The Standard of Aragorn and the Shield of Aeneas

Aragorn unfurling the standard of the Kings of Gondor as he reaches Minas Tirith, sailing up the river Anduin, has got to be one of the most moving passages of The Lord of the Rings. I did not realize until recently that the scene is quite close to the arrival of Aeneas at the Trojan camp in Virgil’s Aeneid, book X.

Aeneas receives word that the Trojan camp is under attack and sails down the river to their aid. He sails through an anxious night with the rowers striving to bring them to the camp. Then in early morning a water-nymphs comes and speaks to Aeneas. She tells him to fling his sheets to the wind:

Up with you! Call your men to arms with the dawn.

That first, then seize the indestructible shield

the God of Fire gave you, ringed with gold.

Daybreak, if you find my urgings on the mark,

will see vast heaps of Rutulians cut down in blood!

Aeneas, propelled by the nymph, reaches the Trojan camp as the day is breaking. He raises his shield and it shines in the sun; the Trojans take it as a sign and their hope is renewed as they throw their spears into the air. The Rutulians and Latins marvel seeing the new hope of the Trojans and the armada bearing down on them, with Aeneas’s crested helm flashing with sunlight and his shield burning like fire.

No more words. As the wheeling sun swung round

to the full light of day and put the dark to flight,

first he commands his troops to follow orders,

brace their hearts for battle, gear for war.

                                                Now Aeneas,

standing high astern, no sooner catches a glimpse

of his own Trojan camp than he quickly hoists

his burnished, brazen shield in his left hand.

The Trojans up on the ramparts shout to the skies—

fresh hope ignites their rage—and wing their spears

like cranes from the river Strymon calling out commands

as they swoop through the air below the black clouds,

flying before the Southwinds, cries raised in joy.

The Rutulian king and the Latin captains marvel

till, glancing back, they see an armada heading

toward the shore and the whole sea rolling down

on them now in a tide of ships. From the peak

of Aeneas’ helmet flames are leaping forth

and a deadly blaze comes pouring from its crest.

The golden boss of his shield spews streams of fire,

strong as the lethal, blood-red light of comets streaming

on in a clear night, or bright as the Dog Star, Sirius,

bearing a plague and thirst to afflicted mortals,

rises up to shroud the sky with gloom.

Many of Virgil’s images in this scene are also used by Tolkien in Aragorn’s arrival at Minas Tirith. The armada sailing through the night to relieve the king’s own city under siege. The citizens sending messengers to ask for help who are killed before they can escape. The wind turning to speed the ships on. The arrival as the dawn breaks. The raising of a sign of the king, bright and shining in the sun—a sign that was the gift of a woman to the king: Aeneas’ shield, given by Venus, or Aragorn’s standard, given by Arwen. The sign gives hope to the defenders and wonder to the besiegers. The defenders throwing their weapons in the air; Éomer throws his sword. The flashing of the king’s helm: Aeneas’ crested helm, Aragorn’s winged helm.

Tolkien also drew images from other scenes of the Aeneid: Aeneas on his way to Latium goes through the land of the dead, like Aragorn taking the paths of the dead. The bright light of Aeneas’ shield in the sun like the light of Theoden’s golden shield. Also Aeneas leads his troops through a hidden valley to reach Latium, like the Riders of Rohan taking the Stonewain road to reach Minas Tirith. The death of Mezentius. Even Denethor burning himself on a pyre is like Dido in Aeneid IV.

I take this as confirmation of what Bruce Charlton has said about the nature of Tolkien’s creativity: that he was inspired especially by images. He gets an image in his head from some source of inspiration—sometimes dreams, here the work of Virgil; however it happens he becomes fixated on a certain image and then work out how that image fits into the story. Sometimes he would radically change the meaning of an image in the process. Charlton has given the example of the black rider sniffing for the hobbits in the Shire: at one point in revision this was not a Nazgul but a good character (Gandalf? I forget). What was important was the image of the black rider sniffing the ground.

Likewise the scene of Mezentius’ death in the Aeneid. Mezentius is on horseback and Aeneas throws his spear, killing the horse, which rears up and collapses on Mezentius. Mezentius’ son steps forth to defend him and exchanges fighting words with Aeneas.

Here the Witch-King stands in the place of Aeneas and Theoden of Mezentius, Éowyn in the place of Mezentius' son. Perhaps Tolkien was inspired by the scene, but he changed it reverse the positions of hero and villain.

We have a glimpse of Tolkien’s creative process: a process of assembling meaningful, striking images into a connected narrative. The image of the king sailing down the river to relieve his city from seige, raising a brightly shining standard in the new dawn—it is powerfully moving, stirring, almost heartbreaking. It seems to be one of those mythic or archetypal images that just strikes a chord no matter what. Could it be that the entire story of Aragorn’s journey to Pelargir—his taking the Paths of the Dead, riding across the southern fiefs, capturing the fleet of Umbar and sailing it up the river Anduin—was all developed so that Aragorn would arrive at Minas Tirith by ship to unfurl the Standard of the Kings? Did Tolkien grasp that this scene was the proper climax of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and then write The Return of the King in such a way as to bring it about? 

Two things necessary for successful art

Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, 1979:

All this is to say that art works by artifice, by illusion, and by technique, and that no amount of talent, idea, or largeness of soul or heart in the artist produces anything except through artifice or technique, through, that is, a mastery of the conventions appropriate to the art.

