Both offerings are complimentary and contradictory to each other. Paul Kingsnorth we find often over labours the sacred, due, possibly, to fully embedding his spiritual life now in masculine/literary sky gods (God/Son). Yet despite this always has a beautifully helpful approach to soul. We’re not sure formal religions are necessary. What you felt with the oak/oaks, Paul, is what we know to be a source of peace and wisdom too. It seems that religions over complicate the divine, over work it into texts, and this can often lead to oppression (wrong story) or dogma or restrictions of feelings and experiences. We too find the divine in both cathedrals and forests. These physical spaces can give forth beauty and divinity in the absence of words. For us words are for politics while the divine is for recuperation from the political, from words, from the noise of words. This is how these two things can operate together so as the political is informed by peace and grace and stillness.
Thanks for this… it was all i needed to tip me over into saying ‘evil’ to describe everything associated with the covid event: the bioengineering — ‘gain of function’ — of covid itself; the ’scientific’ prohibition of disputing/questioning, which is a basic postulate of real science; the myriad lies about the non-vaccine ‘vaccine’; the lockdown, with it’s ‘social distancing’ violation of basic human connections and encouragement of individual fear as opposed to the fundamental spiritual teaching to ‘fear not’; etc. I have said all this was either evil or gross and willful negligence; it is surely a combination of both, but since the negligence was so gross and so willful… and so profitable to those who stood to gain from gain-of-function… I now, with Paul’s encouragement, am content to attribute it all to evil. The only question I have at this point is whether this evil exists as a force in itself — aka, a ‘devil’ — or whether it simply ‘lurks in the heart’ of those who have wholly lost the way. These ruminations also apply to the evils now rampant in wars waged to maintain and extend hegemony of the ‘west’.
Bottom line: thank you WD for introducing us to Paul.
Peter, thanks for the great comment and I’m happy you feel the podcast got into worthwhile topics. To answer your question for myself (maybe Paul will hop in this thread to answer for himself)… I think the word ‘demonic’ is not inappropriate to describe some of what we have witnessed and has been done. I don’t quite mean that in an ‘exorcist’ sort of way; but definitely I think some people have knowingly acted malevolently to achieve known malevolent ends: to knowingly do evil to achieve evil I think deserves that name. That is not in accord with the natural or spiritual order of things.
…and more than happy to have introduced folks to Paul!
I think that maybe "evil" exists in an abstract sense, but becomes physically real when it takes hold of part , or all, of someone's soul and, therefore, their actions.
No. I think there is a force of evil, but that it is not a tangible or pseudo-personal entity - "the Devil" you referred to. It becomes real, or manifest, by its presence in the heart or souls of physically living beings.
Exciting 'thread' so far. Thank you both. So, Peter seems to be pushing for a 'separate force of evil in the cosmos' (though I could be misattributing that to him since he has mostly asked questions) and Paul's precise answer is 'no' to a tangible/pseudo-personal entity but 'yes' to an evil force. We're on tricky ground here and even a substack thread may be insufficient. However, I'd like to jump in and maybe push the lines of thinking to see how y'all respond. I'd like to start by assuming three propositions that I think are defensible: 1) myths contain a lot of Truth, though usually not literal truth; 2) evil should be understood as a privation of the good, not as a separately existing transcendent 'thing' (to preserve the fundamental proposition that 'existence is good'); 3) it feels like a force for evil is for sure out there, but maybe we can be more specific than 'force' (the evil does not seem random or accidental or unstructured). So, there are certainly many ancient myths that talk of evil beings or spirits. Hence, I'm inclined to to try to figure out what that would mean, but it creates a predilection to think there is something that can be talked about mythically as an evil being. Taking evil to mean a privation of the good, any will (evil usually has to do with 'will' because bad things can unintentionally flow from innocent actions which are not themselves evil unless they were the result of an evil will or intention), then evil would be that which sets itself against the Good or against goodness. With the 'cosmos' talk, we could say that evil is anything willfully against the cosmos (I actually kind of like that framing of it). Hence, anything that denies cosmic order to begin with or which attacks that order (Harmony, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Natural Law, etc...). Are the attacks on those things always 'one-offs' or are there systematic assaults on the cosmos? I think there are both. There are probably evil psychological facts that can universally infect our species: let's say hatred. If at some moment no one was hating anyone, would hatred still exist (ie, does it have an independent spiritual or transcendent basis)? I would answer yes it would. Are there structures, maybe what the Bible calls 'powers' or 'thrones' (which it says govern 'this world')? So, we would be looking for something that is systematically anti-cosmos. I think the modern way of looking at Nature only from the perspective of technik may be an example. It doesn't seem like that arose through a series of 'one-offs', but is a malign influence that can take over entire civilizations. Traditional religions would often, I think, speak of this large scale, history shaping malign developments as the manifestation of malign 'spirits'. As The Spirit might be thought of as what motivates, orders, and sustains the cosmos, I think we could think of malign spirits or anti-spirits which systematically seek to degrade it or .at the very least accept that it was a useful way to talk about anti-cosmic forces. Is there something akin to 'will' that seeks to degrade the cosmos? (That would pretty much be your 'devil' Peter).
