Prince Caspian's Fleet.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Anyone who has read 'The Dawn Treader' will know the situation.
Price Caspian of Narnia has heard that the Lord of the Lone Isles, a long way from the Royal capital on the main land, is tyrannising the local people, who are Caspian's subjects.

But Caspian is a long way from home, and he only has a small ship's company to fight against the local lord's minions. How can he go in and sort things out?

Caspian decided to sail within sight of the Lone Islands and then raise the flags to send the signal "I shall go on alone. Lord X will take his ships and wait to the west, Lord Y will take his squadron to the east and wait there. The rest of the fleet will stay where they are and all ships will stay out of sight of the Lone Isles. If I am not back tomorrow, all ships will go in and and investigate. If I do not meet you on the quay, storm the stronghold!"

It therefore appeared to the baddies that they were vastly outnumbered by foes that they could not see, and they surrendered to Prince Caspian without a fight.

But this is not a book review. C S Lewis, did however set me thinking about things.
It is not so much what people actually see, as what they ~think~ they are seeing that dictates their behaviour.

So long as people have confidence in the bank, there is no rush to take out funds. the minute people think the bank is in trouble, or the stock market is about to collapse, well lo and behold - it happens!

And political systems as well as Society itself is bound by the same law it seems. It must have belief in itself, or it will collapse. London was a peaceful city one minute, but when people saw the police outnumbered in Tottenham, Croydon was ablaze within hours, and then trouble broke out in Manchester and other places.

Credibility = stability, and stability is needed for progress and a comfortable way of life.

The priests of everry religion knew from Time immemorial that as long as they could appeal to The Gods, and put the right people in power on the thrones, that all would be well for them.
And if their was plague and famine or defeat in battle, it was easy to blame the victims and demand more obedience.

When Josiah came to the throne of Israel, he was just 8 years old, and the priests of Yahweh sid that they had found an old book in the temple that was being restored. The book was largely a chronicle, written in the 3rd person, with a lot about a person called Moses, who led the nation out of slavery in Egypt to their present homeland.

This story also told how Yahweh had promised to look after His people , if they were good, but calamity would come upon them if they were bad. Cynics may point out that the priests could have written this 'old' book and then 'found' it themselves. But that is mere conjecture...

What is more certain is that in the book, which we today call the Torah, a lot of supernatural events occurred. The Red Sea was opened and the people walked across on dry land, food fell from the skies to feed them and when they approached a great city, the walls fell flat that they might take it.

And yet, to the people of Josiah's day, the prophets of Yahweh did not go calling down fire from heaven, or smiting men dead on the spot if they disagreed. instead, the prophets went in fear of their lives if they upset their wicked kings. The later prophets were big on moral pronouncements, but short on awesome miracles, it seems to me.

Yet the priests who came after them and took up the same moral standards made a good case - thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, for the Lord thy God has got an eye on you and will see to it that you get what is coming...

Alas, there were fewer miracles being done to shore up crumbling belief, and as men learned more about the natural world, the less they needed God to explain things like thunderstorms.

Now, the guys who wrote books like Hosea and Amos wrote in the first person, and they were a lot more humane and tolerant - enlightened, even, than the guys who had written the Torah. But their tolerant and more loving deity still needed good guys with a good sword arm to keep order here below. Most of the time, they got lucky, and we got Civilisation as a result. With a good king on the throne and a good God in heaven, we did ok. The Americans swapped our King for a President, but they made sure that their nation was still under God, and even said so on their most Holy of religious relics, the US dollar.

But God is not about these days, it seems. He certainly does not smite the Heathen like He used to, neither the Chav nor the Gangsta, it seems. Some liberal and cultural Christians will say that 'God is love', and that virtue is it's own reward, that what goes around will come around, and that God has no hands but ours to work His will in the world.