Bruce Charlton, Reviewing the Current Doctor Who, 2014:

The script-editors/ writers themselves, however talented, are what CS Lewis called 'Men without Chests'. At bottom the makers of Doctor Who apparently only believe in positive virtues of kindness and happiness. ... At bottom modern secular morality is just a matter of opinion; which sets a limit to how good, how deep, a script can be.

In this light, it is interesting that the explicitly Roman Catholic author Frank Cottrell Boyce has been hired as a writer - this means that there is at least the potential (if the bosses allow it) for a coherently moral story, with a morality more deeply rooted than 'doing this is what makes me feel good'.

There are two things that go to make art: matter and form. Matter is the content, Form is the technique. If either fails then the work of art itself will be a failure. Success in the one, no matter how great, cannot supply what is lacking from the other.

This is why enduring, classic works of art tend to unite technical mastery with a great subject or theme. Milton’s Paradise Lost sets out to “justify the ways of God to man.” Dante’s Divine Comedy is about the journey of the person from estrangement and sin to union with God. If we want some non-Christian works, Virgil’s Aeneid is not only about the founding of Rome (a subject not of universal significance) but also the resolve and suffering imposed by a vocation: mens immota manet, “the mind remains unmoved as the vain tears fall.”

Even in lighter or smaller works of art, where a weighty subject may not be appropriate, one needs a base of seriousness, especially a moral seriousness, or else the result will be thin. Take a comedy like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and compare it to Helen Fielding’s imitation, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Austen’s work has a moral foundation which the author herself takes seriously; therefore the events in which the comedy takes place are important and consequential in themselves. Fielding only has the morality Charlton describes above: ‘doing what makes me feel good.’ Nothing that happens has any importance except in relation to Bridget Jones’s feelings; and by necessity the comedy is more trivial and less funny. But it is not easy to separate matter from form, and in fact not only her theme but also Jane Austen’s artistry is superior to most modern writing.

Modern art, in all fields but especially in writing, tends to fail on both accounts. Writers now are ‘men without chests’ and do not believe anything has objective significance or meaning. Their work is morally thin; there is nothing there to chew on, no crunch. But they also tend to be inferior in skill and mastery of form than in former years. Partly through overt and conscious rejection of tradition, which means rejection of the great tools and techniques which have been handed down by the masters—it is like trying to build a house but refusing to use a ladder, hammer, or nails. But this is only part of it. Artists and writers are much worse educated than they used to be. Our educational philosophy, and the bureaucratic management of its practice, have worked together to ensure that most people are much stupider than they need to be.

In relation to hymn writing and liturgy you have a perfect storm: badly educated people who reject the tools of art and who do not believe in any objective meaning. 

Decimalization and the modern project of destroying what is natural to man

Until about 1800 practically every civilization used non-decimal reckonings of time, weight, distance, and currency. In Europe at least it is clear that the divisions people found most natural were based on the number twelve. Vestiges of this still remain today, most of all in the measurement of time, where we still divide our days into two twelve-hour cycles—indeed twelfths have an unfair advantage in the calendar because, through God’s providence, the moon makes twelve cycles a year, no doubt simply to frustrate the modern rationalists.

In currency, the old European system was the one of pounds, shillings, and pennies. What the English called a penny was originally a Roman denarius (French denier, Italian denaro, Arabic dinar), hence the abbreviation d. for pence in England until 1971. Twelve pennies make one shilling (Latin solidus, French sou). Twenty shillings make one pound (Latin libra, French livres, Italian lira). That is, a pound is a score of dozens: £1 = 20s. = 240d. Peter Spufford, preeminant historian of medieval currency, remarks, “the habit of counting coins in dozens and scores of dozens was so ingrained that when a new coin did not coincide neatly with a multiple of the pre-existing coins, a new system of pounds, shillings, and pence was automatically constructed on the basis of the new coin”.

This sytem was abolished first, surprise! during the French Revolution. As the French Revolution became a campaign to stamp out the Christian Church, so it became a campaign to stamp out the European tradition itself. One can read with amusement about the failed attempts to establish a ten-hour day, ten-day week, and so on. But it is less amusing to learn that our metric system and decimal currency both have their origins in the French Revolution. They represent the successful conquest of the old European tradition and feelings and the re-education of man.

The Christian Church never tried to abolish the European past which she inherited—on the contrary she adopted and baptized much of what she found in the Europe in which she was born: Roman law (consider the medieval maxim ecclesia vivit lege romana ‘the Church lives by Roman law’); Greek philosophy (Aquinas, the greatest Christian philosopher, represents the harmonizing of Greek and Christian thought); pagan holidays (as is well known).

No, although one steeped in modern cynicism might look for the new Christian religion to try to wipe out all the impure past, actually the Christians received and lived by as much of it as they could. This seems to me the proof that Christians are not and have never been dualists or world-deniers: the Church really believes grace perfects nature; that is, the nature of man is what we have to work with. We don’t deny the nature of man and try to stamp it out, we baptize it; like the Resurrection led the natural body into a new and fuller life, so the Christian thing leads everything natural to man into that new life.

Hence the Christian centuries were a perpetuation, renewal, and over-flowing into new life of the pagan centuries (Roman and Greek) which went before.

The modern project is wholly different. The modern project is essentially, in its nature, anti-Christian. I have observed before that modernization can be defined as the destruction of the Church. Every stage of ‘development’ in Europe’s last five centuries in the direction we call modern has been an act of destruction of the Church.

The modern project is equally anti-Man. This is obvious after what was said above. If the Church took everything that is natural to man into itself, then to destroy the Church requires destroying what is natural to man. Hence we should look, at every stage of modernization, for the destruction of things natural and spontaneous and delightful to man’s nature.

