex (generating higher cerebral functioning), the absence of gag reflex, as well as fixed and dilated pupils, indicating a significant reduction of lower brain functioning.

In this state, sensory organs are non-functional, both in themselves and in the brain’s capacity to process their signals. Furthermore, higher cerebral functions such as thinking, processing memories, and linguistic functions would either be completely absent or reduced to insignificance. Lower brain activity is also minimized, though there may be some sporadic and minimal “sputtering” of pockets of deep cortical neurons in those areas.

Personal experience of a neurosurgeon 

Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, and at that time, professor at the University of Virginia Medical School, who [in 2008] underwent a severe coma from encephalitis and was monitored throughout his comatose state, described it as follows:

My synapses—the spaces between the neurons of the brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain function—were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped.

Only isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad networks capable of generating anything like what we call ‘consciousness’. The E. coli bacteria that flooded my brain during my illness made sure of that.

My doctors have told me that according to all the brain tests they were doing, there was no way that any of the functions including vision, hearing, emotion, memory, language, or logic could possibly have been intact.

Existence continues apart from the body

The most profound aspect of Rudegeair's article comes in its consideration of the "transphysical" component of near-death experiences. She explains:

In 1982, a Gallup survey indicated that approximately 8 million adults in the United States had had a near-death experience (NDE). Those surveyed reported the following eleven characteristics:

• Out-of-body experience
• Accurate visual perception (while out of body)
• Accurate auditory perception (while out of body)
• Feelings of peace and painlessness
• Light phenomena (encounter with loving white light)
• Life review
• Being in another world
• Encountering other beings
• Tunnel experience
• Precognition [foreknowledge of an event]

A body in a state of clinical death is unable to have these experiences, which means that there must be some transphysical aspect to the person to account for these occurrences. By transphysical, we mean some incorporeal part of us that can exist independently of the body. This is supported by the evidence that a person can be capable of seeing and hearing without the biological organs associated with those functions.

This transphysical component retains all its memories and appears to have acute recall and memory functions (without the use of the brain). It is aware of itself and its identity and its distinction from others, but it is more than self-consciousness.

Subjects of scientific studies have claimed that this transphysical component is not limited by physical laws (such as gravity) or the restrictions imposed by physical mass (such as walls or roofs). It can be called into a spiritual or heavenly domain in which it can encounter spiritual beings like itself (in human form) as well as wholly transcendent beings greater than itself (such as a loving white light). It can also communicate with these beings without the use of voice and sounds.

Personal account continued

This is what Dr Alexander writes about his near-death experience:

If one had asked me before my coma how much a patient would remember after such severe meningitis, I would have answered “nothing” and been thinking in the back of my mind that no one would recover from such an illness, at least not to the point of being able to discuss their memories. Thus, you can imagine my surprise at remembering an elaborate and rich odyssey from deep within coma that comprised more than 20,000 words by the time I had written it all down during the six weeks following my return from the hospital.

My older son, Eben Alexander IV, who was majoring in neuroscience at the University of Delaware at the time, advised me to record everything I could remember before I read anything about near-death experiences, physics or cosmology. I dutifully did so, in spite of an intense yearning to read everything I could about those subjects, based on the stunning character of my coma experience.

My meningoencephalitis had been so severe that my original memories from within coma did not include any recollections whatsoever from my life before coma, including language and any knowledge of humans or this universe. That “scorched earth” intensity was the setting for a profound spiritual experience that took me beyond space and time to what seemed like the origin of all existence.

Follow the link to read the vivid details of Dr Alexander's own experience, who was so enthralled by that experience that he has gone on to promote among his medical peers the wider study of consciouness. 

Data reported that can be verified

Rudegeair's article continues:

As noted above, the transphysical component is self-conscious and can see, hear, and remember. Its memories can be recalled after patients return to their bodies. This allows patients to be able to give evidence of their near-death experience because they can share details of what happened around them when they had no physical awareness.

When these accounts have been verified to be 100% accurate, they are termed “veridical.” Virtually every peer-reviewed study reports multiple instances of such veridical data.

Dr. Bruce Greyson (Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia) also reported several instances of accurate veridical data reported by patients after clinical death. He notes:

". . . [veridical reports concern] only descriptions of extremely low antecedent probability that have been cited, such as one woman’s accurate description of the plaid shoelaces on a nurse participating in her resuscitation (Ring and Lawrence, 1993), or one man’s accurate description of his cardiac surgeon during his open-heart surgery ‘‘flapping his arms as if trying to fly’’ (Cook, Greyson, and Stevenson, 1998, p. 399), hardly the type of behavior typically shown in media portrayals of open-heart surgery.

