Joseph Francis Fletcher (1905–1991)

Name dropped by an equal parts ignorant and stupid Christian who wanted to name and shame the 60s. I made a note of the book (a long time ago) out of neutral curiosity/desire to observe, and now I’ve ordered it as I think I will like it, now.

Aleister once said that there is no right or wrong whatever. This does not mean that I am a stone and all things indifferent, or nothing distinguished from others. There is accuracy, for one. A Tarot card refers to something very like an angel or a god, and if your picture of the Ten of Cups is a giant spider, you know, either you really, really like spiders…. Or maybe you need a doctor, or to do some research. Then there’s pleasantness. Some Tarot decks are popular, others forgotten, some people like one and ‘hate’ another, even two decks with similar themes (Wicca; Greek mythology), etc. One thing I suppose is wrong: asking for something and getting it, not liking it, and throwing a fit. Of course, this is the situation of up to ninety nine percent of people, including probably at least thirty to fifty percent of the billionaires…. But there is no right or wrong, as is supposed.

…. And it’s funny because even for the soldiers of orthodoxy, there are situations. They say things that mean basically, One God, One Situation—treat all people with respect and deference, you know; but it’s bullshit. Situations arise very quickly. Your fellow Christian or a Muslim? Well, as a Bible believer I have to help my father fight against the enemy…. But wait: there are wrinkles in situation: that cop there, is he a real ‘solid’ guy, or…. Who’s the mayor in this town? Is he one of those, you know, they’re Democrats, they have the eight legs and the many eyes…. Spiders, that’s what they’re called….

But it’s like, one has to acknowledge if one is to be happy many situations to adapt to, many degrees of similarity and difference in co-religionists and others…. Although, clearly, for ‘good’ Christians that there is one situation and one stance—that of the soldier at war who wants to die because his mother, sister, and fiancée died in the flu, you know…. These other so-called ideas, smack of lack of bravery, right…. Who says that kids shouldn’t go to school if they ought to be going to the hospital? (Their mother!) Who says you buy or sell based on the price, or that words have different meanings in different countries and occupations and so on? (A liberal—a traitor!)

Say: my father was an American white man, and when he was in WWII, they defended every position to the last man, and when they attacked, they took every position, bombing the fortresses with fire, and taking no prisoners. And that’s how Christians won WWII, and the opera pagans, Jews, and Communists ~lost~, right….

—Abernathy was in WWII, you know. All civil rights came from the victory Jesus won over Hitler.
—They should have bombed us with fire and—
—No, they should have accepted disrespect in their own particular case, so that “all of us” could have respect…. Say why’d I use air quotes….
—So there are different situations.
—Don’t tempt me, you slippery fish!

But yeah: I used to very interested in the Christian doctrine of heaven and hell, and in separating the probably true, of which there is surely some, from the obviously racist, of which is there clearly much…. But yeah, now I’m more struck by how the ‘good’ Christian doesn’t know how to live on this present plane of consciousness that he finds himself on, you know…. Wasn’t the point, in the end, that one bad life leads to another bad life, and also with good lives?
“No. The point is, You suck.”

Well, what’s the only thing you can say about that, right. My brother—incidentally, he’s a Christian now, but I can’t help but see that basically as just being a Taurus with a kid, right—but yeah, he’s a sucker for bad jokes, and loving it, he’s always like, I know you are: but what am I? He’s always telling a story, and it’s like, I told the guy— I told him, that— ~It’s ok; I know what you told him….

Although it’s funny, situation ethics, because there’s still that Christian Child part of me, that says, things like, One of the most important things to do, is to help the children! (Although by children I mean the children living inside me: the little fairy-like beings, right….) And it’s like, the stronger thing to say is, What I can I do ~in this situation~ to help the children, right?…. Vague things that require everything of you, require nothing of you, ~really~, and the cackling little baby gosling, knows that, right….

But yeah: there’s One God, One Situation, so it’s not, “The Democrats are giving people who buy an $80,000 electric truck a tax cut; I have a rental property in form of my second home; I should get together with someone or another and ask questions.” No, it’s: The Democrats! The spiders! The slugs! The aliens from the swamp! The War of the Worlds is happening again, and this time it’s the Democrats! The slugs! They’re over there in the Night Forest where it’s always night…. Oh help me mommy; I’m scared…. 😨 …. Oh my god, and they’re not even ~Trump~~!