There is certainly not anything authoritative in any of that response. Pretty speculative on my part. What are folks' thoughts?
Wow. We're getting in deep... Nice to see this can happen in a substack comment thread....
I don't mean to be saying there 'is' an evil 'force/entity', only to ask whether Paul has that thought. So he answered that.
Much of what you say, WD, is also found in various Creation stories — I'm thinking of Navajo and Iroquois in particular — where there are two brothers, both created by the Creator at the beginning of things; one of whom takes on the tasks of creating beings/things in the world, the other of whom —out of jealousy/rivalry — undertakes to disrupt what the first is doing, sometimes by creating antagonistic beings/things, sometimes by making it harder for humans to enjoy the creations.
I'm squeezing a lot of detail here into a very simplified description, in order to say that the question of 'evil' seems to be widely shared and that there are ways of explaining it that do not depend on a 'force' antagonistic to the Creator, but rather on behaviors that one might say are human or at least proto-human.
Thanks WD and Paul for this conversation. We followed this conversation after reading Paul Kingsnorth’s latest:
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkingsnorth/p/all-the-world-is-myth?r=qti8u&utm_medium=ios
Both offerings are complimentary and contradictory to each other. Paul Kingsnorth we find often over labours the sacred, due, possibly, to fully embedding his spiritual life now in masculine/literary sky gods (God/Son). Yet despite this always has a beautifully helpful approach to soul. We’re not sure formal religions are necessary. What you felt with the oak/oaks, Paul, is what we know to be a source of peace and wisdom too. It seems that religions over complicate the divine, over work it into texts, and this can often lead to oppression (wrong story) or dogma or restrictions of feelings and experiences. We too find the divine in both cathedrals and forests. These physical spaces can give forth beauty and divinity in the absence of words. For us words are for politics while the divine is for recuperation from the political, from words, from the noise of words. This is how these two things can operate together so as the political is informed by peace and grace and stillness.
John Ruskin saw Gothic cathedrals as stone representations of the forest - pillars and canopy. It's got to be the same spirituality, deep down.
Thanks for this… it was all i needed to tip me over into saying ‘evil’ to describe everything associated with the covid event: the bioengineering — ‘gain of function’ — of covid itself; the ’scientific’ prohibition of disputing/questioning, which is a basic postulate of real science; the myriad lies about the non-vaccine ‘vaccine’; the lockdown, with it’s ‘social distancing’ violation of basic human connections and encouragement of individual fear as opposed to the fundamental spiritual teaching to ‘fear not’; etc. I have said all this was either evil or gross and willful negligence; it is surely a combination of both, but since the negligence was so gross and so willful… and so profitable to those who stood to gain from gain-of-function… I now, with Paul’s encouragement, am content to attribute it all to evil. The only question I have at this point is whether this evil exists as a force in itself — aka, a ‘devil’ — or whether it simply ‘lurks in the heart’ of those who have wholly lost the way. These ruminations also apply to the evils now rampant in wars waged to maintain and extend hegemony of the ‘west’.
Bottom line: thank you WD for introducing us to Paul.
Peter, thanks for the great comment and I’m happy you feel the podcast got into worthwhile topics. To answer your question for myself (maybe Paul will hop in this thread to answer for himself)… I think the word ‘demonic’ is not inappropriate to describe some of what we have witnessed and has been done. I don’t quite mean that in an ‘exorcist’ sort of way; but definitely I think some people have knowingly acted malevolently to achieve known malevolent ends: to knowingly do evil to achieve evil I think deserves that name. That is not in accord with the natural or spiritual order of things.
