dear Rhyd, I so agree with your remarks about the causation of the prevailing materialist view of the world. An interesting coda to this - the Platonic group I belong to recently asked AI to tell us about Socratic thought and received an entirely materialist, this world, answer. We were heartened on one level to see that AI could never understand spiritual commitment of any kind, except in these terms, and that our lively real discussions maintain that sense of dedication but, on the other, we can all play our part in contributing to the world soul's health by our own deeper understandings. Thank you, Caitlín Matthews
I'm so honored that you are reading my words, as your work was highly influential on my own understanding of things, especially when I first started out. Thank you!
Brave man, to write a novel in full public view. I could never do that.
Look forward to the essay also. Have you read 'The Stripping of the Altars'? It's vast tome which I haven't yet dived into, but it explores the destruction of Catholicism in England during the Reformation, which if you ask me was basically the nation's death sentence. After that, England stopped being a country and started being a machine.
I'll add that to my list-- it looks like a perfect source on this. Thanks for the recommendation!
And also, I guess it is a bit brave to write the novel this way. But I also know that I hate letting people down in public so much that forcing myself to do it this way will ensure that I'll actually finish the damn thing!
Dear Rhyd, Many congratulations on the new publication! And for getting right back into working; I'm only now diving into a project, almost two years after my last book was published. I was so dried out after that effort it took me a long time to find water again (so to speak). Re: your mysteria series. I hope you've read Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, which addresses precisely the issue you raise, which is how the world went from "magical" or enchanted in 1500 to today. His focus is on Western Christendom, obviously, but there is so much gold to mine there. I took tons of notes on his book while reading and am still chewing over it. One of my favorite bits of the book was an idea about how pre-modern time is conceptualized as gathered (as in folds of fabric), which puts the events of the past in closer relation to us (as in occurring simultaneously in an Eternal NOW). It tracks with my own work on ideas of premodern time. I also like Taylor's idea that you can't recapture the past and recreate it verbatim, for that is to take something that was created and developed organically and to mechanize it, taking all the creative life force from it. We are who we are today because of the forces that shaped how we got here, and we can't undo all that. Which is not to say that we cannot continue to grow and develop, or that we cannot re-incorporate past practices, but it must be done in a way that acknowledges the path to the present.
damn, you're unstoppable! i'd love to have a conversation about the role of fiction in These Dark Times... been wrestling with whether to focus on immersive, book-length stories (which are increasingly difficult to produce from a commercial/technological perspective) versus something more like myth or poetry. maybe i'll give the Chat function on here a try and post that as a topic.
dear Rhyd, bring it on. thanking you simply at the announcement of the postings. thresholds are liminal territories; surely there is a warm fire at the hearth to come near to. as ever, best to you, James
Have you read Eugene McCarraher's The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity? He posits that we are not disenchanted but misenchanted by Capitalism's spell. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984615
It's probably a bit dated now, but Carolyn Merchant's "The Death of Nature" was instrumental 25 years ago in my understanding of the transition from an organic to mechanistic worldview in that time period. You're probably already familiar with it but if not it's definitely worth a read.
In Karen Armstrong's book on Fundamentalism, her analysis of the Protestant impulse to justify itself through "science" may be of interest. If you are unfamiliar with her work, she is a wonderful mind to spend time with. Brilliant and a hoot, great, dry sense of humor.
dear Rhyd, I so agree with your remarks about the causation of the prevailing materialist view of the world. An interesting coda to this - the Platonic group I belong to recently asked AI to tell us about Socratic thought and received an entirely materialist, this world, answer. We were heartened on one level to see that AI could never understand spiritual commitment of any kind, except in these terms, and that our lively real discussions maintain that sense of dedication but, on the other, we can all play our part in contributing to the world soul's health by our own deeper understandings. Thank you, Caitlín Matthews
I'm so honored that you are reading my words, as your work was highly influential on my own understanding of things, especially when I first started out. Thank you!
Brave man, to write a novel in full public view. I could never do that.
Look forward to the essay also. Have you read 'The Stripping of the Altars'? It's vast tome which I haven't yet dived into, but it explores the destruction of Catholicism in England during the Reformation, which if you ask me was basically the nation's death sentence. After that, England stopped being a country and started being a machine.
Good luck with the book!
I'll add that to my list-- it looks like a perfect source on this. Thanks for the recommendation!
And also, I guess it is a bit brave to write the novel this way. But I also know that I hate letting people down in public so much that forcing myself to do it this way will ensure that I'll actually finish the damn thing!
Please, please, PLEASE come to Birmingham!!!!!
The publicist is still waiting for a response from Voce books in Birmingham. Hopefully they'd be willing to host a reading!
And thanks again for your kind words about the book!
Keep us updated!!
Dear Rhyd, Many congratulations on the new publication! And for getting right back into working; I'm only now diving into a project, almost two years after my last book was published. I was so dried out after that effort it took me a long time to find water again (so to speak). Re: your mysteria series. I hope you've read Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, which addresses precisely the issue you raise, which is how the world went from "magical" or enchanted in 1500 to today. His focus is on Western Christendom, obviously, but there is so much gold to mine there. I took tons of notes on his book while reading and am still chewing over it. One of my favorite bits of the book was an idea about how pre-modern time is conceptualized as gathered (as in folds of fabric), which puts the events of the past in closer relation to us (as in occurring simultaneously in an Eternal NOW). It tracks with my own work on ideas of premodern time. I also like Taylor's idea that you can't recapture the past and recreate it verbatim, for that is to take something that was created and developed organically and to mechanize it, taking all the creative life force from it. We are who we are today because of the forces that shaped how we got here, and we can't undo all that. Which is not to say that we cannot continue to grow and develop, or that we cannot re-incorporate past practices, but it must be done in a way that acknowledges the path to the present.
damn, you're unstoppable! i'd love to have a conversation about the role of fiction in These Dark Times... been wrestling with whether to focus on immersive, book-length stories (which are increasingly difficult to produce from a commercial/technological perspective) versus something more like myth or poetry. maybe i'll give the Chat function on here a try and post that as a topic.
dear Rhyd, bring it on. thanking you simply at the announcement of the postings. thresholds are liminal territories; surely there is a warm fire at the hearth to come near to. as ever, best to you, James
Have you read Eugene McCarraher's The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity? He posits that we are not disenchanted but misenchanted by Capitalism's spell. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984615
It's probably a bit dated now, but Carolyn Merchant's "The Death of Nature" was instrumental 25 years ago in my understanding of the transition from an organic to mechanistic worldview in that time period. You're probably already familiar with it but if not it's definitely worth a read.
In Karen Armstrong's book on Fundamentalism, her analysis of the Protestant impulse to justify itself through "science" may be of interest. If you are unfamiliar with her work, she is a wonderful mind to spend time with. Brilliant and a hoot, great, dry sense of humor.