The system of pounds and shillings, like the one of inches, feet, and miles, was natural and delightful to European man. It had to be destroyed. The favourite word used to destroy it: ‘arbitrary’. In lying, go big or go home. The truths on the side of decimalization are that it is more convenient to write and certain calculations are easier. But the big lie is that the decimal system is more rational and the old system is arbitrary. The old system is what generations of people found most useful and rational for day-to-day exchange! Twelves in fact are much easier to divide up into quarters and thirds than tens, which only go neatly into tenths, fifths, and halves. But the daily experience of centuries of Europeans apparently has no authority whatsoever. ‘Arbitrary.’

Even after the French Revolution led the way in stomping on human nature, the British, always tenacious in their contrariness to Continental ways, held onto their pounds and shillings until 1971. The economist E.J. Mishan wrote in 1980:

The case for it in terms of economic efficiency alone is doubtful. Indeed it is more than doubtful, since the changeover to a decimal currency (in which one new penny was equal to 2 2/5 old pennies) had the predictable effect of giving a perceptible fillip to the upward drift of prices. Yet economic efficiency is but one consideration. There are others, seemingly less tangible but no less potent, of sentiment, pride, and custom. Pounds, shillings, and pence are not merely convenient units of account and currency. They are also an essential part of John Bull’s accoutrements, an extension of Britain’s personality. Our national system of weights and measures, our pints and yards, our acres and fathoms, which are now to be thrown into limbo as so much jetsam, are also part of our Anglo-Saxon heritage. They ring familiar to our ears as church bells. They are resonant with centuries of British history. They are part of our language and our literature. ... But on yet another isue of deep national concern, the government made no pretence even of consulting the feelings of the British people.

The modern world is trying to re-educate us all from the bottom up. It must wipe out the Christian Church and it is using scorched earth tactics to do it. Give them nothing to live on, deny them all supplies and food, and do this by burning our own fields and slaying our own cattle. Hence the modern European state, born in the French Revolution, proceeds by destroying everything pleasing and sustaining for the natural life of man, lest it nourish the new life in Christ. The most deadly assault is on the family; but even such a seemingly trivial matter as the way we count coins does not escape attention. Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Everything old and traditional must be extirminated, everything must be reframed. Everyone is in need of re-education. 

Powers of sight in The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings

In The Hobbit, when the travellers are in Mirkwood and come to cross the magic river (which puts Bombur to sleep when he falls in), the dwarves ask Bilbo to tell them what he can see on the other side of the river. It seems there that Bilbo can see farther and more clearly than the dwarves.

But when the Fellowship is traversing Moria in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf has Gimli go in front with him to lead the party—he is at home in the mines and not likely to get lost—but also, because he has the best eyes in the dark.

Therefore hobbits can see farther and more clearly than dwarves, but dwarves can see better at night. Since hobbits are essentially a race of men, it is likely that men have eyes about as good as hobbits.

It is the elves who have the best eyes. In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Gandalf frequently ask Legolas to tell them what he sees. He sees a bird flying so high that the other cannot even see it as a speck, yet he can tell that it is an eagle. When Aragorn sees the riders of Rohan approaching in the distance, several miles off, Legolas can tell their number and the colour of their hair.

Legolas’s power of sight is a virtue of his physical nature. He has literally better eyes than any of the others, even Gandalf, who though he has many powers is still in his body a man.

Can all the elves see as well as Legolas? I expect not. Most of the elves of Mirkwood are Silvan Elves, descendants of the Nandor who never crossed the Misty Mountains. Legolas comes from Mirkwood, yet he is the son of King Thranduil, and it is known that the kings and leaders of the Silvan elves are often descended from Eldar who had crossed the Misty Mountains and lived in Beleriand in the First Age. I cannot say what precisely is Legolas’s heritage save that he is of a higher, more noble race than most of the elves in Eriador at the time of The Lord of the Rings.

However, there are also elves about who could probably see better than Legolas; though few, there are far nobler elves still in Middle Earth. There are the Calaquendi, the Elves of the Light, very ancient elves who lived in Aman with the gods in the age of the Two Trees of Light. Glorfindel and Galadriel are two of these. They are of nobler race, being less mixed with the Silvan Elves of Middle Earth. But the Elves of the Light also have greater virtue from their time living with the gods, being nourished by the Light of the Trees, so much stronger and more vital than the dim light of sun and moon. Some of this original Light still remains with them and gives their bodies strength unknown to the Elves of the Darkness. No doubt Glorfindel or Galadriel would have even greater power of sight in their eyes than Legolas.

Gandalf also, at times, can see things far off—he even says once that this power is given to him—but his power of sight is of a different nature than elf-sight. Though Gandalf as a wizard is in fact an angelic spirit of a higher order than the elves, he is incarnate in the body of a man. How limited he is to a man’s capabilities is not clear. He is much stronger and more enduring than he appears. As for his eyes, at times he asks Legolas to tell him what he sees, as when they arrive at Edoras in Rohan. But from the citadel of Minas Tirith, Gandalf is able to see Eowyn and Merry wounded on the battlefield far below. It is not easy to tell how much of Gandalf’s power of sight resides in his eyes and how much is a gift of his angelic nature.

But the Elves of the Light have also been raised up almost to the order of angelic spirits. This gives them powers not limited to their bodies; what the hobbits might call ‘magic’, not unlike Gandalf himself, though lesser. Two of the elves have this to an even greater degree: Galadriel and Elrond. Each of them has a power of seeing things far off which is different in kind than Legolas’s keen eyes.