And maybe they are right, but this isn't going to prevent any rioting next summer. Nor will it keep Western Civilisation safe in a world being run by the Chinese and the Indians. It may be that our generation will see the eclipse of Western civilisation - gone, because we, as a society, were smart enough to see through the priestly tales, but not spiritually aware enough to see the greater truths that the old myths were pointing us to.

We need to have a belief in something just beyond the horizon, something bigger than ourselves, in order not to implode as a society. And most people do not have that any longer.

Comments

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Yes, authority and thus society works on credibility.

A lot of bleeding hearts defend minor criminality as not worth fighting because of it being... well minor. But what they fail to note is the affect it has at large. This is called the "broken window" effect and it absolutely exists.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Isn't the "broken window" thing a fallacy about economic production? What do you intend it to mean?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Oooh! -Oooh!!
I know this one.
A broken window window, the economists tell us, means work for a glazier, so it's good for business. However, other economists will say that the money spent on fixing that window could have bought a new suit. So hard luck for the tailor- ergo it is not good for business.

However, a Criminologist will tell you that a broken window, left broken , will tell every hood on the street that policing round here is slack. More hoodies will hang out here as a result and drive crime figures up.

I dunno what the commenter intended, but this is how I read it, that he is saying that damage will beget more damage unless you fix it soon.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for clarifying (even if it does hurt my fashion-blind sensibilities to see my beloved hoodies equated with criminality).

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

In economics there the "broken window" fallacy. In sociology, there's the "broken window" theory. That being a broken window attracts crime as minto pointed out.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Not exclusively, it applies to any case where the unseen costs of an action are ignored.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So wait, what's a children's book have to do with Western civilization, Biblical prophets, and what does or does not define social stability? The four do not seem to go together here.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Nothing seems to hold together until I look at it. When I do, I see a pattern forming.

guy writes a book, and people in it are fooled, law and order restored by a show of (apparent) force. in the bible, we get prophets appealing to an invisible God to uphold prophet's moral pronouncements (be good and obey - don't eat pork or else)

Now Western Civilization has enabled us to see behind the scenes.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" , says the Wizard of Oz.

But there is no Sky Daddy to smite the wicked or save us from ourselves.
We gotta put on our Big Boy Pants and start to live more ethically for its own sake or we are done for.

We also ought to buy shotguns and form militias or we are doomed, I tell you - doomed ! :-)

ETA: you may also like to read 'Connections' by James Burke. He thinks like I do, but is a real genius and not just a kid who is a bit brighter than the rest. he also says things a lot better than me and with fewer typos.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Nothing seems to hold together until I look at it. When I do, I see a pattern forming.

Looks like you have something in common with conspiracy theorists.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

So does the Theology of Nicky Gumble, R.T Kendall and C S Lewis, among others.

Look , I don't buy into the idea that the Hebrews were given their Torah at the foot of Mt Sinai, and then they marched into Jericho and put it to the sword, do you?

I am inclined to believe that people living in Canaan about 1000BC wrote themselves a history that was more fictional than factual. And they used it to bolster their own belief system and society vis a vis the neighbours. You ?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Patterns are one thing, drawing patterns from random events and disconnected sources is quite a different thing. And again, what does this comment even mean because I have a hard time fathoming it? I'm not sure if it's because I'm a Southerner or if it's just the bizarreness of it.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Well, i am saying that I have reason to believe that the Guys who wrote the OT up as far as say, Psalms, had an agenda.

Did you know that the Anglo Saxon Chronicle was put together by Alfred the Great as a propaganda exercise to Unite Saxon England to fight the danes?

He was like " Ok, we are all Saxons and this is the history of Our people."

Now, the Hebrews were a loose confederation of tribes, so someone gave them a common history and a common ancestry,and this is what was hoped would enable them to pull together.

I admit, it is pretty unconventional thinking , but look at the evidence. What do we see? Are the events of Exodus confirmed in Archaeology , or are they more likely mythic? And Satan? Solomon? Noah ? Joseph in Egypt? Where do they stand in the scheme of things?

Let me say again - The Tanack, to about the period of the Late Monarchy, is written in the 3rd person , and was probably put there at a later date. this explains all the anachronisms in the Torah .

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

All societies evolve and change, and eventually die off or merge with another. Western society is no different. We've had a good run of 2,500 years, longer than most civilizations, from our classical roots in antiquity through the Dark Ages to the age of exploration and conquest to world wars and now to...well, to whatever we are at right now.

I frankly don't buy the whole "Western civilization is doomed!!" line, because I see a lot of promise in us, a lot of things we have given to the world, and still give, that China, for instance, with all its industrial might, will never match. As a society we've been through things far worse than riots and government gridlock and financial meltdowns, and although I think I passed into the "damned kids, git off mah lawn!" phase of adult psyche around seven or eight years ago, I don't see my generation and the one before it making such an unholy mess of things, as many people seem to think we will.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I too have read 'Connections', by James Burke. Ii recommend it to u, for i know you would enjoy it.

When the Chinese do take over, they won't stand for any hoodie nonsense. They may be greedy and exploitative, but they won't be soft on juvenile delinquents.

Too bad that their corporations will ruin the planet, but at least we will have order on the streets :)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Western civilization has also shown an amazing ability to re-define itself. At one point Western civilization is defined as a bunch of feuding slavery-dependent city-states opposed to a multi-cultural, tolerant, abolitionist absolute monarchy, then it was feuding autocratic empires descended from said city-states unified by a fringe kingdom, then it was defined as an empire run by God-Kings who ruled in a grim darkness in which there is only war and endless backstabbing, then it was no less than three rival descendants of said grim and dark empire, then it was a part of that area which had seen complete governmental collapse and was regularly overrun, then the emerging New Monarchies and little petty-states, then the militarized, brutal colonial empires in constitutional monarchical and absolutist forms, and then totalitarianisms and democracy.

At no point has Western ever had a consistent definition or a consistent idea of even what it claims to represent.

Protecting Western Civilization?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Western civilization seems pretty vicious and brutal to me. Why would you want to protect it?

Re: Protecting Western Civilization?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it seems very capable of protecting itself. I'm now more interested in protecting African civilization.

Re: Protecting Western Civilization?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

A noble venture if there was one. How do you intend to handle the Portuguese marauders?

Re: Protecting Western Civilization?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I'm more concerned about our own marauders.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

It has been the pioneer and the standard bearer of democracy, human rights, the rule of law, compassion, equality, and a variety of other "progressive" causes. People who see these things as desirable would like to see them continue, something that isn't likely to happen under any likely successors to Western civilization.

Human rights!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Now there is a concept I would like to see implemented in the West. The only entities that seem to have rights are corporations. In my neighborhood, the police read a suspect his rights: "You have the right to be arrested. All other rights are an illusion."

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

You might want to move to another neighbourhood. Humans rights are enshrined in law in just about every other part of the West. When the level of respect for human rights in other parts of the world is considered, citizens of the West have it pretty good. And if they don't like it, they can vote for reforms.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It has also been the standard bearer of totalitarianism, thoughtcrime, rule of the Party/divinely sanctioned monarch, "hardness is kindess towards the future", "our cornerstone is laid, our very foundation rests on the great moral truth that the black man is inferior to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition", and the idea of starving millions to pay for wars not started by those millions or even relevant to them. Let's not delude ourselves that Western civilization blazes and forges the stars anew, it simply exorcises the demons of its past by neglecting how those demons are of the very same hue and color they are.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

You can nitpick over the perceived shortcomings of the West, most of which occurred centuries ago, all you want, but it all amounts to a flawed argument. Maybe the West isn't perfect, but it is better than any available alternatives. And it's still the only champion of progressive values.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

And China and Russia haven't done likewise, in many cases, I suppose you want to tell me ?