Thread: Chronicles of Barbarism… Narnia

Originally posted by Leo Volont


Well, no, the Wizard of Oz had a female Hero and a Good Witch. But Narnia is a clear attack of the British Lion devouring the Blessed Virgin of the Catholics. C.S. Lewis was a Mason who wrote Narnia from specifications handed to him.

I meant in the way of foreigners taking down an empire of someone just because their evil. But thats a movie I saw a long time ago and partly remembering it so I could be wrong

Originally posted by Sortilegio


I meant in the way of foreigners taking down an empire of someone just because their evil. But thats a movie I saw a long time ago and partly remembering it so I could be wrong

Well, actually you did have something of a point concerning the Wizard of Oz. Remember in one of the culminating scenes we are shown that the Authority that stands behind the Civilization is actually just a befuddled and clueless old idiot. It is the rejection of Civilization on the grounds that it must be inherently incompetent. The Story little remarks on the possibility that the predations of an unmitigated and universal barbarian chaos could possibly add up to being a worse thing then an occassional bureaucratic snafu emanating from out of the bowels of an elaborate Civilization which means well in everything, but might occassionally be guilty of overlooking a detail here or there. But the Barbarian Conspiracies which fund the media, then as now, have little interest in advancing the Cause of Civilization, being convinced that it is only in the dissolution of all moral order that they can finally sweep in and claim everything for themselves. It is a vain hope. All History shows that those who militated against Civilization never lived to profit from their sabotage, but were almost the first to be swept away by the chaos they promoted.

Sorry, Leo, I tend to read past negative thoughts about materialism. I told you before I think it is an obsolete and confusing term.

No serious scientist is a materialist anymore. We've probed the fundamental constituents of matter and have found its nature of being even more mysterious than we ever could have imagined, bending space itself and time itself, and equivalently with what we thought was its opposite, energy. As small levels its position and motion are observed in uniform statistical patterns, however uncertain.

Furthermore, and most importantly, we've discovered that all the material of the human body is replaced by new material continuously.

"Materialism" is a dead ontology because we've broken old notions of what material means.

The fact that you condemn the ontology but use the same word in its economic context also confuses me. Economic materialism is an obsession with accumulating objects and thus, overvaluing them, in favor of devaluing nonmaterial things - like knowledge, information, or aesthetic experience.

And yet, Leo, we have also done away with this kind of materialism. Ours is and is increasingly a knowledge economy. The ability to work a factory machine is no longer valued. Instead, what's valued is the ability to learn and imagine how to build a new and better way of doing things. Whether that results in a new machine, or a new political ideology, or new program for an old machine, a new idea for an old ideology, a new way communicating, anything.

And learning and imagination find fertile ground in freedom. The most important kinds of learning cannot be schooled and newest visions cannot be directed.

Communism does not fail because it is managed incorrectly. It is itself a larger class of management, after all. It fails because it is itself an incorrect method of management.

It fails because all types of "newness," including innovation, cannot be managed, and it is a failure of management to attempt to manage creation.

Originally posted by Ex Nine
Sorry, Leo, I tend to read past negative thoughts about materialism. I told you before I think it is an obsolete and confusing term.

No serious scientist is a materialist anymore. We've probed the fundamental constituents of matter and have found its nature of being even more mysterious than we ever could have imagined, bending space itself and time itself, and equivalently with what we thought was its opposite, energy. As small levels its position and motion are observed in uniform statistical patterns, however uncertain.

Furthermore, and most importantly, we've discovered that all the material of the human body is replaced by new material continuously.

\"Materialism\" is a dead ontology because we've broken old notions of what material means.

The fact that you condemn the ontology but use the same word in its economic context also confuses me. Economic materialism is an obsession with accumulating objects and thus, overvaluing them, in favor of devaluing nonmaterial things - like knowledge, information, or aesthetic experience.

And yet, Leo, we have also done away with this kind of materialism. Ours is and is increasingly a knowledge economy. The ability to work a factory machine is no longer valued. Instead, what's valued is the ability to learn and imagine how to build a new and better way of doing things. Whether that results in a new machine, or a new political ideology, or new program for an old machine, a new idea for an old ideology, a new way communicating, anything.

And learning and imagination find fertile ground in freedom. The most important kinds of learning cannot be schooled and newest visions cannot be directed.

Communism does not fail because it is managed incorrectly. It is itself a larger class of management, after all. It fails because it is itself an incorrect method of management.

It fails because all types of \"newness,\" including innovation, cannot be managed, and it is a failure of management to attempt to manage creation.

Okay.