Both of these examples, incidentally, were corroborated by independent interviews with the doctors and nurses involved. In a specific test of ability of patients to imagine accurate resuscitation scenarios, Michael Sabom (1981, 1982) found NDErs’ descriptions of their resuscitations to be highly accurate with specific veridical details, whereas those of resuscitated patients who did not report NDEs but were asked to imagine what their resuscitations must have looked like were vague and contained erroneous specifics."

These are but a few examples of veridical data reported by patients in virtually every major study of near-death experiences. They corroborate the validity of patients’ claims to have been in an out-of-body state (with sensorial capabilities).

The accuracy of veridical data from multiple studies was correlated by Dr. Janice Holden using the strictest criteria. She determined that the vast majority of veridical data was reported perfectly accurately—with only 8% having some inaccuracy.

Dr Holden, who is the president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), highlights on her website information that answers the question, Are near-death experiences real? - 

"We now have thousands of documented cases of NDEs that challenge some basic assumptions of mainstream psychology, medicine, and philosophy. For example, many NDErs accurately report events that occurred when they had no detectable brain activity or heartbeat. Often NDErs return with knowledge previously unknown to them. Unlike dreams and hallucinations, NDEs have a consistent internal structure, and cross-culturally they reflect universal elements.

Finally, the aftereffects are enduring and life-altering to a much greater extent than for those who experience similar health crises without an NDE. These observations are further supported by studies of resuscitated patients in hospital settings, indicating that NDEs cannot be explained by physiological or pharmacological causes. This phenomenon has the potential to radically affect every aspect of life, from moment-to-moment personal decisions to far reaching public policy." - IANDS Brochure, What Happens When We Die?

In brief, the evidence that people "some incorporeal part of us that can exist independently of the body" and the person in that out-of-body state maintains its sensorial capabilities, reinforces the experience of humankind over eons that we have moved beyond our animal origins to possess a transcendent nature. As possessors of a soul we are capable of exercising such spiritual attributes as the intellect, the will and free will, and conscience.

One thing more, the loss of a sense of transcendence in our present culture has consequences that cause increasing alarm. Further, a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry indicates that disaffiliation with religion "leads to marked increases in suicide rates, familial tensions, drug use, and a sense of meaninglessness and despondency".*

As always, the option is before us: Grasp hold of reality, or lose our sense of identity, of dignity, and ultimate destiny.

*AJP 161, No 12, (December 2004) 2303-8: Kanita Dervic et al., "Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt". Quote from Robert Spitzer, The Soul's Upward Yearning, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2015) p14. 

Ω See, too, on Youtube: Near Death Experience - Wisdom from Beyond

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

The radical lie feeding today's despair

Headline about young people's mental state ‒ February 25, 2022  

The way of thinking that has taken hold in societies around the world is clearly entrapping people in a swamp of despair and anxiety. By whatever yardstick you might choose, people generally, and the younger generations more so, are confused and lost on their journey through life. 

The definition of human happiness as it's being contended over today is how human beings can find fulfillment, how they can find happiness. However, it's very clear that lots of people, despite all the talk about it, aren't finding happiness, the happiness that really matters.

The faulty logic that runs through the accepted mentality of this age, throwing people off the side of the road that leads to happiness, goes like this:

This is what I feel, and this is what I'm  hearing in my heart, and my heart is my feelings, and my feelings are my truth. In order for me to be integrated and healthy and on the road to my own personal happiness I have to be able to be faithful to my inner feelings. 

“[That] is a radical deception; it's a radical  mistake”, says Peter Herbeck, a public intellectual who reminds people of the spiritual nature of human existence, and the fact that the devil – who so many get involved with in “playing “ with the occult – wants to destroy their eternal well-being, starting now.

The reality is, rather than "I can do no wrong, and I'd be happy if only other people got out of my way", that “the human heart is deeply corrupted, the Fall is real, Original Sin is real, spiritual deception is real”. 

Herbeck, first, draws attention to what humankind has learnt about its predicament. For instance, the Ancients, secular and religious, expressed their recognition that the human heart on its own cannot be trusted, and world religions have seen their purpose as combatting evil. In the revelation that is the Judeo-Christian heritage for humankind the picture is completed with the knowledge that the devil, “the father of lies”, is real and active.