You know, like monotheism can be a good thing because it depends on the individual; but with the American folk fighter it becomes like monomania, basically: like I’d say this if it weren’t insulting to the African folk Catholics, but it’s like Christian Voodoo, you know: it’s Christian superstition…. Kinda an ambiguous phrase, “Christian superstition”, it can mean two different things…. “If a witch crosses your path three times on Friday the 13th in a year ending in 13, then your mother dies and goes to hell, even if—“ “Well, at least we’re not talking about something very Likely, here, you know….”

😸

🙀

…. But yeah: if you take in unhealthy ideas—like you can get from basically the whole society, in one form or another—then you get sick, hopefully sick enough to cough or vomit it all up, right…. But the demons of Christian superstition I think probably simply do not exist, in anything like even a similar way: and if they do exist at least in some very similar way, then it is simply Christian superstition which has made them, really; they sound profoundly unnatural….

…. But yeah: the funny thing is the average person is a lot like Trump: at least, more like Trump than most other…. Whatever, other types. It’s just that the average person doesn’t brag about their vices constantly, and also much of the time they’re more worried about it happening to them, than gloating, almost…. Trump does float rather than hide; that is a LITTLE unusual, right…. And so there is a division among the people concerning him….

And yeah: sometimes I talk smack about “Jesus”—the Jesus of the Christians—which they create with their lies, you know…. But obviously there was that other Jesus: and I’m sure that somewhere he still exists: and so there is a division because of the people….

So, yes: I think that the average person is “evil” mostly out of indecision, rather than “commitment to evil”, or something. Even Trump is much more a typical tyrant, than say Hitler gives the impression of having been. Hitler convinced people he was committed to evil; Trump I feel like forgets at least some of his lies from one week to another…. The average person is “evil” in that sense—evil out of indifference. And I mean, there’s a verse or two in the Bible about almost every topic, no matter how anti-Christian; there’s probably a story or two about virtuous warrior matriarchs, for fuck’s sake: but yeah, I feel like Christian thought in general does very poorly with that idea: if you’re “evil”, you’re “committed to evil”, because “good and evil are real things and are not negotiable concepts that we create”—because—because—(old British man from Pink Floyd video) “You bloody buggers! Go to church, damn you—go to, *coughs blood into handkerchief*….”

…. One day I’ll order that fucking book. Fuckers let me cancel one order, on Amazon, although the mechanic doesn’t believe in canceling orders I misunderstood, right…. But yeah, in a way it’s good that they shipped me the three tarot decks anyway, (so much for keeping both SSD ~and~ SSI: I need a new car; I think they run more than $2,000 lol….) because it’s like, I don’t think I’m going to be buying too many expensive books for awhile, right…. There’s the library, KindleUnlimited, the out of copyright bargain books, and my not-trivial pile of books in reserve, right…. But I might want to keep the full price purchases to a minimum again…. I want a new used car: C’mon Springsteen, gimme an anthem, here, right….

But yeah: SitRep Ethics, right. “There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” From Hamlet, and I believe a favorite line of Albert Ellis. One thinks of it as leading to something very much along those lines: like the most respectful dissent from Christianity possible, if such a phenomenon means anything to the person involved: Christianity, indeed; merely without tribal totems and municipal militias…. And there is a well-worn path connecting those two way-points, right: but there’s also a little trail, half-concealed, that leads off another way, to bring to to Crowley’s line from “The Book of Thoth”: “There is no good or bad whatever.”—a flat denial, rather than a coy refusal, to Christ’s evil twin, you know….

…. I have the book.

I feel like it’s general philosophy strongly influenced and informed by Christianity—and post-Christianity, which tends to be more Christian than anything else, it just doesn’t sit in a pew and follow the rules, right; but that’s where it gets its ideas from—than it is literally Christian theology, even if probably over half of the people who read it are Christian theologians and clerics, a group that makes up a negligible proportion of the average book’s readership, you know. Although Joseph considered himself, and wanted to be, democratic-populist, you know, a stance that never fails to enrage (with or without that suppressed-rage thing) the theological elite, you know.

