Simple Englishness

It is a bit of a cliche to like English things. (Could say British, but not sure... not sure...) When I was a child, I thought I was just following the crowd I grew up in, and was gullible and easily influenced. Just liking what everyone else liked.

I began to realise I had reason for liking it when I read The Lord of the Rings, but still thought I might even like that story because others I knew did. I did have concrete things I liked about English culture, but that wasn't enough to convince me there was reason to like it.

Of course, the explanation for it could just be aesthetic, but I do think I like in Englishness something different than other people do, after hearing them describe what they see in it. Not entirely different, but somewhat. (The future will tell.)

It may be in the last some years that I really figured out that English culture is different fundamentally from continental European. English philosophy was, I am told, different from continental philosophy. The continental philosophers are the ones who came up with liberal theology and Marxism, postmodernism, deconstructionism. Eventually continental philosophy seeped into English thinking and then American thinking (which in some ways might be a bit late on the uptake, for which I'm glad).

Some folks think that the American experiment itself was a result of taking the English philosophy to its logical conclusions. England, for complex reasons including the monarchy, could not do this. the US went further than even England had, though to some extent lost some of that sweet Englishness I so like. But some of it is tidily wrapped up in culture and can't easily be transplanted.

For all that the US went further than England, though, Englishness seems chock full of common-sense which resulted in a very down-to-earth, simple, self-deprecating (in a good way) culture. I've beat it into my head that of course English culture can't be perfect, but I don't care if it is or isn't: it still seems to have so much of value that I love and insist on learning from.


It would be wonderful to do a study to find out if my conclusion on this is correct, but it's confirmed by others I currently trust for information on this sort of thing, and I gathered a lot over the years of Englishness and what-is-not-Englishness, so I'm pretty certain of it at the moment.

Looking back on my life and looking at myself now, I know I've shaped my life around this to some extent- whatever was really noble in English culture and thinking, I have tried to learn from. No decadence, no ridiculous idealism, no flowing romanticism like the French (désolée), but instead good, steadfast, humble Englishness.

(It's worth noting that the culture of lower classes in England is probably somewhat cut off and different from the 'elite' in every era, who also were more influenced by foreign things than those who didn't have time to worry about all that stuff.)

Beauty

Recap: I was supposed to write about why The Lord of the Rings affected me so much back when I was eleven, and I didn't figure out how to do it till I heard Stephen Turley talking about the True, Good and Beautiful. I suppose it's because at the heart of it, they're what I learned about in The Lord of the Rings.

Last I said Beauty might be the appearance of the True and Good. People these days seem to think that the appearance of a thing is not necessarily what it actually is, so I realise if I say it's the appearance, it can seem it is not really intrinsic to the True and the Good. Even in my mind, using the word 'appearance', I seem to split the appearance from what it's stuck on, like a mask, or clothing.

But isn't the purpose of appearance ultimately to really tell us about the thing appearing? Obviously in what I think is a broken world, it doesn't work out that way all the time. We know not to judge a book by its cover, because people like to just attract you to read their book with the cover, whether the cover really has to do with the book or not. Men are ultimately just trying to get what they want, and will be deceptive to do it. We also know we don't always see things as they really are; either our minds are broken, or else this messed-upness is normal.

I don't think it is normal. So, if the True and Good appear Beautiful, then they really are, because they are ultimate reality. Whatever is the umbrella under which other things exist has to be greater than what's under it. Philosophers a long time ago seemed to assume that whatever rules over this world; whatever created it, has to be equal to or greater than the world. One way to be greater is to be either more perfect, or actually Perfect (whole, complete, and lacking any defect). I equate the True, Good and Beautiful with ultimate reality, and if they are that, then they are candidates for perfect, too.

I'm sure study of Plato would help me in writing this, as he's the one who talked about Ideals and (maybe with other philosophers around then) set the foundation for real systematic thought about the incompleteness and defectiveness of this world and the perfection of what it comes from or is modelled after. But he thought that the physical world could not be perfect, whereas I think physicalness is also True, Good and Beautiful. I think something else must be wrong with the world besides its being concrete.

I haven't done much study of Beauty by people who have written it, but the impression from my experiences is that it is not merely an illusory appearance, but a real Thing, something you can sense with your mind and heart, communicated through things-that-are-beautiful (abstract or concrete).

