I've read this book several times, along with most of his other nonfiction books. He is correct in warning us that if science will determine the moral compass, we are doomed. Who gets to determine what science is? Will it be the likes of "I am the Science?" Of course it will be, along with the technocrats and tyrants of all sorts, of high and low power, bullies at every social level.
They will decide what science is and what "ethics" and morals are, often leaning on the useful hand washing tool that AI is already serving. Remember Pontius Pilate washing his hands and rhetorically asking what is truth? Oh, so convenient as truth and ethics/morals will be everchanging (as we have seen of recent years, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear) and finicky in order to serve a current requirement.
In defense of science (I was a science teacher), science is not what is presented to us by the MSM nincompoops. Real science does NOT demand to be followed; it demands to be questioned. Nothing is considered to be irrevocably settled. Only idiot politicians say, 'the science is settled'.
As for belief, few scientists think that science has disproved God. Nor has science displaced God. Many, including myself are drawn closer to God as we see the incredible intricacies of nature.
One more thing: Science knows incredible things about the universe, even from its beginnings. But it can't tell us how the universe got here, or why. And science has sorted out most of the essentials of life on earth, but it can't explain how inanimate matter ever developed a will.
Yes, you are referring to science, which as creative beings we use to learn and understand the world around us. "The Science" would be a political and propaganda tool, making claims to belief and faith not proper to the actual scientific realm, but useful and convincing to the uninformed and uninterested manipulatable masses.
I just got a memoir by someone who lived through Mao's famine, and I've been recommending the many memoirs by Chinese immigrants who were Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, written later, filled with regret, but that made me think of a book for you, which I haven't read yet, but have heard interviews with the author. Mao's America by Xi Van Fleet. She lived through the Cultural Revolution, immigrated, became an educator, and then saw the same patterns here that had happened in China. She's on X.
The patterns seen in the Chinese Cultural Revolution are the same patterns found in all types of totalitarianism — political variants such as Communism and Nazism, cults, gangs, secret societies, extremist religions, and mob fanaticism such as the Pro-Hamas street protesters. You will even see the same patterns in both the Red Guard and in the children caught in Parental Alienation (family cult); children or grown children, in both cases, will or did dole out enormous betrayal and cruelty to an innocent but scapegoated parent.
Wonder whether he foresaw Transhumanism? Huxley, Serling and McLuhan did. It was more than fictional ephemera vs. HG Wells, Bradbury, Matheson and Asimov-type musings. And they, too, were visionary. Without realizing it.
I sent an astonishing video of Mike Wallace interviewing Huxley in 1958 to a most interesting friend . Huxley was convinced his epic , sardonic work of fiction had become reality and was terrified. He laid out a detailed, point by point blueprint of what to expect. A grossly divided West,China’s ascent, a Pandemic, wars, technology so advanced and heading towards a human/ tech /pharmaceutical/fusion, depopulation, propaganda, loss of national sovereignty, surveillance, censorship and on .. the endgame ,a tyrannical CommunoFascist Technocracy . A cabal of elite megalomaniacal cabal of Kleptocorporate multinational monopolistic socio/psychopaths lording over a transhuman serfdom.He hit every component, digital currency, androgyny, sterility, lab created, genetically engineered embryos gestating in plastic “ wombs”, alphas, betas,gammas, discards… and it would happen not so much by force, but willful submission. “ You will own nothing, have no privacy and love your servitude”. Mike Wallace was incredibly condescending. Mocking. Huxley was so lost in thought , he didn’t notice. Days later, my friend called. He was chilled to the bone. I asked if he believed there was such a thing as prophets. Were they placed here as warnings? If we didn’t heed the warnings, would we be the architects of our own demise? Huxley was quite succinct, begging us to take action . To stop it from progressing before it was too late. Before the Brave New World became the last vestige of humanity as we know it. My friend’s answer was quite thought provoking. “ Yes, I do believe there are chosen prophets. In the case of Huxley, I’d describe him as something like a “ time traveller”, “ Back from the future to change the course of history before we become history”. We shared a nervous laugh, but it makes one wonder. 2030 is just around the corner.
Gail, these writers you cite were no prophets but envisioned the consequences of their ideas and ambitions. They were spiritualists, eugenicists, fabians, including theosophy and scientology, and trusted in progress and the efficient management of populations. They mingled with powerful people, in academia and politics and business and their ideas were deemed highly sophisticated and of course progressive. Their stories were yearning and revelations of themselves, not warnings.
I just spent half an hour composing a reply and touched the screen, deleting it!