Elrond has some power of seeing, or sensing, things from afar or even before they happen. thus he advises Gandalf not to send Pippin with the Fellowship because of the harm he will do; and he sees truly—it is probably Pippin who stirs up the Balrog and the orcs in Moria by dropping a stone down a well (causing Gandalf’s death); and Pippin also looks into the Palantír, almost disastrously. Gandalf, who has the deeper sense of Providence, is right to allow Pippin to come, because all these events work out to the good: but the point is that Elrond could discern somehow that they would be. He also can tell that there is an evil at work in the Shire long before it comes out in the open.

Elrond’s power of vision has many sources. Through his father Eärendil he is descended from the royal house of Fingolfin, kings of the Noldor—the last declared king was Gil-Galad, but after he was killed by Sauron on the slopes of Mount Doom, it could be supposed that if there is any King of the Noldor it is Elrond. Through his mother Elwing he is descended from Elwë, king of the Telerin elves in Beleriand. Thus he has in him the blood of two races of Elves of the Light, though he himself was never in Aman. But he also has the blood of Melian the Maya, wife of Elwë, through whom true ‘magic’ entered the races of Elves and Men, since she was of the angelic order herself. The blood of Melian has given all the descendants of Eärendel and Elwing seemingly supernatural virtues of spirit and body. Most of the nobility in Men comes from Melian’s blood, through Elrond’s brother Elros, who was King of Númenor: Denethor, Boromor, Faramir, and Imrahil of Dol Amroth all are distantly related to this line, but Aragorn is the greatest of these. Both Aragorn and Elrond have powers of healing, and perhaps some power of perceiving things far off in space and time. But Elrond’s power is enhanced perhaps by his Ring, one of the three great Elven rings.

Galadriel has the greatest power of seeing. She, like Elrond and Gandalf, can somehow sense things far off. But she also has her Mirror in which she shows Sam and Frodo a vision of things far away. She herself is of very great race, probably the oldest Elf in all of Middle Earth, daughter of Finarfin of the house of the Noldorin kings. And she has a Ring, possibly the greatest of the Elven rings. Galadriel is, after Gandalf, the most ‘magical’ of all the good characters in The Lord of the Rings, and it is probably from the combination of her native nobility as a very high Elf of the Light with her wielding of the Ring of Adamant. These together give her a power of seeing not unlike that of the Palantiri.

The Palantiri, the seeing-stones, seem to work like eyes and not like the more intuitive vision which Gandalf and Elrond sometimes reveal. Aragorn uses the Orthanc-stone to see the Black Fleet sailing to Pelargir, many hundreds of miles away, and it seems that Denethor was shown many sights but he did not discern their true meaning. The Palantír thus grant sight but not understanding. They are unique in that they work independent of the user’s nature, high or low, good or evil. One has to contend with other wills who are using the stones; but it seems that if Sauron had not seized upon him even Pippin might have been able to use the stone to see things far off. These stones, created by Féanor, operate more like our technology, and can be used for good or evil. Two of them fall into the wrong hands, Sauron and Saruman, and are used to accomplish great mischief.

***

We can thus rank the powers of purely visual sight (not counting the Palantiri) in Middle Earth:

1. Elves.

Elves of the Light (Glorfindel and Galadriel).
Grey-Elves of the race of Beleriand (Legolas and Thranduil).
Silvan Elves (the elves of Mirkwood).

2. Men and hobbits.

3. Dwarves (but they can see better in the dark than elves, men, or hobbits).

However, some characters have greater powers of sight not strictly connected to their eyes. These are Galadriel, Gandalf, and Elrond. The greaetst of these is Galadriel. 

The body a protection against sin: the example of Michael Scott

Michael Scott wants to be a bad man but his body won’t let him. In season 6 of the Office (US) Michael found out his girlfriend was married and then kept on seeing her. When his friends and coworkers called him out on it he became self-righteous and hardened his heart, dismissing his friends’ objections because “I deserve to be happy,” and “if Stanley can do it why can’t I?”. And he bragged at the office about what he was doing! saying “I take what I want.”  Michael even met her husband face-to-face, shook his hand, and did not repent.

But when he went to meet her for sex at a motel, the guilt overwhelmed him and prevented him from following through, and he broke up with her through a text message.

This episode revealed that Michael is a very bad man. But, one might reply, he repented at the end! Yes, but his will was to go on sleeping with this man’s wife. He resisted being convicted about it and planned in cold blood to do it again. It was only his body that prevented him. Michael is emotionally sensitive, in fact childishly so, and in this situation his emotions got the better of him and defeated his will.

Emotions are an affair of the body. That should be uncontroversial today: it is taken for granted in psychology and medicine. It was known in the middle ages as well—represented by the scheme of four personality types, based on a predominance of one of four types of fluids in the body. E.g. a ‘bloody’ personality (sanguine) was lively, energetic, quick-tempered, and generally happy. We also know from our own experience how much our emotions are determined by physical factors like how much sleep we’ve had or what we’ve eaten.

It is a cliché to talk about the spirit being corrupted or led into sin by the flesh. But it is also an old Christian idea that the flesh can be corrupted by the spirit. This is obvious when you think of the fallen angels—they had no flesh to corrupt them, they fell through pride, an entirely spiritual sin.

There is a sermon in Old English from the tenth century, preserved in the Vercelli Book, that has a scene of the body and soul being brought before Christ at the Last Judgment. The body stand and accuses the soul, saying “you led me into sin!” It says roughly, “I prevented you from sin, and limited the damage you could do, by making you sleepy, hungry, and so on — but you made me sin anyway, and now I will be damned and suffer forever because of you!”