…and more than happy to have introduced folks to Paul!
I think that maybe "evil" exists in an abstract sense, but becomes physically real when it takes hold of part , or all, of someone's soul and, therefore, their actions.
Bu 'abstract' do you mean there is not actually a separate force of 'evil' in the cosmos?
No. I think there is a force of evil, but that it is not a tangible or pseudo-personal entity - "the Devil" you referred to. It becomes real, or manifest, by its presence in the heart or souls of physically living beings.
Exciting 'thread' so far. Thank you both. So, Peter seems to be pushing for a 'separate force of evil in the cosmos' (though I could be misattributing that to him since he has mostly asked questions) and Paul's precise answer is 'no' to a tangible/pseudo-personal entity but 'yes' to an evil force. We're on tricky ground here and even a substack thread may be insufficient. However, I'd like to jump in and maybe push the lines of thinking to see how y'all respond. I'd like to start by assuming three propositions that I think are defensible: 1) myths contain a lot of Truth, though usually not literal truth; 2) evil should be understood as a privation of the good, not as a separately existing transcendent 'thing' (to preserve the fundamental proposition that 'existence is good'); 3) it feels like a force for evil is for sure out there, but maybe we can be more specific than 'force' (the evil does not seem random or accidental or unstructured). So, there are certainly many ancient myths that talk of evil beings or spirits. Hence, I'm inclined to to try to figure out what that would mean, but it creates a predilection to think there is something that can be talked about mythically as an evil being. Taking evil to mean a privation of the good, any will (evil usually has to do with 'will' because bad things can unintentionally flow from innocent actions which are not themselves evil unless they were the result of an evil will or intention), then evil would be that which sets itself against the Good or against goodness. With the 'cosmos' talk, we could say that evil is anything willfully against the cosmos (I actually kind of like that framing of it). Hence, anything that denies cosmic order to begin with or which attacks that order (Harmony, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Natural Law, etc...). Are the attacks on those things always 'one-offs' or are there systematic assaults on the cosmos? I think there are both. There are probably evil psychological facts that can universally infect our species: let's say hatred. If at some moment no one was hating anyone, would hatred still exist (ie, does it have an independent spiritual or transcendent basis)? I would answer yes it would. Are there structures, maybe what the Bible calls 'powers' or 'thrones' (which it says govern 'this world')? So, we would be looking for something that is systematically anti-cosmos. I think the modern way of looking at Nature only from the perspective of technik may be an example. It doesn't seem like that arose through a series of 'one-offs', but is a malign influence that can take over entire civilizations. Traditional religions would often, I think, speak of this large scale, history shaping malign developments as the manifestation of malign 'spirits'. As The Spirit might be thought of as what motivates, orders, and sustains the cosmos, I think we could think of malign spirits or anti-spirits which systematically seek to degrade it or .at the very least accept that it was a useful way to talk about anti-cosmic forces. Is there something akin to 'will' that seeks to degrade the cosmos? (That would pretty much be your 'devil' Peter).
There is certainly not anything authoritative in any of that response. Pretty speculative on my part. What are folks' thoughts?
Wow. We're getting in deep... Nice to see this can happen in a substack comment thread....
I don't mean to be saying there 'is' an evil 'force/entity', only to ask whether Paul has that thought. So he answered that.
Much of what you say, WD, is also found in various Creation stories — I'm thinking of Navajo and Iroquois in particular — where there are two brothers, both created by the Creator at the beginning of things; one of whom takes on the tasks of creating beings/things in the world, the other of whom —out of jealousy/rivalry — undertakes to disrupt what the first is doing, sometimes by creating antagonistic beings/things, sometimes by making it harder for humans to enjoy the creations.
I'm squeezing a lot of detail here into a very simplified description, in order to say that the question of 'evil' seems to be widely shared and that there are ways of explaining it that do not depend on a 'force' antagonistic to the Creator, but rather on behaviors that one might say are human or at least proto-human.
Thanks WD! I enjoyed that.
A as F, thank you for the reflections.
Our conversation intersects with a recent piece by David Benjamin Blower. https://open.substack.com/pub/davidbenjaminblower/p/postscript-deliver-us-from-miserable?r=1hp10e&utm_medium=ios
It does indeed.