I’m not much on religious dogma or doctrine.Too many are incapable of discerning actuality from metaphor, apocrypha and allegory. Can’t stand the fundamental absolutists. Hindu symbology and theory is quite interesting. Aligns with many theories that became undeniable with ample empirical evidence. Karma is the most relevant. What goes around, comes around applies to all things existential.. incorporating Physics, gravity, energy, the Fibonacci Sequence, Chaos Theoy, Butterfly Effect… Everything is cyclical. and orbital.. each planet spins on its own axis and orbits a star. cell walls encase nuclei, blood flows through circulatory systems ,birth and death, repressive cycles, time and seasons, action an reaction, infinite math and cosmos, ebb and flow the spiral is a perfect form. A rotation. The DNA double helix. Survival requires constant revolution. Energy.
Ergo, I sometimes wonder whether we cross paths at times. When the weird episodes of Deja Vu, blurting out an answer to a question, novel ideas that seemingly come from nowhere… things you have no idea how or why you know them.. Since I don’t have any concrete answers, I’m loath to discount what is not in my wheel house. If there might be some plausibility.
I’ve always been irritated by religious fundamentalist zealots arguing with people of different religious factions, the same religious affiliation.but minus the hyper-judgment of less contextual literalism or Heaven forbid, a non-Judeo/Christian orthodox adherent , particularly Hindu, Buddhist, spiritual, somewhat agnostic or.. bring out those garlic necklaces… atheist! I’m so upset that Trump passed on Tulsi Gabbard and chose Vance The effing GOP/RNC couldn’t bear the thought of a “ heretic Hindu” within their Puritan midst. The Party is becoming indistinguishable from an Evangelical Mega Church / Pope John Paul Vatican symbiosis. I don’t know what the hell Trump is thinking. I know him personally. Worked alongside him on the project that was the crown jewel of my career.He was a Presbyterian lite.
Huxley was the only one that transcended the realm of explicable. Brave New World was a satirical work of fiction decrying eugenics and mad science . His brother was the inspiration and the target. Julian Huxley was a Malthusian eugenicist.He wasn’t nefarious, but was of the peculiar emotionless scientist genre. Aldous foresaw the path said Science” could lead to. Much like Elon Musk with AI and Neuralink. It could be monumental in helping those with crippling neurological, degenerative diseases, brain injuries, paralysis if in the right hands, but horrific in the wrong hands. He was very vocal in his warnings.Ditto Kary Mullis, Robert Malone.
Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing -- How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior
How are so many human minds being altered into near-insanity these days? It is not a new phenomenon, actually. Call it mind-conversion, menticide, mind-control, thought reform, or brainwashing. The potential has always been with us.
The Bible refers to it as a spirit of stupor sent to those who refuse to acknowledge God. Their foolish hearts are darkened so that they cannot conceive of truth.
Please watch Tucker’s interview on X of Professor Willie Moon. An astrophysicist who taught and researched at Harvard. A brilliant interview about fossil fuel, the sun, CO2, nuclear energy, wind and solar energy. An eye opener from a highly intelligent man.
My great-grandfather was Andrew Jackson Staples, the original Maga populist (if you will allow me some self-indulgent pride). I wonder if this Clyde Staples Lewis guy is in my tree also.
He sure looks like a great from my maternal side, and he sounds just like me! ;-)
CS Lewis saw things that many of us do not yet understand. My Substack series is devoted to the exploration of how Science confirms the presence and goodness of God. (true science, not Fauci pseudoscience or the worship of science like a form of magic)
Sorry--but you ain't been a Jewish kid getting all the way to the end of The Chronicles of Narnia to be smacked in the face with Aslan turning out to be Jesus. That is some child abuse for the ages.
Kids, you know, we pick up a fantasy series, we don't expect to get smacked in the head with the anti-anxiety medicine of choice of the over-educated set.
I've read this book several times, along with most of his other nonfiction books. He is correct in warning us that if science will determine the moral compass, we are doomed. Who gets to determine what science is? Will it be the likes of "I am the Science?" Of course it will be, along with the technocrats and tyrants of all sorts, of high and low power, bullies at every social level.
They will decide what science is and what "ethics" and morals are, often leaning on the useful hand washing tool that AI is already serving. Remember Pontius Pilate washing his hands and rhetorically asking what is truth? Oh, so convenient as truth and ethics/morals will be everchanging (as we have seen of recent years, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear) and finicky in order to serve a current requirement.