The intro guy def seems a theologian. He summarizes in kinda a fair way—like, it would all be legal in a Latin-language court, right—although he’s clearly subtly hostile (the Best way to be—always), you know—Joseph “fails to appreciate” how beautiful and cosmic legalism is, right, (the way that legalists always respect the inherent honor and dignity of anarchists and people who speak Spanish but not Latin, right!), and implicitly maybe the whole book is garbage because it’s not anti-abortion. Oh, and he seems like the guy who would acknowledge that it’s hard to take up a gun and shoot Nazis when your father is a Nazi?…. I realize this is betting, but usually the person, at least the conservative person, who gets uppity at the WWII-pacifist-who-won’t-shoot-his-father, is at least half a Nazi and totally oblivious of his children’s internal state of mind, you know…. I once had an argument, when I was mentally ill and loved nothing better than an internet argument, with this guy whose grandfather had been in the Waffen-SS or something and was explaining filial piety and the German heritage and everything…. And it’s like, son of a gun, three to five paragraphs on YouTube like a class assignment about what the Hitler military was like didn’t heal this loser’s family trauma, it just made me sound like a “talkative fool” or whatever it was, to this Shakespeare/Constitution conservative who I guess had come to hear some kind of nerd music and wanted people to just be good and ignore this little Hitler talk, and isn’t lack of education or whatever also a bad thing, right….

But yeah, anyway, it was this Michelangelo Antonioni film time—it was years and years after 1970 before the non-counter-culture world was significantly different from that trilogy he made, and event today it’s controversial, you know, to put it mildly—where people had lost interest in the movement of history, and, the wise white men, also in pleasure, basically, and people in general, in living as opposed to thinking, or at least, cultivating politeness~although today it is not entirely different, not unrecognizable, except on the surface where it’s different because now people are rude: they honk when unnecessary instead of calming plotting your death and smiling, you know~…. and into this world Joseph introduced love as a philosopher’s tool (the theologian is endlessly impressed with that love cannot be defined: that is theology, I guess, to be endlessly impressed with the unimportance of one’s wife, you know: indeed, “a woman of no importance”, right)…. but yeah: love as a philosopher’s tool, not something felt, right…. Granted that we cannot define love, but it is even stranger that a love we cannot feel will guide our reasonings and conduct, you know…. But such is the Christian way, and, since it is the same, under new management—they fired the cooks but kept the menu, I guess—the post-Christian way, too, right….

I don’t know. In those Michelangelo Antonioni days, the intellectuals thought that everything was a technical question that would one day be handled by bureaucrats…. And I do believe that more ought to be handled by paid professionals and regulated by the government, rather than everything being based on free female labor and family/custom that has done little except produce generation after generation of disturbed people, you know—how sick do you have to be before you Hitler away the Native peoples of ~several~ continents, and never look back: to mention nothing of how parents and children treat each other, right…. Sometimes children are still putting their parents in the fryer when the children are forty, right! It’s almost the more common thing!…. And just to leave everything to the undiagnosed mentally ill to abuse the next generation, right: it would be better if more Were handled by professionals who actually fucking knew something about some goddamn thing, right…. But not an Michelangelo Antonioni character professional, right. If the “expert” can’t love, they oughtn’t be trusted, you know…. And love is many things, and love is knowledge, but love is not primarily a philosopher’s tool, right. Love is life…. The right life. Philosophy is wonderful and should exist, but if only the part of the brain which produced philosophy, and nothing else, right, is consulted, and philosophy is simply a tool to distinguish and divide oneself from non-philosophers, right: then philosophy is no longer philosophy; it is become bunk, you know…. Joseph wasn’t a bad guy, but I wouldn’t consider him a household god of mine, right…. A vague sense of the right direction, maybe—endlessly infuriating to someone on the wrong road, seeing someone turn around and “make a fool” of them, right—but not very far down the road, right. It is only centuries that discover these things, right. The rocks know that, although our geologists I suppose, do not, you know.

…. Every other introduction to every book I can think of, puts the main text in a relatively good light, you know: the publisher wants the book to sell, and most people who associate with a book or author closely enough to become an expert on it, have a pretty good opinion of it, relatively speaking right: otherwise you’d be a real weirdo, and extremely self-defeating, you know. But conservatives reviewing obscure liberal thinkers on the borderlands of theology and philosophy don’t have to follow the rules (lol) followed by the lesser breeds of mankind, you know: they are Custom Men, they follow, THE, rules, you know—the rules that say, when those dem libtards want to get their theory about how the Biases of the Ages should be re-evaluated, instead of just—BAM! CUSTOM!—then, no matter how self-defeating and against the general rules of self-interest people generally follow, we’ll do it, because we—and we alone! We noble few! We (Shakespeare monologue for a few paragraphs)—decide that what all men have always held to be true, IS true, and if you are one of the many many people who stand against what all men have always believed, well…. 👹🪓

But ~~so suppressed~~, that he can almost be polite as he tells him to go fuck himself, right…. “Everything you say is always wrong, and it’s my Honest Opinion that you’re a caveman, which is worse than being a devil…. But God loves you, I guess: I mean, my job is to make sure that you never feel that love, but hey. I never violated your right to a fair trial at this preliminary hearing to the White Throne Judgment: and that’s because I’m a pretty outstanding guy, you know. And I could have written this in Greek, but I chose to write it in Latin, because I love the little people, you know. Their inability to be ok doesn’t impede the flow of love through my innermost being….”

