I Didn't Leave Catholicism. Catholicism Left Me.

Spengler on 'Womanish Love of One's Neighbour'

From The Hour of Decision, 1933:

"There is one other thing that belongs of necessity to a ripe Culture. That is property, the thought of which causes delirious outbursts of envy and hatred from the vulgar-minded. Property, that is, in the original sense: old and permanent possession, inherited from forefathers or acquired over long years by the heavy and devoted work of the owner and cherished and increased for his sons and grandsons. Wealth is not the mere background of superiority, but, above all, the result and expression of it, a function not only of the way in which it has been acquired, but also of the ability needed to shape and use it as a true cultural element. Let it for once be said outright, though it is a slap in the face for the vulgarity of the age: property is not a vice, but a gift, and a gift such as few possess. For it, too, is the product of long training through generations of distinction; occasionally it is acquired in families that have worked their way upward - by self-education on a groundwork of sound and strong race-character, but practically never by original talent alone, without some precondition of educated environment and past example. It is not a question of how much one has, but of what one has and the way in which one has it. Mere quantity as an end in itself is vulgar.

"One can have, and will to have, property as a means to power - this is a subordinating of economic successes to political aims, and it affirms the ancient experience that money belongs with leadership in war and State. This was Caesar's conception when he conquered and plundered Gaul, and that of Cecil Rhodes when he got the mines of South Africa into his hands in order there to found an empire after his own heart. No poor nation can have great political successes, and so long as it regards poverty as virtue, and riches as sin, it does not deserve any. This was the fundamental though only half-conscious meaning of the old Germanic expeditions by sea and land, for with the booty acquired, ships were built and followers enlisted. This type of will-to-power is hallmarked by a royal generosity. It is the opposite of greed and miserliness and equally remote from parvenu prodigality and womanish love of one's neighbour.

"But this is beside the point. I am speaking of property-owning in so far as it implies the tradition of a Culture. It signifies inward superiority, it marks a distinction from whole classes of people. Not much is needed: a small well-preserved homestead, a worthy craft reputably practised, a tiny garden bearing evidence of cultivation by loving hands, a miner's spotless home, a few books or reproductions of classical art. The point is that these objects should be transformed into a personal world, should bear the stamp of the owner's personality. True possessions are soul, and only through that soul Culture. To estimate them by their money value is, however you look at it, either an incomprehension or a desecration. To divide them after the owner's death is a sort of murder."

Christian Morality is Renunciation and Nothing Else

Oswald Spengler, 1933:

What are, actually, Christian trade unions? Christian Bolshevism, neither more nor less. Since the beginning of the Rationalist age - that is, since 1750 - there is materialism both with and without Christian terminology. As soon as one mixes up the concepts of poverty, hunger, distress, work, and wages (with the moral undertone of rich and poor, right and wrong) and is led thereby to join in the social and economic demands of the proletarian sort - that is, money demands - one is a materialist. And then the pressing inward need for a high altar is supplied by the party secretariat, for a poor-box by election funds - and the trade-union official becomes the successor to St. Francis.

This materialism of the Late megalopolis is a practical cast of thought and action, whatever the "faith" may be that accompanies it. It is the mode of regarding history and public and personal life "economically" and of looking upon economics, not as a thing of vocations and the content of lives, but as the method by which with the least exertion the most money and pleasure can be secured: panem et circenses. Most people nowadays do not realize at all how materialistic they are in themselves and their thought. They may be zealous in prayer and confession and have the word "God" for ever on their lips, they may even be priests by calling and conviction, and yet be materialists. Christian morality is, like every morality, renunciation and nothing else. Those who do not feel it to be so are materialists. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" means: do not regard this hard meaning of life as misery and seek to circumvent it by party politics. But for proletarian election propaganda the precept is certainly not suitable. The materialist prefers to eat the bread that others have earned in the sweat of their face, the peasant, the craftsman, the inventor, the captain of industry. But the famous "eye of a needle," through which many a camel passes, is not too narrow for the "rich man" only; it is equally narrow for the man who extorts bigger wages and shorter working hours by means of strikes, sabotage, and elections - and for him, too, who engineers these for the sake of his own power. It is the utility-moral of the slave-souls: slaves, not because of their situation in life - for that we are all without exception, from the destiny of being born at a particular time and place - but because to regard the world from below is mean. Does one regard the state of being rich with envy or with contempt? Does one acknowledge the man who has by personal superiority worked his way up to the rank of a leader - from locksmith's apprentice, say, to founder and owner of a factory - or hate him and try to pull him down? That is the test. But this materialism, to which renunciation is incomprehensible and absurd, is nothing but egoism of individuals and classes, the parasitic egoism of inferior minds, who regard the economic life of other people, and that of the whole, as an object from which to squeeze with the least possible exertion the greatest possible enjoyment: panem et circenses. Such people look upon personal distinction, industry, success, joy in achievement as wickedness, sin, and treason. It is the moral of class war, which lumps all this together under the name Capitalism (which had from the first a moral significance) and sets it up as a target for proletarian hate, while on the other side it aims at welding the wage-earners into one political front with the underworld of the great cities.

A Production from "P"

 

 

 

 

Here gathering Chroniclers, and by them stand

Giddie fantastique Poets of each land.

-- John Donne

John Lennon's biggest hit 'Imagine' is tosh

So says Paul Handley for the UK Guardian here, in defense of a New Year's Eve performance of the song which has outraged many who heard it because the performer altered the lyrics.

He's right. The song is a gooey mess, the sentimentality of which mocks the lyrics. But hasn't nonsense been the whole point of rock 'n roll from the beginning? 

That many people take this music too seriously isn't just evidence of a new belief which has taken the place of an old one. The new one is now an orthodoxy whose reactionaries can't abide messing with its sacred, atheocratic text.

Give Yoko Ono some of the credit for this. After all it was she who called Paul McCartney's songs all June, spoon and moon.

She ought to know.

Samuel Johnson: Austerity is the Contrary Cure and Antidote to the Disease of Indulgence

"Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is invigorated and roused, by which the attractions of pleasure are interrupted, and the chains of sensuality are broken. It is observed by one of the fathers, that "he who restrains himself in the use of things lawful, will never encroach upon things forbidden". Abstinence, if nothing more, is, at least, a cautious retreat from the utmost verge of permission, and confers that security which cannot be reasonably hoped by him that dares always to hover over the precipice of destruction, or delights to approach the pleasures which he knows it fatal to partake. Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should readily have recourse, if we dreaded guilt as we dread pain.

"The completion and sum of repentance is a change of life. That sorrow which dictates no caution, that fear which does not quicken our escape, that austerity which fails to rectify our affections, are vain and unavailing. But sorrow and terrour must naturally precede reformation; for what other cause can produce it? He, therefore, that feels himself alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state, and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude, that the great work of repentance is begun, and hope by retirement and prayer, the natural and religious means of strengthening his conviction, to impress upon his mind such a sense of the divine presence, as may overpower the blandishments of secular delights, and enable him to advance from one degree of holiness to another, till death shall set him free from doubt and contest, misery and temptation."

-- Samuel Johnson, From Ramber No. 110, 6 April 1751 (here)

"O" Casts a Shadow

 

 

But now these Epicures begin to smile,

And say, my doctrine is more safe than true;

And that I fondly do myself beguile,

While these receiv'd opinions I ensue.

-- John Davies