In defense of science (I was a science teacher), science is not what is presented to us by the MSM nincompoops. Real science does NOT demand to be followed; it demands to be questioned. Nothing is considered to be irrevocably settled. Only idiot politicians say, 'the science is settled'.
As for belief, few scientists think that science has disproved God. Nor has science displaced God. Many, including myself are drawn closer to God as we see the incredible intricacies of nature.
One more thing: Science knows incredible things about the universe, even from its beginnings. But it can't tell us how the universe got here, or why. And science has sorted out most of the essentials of life on earth, but it can't explain how inanimate matter ever developed a will.
Yes, you are referring to science, which as creative beings we use to learn and understand the world around us. "The Science" would be a political and propaganda tool, making claims to belief and faith not proper to the actual scientific realm, but useful and convincing to the uninformed and uninterested manipulatable masses.
I’ve logically dismissed the gaseous exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in my article: we breathe air not oxygen.
Click on my blue icon to read and comment.
We are not machine men using gases of combustion and exhaust.
Hydration not oxygenation underpins our physiology.
I just got a memoir by someone who lived through Mao's famine, and I've been recommending the many memoirs by Chinese immigrants who were Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, written later, filled with regret, but that made me think of a book for you, which I haven't read yet, but have heard interviews with the author. Mao's America by Xi Van Fleet. She lived through the Cultural Revolution, immigrated, became an educator, and then saw the same patterns here that had happened in China. She's on X.
The patterns seen in the Chinese Cultural Revolution are the same patterns found in all types of totalitarianism — political variants such as Communism and Nazism, cults, gangs, secret societies, extremist religions, and mob fanaticism such as the Pro-Hamas street protesters. You will even see the same patterns in both the Red Guard and in the children caught in Parental Alienation (family cult); children or grown children, in both cases, will or did dole out enormous betrayal and cruelty to an innocent but scapegoated parent.
Wonder whether he foresaw Transhumanism? Huxley, Serling and McLuhan did. It was more than fictional ephemera vs. HG Wells, Bradbury, Matheson and Asimov-type musings. And they, too, were visionary. Without realizing it.
I sent an astonishing video of Mike Wallace interviewing Huxley in 1958 to a most interesting friend . Huxley was convinced his epic , sardonic work of fiction had become reality and was terrified. He laid out a detailed, point by point blueprint of what to expect. A grossly divided West,China’s ascent, a Pandemic, wars, technology so advanced and heading towards a human/ tech /pharmaceutical/fusion, depopulation, propaganda, loss of national sovereignty, surveillance, censorship and on .. the endgame ,a tyrannical CommunoFascist Technocracy . A cabal of elite megalomaniacal cabal of Kleptocorporate multinational monopolistic socio/psychopaths lording over a transhuman serfdom.He hit every component, digital currency, androgyny, sterility, lab created, genetically engineered embryos gestating in plastic “ wombs”, alphas, betas,gammas, discards… and it would happen not so much by force, but willful submission. “ You will own nothing, have no privacy and love your servitude”. Mike Wallace was incredibly condescending. Mocking. Huxley was so lost in thought , he didn’t notice. Days later, my friend called. He was chilled to the bone. I asked if he believed there was such a thing as prophets. Were they placed here as warnings? If we didn’t heed the warnings, would we be the architects of our own demise? Huxley was quite succinct, begging us to take action . To stop it from progressing before it was too late. Before the Brave New World became the last vestige of humanity as we know it. My friend’s answer was quite thought provoking. “ Yes, I do believe there are chosen prophets. In the case of Huxley, I’d describe him as something like a “ time traveller”, “ Back from the future to change the course of history before we become history”. We shared a nervous laugh, but it makes one wonder. 2030 is just around the corner.
That Hideous Strength, though it has been decades since I read it.
Gail, these writers you cite were no prophets but envisioned the consequences of their ideas and ambitions. They were spiritualists, eugenicists, fabians, including theosophy and scientology, and trusted in progress and the efficient management of populations. They mingled with powerful people, in academia and politics and business and their ideas were deemed highly sophisticated and of course progressive. Their stories were yearning and revelations of themselves, not warnings.
I just spent half an hour composing a reply and touched the screen, deleting it!