You've read my essays describing all of these scum bags as "Materialists". And now you tell me the word has grown out of fashion. Fine. Suggest a substitute. I am not hung up on particular words. As long as it substantially represents what I wish to convey, then I am happy enough to ride it out until it fits.

However, "Materialism" has a long tradition of meaning exactly what I wish it to convey.

Now, of course, the Materialists may go some great distance to dodge the term, by insisting it no longer means much.... what, in the Constant Rejection of Principle after Principle the Materialists now even find themselves rejecting Material itself. It seems the Materialists will not be happy until they are left with absolutely nothing.

So, Ex-Nine, this rejection of Material by the Materialists simply underlines the Truth of the intent behind the Word, which is not so much as to link them to Material, as to indicate that they entirely devoid of Spirit.

I suggested the substitute "monism" when I mentioned this to you before. It is an overhead term for any philosophy that states the universe is only made of one substance or energy.

It is opposed to "dualism," which, especially in the form of Thomistic Catholicism, says there are two substances that make up the universe, spirit and matter. It is from dualism where the Catholic condemnation of materialism, favoring matter at the expense of spirit, comes from.

You use it in much the same way, rooting the definition of the word in dualism. However, I don't suspect that any materialists are dualists. They do not reject spiritualism as much as they reject the division of spirit and matter. Materialists are monists.

The Wikipedia page for monism defines three main kinds, of which materialism is one. Of course, I do not mean to use Wikipedia as a definitive source, but only for illustrative purposes to clear up a misconception about monism.

Originally posted by Wikipedia
1. Idealism or phenomenalism, which holds that only mind is real.
2. Neutral monism, which holds that both the mental and the physical can be reduced to some sort of third substance, or energy.
3. Physicalism or materialism, which holds that only the physical is real, and that the mental can be reduced to the physical.

As you can see, materialism and its opposite counterpart, phenomenalism, are not only extreme but, more importantly, dependent entirely on unfinished knowledge. Anyone who thinks that only the mind is real does not pay attention to the physical world, and anyone who only thinks that only the physical world is real does not pay attention to their mind or their dreams. Furthermore, we're just beginning our exploration of the mind, compared how we are just beginning our exploration of the material world.

The only reasonable monism is neutral monism, which is what the far majority of people you condemn as materialists are, whether they know it or not, whether they say it or not, by virtue of the fact that they are open to new discoveries. If they do not appear open to the discoveries of the mind, it is because our discoveries up until this point have been woefully inadequate to the task of delivering them to the public, mainly because they are not repeatable.

Maybe a dualist like you would feel just fine in giving up on that endeavor, claiming that the mind is separate and entirely distinct from physical reality and that it is not worth the impossible effort to demonstrate so-called psychic phenomena for the critical and faithless masses. That you think they need faith first and foremost to see the truth of the mind is despicable, if that is indeed what you think, for the reason that no human being knows the full capacity of the mind.

Your dualism surprises me because monism is the basis for much of Eastern religion, which you continuously express an affinity toward.

Finally, it is appropriate that we are so near to the Feast of the Incarnation, incidentally under which chasms formed from mere differences in wording for the early churches. Jesus was one of the first to blow a hole in the concept of dualism in the West. Since then we've had trouble with the idea of something being both divine and physical, feeling compelled to worship Jesus as though he were something special, even though he called us brothers and sisters and walked among us on his feet and even prayed beside us in the temple. He wasn't a priest or member of the clergy in his own religion. He was recalcitrant!

The Easterners have had a similar problem, except they have fallen into phenomenalism more often than we have fallen into materialism, claiming that the world is an illusion or some such. The Easterners search for miracles in their dreams and the Westerners search for them in the physical world. The future will belong to reproducible feats of both that reveal their unity.

And blow away both eastern and western traditions forever.

Anyone who thinks that only the mind is real does not pay attention to the physical world, and anyone who only thinks that [****] the physical world is real does not pay attention to their mind or their dreams.[/b]

I assume you meant to say 'only' where I've inserted the [****].

And that's not necessarily true...

Ah, thank you, I've made the edit.

Originally posted by Citrusponge
And that's not necessarily true...

You're right, I suppose it is possible to not pay attention to either the mind or the physical world.

I think we have a sizable number of those people in this forum.


Kidding aside, I was trying to use the word "physical world" as it was used in the context of the Wiki article, in the sense that seems to mean "the physical world as it is known." I did end up putting myself on a slippery slope. People who call themselves physicalists or materialists take it for granted that we do not fully understand the physical world. That's much worse, though.

How can you say you are something with you don't fully understand? In general you can't and it's dishonest.