Michael illustrates just this situation. His will is bad, but his body prevented him from carrying out his will.

This also shows the importance of formation of character, in the sense of habits and the training of the right emotional responses.  Lewis once said that he would rather play cards with a man who was a skeptic about ethics but was taught that “a gentleman doesn’t cheat” than with a man who believes cheating is wrong but had no such upbringing. We want the emotions to guide and help the will make the right choices—which is precisely what happened to Michael.

In this vein it also shows the poverty of modern utilitarian or contractual schemes of ethics. A modern might say that adultery is wrong because it is a breach of trust, and so he would condemn Michael’s action in the abstract. But this is in a context where people are raised in general to have no shame and to adopt a pose of self-righteous entitlement about their own choices. In particular people are not taught to be ashamed of lying, divorcing a spouse, fornicating, and are bombarded with art forms that show sympathetic people engaging in adultery and all kinds of banditry. And you expect this quasi-contractual moral obligation not to commit adultery to have any force?

But Michael shows that this is a very inadequate account of ethics! Because even with all his self-righteousness and attempts to steel himself up to do what’s wrong, his human nature rebelled against it. Ethics are not just an arbitrary set of intellectually-defined duties! They are not like the rules of the road, which you have to learn but could in principle be totally different. Ethics flow from our human nature. And because they are part of our nature they even make themselves felt in our body when we do something wrong — if we have not been artificially divorced from our nature.

Adultery is not just a violation of a contract. Adultery goes against our human nature. As when we eat something we can’t digest and our gut vomits it up, so with adultery. Our conscience cannot digest adultery, and so our nature rebels against it!

The difference over provision for the poor

Men of the political Left make it their slogan: “we need to provide for the poor”. They claim to be the party of compassion and of charity towards one’s neighbour, and label men of the Right cold-hearted, selfish, etc. A lot of this is simply dishonest—Leftist ‘concern for the poor’ is very often simply a cover for destruction, especially destruction of freedom and of the family. But for the sake of argument let’s take their words at face value.

If we are Christians then we cannot avoid that we have an obligation towards the poor, because God said so. And so the Left can very easily appeal to the Christian conscience by claiming that they take seriously “we need to provide for the poor”. And if it is true that men of the Right don’t care about the poor then this is a serious problem.

Jay Richards, an economist, explained how as an undergraduate he came to think that all Christians should be Marxists:

Premise 1. God cares about the poor.

Premise 2. God expects us to care about the poor.

Premise 3. Marx cares about the poor.

Conclusion: Christians should be Marxists.

(The Dalai Lama illustrates this syllogism. He has said that he considers himself a Marxist because Marx evaluates the economy morally and cares about the poor.)

Is the claim of the Left to have a monopoly on care for the poor of any force?

Well the Left certainly talk about caring for the poor. And the Right, perhaps, say less about it. But I think most men of the Right, especially Christians, would agree that “we need to provide for the poor”. (Among secular conservatives and libertarians there are some who express no moral obligation to the poor.)

***

Christians on the Left and on the Right would both agree with the statement “we need to provide for the poor”.

The difference comes from the definition of PROVIDE FOR and POOR.

Start with POOR. The Left characteristically define ‘poor’ in relative terms—based on inequality. E.g. those whose income falls below the average. This does not define ‘poor’ based on an objective measure of living standard, but against a set of expectations for a given society. Being ‘poor’ is compatible with having ample food, a television, air conditioning, etc. Using this relative method, the amount of poverty in any time or place is arbitrary—it depends entirely on how broadly you want to apply it.

The Right are willing to define ‘poor’ in objective terms. There are objective measures of poverty which are obvious, unmistakeable, and were part of common sense until recently. E.g. infant mortality, danger of starvation. By this definition most people through most of human history have been poor—they were in immediate danger of starvation and few of their children would survive to reproduce.

The great thing (politically) about the Leftist definition is that you can use it no matter what the circumstances. In the West there is practically no poverty, in absolute terms. In fact the relative poor are so amply fed and so fertile out-reproducing all other income classes. Their biggest killer is not starvation but addiction—diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, drug abuse, these are the bane of the ‘poor’ in the West. And they are not problems of material poverty! Quite the opposite.

But the Left can still use relief of the ‘poor’ as a justification because there is inequality of income in the West. Really it is an appeal to envy. As long as there are people who cannot have what the richest few have, they can claim to be ‘poor’ and therefore to have the moral high ground when they use the force of law to steal income, etc.

One wonders then, if a society of high infant mortality and starvation but where everyone had the same income, would pass the Leftist test and be a society that had eliminated poverty.

But this difference over definition makes it obvious why men of the Right talk less about the poor. Poverty is simply not a problem in the West, not on any significant scale. Where people in the West are actually in danger of starvation or their children are dying, it is because of extraordinary circumstances which are not amenable to a general solution.

Now on to PROVIDE FOR. The Left accomplish their purposes by defining this ambiguous term in a specific way: ‘provide for’ means to redistribute income by force from the rich to the poor. There are other ways to state this, but that is what it always comes down to.

On the Right I would say ‘provide for’ is left more potentially open to interpretation. The point is that Christians are obliged to provide for the poor but how best to do that will depend on the circumstances involved, and cannot necessarily be defined in advance. Families, friends, churches, businesses, self-help associations, these are all actors who have a more primary responsibility for helping the poor than the government, because they are closer to the person and more likely to know their situation and how to help. And those things cannot be predicted or reduced to a formula. Men of the Right will sometimes say that the government should take from the rich and give to the poor, but that is not the go-to answer to everything.