…. A few points:

—I do feel like it’s philosophy not theology, although it’s philosophy deeply dyed in Christian ideals, far more than the average big-name philosopher

—I do think that method matters more than system. A system that matters more than reality is harmful, and although I would go farther than Joseph in building up a system, it is only sensible to do this provisionally. If your system of ethics causes you to do wrong, you do not arrest the people who point this out to you, right.

—Certainly aroused theological hate, right. (chuckles)

—I do feel like it’s not quite right, even when I do not know what it is, because, although there has always been wisdom, and yet the potter’s wheel turns always, and in 1966 it had only just begun to come round again—it had not yet come all the way around again, at all, you know.

…. Yes, he is kinda a callous, cynical “Michelangelo Antonioni character”, even when he’s “right”, you know. Still, I suppose he wasn’t cowed easily. When the big people agree, you’re supposed to let them cow you, right—there’s no polite disagreement, when things are “the way they should be”, right. I mean, maybe we’ll be polite and maybe we won’t. But you’ll be polite, and you’ll obey.

But it’s much more readable than Aquinas. Aquinas could be a deep seer, as long as people were good enough to keep the little people and their little problems far away, right. (The only way to live….)

But yeah, society isn’t really less legalistic, you know. Rules change; legalism remains. Even the anarchy reaction kinda flares up and dies down and is compartmentalized and changes nothing and is the same, really. And we’re not situational, you know.

I’d like to think that I’m less legalistic than I could be….

…. But yeah, the three POVs:

—Yes, you can at least make exceptions to loveless rules in particular cases when appropriate, when not to do so is obviously brutish and tyrannical. A simple rule applied brutishly is a worse tyrant than a complicated net of rules. Though to be honest sometimes it is merely, ‘Through legalism, my power is absolute: so I’ll do what I like; you have no power under the rules, so you’ll not be considered.’ I mean, seriously, not allowing an abortion in the case of rape? What the ~fuck~, right? It’s to allow a second rape, without question—though it’s not by the embryo, (!), obviously, but by the state. “The state should never be aggressive…. against men, tribesmen”—I think that’s a very sound principle for some people!

—The theologian traditionally suppresses his rage, in his estimation, against the rule-breakers, as he considers them, with the uncommon (to put it politely) term “antinomian”, but it’s a strange, very “non-A”, “non-Greek; barbarian”, sort of word. Sometimes it refers to anarchistic behavior—which probably should have gotten more coverage, how to cool the fires of hatred and resentment against theological hate, right! (Let’s ask Luther and Inquisitor Michael, right!) Sometimes it means essentially unrelated things. I can see how the legalists can fall in together, right: “the ecumenism of hate”, some call it, although I suppose the almost quasi-racial lines of god-names prevent it from applying to, say, Muslim-Christian stuff, right, however they feel about fatherhood, or whatever. (/Muslim mob/ Abortion no good! (string of phrases in Arabic) ~(arch-conservative) (grabs nearest liberal) This epithet right here is my buddy; he’s a white epithet: we go way back. We’ve been to feminist rallies together. I mean, we oppose abortion, too, but…. But can this not be happening, okay? I’m white. I love the Lord, homies!) But yeah, Catholic-Protestant legalists can agree if they don’t spend too much time talking: they can say, People should follow God’s law, just in general—get bullied by somebody, go to some church, any church…. Follow the goddamn rules, ok? And put God in the captain’s chair! 😎

It’s harder to see how, on the one hand, I mean, I’m not familiar with Sartre, really, at all, pretty much: but apparently he holds with “radical discontinuity” between events/situations—you know, randomness, meaninglessness, right. It’s hard to see how that would mesh with say a tarot reader, who would hold that there is ~such order~ and ~such meaning and regularity~, that with some general principles and understanding of universal symbols you can, with the help of signs, make decisions without a Book of General Principles/God’s philosophy courtesy of Paul, and ratiocination—and nothing else, right. But no good tarot reader—no one with the slightest sense of competency—simply dismisses reason and assigns it no importance, right…. Joseph is very conventional/stigmatizing about pagans—very incidentally, in his mind, right. A “pagan” anarchist—WHAT an anarchist! A “pagan” legalist—WHAT a legalist! A “pagan” foreigner—how strange! How uncouth! How dirty! And yet, how unnecessarily fastidious and sterile, you know! My, what strange people! I’m glad we don’t have any of them lot here…. ever since the Trail of Tears! (Well, I suppose they might still be in Oklahoma!)…. (shrugs) But yeah, I don’t mind situationism, I guess, but I’m sure that that for some people would be my bias, feeling like I’m being lumped in with, not one but two!, groups that I feel like I am quite unlike, although one rests upon a guess, since it’s so very different from how I think and what I read!