I'm a phillybippoist. I don't know what a phillybippo is but I know it has something to do with philly and therefore I advocate it. It's as much nonsense as saying I am a materialist. I don't know what material is, but I know it has something to do with matter/energy and I'm for it.

Being a materialist means you are an implied "open materialist." You are open to new knowledge about what material is and what it can do. For example, that it could exist in extra dimensions or in parrallel universes outside of space and time.

However, materialism, the way Leo recognizes it, simply means "anti-spiritual," because it is interpreted within a dualist concept. And that's not right. Materialism is a monist concept. That's my essential message.

Originally posted by Ex Nine
How can you say you are something with you don't fully understand? In general you can't and it's dishonest.

I'm a phillybippoist. I don't know what a phillybippo is but I know it has something to do with philly and therefore I advocate it. It's as much nonsense as saying I am a materialist. I don't know what material is, but I know it has something to do with matter/energy and I'm for it.

Hmm. Materialism/physicalism as I understand it, and as I label myself with it, is the idea that everything is matter/energy/space/time and follows strict physical laws, without exception. I don't claim to know everything about the workings of the universe and I don't think I need to to choose a metaphysical stance. To me this just seems to be a coherent and nicely elegant view. If it turns out to be balls can always change my mind :]

Exactly. But what is space? What is matter? What is energy? And what is time? These are not philosophical questions. These are hardcore physics questions. Hardcore. Our answers to each and every single one of these has changed through the history of science.

I certainly think we are closer to the truth of each question and its answer than we were before. But are we there yet? A mind-numbing spiritualist would think we are, assuming to know the essence of everything.

Good point. I guess the only substancial thing I can pull out of this view is the idea of everything being reducible to the same elements, all subject to the same strict laws. And maybe something along the lines of scientists at least being on the right track at this moment in time. That last bit's more to do with epistimology though. Whatever. What was my point again... oh yeah, materialism. Seems we've watered down and shifted the focus of my view into something pretty flaccid and boring. Perhaps I'll sex it up a bit some day if I feel the need to make it a meatier and more infectious meme.

Just remembered one piece of meat I can keep: everything existing being completely objective. Maybe that just follows from what I decided above. No matter.

I just saw this movie yesterday and would like to make a few comments about what Leo has said about it.

First It was very well made.

The point is the lion held position of "good". The lion was a very well developed character that while not perfect I found to be encouraging to all that is good and wise. There is no secret meaning here that makes the lion a beast.

The queen I found. "impure" Being interested in herself, power and control over Narnia. You are not suppose to see her as a fair character Leo. You are supose to see her as the adversary to good. I don't care if you think she represents the Virgin Mary. That is your wish. It does not change the fact that this character is designed to be the adversay. To get upset about the outside form, I think is not very wise or important to do that. I assume it comes from your strong catholic views. Just because they have power over narnia, does not mean they deserve the position and to treat the people there the way the queen did. You are largely missing the point here.

The children are the central charaters of the story. They are also not supose to be immoral characters. No matter how much you dislike them. They hold position of "humans on a journey" in the movie. We are supose to relate to these characters. The brother has his own issues with the queen. And all this is part of the percieved learning human experience. It is a fantasy story from a famous novel. Not a propaganda tool.

A few weak points I found, was with the central characters. I would like to see them more earn their position as king of Narnia. It is not effective when they did not prove themself as worthy or demonstrate very much. They basically went along with the circumstances they found themself in. Which carried them to the feet of the lion who made them king and did most of the work for them. This is the unrealistic part of the film.

At first they wanted to get their brother and just go home. They did not care an ice-acle about Narnia until they were so involved it was almost their life. At first they didn't see the place as important or even that real, Just a strange land. In the end it was all they knew and their real life was forgotten. There is alot of subtle things you are missing Leo.

Now whats "right" and "wrong" and "justice" and "true" wise, etc. The spiritual understanding of humanity in molding these characters always makes this part a stretch. Hence the hollowness of the main characters. But they did well considering.....

One thing I was impressed with was the lion in this movie. I found one of the most effective parts was the decision to sacrifice himself before the queen. That kind of thing is the type of stuff you need to develop in your good characters. To show they are worthy of the position in the movie they hold. To show their purity. They should demonstrate their understanding,wisdom, knowledge.

Now I found the beavers (and thorne who you mentioned as property of the queen) as amusing little characters. You forgot to demonize these characters as you did not mention them. Perhaps you saw them as the messengers of satan, painted by british proparganda as angels.

Like I said I think there is alot in the movie that seems to have gone right over your head Leo. It seems you are upset because you do not like the british. Or you have been offended by the symbolism. Meanwhile this upset causes you to miss the entire point of the story and you cannot sit down and enjoy the work that has gone into it. Nor were you able to apreciate the good in the film.