Consider how useful the Christian conscience of “providing for the poor” becomes when you define the terms in the Leftist way! You can use it to justify any amount of government expansion and of redistribution from rich to poor. As long as there are income differences you can claim poverty relief. And you can expand the government without limit to do it. It feeds on everyone’s envy and short-term self-interest.

And the Right’s definition is bound to have less political appeal, because it does not offer a one-size-fits-all consistent to solution to every problem. The Leftist formula is to name a problem—say, unemployment—and then propose a solution based on redistributing income. The problem for the Right is that once the problem is named, you are stuck doing negative tasks—either denying there is a problem (which is not much fun) or criticizing the Leftist ‘solution’—and then you are caught by the fallacy which the Left capitalizes on: “something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do it”.

Nor does the Right’s definition have the appeal to envy.

Thus far I have confined the discussion to material poverty. This leaves out the other significant dimensions to providing for the poor. If one was interested one could define the Christian Right as “men who are motivated primarily to relieve non-material poverty”. This is perfectly illustrated by the plight of the ‘poor’ today, dying of diabetes and addiction: their problem is not material poverty, it is moral poverty, poverty of character, poverty of family. The breakup of families and unchecked bad habits are their bane. Those problems simply cannot be solved by the government—but the government can make them worse! In fact one wonders whether the welfare state is a kind of circular self-justifying institution: the welfare state creates poverty and then justifies its expansion to relieve poverty. And its expansion just creates more. Certainly the last century has seen the government working hard to create poverty in the best way possible, by destroying families. 

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Trying to put this in a more concise way:

The Left defines poverty in relative terms. As long as there is income difference, there is poverty.
The Right defines poverty in absolute terms. As long as basic needs are met, there is no (material) poverty. 

The Left defines provision in permanent, institutional terms. The government has to set things up so that nobody becomes, or remains, poor. 
The Right defines provision in personal, circumstantial terms. People are poor in diverse ways and for diverse reasons; consequently providing for a poor man depends on knowing his need and meeting it, which requires intimacy on the personal level.

The Leftist definition works so well politically because it appeals to men's envy and impatience. 

‘Taste’ is both subjective and objective

We all recognize that personal taste in art — defined broadly as anything made by man, like paintings, motion pictures, wine, buildings, shoes, and so on — is both subjective and objective. Subjective because different people like different things, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is wrong and the other right. But objective because sometimes things are just bad, and if someone doesn’t see that then it is a defect on his part — likewise if someone doesn’t see that a good thing is good.

How does this work?

I propose that there are two actions in evaluating works of art.

The first evaluation is an act of division: separating the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff.

This is normally easy and obvious. Anyone with a basic receptivity to art should be able to recognize the difference — there can be a small grey area at the margin, but otherwise there should be widespread, spontaneous, non-controversial agreement.

Take for instance the Star Wars motion pictures. The act of separation is exceedingly easy. The films of the original trilogy are good; the films of the prequel trilogy are bad. The only grey area where there is any dispute is the third prequel film, Revenge of the Sith.

The second evaluation is an act of sorting: discriminating the merit of things already recognized to be good.

So with Star Wars, having dismissed the prequel trilogy we move on to discerning what is the relative quality, what are the particular achievements, what is special, about the original films.

In a word, we are trying to discover what makes them good and how good are they.

In this, personal taste in the usual sense has a large part to play — because any good thing is going to have many different qualities, and these qualities will speak to different people in different degrees, and different people will value these things more or less than others. So one person will say The Empire Strikes Back is the best of all the Star Wars films, because it is the most intense and emotional. I would say A New Hope is the best of all, because it is the most perfect, simple, and satisfying in conception.

Notice the difference between the two types of evaluation. The first evaluation is objective, the second is subjective.

In the first, contrary opinions have to be resolved. A thing cannot be both good and bad. If John says Chartres cathedral is good, and Jane says it is bad, one of them is wrong. It has to be that way. And so they can argue over it and try to persuade one another, and indeed they should, because the one who is wrong should be corrected. Jane needs to develop a better capacity for discerning good from bad.

Discriminating the good from the bad in art is a recognition of objective reality which, in principle, everyone should be capable of. It can be learned through teaching and through deliberate change of habits, but I suspect that the best way to improve is to become better oneself. A good man can comprehend both good and bad; a bad man cannot even comprehend bad.

In the second evaluation, contrary opinions do not have to be resolved. If my wife’s favourite Star Wars film is Empire, and mine is A New Hope, there is no contradiction and we do not need to argue about it. My wife perceives more perfectly the good in Empire, and I in A New Hope. What we can do is discuss our different judgements, not necessarily to persuade, but to try to reveal to the other what is the good which we perceive. Sometimes one can come to recognize what was not recognized before — and it is a beautiful thing, because it means you have become more adequate to perceive beauty.

In fact this latter task, communicating a perception of beauty to another, is what we are made for. Our subjective personal taste is actually a essential to the meaning of life. Because each of us is made to perceive, to praise, and to communicate a different glimmer of the glory of God. And since God is every perfection and every beauty, it means that every perfection and every beauty we perceive is the glory of God.

When one has a special love for a particular film, or a particular wine or building or meal, that is his unique character and destiny revealed. If he can communicate something of the beauty to another, he has done what he was created for — he has told the glory of God to the world.

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The twofold method of evaluation was inspired by C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism. A wonderful little book, less known among Lewis’s disciples than it should be. 

How to fund scholarship morally?

