The Cloud of Unknowing

The world is badly broken. The problem is a simple one: humanity has begun to assume that all difficulties can be overcome, all answers can be found, given enough cerebration and enough data. This is why we invest huge amounts of land, money, energy and hardware in storing enormous archives of data, most of which will be redundant, out of date, trivial, or impossible to convert into information.

The reality is sobering. We will be expending all of those resources because we think we should keep our stuff, our work, the unblessed fruit of our hands and minds, the debris of our data transactions and online interactions. We have overvalued the products of our thinking despite the fact that they have create problems we cannot solve, or created answers insufficient to those problems.

When London grew too crowded and too corrupt, the only solution for its chaotic and filthy tangle was the unthinkable Great Fire of 1666. Totally gutting the medieval Roman inner city, it destroyed the homes of seven-eighths of all London's inhabitants. It was this destruction of existing constructs that instructed the development of modern London and the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren.

Imagine this: what if ALL humanity's electronic data stores, in all forms and formats, media and mediating devices, were destroyed at one blow? A tragedy? A disaster?

I would say not. I would say it would be a golden opportunity to discover exactly what humanity is really made of, and to rebuild anew. However, I am not so sanguine as to think humanity will do better. Rather, I am inclined to believe that we will do worse.

Calendar Bump

In every year, one comes to the calendar bump, that doubly prolonged section of the calendar containing July and August. It is hard to believe that there were once only ten months in the calendar, and that June became September ('seventh month') before going to October ('eighth month'), November ('ninth month') and December ('tenth month').

The calendar bump is a monument to clever chronological gerrymandering. Somebody needed to make months match. The intent was good, and it did reduce the chaos. Apparently, it worked.

To me, the July-August bump was always that chaotic part of the year in which it was too early to study for final examinations and too late to be blithely unconcerned. You were suffering great heat while feeling that the end was coming.

And now, I sit here watching the end arrive. It is like one of those disaster movies.

The Moment of Impact

Last night I saw two moments of impact. The first was enormous, the second was on a much more personal level. It seemed facetious to compare the two; only an accident of timing had brought them anywhere near each other and they shared little in common.

In the first, the Nazca plate off the coast of Chile thumped yet again into the underside of the South American plate. The result was an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale (about 10x the magnitude of the one that hit Haiti earlier). The reverberations resulted in tsunami warnings for places as far away as Japan. Despite the intensity of the quake, the death toll is not expected to cross 250.

In the second, promising Welsh player Aaron Ramsey took a hit from a horrified Ryan Shawcross in the Stoke City-Arsenal soccer match. Shawcross missed his tackle and fractured Ramsey's lower leg so badly that the foot was hanging loosely off the joint. It was clear that players from both teams were badly shaken. Ramsey is 19 years old, 5'11"; Shawcross is only 22, 6'5" and was just called up for England.

How can you compare the two? You can't. The first is a natural event in which more than 200 people lost their lives. The second is an unnatural event in which a young man has broken his leg. But the fact is that they are juxtaposed in our consciousness, and human empathy is such that it is easier to imagine breaking your own leg badly than to imagine the agony of 200 deaths.

When I saw the first event in the media, it was hard to assess my immediate emotional response. I must confess I felt relieved that relatively few people had died. When I saw the second, my heart sank. When the cameras pan away from the scene and the last thing you saw was a crunching impact that leaves someone's leg looking wrong, there's a more visceral sensation.

That highlights the difference between an objectified event and a subjectified one. The former was big, and you felt you ought to feel bad for victims of such a disaster. But the latter was more personal. You felt bad at once. You felt bad later when you realised you honestly felt worse for Aaron Ramsey than for Chile. Emotion is a funny thing.

Glorious

Recently, an Atlantean sect proposed to build a most glorious temple with built-in eateries and other entertainments, for the goodly harvest of about 300 million Atlantean thalers. Not to be outdone was another sect, which purposed in their hearts to set up a project costing about 1,000 million Atlantean thalers in total.

Across the world came a horrendous earthquake. 200,000 people died. The Atlantean priesthood sent 50,000 thalers in aid. Some people protested at what they saw was a petty response.

