Simple Gifts

Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, is considered one of the classics of Western literature. Having now read the second book, I am beginning to understand why. It is not easy going, but it is rewarding. This month we track the journey of Satan from Hell to earth. Let's explore this classic of Western literature together!

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C S Lewis said: "ANIMAL FARM is formally almost perfect; light, strong, balanced. There is not a sentence that does not contribute to the whole. The myth says all the author wants it to say and (equally important) it doesn't say anything else."

Lewis did not like 1984: "Tragedy demands a certain minimum stature in the victim; and the hero and heroine of 1984 do not reach that minimum.... In Animal Farm all this is changed. The greed and cunning of the pigs is tragic ... because we are made to care about all the honest, well-meaning, or even heroic beasts whom they exploit. The death of Boxer the horse moves us more than all the more elaborate cruelties of the other book. And not only moves, but convinces."

"One result is that the satire becomes more effective. Wit and humour (absent from the longer work) are employed with devastating effect. The great sentence 'All animals are equal but some are more equal than others' bites deeper than the whole of 1984. Thus the shorter book does all that the longer does. But it also does more. Paradoxically, when Orwell turns all his characters into animals he makes them more fully human."

Wokist totalitarianism is blossoming and colonizing every segment of our culture. Boxer and Winston will again suffer and die, unless we "wake up" from the Wokist dystopian dream.

It Is Time, SLEEPERS, [to] AWAKE!

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Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending the European theater of war in WWII, on May 7, 1945, effective 12:01 am on May 9. Prime Minister Churchill took to the airwaves from the House of Commons to announce Victory in Europe.

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This partial essay came at just the right time, and I find it one of his most fruitful. The topic is one of Lewis's favorites: language. We do seem to have differing ways of speaking, and they are not always working the same way. For our purposes in this essay, Lewis speaks of common language, scientific language and poetic language, asking how "the language of religion" fits in. Common language, of course, is the base from which the others spring. It is indexical. We use language to point beyond language, to convey information to others, whether in science or poetry. Now, this next is utterly central to the argument. Many dismiss poetry as merely the expression of emotion. Lewis rejects this as untenable, and for good reasons. Poetic language is about something, just like scientific and ordinary language. It expresses information in many cases by the only way that information can be expressed:

"This is the most remarkable of the powers of poetic language: to convey to us the quality of experiences which we have not had, or perhaps can never have, to use factors within our experience so that they become pointers to something outside our experience."

"My conclusion is that such language is by no means merely an expression, nor a stimulant, of emotion, but a real medium of information. Which information may, like any other, be true or false.... Because events, as real events 'really' are and feigned events would 'really' be if they occurred, cannot be conveyed without bringing in the observer's heart and the common emotional reaction of the species, it has been falsely concluded that poetry represented the heart for its own sake, and nothing but the heart."

That is, poetic language conveys concrete information from one subject to another, involving the whole subject, but it is no less ABOUT something (in philosophical language it is intentional) than scientific or ordinary language. Whereas scientific language is abstract, poetic language is concrete. An expression like, "it is -60 degrees centigrade" out there is impoverished, but precise language; it is not qualitative, but quantitative. "It's so cold out there your nose hairs freeze to your nostrils as you breathe, and your head feels likely to explode," is concrete, but also vague in expressing temperature, not quantifiable.

Religious language is usually conducted, like most of our language work, with ordinary language, but when we are pressed to explain what we mean by religious statements like "I believe in God," we will need to go one of two ways: toward the scientific, or toward the poetic, and while each attempt will be trying to convey the same information, they will suffer different strengths and weaknesses.

"Apologetics is controversy. You cannot conduct a controversy in those poetical expressions which alone convey the concrete: you must use terms as definable and univocal as possible, and these are always abstract. And this means that the thing we are really talking about can never appear in the discussion at all. We have to try to prove THAT God is in circumstances where we are denied every means of conveying WHO God is."

"Now it seems to me a mistake to think that our experience in general can be communicated by precise and literal [that is, scientific] language and that there is a special class of experiences (say emotions) which cannot. The truth seems to me the opposite: there is a special region of experiences which can be communicated without poetic language, namely, its 'common measurable features,' but most experience cannot. To be incommunicable by scientific language is, so far as I can judge, the normal state of experience."

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Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, is considered one of the classics of Western literature. Having now read the second book, I am beginning to understand why. It is not easy going, but it is rewarding. This month we track the journey of Satan from Hell to earth. Let's explore this classic of Western literature together!

If you’d like to support us, donate through Paypal at [email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianAtheist/featured

https://www.facebook.com/JnJWiseWords

https://wisewordsforyouroccasion.wordpress.com

#paradiselost #paradise #johnmilton #milton #poetry #poem #epic #epicpoem #classicpoetry #classicpoem #classics #westernliterature #satan #hell #earth #christianity #religion #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #hegelism #hegel #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry

C S Lewis said: "ANIMAL FARM is formally almost perfect; light, strong, balanced. There is not a sentence that does not contribute to the whole. The myth says all the author wants it to say and (equally important) it doesn't say anything else."