The devil is devious, Herbeck says:

The devil is contending against human beings, but he'll act in their favor, you might say, to give them all the pleasures of the world, to give them happiness – what looks like happiness in  the world, how the world defines happiness – what I possess, my popularity, am I rich? am I good looking? you name it.

All these different things that the world keeps reinforcing: this will make you happy, this will give you popularity and people will recognize you and  reinforce you, and, therefore, you will be happy.

All deception, all that’s easy – that comes from the source of all evil. “

Seeking happiness in all the wrong places

This whole idea, which has got a  demonic origin to it, that if I submit to anybody else about who I am, I'm no longer free, I'm not radically autonomous, so I'm not living authentically and I can't be happy, and submission is also kind of  humiliating, it's controlling, and I don't want that, I reject that from my life because I can't  find happiness and I have a right to happiness.

But let’s explore where that mentality leads us. Herbeck draws powerful insight from the word of God in the Bible and from the teaching of Jesus, who is God with us: 

God wants health for your body nourishment for your bones. He wants wholeness for you. He wants absolute happiness for you now. It’s important  for us to see the consequences of believing in the deception that I'm the source  of my own reality, I'm the source of my own truth. I set the norm of truth for my life.

The consequences are completely opposite of the flourishing that the Lord is talking  about. [An outcome] might lead to temporary pleasure. It might lead to people celebrating you. It might happen that you find pleasure, but at  the end of the day it's not going to lead to life. 

Step back for a minute and look at where the big fights are happening in the culture today when people are insisting on  their own way and their own autonomy and their own absolute authority over themselves.

Number one of the big questions is when does life begin and when does it end.

People say “You can't  take away from me my right and my power to be able to determine for myself what's growing inside  me, defining whether it's a human being or not. I can't  be happy in this world unless I can determine whether this child or whatever you want to call it in the womb, right up to the first breath… unless I determine whether it can live or not. That  power belongs to me and if it doesn't belong to me I can't be free, and you're stealing my happiness, you're stealing my freedom and my autonomy, you're  not respecting who I am.”

That's a great deception from the enemy involving the beginning of life but it involves the end of life as well.  

To say “If I don't have power over when I die, how I die, how I define death, then I'm not free, I'm not in control of my life and I can't be happy, and  you have no right to take that away from me.” 

However, if we don’t use informed discernment in assessing our deepest feelings it’s easy for the deception of the devil to manipulate those feelings to build in us the fear of death. Herbeck observes:

And the only way to think we can get control apart from the light of God is to determine when death happens, how it happens. I'm the master of my own destiny, right? So that's the devil’s deception.

A second fundamental deception is over the reality of the human binary, as it occurs in nature generally. Herbeck:

God made men and women male and female for reproductive purposes – right for life and for families. Now, all of a sudden, in this contemporary culture, the binary is bad. It's a  social construct that's set to control people, and it's hateful, and it rejects other people, and we all should be slightly embarrassed about it.

To see it as just sort of insignificant in its importance instead of accepting the binary state of affairs for what it is, here again we can discern that this mentality leads to rejecting something that is so fundamental, so undeniably true, and everybody has to pretend that the binary is a problem now, again rejecting God's creative order.  

Population decline show world’s despair

The third deception surrounds the question of wanting to reproduce at all. Herbeck quotes from the book How Civilizations Die. He says: "It's a great study. I recommend it to you. […] It relates exactly to what we're saying." David P Goldman, the author, writes this: 

Population  decline is the elephant in the world's living room. For the first time in history the birth rate  of the whole developed world is well below replacement and a significant part of it has passed the demographic point of no return. People don't want to reproduce for the first time and there are consequences to it. Mortality now stalks most of the peoples of the world, not  this year or next but within the horizon of human reckoning. A good deal of the world seems to have  lost its taste for life. The repudiation of life among advanced countries living in prosperity  and peace has no historical precedent. Today's cultures are dying of apathy not by the swords of their enemies. There's no historical precedent. Something absolutely unique is happening here and it's dark. Why is it happening? 

Why do human beings not want to reproduce because reproduction is totally natural but the willingness to reproduce comes from those who live freely out of the commands of God.  

Herbeck highlights a key point:

The truth is that humankind cannot survive without faith, specifically faith that our lives  have meaning beyond the mere sphere of our years. Civilizations that lose their faith also  lose their desire to continue and they fail to reproduce themselves. 