I didn't think it was petty at all. For decades, the priesthood of Atlantis has said that aid is partly from the people and partly from the priesthood. If the people can afford to spend 1,300,000,000 thalers on temples, they can surely spend a few thalers on the disaster-stricken on the other side of the world.

I did some calculations. Even in rich Atlantis, it costs 20,000 thalers to build a classroom in a school. In an expensive school, it can cost 60,000 thalers — I should know, since my family overpaid for one and were never acknowledged for it. But this madness is even greater, because public housing costs about 2-300,000 thalers if you're looking for a reasonable size.

On the other side of the world, a few thalers will buy medicine, security, survival, life. The priesthood has saved at least a thousand lives, while the faithful have built temples. Glorious temples. Great temples. Money-spinning temples designed to entrap more faithful while creaming off their sinful gold. To build more temples. More glorious temples. Greater temples. (And over the years, many, many temples of all kinds, all over the face of the world.)

Temples that will wink from their golden eyes in their titanium faces, while the poor across the world lie dead in a muddy ditch. And one day, the Judge will walk the hallways of history, and He will see this, and He will strike the temples and their memory from the minds of men as He once promised — "I never knew you," He will say.

And the dead will rise. Glorious.

Disaster Philosophy

Suppose a natural disaster occurs, and thousands of people are instantly rendered homeless, hurt, horrified. Some are beyond that. Then an atheist says, "These people need help."

Why is this so? From what first principles is this derived?

Perhaps it's the principle of empathy. "You can imagine yourself in their position, so you should help." But this is a position based on an imaginary situation, one that not only does not exist, but which you are deliberately imagining in order to rationalise your behaviour.

Perhaps it's the principle of equivalence. "Something like this might happen to you, and when it happens (if it happens), you would be glad for others to help you." But this is a position based on a hypothetical situation, one that does not exist and one which you imagine might exist because you hope that it is true. This one's more serious, with two possible replies. Firstly, people will help you anyway, because people help people they don't know — this is an empirical finding. Secondly, this is a bad justification for helping others; it's like pretending there's a heaven so that people will behave themselves on earth.

Perhaps it's the principle of emotion. "Oh, that's a bad thing! Here, have some money. Now I feel good." Ah, this one doesn't deserve comment. Doing things so that you feel good? Isn't that hedonism of some sort, thinly disguised?

Perhaps it's the principle of economics. "If I help people, then the nett economic power of the world increases and everyone's life gets better." Sounds plausible. But can you prove it?

Actually, the more you think about it, the more you realise that the rational atheist has no real reasons to help anybody.

But what about the rational Christian? The Christian is told essentially that he should help others because he is saved for no particular reason, and this point is rubbed in so that nobody can boast about being saved. Get this: you don't deserve it, so you should be happy with what you have — and you should help others whether or not you think they deserve it, and especially if you don't think they deserve it, because you were helped when you didn't deserve it.

It's a strangely compelling argument. It turns all the other arguments on their head. It's a WINNER.

A Catastrophe Theology Credo

Years ago, I presented a paper on Catastrophe Theory and applications of that kind of model to educational systems. Over the last few years, I've had occasion to suspect there is an equivalent model for the theology of disaster in which the main factors are restrained omnipotence, human free will, and the obvious balance which must occur between them.

Consider first of all the human level concept of disaster: insurance policies and suchlike list these as 'Acts of God' - hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions. Pandemics, epidemics, plagues, and that most recent of terrors, the tsunami – all these are included as well in man's catalogue of disaster. They are events which one would not generally attribute to human agencies. The 'Force Majeure' clause in contracts includes war, terrorism and other forms of extreme human-initiated activity (armed rebellion, rioting and revolution - the 3Rs of violence - for example).

Consider secondly the human response on an instinctive level for things which seem beyond human control – O God, why me, why us, why them, why these? And on a more philosophical level: how can God exist if this entity is all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful and there are bad/evil outcomes?