Lewis did not like 1984: "Tragedy demands a certain minimum stature in the victim; and the hero and heroine of 1984 do not reach that minimum.... In Animal Farm all this is changed. The greed and cunning of the pigs is tragic ... because we are made to care about all the honest, well-meaning, or even heroic beasts whom they exploit. The death of Boxer the horse moves us more than all the more elaborate cruelties of the other book. And not only moves, but convinces."

"One result is that the satire becomes more effective. Wit and humour (absent from the longer work) are employed with devastating effect. The great sentence 'All animals are equal but some are more equal than others' bites deeper than the whole of 1984. Thus the shorter book does all that the longer does. But it also does more. Paradoxically, when Orwell turns all his characters into animals he makes them more fully human."

Wokist totalitarianism is blossoming and colonizing every segment of our culture. Boxer and Winston will again suffer and die, unless we "wake up" from the Wokist dystopian dream.

It Is Time, SLEEPERS, [to] AWAKE!

If you’d like to support us, donate through Paypal at [email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianAtheist/featured

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#georgeorwell #1984 #nineteeneightyfour #classic #classicdystopianliterature #dystopianliterature #dystopianfiction #dystopian #literature #fiction #psychologicalliterature #psychological #psychology #totalitarian #totalitarianfiction #totalitarianliterature #20thcentury #20thcenturyliterature #woke #wokism #orwell

John Locke's Second Treatise on Government was thought by Thomas Jefferson one of the most important influences on his own political thinking, and while it is disputed, one of the most important philosophical voices in the formation of the United States and its founding documents.

As such, it is vital to Americans in these days to understand and know Locke's ideas. History is being rewritten at a level approaching the Doublethink of George Orwell, and we must know and proclaim the Truth, the ultimate safeguard of our liberties against the forces of tyranny.

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We posted long ago President Roosevelt's D-day prayer. Here is Winston Churchill's speech to the House of Commons on that historic day.

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This partial essay came at just the right time, and I find it one of his most fruitful. The topic is one of Lewis's favorites: language. We do seem to have differing ways of speaking, and they are not always working the same way. For our purposes in this essay, Lewis speaks of common language, scientific language and poetic language, asking how "the language of religion" fits in. Common language, of course, is the base from which the others spring. It is indexical. We use language to point beyond language, to convey information to others, whether in science or poetry. Now, this next is utterly central to the argument. Many dismiss poetry as merely the expression of emotion. Lewis rejects this as untenable, and for good reasons. Poetic language is about something, just like scientific and ordinary language. It expresses information in many cases by the only way that information can be expressed:

"This is the most remarkable of the powers of poetic language: to convey to us the quality of experiences which we have not had, or perhaps can never have, to use factors within our experience so that they become pointers to something outside our experience."

"My conclusion is that such language is by no means merely an expression, nor a stimulant, of emotion, but a real medium of information. Which information may, like any other, be true or false.... Because events, as real events 'really' are and feigned events would 'really' be if they occurred, cannot be conveyed without bringing in the observer's heart and the common emotional reaction of the species, it has been falsely concluded that poetry represented the heart for its own sake, and nothing but the heart."

That is, poetic language conveys concrete information from one subject to another, involving the whole subject, but it is no less ABOUT something (in philosophical language it is intentional) than scientific or ordinary language. Whereas scientific language is abstract, poetic language is concrete. An expression like, "it is -60 degrees centigrade" out there is impoverished, but precise language; it is not qualitative, but quantitative. "It's so cold out there your nose hairs freeze to your nostrils as you breathe, and your head feels likely to explode," is concrete, but also vague in expressing temperature, not quantifiable.

Religious language is usually conducted, like most of our language work, with ordinary language, but when we are pressed to explain what we mean by religious statements like "I believe in God," we will need to go one of two ways: toward the scientific, or toward the poetic, and while each attempt will be trying to convey the same information, they will suffer different strengths and weaknesses.

"Apologetics is controversy. You cannot conduct a controversy in those poetical expressions which alone convey the concrete: you must use terms as definable and univocal as possible, and these are always abstract. And this means that the thing we are really talking about can never appear in the discussion at all. We have to try to prove THAT God is in circumstances where we are denied every means of conveying WHO God is."

"Now it seems to me a mistake to think that our experience in general can be communicated by precise and literal [that is, scientific] language and that there is a special class of experiences (say emotions) which cannot. The truth seems to me the opposite: there is a special region of experiences which can be communicated without poetic language, namely, its 'common measurable features,' but most experience cannot. To be incommunicable by scientific language is, so far as I can judge, the normal state of experience."

If you’d like to support us, donate through Paypal at [email protected]

Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, is considered one of the classics of Western literature. Having now read the second book, I am beginning to understand why. It is not easy going, but it is rewarding. This month we track the journey of Satan from Hell to earth. Let's explore this classic of Western literature together!

If you’d like to support us, donate through Paypal at [email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianAtheist/featured

https://www.facebook.com/JnJWiseWords

https://wisewordsforyouroccasion.wordpress.com

#paradiselost #paradise #johnmilton #milton #poetry #poem #epic #epicpoem #classicpoetry #classicpoem #classics #westernliterature #satan #hell #earth #christianity #religion #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #hegelism #hegel #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry