.diminished discords (xviii)

this week, on Laeth's mind

there is a positive intuition buried underneath the unhealthy obsession with sex both from secular people and culture, as well as from christian people and doctrine. it’s a recognition that marriage is foundational, that the relation between man and woman is the building block of everything, and other aspects of humanity can't compare, belong to a less fundamental realm. the chaos unleashed by the sexual revolution is understandable as a reaction to freedom and consciousness, and as it always happens, in the long run freedom and consciousness act as a sieve. not only or even especially for this life, but for the next.

if one is uncomfortable with the implications, perhaps remembering that the vast majority of sperm and eggs do not, even without contraception, become human beings, will help provide an image of how in this life already, many spirits may be called, but few are chosen. and that up next the selection is probably even more careful. why wouldn’t it be.

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every once in a while i think i should have been some kind of biologist. a once possible past. no longer, of course. but i still tend to find that biologists have great narrative intuition. perhaps i can still be at least a biosophist.

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proper spacing is the difference between being a moralist and amoralist.

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be it nondualism or trinitarianism or complex hierarchy, monists always try to escape from monism, because it's so nonsensical and self contradictory. but it's better to escape without the gimmicks. you can just say no to monism as such. it's just a bad idea. if monism was true, you could never know it. because knowing implies at least a knower and something to know. but that's just the most basic contradiction. a more compelling piece of evidence against monism is looking around and paying attention.

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life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a wonderful idea, but a very young one, considering the great saga of human history. give it time.

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churches aren't persons, so they can't be christian. it's a privilege reserved for individuals.

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slavery is, like freedom, ineradicable.

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each of the six Star Wars movies is in a different genre. the Phantom Menace is the one for kids, despite the politics. hence Jar Jar. the perspectives we follow in that movie, first through Jar Jar and then through Anakin, are those of children. even the political stuff, it’s seen through the eyes of a child, who is looking in and doesn’t quite get what’s going on. which is why those scenes are brilliantly inserted, and misunderstood as boring filler. but they aren’t.

people wanted Lucas to do the same thing over and over with every film at least since Empire Strikes Back. but he's a genius and had a vision. Lucas doesn't treat kids as if they're stupid and he doesn't treat adults as being without whimsy. and he doesn't try to put everything into every movie. he planned the story carefully and it makes metafictional sense in every case.

i will defend George Lucas' genius at every opportunity (and especially the prequels, where the scope of his genius was truly revealed). i believe that strongly in it.

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since machine vomit is not really writing, reading machine vomit is not really reading.

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i dreamed of saint Paul telling me about a brain parasite that makes people understand portuguese. he was explaining to me that the language came about because our people became infected with this parasite that unlocked certain brain waves. and he was framing it as a good thing. and of course it made total sense to me in the dream.

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whether the other romantic christian bloggers accept it or not, WmJas has made dreams and synchronicities pervasive and fundamental themes of the milieu.

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ironically, the orthodox critique of imagination could be useful when applied to machine vomit, because it requires no discipline, no training, no delay of gratification. an artist reins in his worst instincts by putting in the effort to realize his vision. it’s a form of self denial like any of the other promoted by orthodoxy. but of course they don’t understand it, because it would require a favorable appreciation of the limitations of the flesh, and unfortunately the orthodox thinkers are too far gone up the mind of fathers.

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it's useful to know what the devil wants, and i used to be very obsessed with this. but it's probably more important to know what God wants, and what your spouse wants, and what your friends want. more interesting too. and more productive. what the devil wants is to fight God. that's it. it’s really not that interesting a subject. to focus on the specifics of his rivalry is to be doubly negatively motivated: to be against the guy who is against God.

better to think of what we can add to this wonderful creation within the constraints of our specific lives. but it's no wonder that trads of all types get obsessed with the manifestations of evil. even the pagans now. you can't even trust them to be positive. because they are all under the spell of monism, thus this life will always always belong to the devil for them, and so there's no point to anything at all here.

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to be any good an artist needs consistent practice, otherwise his skill dwindles, as well as time away from his art, otherwise both body and mind go. it's because human energy is limited, and they can never become truly specialized, that their products are unique, unlike those of a machine.

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you can't buy my books on amazon for the same reason you can't buy a rolex there. they're exclusive.

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mormonism IS NOT christianity. it's better.

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the yogi is enlightened in the cave because he doesn't have to face the real world. when he comes out, he's just as ignorant, except now he's convinced he has wisdom, and will proceed to derail a bunch of people's lives in search of nothingness, potentially for centuries. think of how chill even the largest metropolis was three, five, nine hundred years ago. and now think how fragile and cowardly you'd have to be to have to want to retreat entirely from that.

the only wisdom to be found in retreating to a cave is how to get out. staying is not wisdom, especially if there's no one trying to keep you there. it's worse when we enslave and deceive ourselves than when others do it to us.

saint Paul solved this ages ago of course, but not long after he did the people who supposedly followed the same religion made a big spectacle of ignoring him and still do.

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the comedown from the new age woo was catastrophic, but it will make the comedown from traditionalism seem like a walk in the park, because the new agers can only blame themselves. traditionalists will blame God.

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if they ban kids from social media all that will happen is that it will hasten the death of social media. kids always find a way. usually a way out. and it will be cool, unlike social media now.

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timeless wisdom is great when you have nothing to give

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everyone must go through dark nights of the soul. the problem is fighting the sunrise when it comes. because i'm a simpleton, i know exactly who made me stop fighting the sunrise. thank God for Joseph Smith. morning light is so beautiful.

all my life i had been, and probably remain, a pessimist by temperament. but the expansive vision of Joseph Smith made of me an ineradicable cosmic optimist. this was the message Jesus was trying to relay, but which the christian churches always failed to deliver, and buried underneath nihilistic metaphysics and purely negative motivations.

Joseph Smith finally made me understand that salvation is the moment just before you need more. and it’s that more, and not the moment before, that Jesus cared about.

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does studying history bring you closer to it, or further away. for me it’s definitely the latter. of course it depends on what studying history means. if it means reading historians, as it usually does, then it definitely increases, because what we are reading is another person's perspective. even if contemporary with the subject, it's always a further layer of abstraction.

but even if we just look at artifacts, our own theories about them will be necessarily informed by words written by someone else. there is no history separate from theory, and a subject is ultimately the words used to talk about it. a subject is really nothing more than a special way of talking about certain things, that more or less approximates and makes sense of experience.

to participate in a rite that has been practiced similarly for centuries is the closest one can get to real history. but when i did it, it only highlighted for me how alien modern consciousness is to it, and how powerless the rites are now compared to how powerful they used to be. they used to move entire civilizations, and the whole of people’s lives. they do not anymore. they just don’t. ancient religion now is essentially scholarship.

but studying something does not bring you closer to it necessarily. it gives you tools and frames, but it does not guarantee understanding. as in everything, intuition is how the gap is bridged. technical knowledge can both help and hinder, depending on when it's deployed. to investigate answers it's good. to pose questions, bad. and the right question comes from inspiration, outside the box. by definition you study answers. new questions come from somewhere else.

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every true human act is a revolt against universalism.

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oh yeah, i released a new novel the other day. a metafictional slice of life romantic comedy drama mosaic. what a mouthful. but the inside is more cozy. a good summer read, my wife says. she would know. she’s my editor too.

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musical portion today is Fair Weather, with Chet Baker singing and on trumpet, and Herbie on piano, from the Round Midnight motion picture soundtrack. beautiful song with beautiful lyrics and a heartfelt rendition from Chet.

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episode two of .youasked. questions about why i think my first two novels are kind of crap, and the future of religious community in the modern west.

if you have further questions, i will record further answers.

someone called me this the other day. no error.