George MacDonald's Prophecies

You know that a fairy tale is truly superb if it tells prophecies that all come true.

This is the case in George MacDonald’s Lilith.

In Lilith, a city called Bulika is ruled by an evil princess. MacDonald’s description of this city is disturbingly familiar. It all sounds an awful lot like the United States today.

In chapter 21, the main character meets a woman who is fleeing from Bulika to save her baby’s life. She describes the princess thus:

“She does not care about her country. She sends witches around to teach the women spells that keep babies away, and give them horrible things to eat. Some say she is in league with the Shadows to put an end to the race.”

After entering Bulika, the main character has a rather interesting conversation with a woman of the city:

I asked her many questions. She told me the people never did anything except dig for precious stones in their cellars. They were rich, and had everything made for them in other towns.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it is a disgrace to work,” she answered. Everybody in Bulika knows that!”

I asked how they were rich if none of them earned money. She replied that their ancestors had saved for them, and they never spent. When they wanted money, they sold a few of their gems.

“But there must be some poor!” I said.

“I suppose there must be, but we never think of such people. When one goes poor, we forget him. That is how we keep rich. We mean to be rich always.”

“But when you have dug up all your precious stones and sold them, you will have to spend your money, and one day you will have none left!”

“We have so many, and there are so many still in the ground, that that day will never come,” she replied.

“Suppose a strange people were to fall upon you, and take everything you have!”

“No strange people will dare; they are all horribly afraid of our princess. She it is who keeps us safe and free and rich!” (Chapter 23.)   

The first reference almost seems to be a foretelling of the deeds of population control freaks. The city of Bulika has no children; soon our country will be no different.

I found the second passage particularly intriguing. Like in the U.S., the people of Bulika no longer make anything for themselves, but buy it from other places. They are confident that their economy will never fail, and that no one will ever dare to invade.

By the way, this book was published in 1895. Could all of this be a coincidence? It’s much more likely that MacDonald had already seen signs of what the real world was becoming, and that he followed them to their natural conclusion in his story. It's all a little too close to the truth.

 This commentary, I feel, is very incomplete, so it would be great if we all discussed this book. 

The Worth of Fantasy

What good could anyone get from writing fantasy? This is an important question, for either fantasy has an end worth pursuing, or it is a waste of time. So, for anyone out there who’s interested in reading or writing fantasy, here’s my take on it based on my own experience.   

About two thanksgivings ago I promised a friend of mine that I would help her with a movie based on a fantasy story she was making up. Over the next few months we sweated over the script for the film. Unfortunately, we were unable to implement her idea due to a shortage of money, props, costumes, people, talent, etc. However, we did continue to write the story and discuss it.

Here’s what I got out of the experience. I found that when we talked it over, I always tested our ideas against those of the real world. I found myself trying to make the fantasy not just believable, but true.

This, I believe, is the whole point. Fantasy writers are supposed to base their worlds on truth, on reality. They do this by creating a mythical world that may be different in many ways from ours and yet follows all of the same moral laws. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, for example, is unlike our world; it is full of wise elves and evil orcs and magical rings. It is also like our world; the One Ring, like any evil thing, always corrupts those who use it regardless of their intentions. The moral laws are just as inflexible there as here.

Fantasy authors also have a great responsibility on their hands. The medium they are using is meant to convey truth, but it can also be used to teach falsehoods. It may be tempting to force reality to conform to fantasy, but we must not do this. Fantasy instead must conform to reality, to truth. Indeed all good fantasy conforms to reality. This is why George MacDonald said that “if you understood any world besides your own, you would understand your own much better.” (Lilith, Chapter V.)

So my conclusion is this: fantasy is well worth writing, as I have found through making it up. It is a vehicle with which to convey truth with a power that few other methods have, for not only is it true, it is also fascinating. What do people like better than an exciting, well told story about elves and dwarves and wizards and valiant men?

 

 

 

Musical Paradoxes: Food for Thought

Just yesterday I went to an ice rink and skated there for a few hours. Just like at any other public place, they were playing music. (Since this rink is owned by a christian university, all the contemporary Christian stuff was playing.)
As I skated, I recalled a Switchfoot song that I'd heard a few years ago. The only words that I can really remember were from the chorus, which said, "If we're adding to the noise, turn off this song." Ironic, I thought, since the band was blasting at that point. I'm surprised that the singer didn't point this out himself.
Not long after I thought this, these words from the speakers caught my ear: "I'm trying to hear that still small voice." Huh, I thought. That singer will never hear the still small voice over all the noise she's making.
Anyway, I hope my thoughts have started some wheels turning in your minds. 

Live Music vs. Recordings: My thoughts

Just this past Sunday, I played in a strings ensemble concert. We’re a mixed group; some of us are professionals while some are not. But the magic that all of us created there—for just the space of an hour—was indescribable. We really cast a spell there.  

And this magic didn’t just happen. We practiced our music until it became magic. We worked it until it became perfect so that we could create something sublime.

But recordings can be played over and over again at the push of a button. Recordings are certainly very convenient and wonderful, and without them we would never be able to listen to old recitals or violin concertos or any other music that we would otherwise be unable to experience.  