The reason people  aren't having children is they're drifting  away from a Biblical worldview, belief in God,  and the world gets smaller and smaller, and so does my horizon and my time on earth, and now  I have to have massive control in my life. All kinds of people are saying “Look, if I have a child, is this a real value-add in my  life? I only have so much time. I want autonomy. I want freedom. I want happiness. I want to live my  adventure. Children are a high cost and…”  

It's all down to feelings: "Not having children is what's going to make me happy and the whole  point of living is to make me happy.” On the other hand, those who have embraced having children within a family rejoice over the way parenting stretches them on many levels. They find they have grown through the discipline of self-sacrifice. 

The shrinking world of the self-centered

Herbeck reflects:

When you step outside of God's truth and God's revelation, you step into a dark world and it's the only world you're observing and then you try to define  happiness in that light on your own acting as if you truly are authentically free and totally free of any kind of imposition in your life because you got all  those commandments and rules and other things out of the way and now you're absolutely free.

But this is the deception broadcast by the devil. It’s simply not true:

It’s not true because there's only two kingdoms. There's only two realities. There's no third way. You're going  to step right into the kingdom of darkness. That is a fact. [… Goldman] really does put his finger on it when he says individuals trapped in a  dying culture live in a twilight world. They embrace death through infertility, concupiscence  and war. 

Look at what's happening in our culture. The radical kind of release of concupiscence — that’s the fallen flesh in us, the fleshly desires, the seeking of pleasure alone — it's obsessive, it's out of control and it's not just believers who say that. I mean secular studies of all  kinds.

Why is that happening? It’s an expression of the emptiness that's in the human heart. We're trying to fill the human heart with the constant pursuit of  pleasure. If you don't have the pleasure of God, the knowledge of God, the love of God, the joy that comes from God, you're going to try to fill it with something else, and that's what's  going on there.

Then Goldman says very clearly …"they embrace death through infertility… the fear  of reproducing… the fear of even being married”.

We notice, too, the false justice movement that's out there. It’s trying to say, “Well, no, you're actually a hero” to try to give you a sense that by not having children you're saving the planet on some level. That’s the unreality of the whole  thing.  

The source of true happiness

How do you find the good news for your life? How do you find good news that's eternal, that never changes? It is from all time, and it comes from the heart of God. It begins with fearing God, which is just disposing ourselves before God.

[This is] a profound awareness in our heart that we get through the gift of  the Holy Spirit. The thing we grasp with the help of the Holy Spirit is to see the awesomeness  of God and an understanding that God is our creator. God is our father. God loves us, and made us, and he gives us our identity. It comes from him.

Colossians talks about how the Father created all things through Jesus Christ his Son. You and me were made for him, were made by him, were made through him, and we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. This is the awareness and the place where human beings find security and identity and peace and ultimately happiness.  

I love this passage from Proverbs chapter 3. It says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. This is important. It doesn't say, “trust your heart first”. It says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. So our trust should be directed to God and not first to me and to my feelings.

The verse in Proverbs goes on: “In all your ways acknowledge the Lord, and he will make your paths straight”. This is how we find happiness, recognized long ago, as in Augustine of Hippo’s words: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” There lies the greater source of personal authenticity than my inner feelings. It's a source that defines me in my highest possible state, a source that deploys transcendent truth to protect me against the deception of the devil. What more splendid adventure in life than to know I am living as God made me to live! 

Identity found only in an image of God

Paul writes in his letter to the Romans of people claiming to be wise who become fools because they  worship the creature rather than the Creator. 

In this age we have those drunk with the new self-centered mentality and antihuman ideologies claiming to be wise while condemning children to lifelong infertility, women to non-existence, and pitting one racial group against another, to take three absurdities thrust upon us by academics and media elites competing for supremacy in virtue-signalling. Herbeck notes:

“Look what we've done! Look who I am!” Claiming to  be wise we become fools. That's where it ends. It's a fool's errand to say, “My feelings  are the ultimate determiner. They're the norm. They determine what's true, and this is my  truth, and I demand that everybody acknowledge my truth and live according to it so that  I can be absolutely free, and I can be happy.”  

It's the right motive to be free, to live in  freedom, but it's the wrong road, it's the wrong way. Human beings simply cannot find it without God.

I  just want to end here with a passage I love from Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI. He said Christian identity  is composed in restraint from seeking oneself by oneself.