Well, I'm a late joiner to this thread. Thought I'd mention something, though: Leo, you're grossly misstating the facts in your arguments against atheism. Theists account for more wars, and hence, more killings, throughout history. The atheists aren't really innocent, either, though. The simple, hard fact is people don't play well with others. Theists outnumbered atheists throughout history, with a few exceptions. I'd estimate that looking at straight facts, killings by theists are equal to killings by atheists pound-for-pound. But since there's more theists, killings by theists outnumber the killings by atheists.

Remember--In WWII, the USA, Japan, Britain, France and Germany were all theistic nations. A large portion of Russia, too, though communism tried to eliminate it over time. The nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan BY THEISTS. Had America been an atheistic nation, the same thing likely would have happened. Bomb dropped, people dead.

Now, going back to medieval era: I trust you've seen the quote from my essay that was posted in one of the other threads in the Religion Forum. If not, I'll sum it up: Basically, it attributes more than 4,000,000 killingss committed BY CHRISTIANS primarily with the excuse of 'Holy War' or 'Witch Hunts'. Not only this, most of these killings were BY THEISTS, AGAINST THEISTS! When the Christians tried to convert the Scandinavians and Norsmen, they met with strong resistance to the spread of Christianity. The answer? Kill off 3,000,000 Scandinavians. Then adopt their holidays, noteably the celebration of Winter which went on to become Christmas, and force what's left of the Scandinavians to convert. These Scandinavians were THEISTS. Polytheists, but theists nonetheless.
And the witch hunts! Most of the victims were Jews, numbering at nearly 1,000,000 total. Jews are MONOTHIESTS, just like Christians.
And the Crusades! Millions of Muslims killed, and Christians as well! (NOTE: MUSLIMS ARE ALSO MONOTHIESTS!)

Now, moving ahead. American Civil War: Primarily Theists vs Theists, and of the same nationality as well. Millions slaughtered. WWI: Again, USA, Germany, Britain, France, etc. All primarily theists.

The fact is, people often resort to killing other people. Like I said, we don't play along well with others, or even with ourselves. Theism and atheism have nothing to do with it. A man, driven to the point of killing, will just as quickly do it under the banner of theism as he will under atheism.

But while we're talking, I might draw your attention to the fact that science has brought about much more than religion, progress-wise. Modern medicine, refrigeration, transportation and computers are all fruits of science. Now, science doesn't necessarily mean atheism. Science represents SKEPTICISM. I mentioned somewhere else that it is impossible to disprove the existence of any God, by definition. Others have mentioned the same fact. Therefore we can never prove that God doesn't exist, only take the cautious, skeptical approach. NOT the cynical approach that you take to science, Leo. Skepticism means seeking out evidence, verifying claims before buying into them, etc. Cynicism means avoiding seeking out evidence out of ignorance, hatred or bigotry.

Originally posted by Leo Volont


That is such bullcrap.

Just tally it up. *Attila the Hun -- Atheist Barbarian. *Genghis Kha (who committed almost a total gencide on the once great Persian Civilization) -- Atheist Barbarian. *Timerlane emulated Genghis in his own bloodbath -- another killing spree in old Persia and the massacre of Delhi. *The Catholic Civilization knew of a few capital crimes, but with the Wars of the Protestant Rebellion, in fact conducted by an Atheist and Predatory Nobility, had a wide slaughter of Catholics in Ireland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Heugonot Protestants in France slaughtered on a wide scale in every territory of their control, the German Protestant Princes, in fact Atheists, depopulated entire regions as they destroyed to a man complete provinces of Catholic peasantry. *The Revolutions continued. *The French Revolution was largely anticlerical, and its victims in the Reigns of Terror were largely Catholic. *When we get to the 20th Century we have the Greatest Slaughters perhaps in History (though Genghis Khans slaughter in Persia may have been numerically comparable) -- the Russian annihilation of the peasants in Ukraine and Belaruse (20 million or more). *The Chinese Revoltution and then the Cultural Revoltuion. *The Cambodian bloodbaths.

So it simply is no where near the truth to say that Religion has killed even the tiniest fraction of the people that Barbarian Atheism and Materialism has murdered.

It is simply recycled propaganda from the French Revolution, something that Voltaire or Diderot had said, from the depth of their ill informed lies, which nobody on their side has had any interest in correcting. *One has to be very uneducated and stupid to repeat such a lie with the hope of being believed, except by somebody just as stupid.

Can you say "Crusades" and "Holocaust" as huge events and only part of religious wars/deaths.