The things that I am going to say are really just my own thoughts. I am not saying that recordings are bad, but I think that live performances are preferable to recordings. When you go to a concert, you not only get to hear the music as it’s being produced, you see the musicians as they are playing, and form a sort of connection to them. If you are a musician, you are producing the music yourself, which is an even more wonderful thing. 

On the other hand, recordings are static. The process has already taken place, and the music is now packaged frozen, just waiting to be microwaved. While this is very convenient, it’s certainly not as good as having it fresh from the garden.   

I have another objection to recordings. They can be an occasion for musicians with little or no playing talent to impress the world, and I’m sure they have. All that anyone has to do to make a spotless recording is to put lots of little bits of music together with the aid of a computer—plus the necessary equipment. (A few people don’t even try to sing anymore. All they have to do is talk into a computer and bend their voice pitch to particular frequencies.) Still, a great many recordings are produced by very talented musicians, and my objection is only that they can be done by people with little or no musical talent; I’m sure they have been. (If I'm wrong about anything in this paragraph, please correct me.)

This entire article is just an attempt to voice my somewhat embryonic thoughts on this subject (thoughts that might not all be right). I must admit that I don’t know much about the ways that live music can be better than recorded music. I also admit that I listen to a great quantity of recorded music all the time; I love it. In fact, I listen to more recordings than live music. Either one is good in its own way, but perhaps our culture makes music too easy, like frozen food.

If you have thoughts on this, please tell me. This is going to be a very interesting topic for discussion.

   

Why Take Logic?

One of the most annoying problems I encounter is the inability to communicate. It’s not a problem I encounter once in a while, but practically every day. Sometimes I’m the one who’s struggling with my words; sometimes it’s my online teachers, sometimes my friends or parents. And we are all not just groping for words. We’re also trying to think clearly.

What should we do to solve this problem? How can we teach ourselves to think? I have a solution that I find most alluring: traditional logic.

A few years back, I studied Martin Cothran’s Traditional Logic Book I (published by Memoria Press), his intro course on formal logic. I didn’t take the subject very seriously then, and as a result, I was lazy with it. When I finished the book (I wonder if I did even that), I put it away and didn’t think too much about it for a long time, except in a few cases.

But several months ago I attended a talk on the Liberal Arts by Andrew Pudewa. His message on the power of traditional education prompted me to go back and study Logic once again.

I’m very eager to learn Logic. The reason behind all my eagerness is this: I long to think for myself, to pursue the truth on my own steam. I want to think clearly and to see clearly. I’m so tired of the inability to form my own thoughts and communicate them to others. Now that I am taking Logic, a whole new world of communication is opening before me.

But to teach us how to think, what does Traditional Logic teach us? How is it useful to us every day?  I’ll give you a brief overview. To make it interesting, I’ll keep it short. Logic teaches us that:

1.       The mind reasons in three distinct actions: first it grasps concepts, then it affirms or denies certain things about them, and finally it connects judgements together, drawing conclusions.

2.       Two terms can be equated to one another by equating them to a third. For instance, if A is C and B is C, then A is B. Two terms may also be non-equated to one another by means of a third term. If A is C and B is not C, then A is not B.

3.       There are four kinds of propositions in logic. These may oppose each other in four ways, and equal each other in three.

 

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I hope you get the idea. Now, how will any of these principles help you in the real world? I’ll give you a couple examples.

Firstly, many people believe opposing statements without thinking. Consider the following conversation:

 

Skeptic: There are no absolutes.

Logician: Is that statement absolutely true?

Skeptic: Yes.

Logician: Then you would call it an absolute. So you actually believe in the existence of at least one absolute: namely that there are none.

 

I’ll break this example down to make the Skeptic’s problem more lucid. The skeptic really believes two things:

1.       No absolutes exist.

2.       Some absolutes exist (one absolute, namely that there are none). 

According to Logic, these statements are opposed to each other by contradiction. Contradictory statements cannot both be true or false. Thus one must be true and the other false. When the skeptic claimed that no absolutes exist, he was backing himself into a logical corner, since in order to claim that no absolutes exist he had to create a new absolute. His only option would be to give up the attempt to deny the existence of absolute truths. (I am stating his only logical option. He would probably try a whole multitude of other tactics that have little or no relation to logic.)

Secondly, terms, can be equated to each other by a method called the categorical syllogism. It’s based on a thought process that many people use all the time without even realizing it. The Puritans, for example, believed that all people who floated in water were witches. Based on this belief, they could determine who was a witch, and who wasn’t. Syllogistically, their thought process would look something like this:

All people who float are witches.

This person is a person who floats.

Therefore, this person is a witch.

 

This is a valid syllogism, though one should immediately challenge the truth of the first premise. In any case it demonstrates the importance of the syllogism in the real world. There are lots of other examples I could include that would reinforce my point even further, but I don’t have the time to write them.

I’m really excited about logic. I want to share the good news about it with you; I want you to catch my excitement from me and pass it on to others. This is essential stuff. Everyone needs to know Logic; everyone needs to be able to think with clarity.

And so, in conclusion, I strongly urge you to study Traditional logic (a course that you can buy off memoriapress.com). We are in great need of people who can read, write, think, and speak correctly. Why don’t we reform our culture, starting with ourselves?