This is the absolute opposite  of what the world today calls the only way to happiness: I must seek myself for myself and reject looking anywhere else outside me. That person is trying to tell  me who I am and what I should be doing. This law is limiting my freedom and imposing submission.

[With this way of thinking] even God becomes my adversary. He stands in the way of my being able to be free.

Instead, the reality is we receive ourselves from Christ and we give ourselves to Christ. It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives  in me. The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God. Our Creator tells us  who we are and where the road to happiness is, and no one can replace him.  

Nothing we raise as our own absolute, our own idol… “should pollute our spiritual universe, or else, instead of enjoying the freedom God gives us to use well we will “relapse into a  humiliating form of slavery” that is of our own making under the influence of the devil.

“This is exactly what's happening, friends. Nothing, no one can  replace God. Nobody else can give us what we need. No one else will lead us to what Proverbs chapter 3 is  promising: health for my body and bones in eternal happiness and total fulfillment and integration as to who we are.  

I don't care how happy you say you are apart from God … because the devil can deceive you. Remember how he tempted Jesus in the desert. He said, “ Look at all the kingdoms of the earth. I own them. I can give them to you. You can be  the most popular, the richest , you can have it all, just so you bow down and obey me”.

The saints  have told us that when you're moving in this direction, away from God, the devil is gonna grease those skids and just keep you going on that pathway.  

The deception, the lie, large sections of the world have fallen for, wants to tell you about where to find freedom and happiness. But it is so far off the mark that people go about creating their own forms of slavery, and those seeming wise show themselves as fools in the eyes of most ordinary people who continue to adhere to common sense. 

The consequence is that pride takes over in the "wise", and greater degrees of despair, anxiety and distress ensue as they promulgate new rules that bind rather than free. The good news is available, however, and a joy-filled life awaits those with the countercultural courage to trust God in the direction of their life.

Ω See also Bishop Robert Barron's The Parasite of Evil 

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Reject legitimacy of war - Pope Francis

Kyiv victim of powerplay of world leaders. Photo: Ukrainian State Emergency Service

Today is the 513th day of the war in Ukraine. The conceit of Western nations in provoking the conflict, and the callousness of the Russian leadership in launching its assault on such a closely related neighbour, and subsequently on homes and other civilian targets, are lessons in evil that are impacting the world in many ways, with the greatest toll as always on the most innocent. 

Clearly many societies and the elites populating leading institutions have grown lax in maintaining a firm intention of preserving peace and making peace with those who stand opposed to their vital beliefs and traditions. Therefore, any opportunity to gain insight into how to achieve peace in this increasingly interdependent world must be welcomed.

The war in Ukraine, the conflicts and terrorism in Africa, and the blood-letting in Myanmar, have all caused Pope Francis such sadness and concern for the people affected that his appeal to the United Nations' Security Council last month is worthy of close scrutiny.

Francis called on the 15 members of the Council, which focuses on preserving peace and world security, to live up to the requirements that make it possible for it to fulfil its mission:

I want to offer you a heartfelt invitation to face our common problems, setting aside ideologies and narrow visions, partisan ideas and interests, and to cultivate a single purpose: to work for the good of all humanity. 

All the busy international activity of the modern era has resulted instead in "a famine of fraternity":

[Instead,] we are suffering from a famine of fraternity, which arises from the many situations of injustice, poverty and inequality and also from the lack of a culture of solidarity. 

New ideologies heighten the likelihood of strife 

To emphasise how technologically developed socieites can also be humanly diminished Francis recalls his message for the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2014, where he said:  

New ideologies, characterized by widespread individualism, egocentrism and materialistic consumerism, weaken social bonds, fueling that ‘throwaway’ mentality, which leads to contempt for and abandonment of, the weakest and those considered ‘useless’.  In this way human coexistence increasingly tends to resemble a mere do ut des [contract of giving and receiving] which is both pragmatic and selfish.

 Previous hopes for stability in regional and global affairs are in tatters:

With the founding of the United Nations, it seemed that the world had learned, after two terrible world wars, to move towards a more stable peace, to become, at last, a family of nations.  It seems, though, that we are going backwards in history, with the rise of myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalisms that have kindled conflicts which are not only anachronistic and outdated, but even more violent.

Peace is God’s dream for humanity, Francis says. He goes on:

It takes more courage to renounce easy profits for the sake of keeping peace than to sell ever more sophisticated and powerful weapons.  It takes more courage to seek peace than to wage war.  It takes more courage to promote encounter than confrontation, to sit at the negotiating table than to continue hostilities. 

