The Rock We Stand On.

 

Sherkin Mass Rock

One may read frequently these days about the English public schools and how dreadful they are, including from many who reckon they were 'scarred for life' by being hustled off to some preparatory boarding school at a tender age. The Catholic ones come in for a slagging no less that the others, but I have to say that my experience at Benedictine boarding schools, from the age of 9 to 18, was on balance very positive, while I am sad that it proved to be but a privileged moment in time. In particular, I am grateful for having been given the tools to think critically, and challenged to think about the fundamental questions like 'what is truth?' and 'what is life for?' It was the radical commitment of some of the monks that above all constituted the challenge, not merely the ideas they taught. Where are the alternatives to mass education now?

     'You were well indoctrinated!' I was once informed by a Protestant clergyman. Such a charge is not easy to refute; I tried to explain why I thought that he needed to straighten out in his mind the difference between teaching and indoctrination. Was he never the beneficiary of teaching? Did he perhaps invent whatever ideas and opinions he professes out of thin air? Or did he absorb them uncritically from wherever? The encounter with another mind is essential to jog our own into authentic action!

     A good teacher does not impose his ideas on his pupils. He will respect the fact that each individual must arrive at truth in his own way. It is however essential that the teacher be convincing in the expression of his own convictions, otherwise he gives the impression that there are no grounds for conviction at all, no such thing as truth whatsoever in fact. The various views expressed in literature, as in life, are not represented in this case as possible pointers, if they are genuine, each presenting a different bearing on the truth, which can mean nothing however if it is not ultimately indivisible. Otherwise one is left with the canard of 'your truth and my truth'; at Cambridge I got the impression that it didn't matter much what one did or did not believe, so long as one did not really believe it, which leads to a highly corrosive state of mind. 'Religious studies' not rooted in a solid tradition are a nonsense.

     From my grandmother's knee, even in the 1950s, I imbibed the impression that our civilisation was slipping into irremediable decadence precisely because it was losing any sense of a shared conviction that, however difficult, it was nonetheless possible to access truth, indeed that there was any such thing as truth at all, and that it is the bedrock of civilisation. Being half German, she was no doubt particularly shaken by recent experience in that nation, which she in a lonely way continued to love and admire, even while it had so radically lost its footing in what was true and what was not. Neither however did she buy into the notion that the democracies necessariy represented all truth and light. Today this is much more obvious. But it was to the other Catholic side of the family that I had to turn for a convincing 'language of truth', which the Benedictines tried to build upon.

      Some of them naturally were more convincing than others. There was always that tension between the need to obtain good exam results and real education, which seems to have proved impossible to ultimately maintain at Downside. 'It is in the depths of minds that literature exists', wrote Joseph Joubert. It is in the study of literature perhaps that the conflict can become most acute; at least that is where I encountered it, but no doubt it can be equally so for real scientists. The depths of the mind actually need to be concreted over so that the trucks of commerce can run over its surface. This is how we have ended up with so many people who actually have no notion of truth whatsoever, and we even find ourselves apparently incapable of taking in and acting effectively on such truths as that our set-up is not sustainable and a radically new approach to life is urgently necessary, no matter how clearly they are spelt out for us.

      Where to begin? Solutions can only come by way of the human imagination. It is a steep and narrow way, but the wide and easy one has to be rejected. We have to start by breaking up that concrete, paying attention to nature and the depths of our minds. We are likely to find ourselves in a deserted wilderness, or to put it another way, at sea; hence the fact that a bloggeer who set off comfortably sailing from Baltimore can find his way without inconsistancy to these distant shores, whereon he now finds himself an intellectual stranger!

      While our imaginations must come up with answers, they will not come out of nowhere, nor should we set about ignoring science. Tired as I am of hearing mass vaccination being preached in the name of 'science', and Israel being held up as a good example of its benefits, I have a juicy anecdote from a niece who lives there. She is a student nurse, but just like everyone else, she was virtually compelled to take the vaccination. When she reported uncomfortable side effects lasting a month, she was told to forget it, it could have nothing to do with the vaccination, and no records were being kept of reported side-effects anyway. How's that for 'scientific method' in the application of a brand new therapy?!

     Simple questions remain unanswered. What are the reasons why covid passes so many by lightly, while it kills others? Why not put the emphasis on understanding and enhancing our immune systems rather that usurping their function, undermining them? What resources are being put into researching such possibilities? Oh silly, of course one could not patent them, and it is precisely the possibility of making everyone depend on something that one can patent that makes the monster capitalists salivate! Where does this path of depending on big Pharma (or Monsanto) to keep us alive end? Is it actually practical in the long run? If the vaccines are so safe, why are their manufacturers not required to take responsibility when they go wrong? Why are effective steps not taken to track side-effects? 13 people died in a Bantry nursing home within 10 days of being vaccinated. Why were there no post-mortems nor efforts to determine the cause of death? Why are there plans to vaccinate children? 

     Are there signs that our society is losing the ability to sustain criticism, let alone pay attention to it? Would we happen to be deep into the prioritisation of technology and 'scientific' experimentation, not to mention the commercial interests, over elementary human rights? Are we not treating our bodies in precisely the same way that we have been treating the rest of nature in this technological age, with the disastrous results that are only now beginning to be widely recognised after so many years of being known to science?

     What Irish government would want to fall out with Big Pharma, when it earns it so much tax, or for that matter, how many doctors' conscience would rise to forgoing that handy €60 a shot and falling out with the establishment? The Nazis and the Communists exploited such weaknesses to catastrophic extremes, but the insidious  alliance of high technology and market capitalism makes me particularly nervous, although I am not living in fear of the bang on the door, thank God, yet! Are we not however in danger of travel bans and what not?  More than ever, my mind goes back to those who tried to stand up to the 20th century totalitarians. Things may be more subtle these days, but who, I ask, is being indoctrinated now, and who is really thinking for themselves?