What would you guess: C. S. Lewis said something about it in The Weight of Glory, wording what I had felt for years-

We do not merely want to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

That is the sensation I got from reading The Lord of the Rings. I had such a painful longing to somehow break free of the chains that tether me to this bland existence, the prison of my mind, and to be part of the world, which is so beautiful; never again to be enchanted into thinking that there is no hope, no meaning, no loveliness, in existence.

Of course I went back into cynicism. I had some moments where I felt like I saw how things really are, and then that feeling passes. When it passes, one wonders if one dreamed it was real, of course. It may just be a feeling. But I feel there is likely something True about it: that it was real-er than all the grey, blank monotony of life as we see it.

Is that true? And is Beauty actually not simply appearance or illusion, but an actual thing that is part and parcel with Is-ness and Purpose? Is Beauty even substantive- touchable, tasteable?

The True, the Good and the Beautiful

My mother has been listening to Stephen Turley on YouTube, and she found some lectures (and what seems like a sermon) by him, talking about classical times/things and the Good, True and Beautiful. It was somewhat about where the idea of them came from in the West, and how they relate to living well as a Christian.

I was given an assignment to write about what I liked about The Lord of the Rings, in an attempt to remember who I am. For awhile I didn't even know how to do it; kind of like writer's block, but related to a specific topic. Then at some point in the last week my mother turned on one of his lectures on this, relating these things to his Orthodox faith, and I remembered this is why I liked the story.

To me, Truth, Goodness and Beauty are basically reality. Ultimately anything that is worth doing in life is true, good and beautiful. It was wonderful to hear him describe what these things mean, too, as it very much reminded me why Tolkien's world meant so much to me. It led me to see that what I loved most is actually part of the real world... it let me believe what I wanted to believe: that life is meaningful and purposeful.

Here's the mental mess of what is currently striking me about these three things:

1. They either have an interrelationship, or else they are three levels or aspects of the same thing; like three planes of the same thing (dimensions, I guess). Either they necessitate each other; where one of them is, so are the others, in some way or other. My brain kind of visualises this as that they all modify each other. Truth is good, goodness is true, beauty is good, beauty is true, truth is beautiful, so on and so forth.

2. Truth is not 'facts' (or at least not only them), but is Reality and What Things Are. It's not, in my mind, knowledge at all, but rather what we learn about. I see truth like the law that is in fact written in the language of existence. All the nature of things is Truth. Truth is all the is-ness of things. Truth is assumed to exist whether or not any human knows the truth about a thing or not. It is a thing-outside-of-us we can learn about gradually as we live and humble ourselves to open ourselves to what we see.

3. Goodness is about telos- purpose. A thing is good if it is fulfilling its purpose, outlined in Truth (which to me seems to be at least related to Law). A good marriage is good because it is aligned with the definition (whether Man knows it or not) of marriage. Complete goodness in any thing and the world is whole and rich; every thing in the world is complex in how it relates to other things and helps to fulfill their purpose. The one-ness of reality is the dance of the parts with each other in perfect harmony.

4. Beauty is what flows out of these. Things being how they ought to be is beautiful. Turley said that it is through Beauty (the aesthetic of the True and Good) that we see and are drawn to the True and the Good. Maybe Beauty is just how True and Good things appear (when we can see Beauty; I think we blind ourselves to it often), but I've often wondered if Beauty is actually more fundamental.


Next post I'm going to rant on Beauty a bit.

The LORD's Will

Part of me says it's unholy to ask God for something that isn't 'possible'. I justify it by thinking that God wouldn't want me to ask Him to go against the laws of His universe (otherwise termed 'to do miracles').

The result of this thinking is that I never pray for pretty much anything, because I can always find a way that it can't fit into the natural domino-effect of the world in the moment of praying. I also practically feel that God does not care enough to do miracles for me, so I don't ask for them. I certainly don't really believe in His power to do above and beyond the laws of cause and effect (it applies to mental states, too... I try to ask for just the next step, instead of my own end goal).

Perhaps relatedly, or separately, it seems to me a truly sinful thought to think that God doesn't have power to do whatever He pleases. And only good things please Him.

Let it sink in... see if it is true.