I’m not much on religious dogma or doctrine.Too many are incapable of discerning actuality from metaphor, apocrypha and allegory. Can’t stand the fundamental absolutists. Hindu symbology and theory is quite interesting. Aligns with many theories that became undeniable with ample empirical evidence. Karma is the most relevant. What goes around, comes around applies to all things existential.. incorporating Physics, gravity, energy, the Fibonacci Sequence, Chaos Theoy, Butterfly Effect… Everything is cyclical. and orbital.. each planet spins on its own axis and orbits a star. cell walls encase nuclei, blood flows through circulatory systems ,birth and death, repressive cycles, time and seasons, action an reaction, infinite math and cosmos, ebb and flow the spiral is a perfect form. A rotation. The DNA double helix. Survival requires constant revolution. Energy.
Ergo, I sometimes wonder whether we cross paths at times. When the weird episodes of Deja Vu, blurting out an answer to a question, novel ideas that seemingly come from nowhere… things you have no idea how or why you know them.. Since I don’t have any concrete answers, I’m loath to discount what is not in my wheel house. If there might be some plausibility.
I’ve always been irritated by religious fundamentalist zealots arguing with people of different religious factions, the same religious affiliation.but minus the hyper-judgment of less contextual literalism or Heaven forbid, a non-Judeo/Christian orthodox adherent , particularly Hindu, Buddhist, spiritual, somewhat agnostic or.. bring out those garlic necklaces… atheist! I’m so upset that Trump passed on Tulsi Gabbard and chose Vance The effing GOP/RNC couldn’t bear the thought of a “ heretic Hindu” within their Puritan midst. The Party is becoming indistinguishable from an Evangelical Mega Church / Pope John Paul Vatican symbiosis. I don’t know what the hell Trump is thinking. I know him personally. Worked alongside him on the project that was the crown jewel of my career.He was a Presbyterian lite.
Huxley was the only one that transcended the realm of explicable. Brave New World was a satirical work of fiction decrying eugenics and mad science . His brother was the inspiration and the target. Julian Huxley was a Malthusian eugenicist.He wasn’t nefarious, but was of the peculiar emotionless scientist genre. Aldous foresaw the path said Science” could lead to. Much like Elon Musk with AI and Neuralink. It could be monumental in helping those with crippling neurological, degenerative diseases, brain injuries, paralysis if in the right hands, but horrific in the wrong hands. He was very vocal in his warnings.Ditto Kary Mullis, Robert Malone.
The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton
Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing -- How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior
How are so many human minds being altered into near-insanity these days? It is not a new phenomenon, actually. Call it mind-conversion, menticide, mind-control, thought reform, or brainwashing. The potential has always been with us.
The Bible refers to it as a spirit of stupor sent to those who refuse to acknowledge God. Their foolish hearts are darkened so that they cannot conceive of truth.
Lewis’ science-fiction trilogy are also great reads, where he translates his thoughts from Abolition into fictional form.
Please watch Tucker’s interview on X of Professor Willie Moon. An astrophysicist who taught and researched at Harvard. A brilliant interview about fossil fuel, the sun, CO2, nuclear energy, wind and solar energy. An eye opener from a highly intelligent man.
Willie Soon?
Yes
Does no one know how to use affect and effect anymore instead of the marketing buzzword impact?
No because they would lose the affect of the effect.
My great-grandfather was Andrew Jackson Staples, the original Maga populist (if you will allow me some self-indulgent pride). I wonder if this Clyde Staples Lewis guy is in my tree also.
He sure looks like a great from my maternal side, and he sounds just like me! ;-)
(Read *all* of C.S.Lewis.)
Book suggestion: The Lucifer Effect; Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo
I haven't read it yet but it has potential to be a book for our times.
Thank you for the excellent book recommedations.
CS Lewis saw things that many of us do not yet understand. My Substack series is devoted to the exploration of how Science confirms the presence and goodness of God. (true science, not Fauci pseudoscience or the worship of science like a form of magic)
Start here:
https://jmadden.substack.com/p/moses-and-the-big-bang
Videos - Reagan and Trump shootings... have fun
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/reagan-shooting-vs-trump-shooting
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-trump-shooting-was-staged
This is a great book. It’s been a while so I might read it again now (and put Infinite Jest down for a few minutes.).
“Battle for the Mind” is by William Sargant.
That tiresome neurotic.
Sorry--but you ain't been a Jewish kid getting all the way to the end of The Chronicles of Narnia to be smacked in the face with Aslan turning out to be Jesus. That is some child abuse for the ages.
That fact is made clear in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You are the neurotic.
Its allegorical. One of Christ's titles is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Revelation 5:5.
Yes dear.
Kids, you know, we pick up a fantasy series, we don't expect to get smacked in the head with the anti-anxiety medicine of choice of the over-educated set.