Reading a work of economic history written in the ‘60s, I was pleased to find this quaint story of how the author secured funding for the project:

This book grew out of a chance meeting with the late Dr Marcellus Kik at the Institute of Medieval Canon Law, Washington, D.C., in February 1964. Dr Kik had come to the Institute in the hope of finding some refence work dealing with the economic legislation of the medieval Church. Our joint search had no success, and this prompted Dr Kik to suggest that I might write such a work. … For this scheme Dr Kik secured the generous financial support of J. Howard Pew of Philadelphia.
(J. Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (1969), vii)

Who was J. Howard Pew?

John Howard Pew (1882–1971) was an American philanthropist and president of Sunoco (Sun Oil Company). With his siblings, Pew was a co-founder of The Pew Charitable Trusts. J. Howard Pew also donated the funds for the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust in 1957. Pew provided early funding to support Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, working closely with Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga. Pew also donated to various other organizations, including the Foundation for Economic Education, American Liberty League and Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, 1964.
(Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Howard_Pew)

Consider the great moral difference between securing funding for research in this fashion and getting it through SSHRC.

Here, an individual has freely chosen to give of his wealth to advance learning, and has given it to this project because, presumably, he thinks it is worth doing.

There, a committee is given authority to dispose of other men’s wealth, which has been coercively taken from them through taxation, and the committee has selected one thousand or so carefully tailored and frequently dishonest research proposals to which to assign this money.

Here, scholarship is connected to demand—this work can get done because someone thinks it worth enough to pay for it with his own money.

There, scholarship has no connection to demand—the work can get done because the government allocates X million dollars to ‘humanities funding’ and the SSHRC committee has to assign it somewhere.

Nobody spends his own money on the thing, and for many or most of these projects, nobody ever would.

Whatever we think about the value of scholarship, there is a great moral gulf between the two methods. And that moral difference, the difference in character of getting funding the one way versus getting it in the other, has to have an effect on the profession itself. For one, scholars are totally dependent on the government.

But above all a profession whose existence depends in no way on demand (in the sense of individuals choosing to pay for the product with their own money) must be prone to a sense of superiority and contempt for the masses. And the moreso, the more the masses resent having their money taken from them and given to scholars. Is there any question that this is endemic in academia?

The objects of scholars’ scorn are the very people to whom they ought to be grateful. 

A medieval perpetual motion machine

A remarkable item from the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt—a medieval architect-engineer who flourished in the thirteenth century. A perpetual motion machine:

It reflects the general passionate interest of medieval men in natural sources of energy. They were power-conscious to the point of fantasy, always looking for sources of power beyond hydraulic, wind, and tidal energy.

Villard hoped that with mallets or bags filled with mercury assembled so as to swing freely “there will always be four on the downward side of the wheel and only three on the upward side; thus the mallet or bag will always fall over to the left as it reaches the top, ad infinitum.”

It is probably through the Islamic world that western Europe got involved in perpetual motion, but with the difference that Europe, given its interest in mechanization, would try to use perpetual motion as a practical source of energy.

Villard’s wide interest in an unlimited source of energy and in various types of machines makes him an archetypal engineer of the medieval industrial revolution (J. Gimpel, The Medieval Machine, 1976, 127–130).

The three things for which no one will spend money: medicine, education, children. Why have money at all?

There are three things the price of which modern enlightened people are continually griping about: medicine, education, and children. Yet it seems that these three are about the only things that cannot be afforded today.

While searching for a private clinic where to get a procedure done speedily (successfully: reduced my wait time from 90 days to 24 hours) I ran across this article from February:

http://www.torontolife.com/style/toronto-health-and-beauty/2014/02/26/best-private-medical-clinics-toronto/

Five of Toronto’s most exclusive private medical clinics

Private health care, once taboo, has become a status symbol for those who can afford it. From anti-aging to Alzheimer’s, here are five of the city’s most sought-after clinics

One thing stood out to me: the prices.

The article calls these clinics ‘exclusive’, only ‘for those who can afford it’, ‘a status symbol’. I think that would be a common reaction—above all among the class most familiar to me, graduate students and academics.

But consider the prices: $2,595 for a health assessment. $3,300 a year for doctors available round-the-clock, including weekends and holidays. $1,500 for a health assessment and a year of ongoing care.

These aren’t pocket change. But regular folks afford things a lot more expensive than this every day. As Bruce Charlton says, “People spend many years and 100Ks of dollars on worthless and unused college degrees… They spend 1000 dollars a year on their hair, 10,000 dollars on holidays, 30,000 dollars on a wedding party, 20,000 on a better car than they need, tens of thousands on divorces...”

Actually, these ‘exclusive, status symbol’ medical clinics are already within the financial reach of most of us—even the long-suffering graduate students. We can afford a few thousand dollars: I know we can because we do—we spend it on cars, clothes, travel, and so on. It’s not that we cannot afford this kind of health care, it’s simply that it is not our priority.

In truth these clinics are not exclusive to the ultra-rich. They are exclusive to the people who are willing to spend money on medicine. Likewise for the good schools. Likewise for having children. Most of the big families I know bring in small incomes—but they afford children because children are their priority. Not holidays in Spain.

It’s a cliché to talk about the consumerism that the free market encourage. But I think the welfare state is more to blame for consumerism. Socialist policies like tax-funded healthcare, education, and childcare have done this. Because they have removed from the individual the responsibility to take thought for these things, to prioritize and earn and set aside money for medicine, for schools, for raising children. If we don’t have to spend money on these things, what are we supposed to spend it on? What is money even for?