I'm sorry, but I'm impatient with apologists for God's conduct as much as I'm impatient with atheists who use this particular argument as an argument against the existence of God. I believe there are possible answers which many have attempted to show. One: there is indeed no God. Two: there is a God and He is not all-knowing. Three: there is a God and He is not all-good. Four: there is a God and He is not all-powerful. Five: there are no evil (or good?) outcomes and we've missed the point. And variations on these themes, showing their strengths and weaknesses.

I believe there must be a God of some sort. You can't say simplicity trumps complexity in terms of entities (i.e. Occam's Razor) and then say complexity trumps simplicity in terms of entities (i.e. evolution). This is not the full extent of my beliefs, but it is a starting point.

I believe the truth is that only a transcendent mind can be omniscient, and that you can't understand a transcendent and omniscient mind. However, it can understand you and your limitations of knowledge.

I believe that free will for humans automatically means there will be non-optimal (or non-good or even bad) outcomes. (Reason: no will can be free without impinging on another free will given finite space and resources for exercise of will. Corollary: if no human is perfect, free will is a disaster waiting to happen.)

I believe that the universe as we know it is able to allow two competing forces to work concurrently: human reason and human will. Humans have a great desire to figure things out; how fortunate that the universe seems amenable to reason. Humans have a great desire to impose their will on other entities; how fortunate that this is circumscribed by some kinds of almost-universal laws. For worlds in which this state is not true, just look at Jack Vance's Dying Earth series.

There is a rather silly old chestnut about whether it is possible for God to make a rock He cannot lift. It is supposed to deny omnipotence one way or the other. It is also too easily refuted. My theory is that the God who can create a universe containing free-willed entities has in fact created a universe in which He can allow for free will. His omnipotence to break the laws of that universe is circumscribed of His own volition by His allowances for said free-willed entities.

And that is perhaps why disasters happen. He will not often intervene where He has bound himself to allow for free will. So people are at liberty to live in the shadows of volcanoes, or along beaches in the Ring of Fire; so too are people able to voluntarily entrust themselves to machines made by other people, and to processes created by others – economical, social, mechanical or otherwise. Most final of all, they are able to deny His existence freely, thus creating for themselves a world where the only miracle is the miracle of anything happening at all.

Remember though that the percentage probability of man's existence is 100%, and that there are consequences to this.

The Greater Trumps: (23) The Lightning-Struck Tower

There is a great Tower standing on a cliff, a Tower on a high place where it looks down upon the plains and waters of the earth. The Tower is built by the hands of men, and years of falsity and human error have seeped into its stones. Some say this Tower is Babel, where God first confounded the languages - some say this edifice is the first pyramid, broken at the top and never completed because higher powers rose against it.

In the image, a mighty bolt of lightning strikes the Tower and casts its inhabitants out as it crumbles and falls. It is a sign that nothing made imperfectly by the faith and work of man will survive the wrath of God's truth and the dictates of Heaven - no matter how grand it seems. In the most ancient readings, it is the work of men who have forgotten the higher truths and raised themselves above others, proclaiming, "Let us build a tower to heaven." These are men who think they can be as God, and the sundering of their Tower denies that presumption.

At the same time, as the thunderbolt lays bare the insides of the Tower and casts its people out, it brings sudden and earth-shaking understanding to those below. What is Disaster in one way is also Revelation in another. It all depends on which side you are on, and what understanding you gain. Regardless, expect upheaval and a different order of things.

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I have a subtle appreciation for this image. I can feel the pain of having your foundations shattered, but it is like wound debridement or the re-setting of a broken bone that has healed badly. It will hurt a lot, but with a chance to begin again, and the enlightenment of having finally cleared out the rubbish, things will be better henceforth.

Here is the fourth stanza of a rare poem, translated from the Dutch by Cliff Crego. It is The Wanderer by Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953).

I am a spectator looking out from a high tower,
A space divides me from the rest of the world,
That I see as small and as very far away
And that I cannot touch and cannot hear.

It reminds one of these lines from Chesterton's Lepanto:

The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

The breaking of the Tower brings both Disaster and Revelation, and yet this is where all things become new, and we can start afresh.