The Dismissal

*

Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents. What is nowadays called the higher criticism of the Bible is only a study of the Bible from this existential point of view, neglected too much by the earlier church. Under just what biographic conditions did the sacred writers bring forth their various contributions to the holy volume? And what had they exactly in their several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances? These are manifestly questions of historical fact, and one does not see how the answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: of what use should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in a thing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation; and this theory itself would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment, we might indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. You see that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritual problem.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.

The landscape was entirely artificial; half-opened cells as far as the eye could see. The floor, stretching to infinity, was reminiscent in appearance to a vast stadium littered with opened, opaque egg cartons made of plastic, with mysterious swirls of a disturbing, poisoning pink moving in the layers beneath. There wasn't anything there. These were the empty days. If it was all about the recreation of self, he had entirely failed. And so had become, in this journey into the inner, just another wasted soul. Derelict, as the saying goes, inside his own soul. And so it was that observer status was born anew, because there was no other role, no other function, no other person to be. Not with his limited gifts.

The Education Department should hire you, the boy said to his mother on Christmas Day, and parade you around in schools, saying: this is what will happen to you if you keep taking drugs. She laughed, that brazen, maniacal cackle that they all had, as they all became the same person, in between the sweeps of tears and the rising hysteria. She scratched at the sores on her legs, which were festering and poisonous. I'm on two different types of antibiotics and my blood has gone septic, she said, and if ever an outer appearance had mirrored an inner, this was it. But he had been blind to it all, blind for years, hadn't seen what was staring him in the face, hadn't even pretended there was a solution. He fell off the wagon into comforting despair because he missed the company and adventure, their little clique getting drunker and drunker, laughing and laughing.

But in the cold light of the hungover dawns there was nothing to laugh about. Their lives had become pathetic. Gersch's house was falling apart, and he was clearly in a great deal of pain, yet at the same time he was a wonderfully intelligent and talented man. The best time of his life had been selling hash to backpackers in a London guesthouse, when everything was on tap, girls, kudos, easy distractions. It had all seemed so much fun. And Bridgette too, who he did not speak to, or but rarely, was there with her schooner of beer and her neuroses and the world flying high, hoping for the knight in shining armour, making a fool of herself in front of the randy, drunken men who after a few would screw anything and not care.

Because you could always wake up in the morning and get on your way, extricate yourself from her clinging arms and seek salvatioin in the routines of the day. It was all too cruel. He was happy to be seen somewhere else. And yet time and again he went to that beer garden at the Glengowrie, out of sight of the street and away from anyone he knew in those different, straighter world, and joined the party that was always going on there. The Czech girls were back, showing the Aussie girls what partying was all about. The leader of the pack, her name anglicised as Jane, showed no adherence whatsoever to any normal morality, and was still young enough and good looking enough to get away with it. There were always more handsome strangers; and even more handsome local boys, fit, tight muscles, earnest faces, a ready smile. Happy to sweep a girl off her feet.

It was a long time since he had swept anyone off their feet. He had become a criminal lurking only briefly in the twilight of the real. They could tell he wasn't all there; that his head was somewhere else. I was effed and now I'm fabulous and I owe it all to you guys queue applause, the routine went, and he pleaded with fate to let him just be an ordinary person; not to be overwhelmed with anxiety or distress. Not to be in a mental state where the only solution was oblivion. Writing himself off had become not only a passtime but a destiny, filling every crack in the day, every waking moment. A persistent fly made his life hell; as he sat on the balcony with his laptop, everyting was going, everything was gone, it was time to surrender to a higher fate. If only, if only.

If only these aberrant desires were not so real. If only cognitive behavioiural therapy really worked; and he could alter his thinking, his feeling and behaviour; become normal, that great ambition of the permanently damaged. Instead that tiny creature that was the real person kept skuttling across artificial landscapes, dodging the poisonous pink fumes emerging from the chaotic floor, and would rise up and unite. Margaret, skinny Irish Margaret who had worked hard all her life and once drunk would tell the same stories over and over, almost word for word the same. He sat and had virtually the same conversation with her as he had had before, listening to her litany of pain and injustice and tough upbringing, only to burst into tears. Was it simply self-pity; that the whole world was so infinitely sad. He lived in a world of therapeutic jargon, yet not one person said a genuine hello. It was too much to expect; they were only human after all. And his sense of difference and of isolation solidified; just like that. There was no turning back. He was born to die a street alcoholic; and that was that.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.businessinsider.com/monckton-lies-about-calling-climate-activists-hitler-youth-2009-12

Christopher Monckton told the AP in an interview Monday that he did not call a group of young climate activists in Copenhagen "Hitler Youth," but that it was a trio of Germans and "a Dane" who did.

Unfortunately for the Viscount, video of the incident has been all over the web since last week.

Huffington Post: After lying to Associated Press about his Hitler youth comments, Monckton then proceeded to compare the climate activists to Adolf Hitler's fascist army, saying the activists were attempting to stifle free speech, using tactics "last seen here when the Nazis occupied Denmark.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/climate-change-rebel-bites-back/story-e6frezz0-1225816361017

HIS Excellency Mr Kevin Rudd,

Your speech has prompted several leading Australian citizens to invite me to explain myself in a series of lectures in Australia later this month.

I am writing to offer personal briefings on why "global warming" is a non-problem to you and other party leaders during my visit.

You say I am one of "those who argue that any multilateral action is by definition evil". On the contrary: my first question is whether any action at all is required, to which the objective economic and scientific answer is - no.

Even if multilateral action were required, which it is not, national governments in the West are by tradition democratically elected. The climate ought not to be used as a shoddy pretext for international bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship.

You say I am one of "those who argue that climate change does not represent a global market failure".

Yet it is only recently that opinion sufficient to constitute a market signal became apparent in the documents of the IPCC, which is, however, a political rather than a scientific entity. There has scarcely been time for a "market failure".

Besides, corporations are falling over themselves to cash in on the giant financial fraud against the little guy that carbon taxation and trading have already become in the goody-two-shoes EU and will become in Australia if you get your way.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/11/taking-tea-with-professor-plimer-and-lord-monckton-at-the-other-copenhagen/

The walls of the tiny room where the 50-odd sceptics gather are almost invisible behind the mass of rococo artworks: squint and you could be in the Louvre. “We are certainly small in quantity, but what we lack in numbers we make up for in quality,” boasts Christopher Monckton, chairman of the event and former adviser to Margaret Thatcher.

Buoyed by the recent release of the stolen Climate-gate emails, the sceptics are in fine spirits — one of the gatherings says their struggle is the 21st century equivalent of Galileo’s attempts to disprove the Catholic Church’s claim that the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Australian Ian Plimer, geologist and author of Heaven and Earth, is one of the stars and despite initial doubts — “What is Crikey doing at an event like this?” — agrees to answer some questions on COP15 and the Senate’s rejection of the Rudd government’s ETS:

Attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Challenge is to enter a parallel universe, a 100% irony-neutral zone.

The East Anglia professors — “Let’s sue for fraud!” — are pilloried for manipulating evidence to prove their hypothesis. But no one bats an eyelid when UK lawyer and businessman Stewart Wheeler says: “Maybe what I am about to say is not completely accurate but it’ll make the point I hope.”

At the conclusion of Wheeler’s talk, chairman Christopher Monckton lauds him for speaking up for the “common man on the bus”. Then he remarks, no pun intended: “I know where your castle is.” Turns out Wheeler is a multimillionaire who had enough spare change lying around in 2001 to donate £5 million towards the Conservative Party election campaign.

The speakers pat themselves on their backs for their “evidence-based” and “apolitical” presentations. Yet politics, of a distinctly right-of-centre variety, dominates the conference. Several of the participants boast of their membership of the anti-European Union UK Independence Party.

Professor Plimer says that not only do Al Gore and algae sound alike: “They are both scum.”

The suggestion that mankind should be demonising water rather than co2, given that 300 Americans drown in their bathtubs each year, is greeted by the reply: “I’m sure the 300 are all Democrats.”