If you take away health, education, and children, then money becomes by necessity mainly for gadgets, for toys, for expensive distractions, for status symbols…

And the sad irony is that, at the same time that people feel entitled to get (for free!) the world’s best medical care, they content themselves with the shabby product the State is willing to dole out to them. When the good stuff—good, responsive medical care—is out there, they don’t take it! Because of the welfare state, they aren’t willing to pay for it. 

But what is money for?! Why have money if you won't spend it on your health! People are shocked and indignant about hospital bills for tens of thousands of dollars. But I'd give up a lot of holidays in the Caribbean to get a good surgeon to do my triple bypass! I'd go without a car for a decade, and be happy about it, to buy the best education for my kids. Why else have money? Medical care is not a scandal to spend money on: medical care is a good thing to spend money on! Even going into debt—people go into debt for lots of stupid things; medical care is a better reason than most. 

Ironically the entitlement state creates an attitude of poverty. High-quality medical care? Can’t afford it. The best schools? Can’t afford ‘em. The pitter-patter of little feet? Can’t afford it.

Our welfare entitlements have become shortages. We live like England in the Second World War—we take our scrap of rations, like it or lump it.

In the most affluent society in history, where the normal, average person can afford to spend thousands of dollars on skydiving, trips to Disneyworld, giant weddings, cars, condos… Medicine, education, and children are the only things we can’t afford.

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This post picks up on Bruce G. Charlton’s excellent comments here:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.ca/2014/07/women-as-victims-of-modernity.html

"We have been living in the most prosperous circumstances in history, but say children cannot be afforded.   People spend many years and 100Ks of dollars on worthless and unused college degrees, but say children cannot be afforded.   They spend 1000 dollars a year on their hair, 10,000 dollars on holidays, 30,000 dollars on a wedding party, 20,000 on a better car than they need, tens of thousands on divorces...  Apparently the *only* thing that is just too inconvenient and too expensive in the modern world, is children.   The fact is that modern women, modern people, could have successfully raised more children than at any time in history - if it had been a priority.   But it wasn't."

The Verhoeven Trilogy: Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers

Paul Verhoeven directed three futuristic action movies in the late 80s / early 90s: RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Starship Troopers (1997). These three films make up what I call the Verhoeven Trilogy, and I like them very much. Although they do not share a common world, characters, or plot, they all have the same tone and style. At the most basic, they all take place in a bleak futuristic Earth, they are all violent to excess, and they all have a persistent satirical and humorous vein underneath the action.

But the common elements go well beyond. One can compile a list of ‘Things Paul Verhoeven Likes’—in the sense that he likes to make films with these things in them.

Things Paul Verhoven Likes:

-          babes (two in Total Recall and in Starship Troopers)

-          boobs (three on one woman in Total Recall, a roomful of exposed boobs in Starship Troopers)

-          cool guns (RoboCop has a huge pistol and then the bad guys get the Cobra Assault Rifles, the Starship Troopers have many large and impressive guns)

-          evil corporations / governments / militaries (main plot elements of each movie)

-          police, secret agents, soldiers (the protagonists of each movie)

-          limbs getting severed (Murphy in RoboCop, Richter in Total Recall, beyond count in Starship Troopers)

-          people dying hilariously gruesome deaths (melted by toxic waste then smashed to bits in RoboCop, eyes popped out from violent decompression on the surface of Mars in Total Recall, brains sucked out in Starship Troopers)

-          genital injury (rapist in RoboCop, Arnold in Total Recall, Xander in Starship Troopers)

-          bald men with scratchy voices (Clarence Boddiker in RoboCop, Richter in Total Recall and Radczak in Starship Troopers—both played by Michael Ironside)

-          violently malfunctioning technology (ED 209, the Johnnycab, the door that crushes the captain in Starship Troopers)

-          strong men of righteous violence (RoboCop, Quaid, Johnny Rico)

A final thing which is easily noticed in RoboCop and Starship Troopers is the use of satirical television content: RoboCop has news programs and a really lame sitcom (“I’d buy that for a dollar!”); Starship Troopers has over-the-top military recruiting ads.

These are really fun movies, just made for young men to enjoy. My personal favourite is RoboCop. I like the other two very much, but for RoboCop I have an endless appetite. I think the guys on Half in the Bag are right that RoboCop is a perfect movie. Not that it will change your life, or leave an enduring mark on the ages, or make a great contribution to human civilization—but it perfectly accomplishes what it sets out to do; it is a perfect futuristic action / comedy. It is also perfect in that it is hard to imagine improving it; changing anything would make it worse.

(Using these criteria, other perfect movies that come to mind: Die Hard (1988); Pride and Prejudice (TV mini-series 1995); Holes (2003); The Jungle Book (Disney 1967).

Part of the pleasure in RoboCop is the use of real old-fashioned practical special effects. RoboCop is not a digital creation, he is Peter Weller in a suit of metal. The car chases go at maybe 70 miles per hour and use real cars which were actually smashed during filming. When people are gruesomely blown to bits it is done with models and makeup which had actual physical existence. And when people get shot they use actual squibs—it’s so much fun when the ED 209 shoot up the poor corporate executive and the blood spatters everywhere, and it’s so obvious that it was real fake blood and not digital!

The movies also tend to have great music. The RoboCop theme and some of the military music in Starship Troopers is enough to get the blood stirring.

I recommend RoboCop most of all but anyone who enjoys action movies could do worse than to watch the Verhoeven Trilogy. Three fun films from a glorious decade. Thank you, Paul Verhoeven. Thank you for all the babes and blood and badasses.