War is not a just act 

Then he comes to the heart of his statement ‒ that war is not a just act, and an aggressive form of  nationalism cannot be condoned: 

In order to make peace a reality, we must move away from the logic of the legitimacy of war: if this were valid in earlier times, when wars were more limited in scope, in our own day, with nuclear weapons and those of mass destruction, the battlefield has become practically unlimited, and the effects potentially catastrophic.  The time has come to say an emphatic “no” to war, to state that wars are not just, but only peace is just: a stable and lasting peace, built not on the precarious balance of deterrence, but on the fraternity that unites us.

On this, one commentator, stresses the importance of Francis' statement:  

With these words of the Supreme Pontiff, it can be credibly argued that the Catholic Church is being directed to understand that the “just-war theory” – if it ever had any moral legitimacy, and that’s a big “if” – cannot in anyway claim today that it morally reflects Gospel-based truth. If we take this teaching by Pope Francis seriously – and indeed we should – this is monumental! It deserves serious study, discussion and prayer in our churches, schools, universities, corporations and halls of government

Francis' statement is also highly significant, the above commentator says, as he uses inspiring and prophetic language in attempting to move us to a morally higher way of thinking and acting. Francis declares:

Indeed, we are all brothers and sisters, journeying on the same earth, dwelling in a single common home, and we cannot darken the heaven under which we live with the clouds of nationalisms.  Where will we end up if everyone thinks only of themselves?  So those who strive to build peace must promote fraternity. 

Building peace is a craft that requires passion and patience, experience and farsightedness, tenacity and dedication, dialogue and diplomacy.  And listening as well: listening to the cries of those who are suffering because of wars, especially children.  Their tear-stained eyes judge us: the future we prepare for them will be the court for our present choices.

Words from Pope Paul VI in 1973 provide the basis of the peace Francis seeks:

Peace must be based on reason, not passion; magnanimous, not selfish.  Peace must be not inert and passive, but dynamic, active and progressive according as the just demands of the declared and equitable rights of man require new and better expressions of peace. Peace must not be weak, inefficient and servile, but strong in the moral reasons that justify it and in the solid support of the nations that must uphold it. 

In a similiar line of thought Francis gives his conclusion, quoting again from his 2014 World Day of Peace message:

I want to emphasize again a word that I like to repeat, for I consider it decisive: fraternity.  Fraternity cannot remain an abstract idea, but must become a real point of departure: indeed, it is “an essential dimension of man, who is a relational being.  A lively awareness of this relationality leads us to see and treat each person as a true sister and brother; without it, it becomes impossible to build a just society, a solid and lasting peace.”

In highly critical language to weapon producing corporations, and thus to the individuals who comprise them, and those who hold stock in them, Francis says:

From the economic point of view, war is often more enticing than peace, inasmuch as it promotes profit, but always for a few and at the expense of the wellbeing of entire populations. The money earned from arms sales is thus money soiled with innocent blood.

Ukraine war sets challenge for all

On the basis of fraternity, then, Western powers stand convicted in the instance of the Ukraine war because of an unwillingness to abide by an earlier Minsk agreement, and a gung ho attitude that aggressive promotion in the former Soviet Bloc as elsewhere of its liberal "progressivism" should not be tempered even in light of the serious antipathy it evokes from the Russian side.  

To end, Francis sets out the task of each of us in laying the groundwork for peace. He states in his 2020 encyclical on fraternity Fratelli tutti:

Once more we are being reminded that “each new generation must take up the struggles and attainments of past generations, while setting its sights even higher. This is the path. Goodness, together with love, justice and solidarity, are not achieved once and for all; they have to be realized each day. It is not possible to settle for what was achieved in the past and complacently enjoy it, as if we could somehow disregard the fact that many of our brothers and sisters still endure situations that cry out for our attention”.

Therefore, a cooperative search for truth, an openness to the other, even when it means sacrifice of our own interests, a wish to love and share, and taking an option for the poor are among the attritributes that will lead us to friendship and away from war, even in the midst of stressful situations. These are the qualities that we must also seek in our leaders.

Peacemaking can be learned, as history shows us, for example with the end of the inter-family strife of the medieval era that Dante was himself part of. And that is stance we have to espouse as we reject the concept of the legitimacy of war as a whole.

Ω Watch Francis in a powerful video on this issue here. 

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free when a new post is published.