—But yeah, situationism, it seems okay, I guess—it’s though it’s all so vague and complicated, you know; I suppose the average philosophy book is pretty short, but by virtue of being vague and unclear, you know—explaining very little with very few words that have no obvious ordinary meaning, and which fit into an abstract system of some fine-sounding thing, right…. But if he does not really feel the “love” which is to guide him—and he gives no hint that there is any love, any feeling, any willing, even, anything like something that a calculator couldn’t feel, right—then how are we to trust him, that this “love” guides him aright?

…. ~Got to keep the loonies on the path….

There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me!~ ⛪️

…. “…. we can pin another label on our method.”

And I’m sure you will, lol. Probably a pretty redundant process, using many more labels than necessary, when a few examples or teaching stories would have been more useful and less of a mere spinning of the wheels, you know.

Still: it’s a very short book, though: and what I didn’t notice is—not only few pages, but few words on a page. (Not like the edition I read of the “Mists of Avalon”, for example.) The problem certainly isn’t length: but it is Very Abstract. I do use labels in my reviews, even, and my tagging is meant to be pretty systematic, but…. I mean, I like to remember that that’s ~on the surface~, so to speak, right.

Philosophers often don’t get that. It is kinda ironic, how he talks and what his style is, given the substance of the argument, which isn’t bad…. And it’s not like the manner of it endeared him to the people grimacing and set against him, right. Class loyalty, if I may call manners that, doesn’t really win you acceptance from people who don’t like you. It’s not only in the suburbs or the middle class that it’s like that, of course…. But I digress.

…. I realize he’s offering another position, but it’s funny how many things in philosophy are mis-named—or weirdly named, at the bare minimum, right. I don’t know but would bet money that “natural law” has nothing in it more natural than the rule-making machinations of the mind of man, which seeks to impose law on nature, and call the rule-breakers immoral and “unnatural” so that they will obey. (Or at least, be isolated, right.) And OBVIOUSLY without the faintest suggestion of the possibility of sitting under an oak tree, you know. That would make us like, the people who had to be suppressed for being natural, or the people who need laws imposed upon them so that they do not wander from the possible, you know. But anyway.

…. But yeah: imperfection isn’t negative. It’s reality.

And you don’t get fun pithy little things like that except after you’ve been silent; it doesn’t come from assembling more labels than you need even for labeling purposes, and airing out your Latin frill, you know. It’s covered with a coating of garbage, you know…. Although you could speculate, I guess, what the “it” is, no?

…. And yet; and yet….

(The Child Hermes) And yet, wherever I go, there’s freedom. Wherever I go—there’s truth. (nods smugly)

“There are six positions, and four supposes. Together, they form the Ten Suppose-y, Position-y Things.”

(The Child Hermes finds a secret door in the floor of your mind, opens it and jumps down into it halfway, then turns and motions for you to follow him)

…. Certainly much “realist” or “intrinsic” thought is legalism, but I’m not sure that we can ensure anti-tyrannical thought along these abstract, terminological lines, you know. The “nominalist” thing sounds a lot like the “divine command” theory that theologians/Christian philosophers offer as a possibility around that Plato dialogue, (Euphyrphro?— Euthyphro, there we go), right—like, God could just decide that coldness to one’s relations/dependents, is a good thing, and presto magico: divine command = good to go! But then, we cannot say when silence and even detachment are a necessary part of life; certainly we cannot pass judgment without knowing specifics (and if it isn’t our business, right)…. Really the truth has both absolute/objective elements—which are basically very few and very abstract, but occasionally rather important—and relative, which is the stuff of most of life, you know: and I don’t feel like these terminological debates about “intrinsic” vs “extrinsic” do justice to that. He certainly doesn’t show love to the naive conservatism of his own time, or indeed to people without knowledge of all the usual stock phrases of Latin, either, you know. He just tries to prove others wrong, and himself intelligent, right. Love is wise, but few philosophers have known his wisdom, you know.

…. Love is a “monolithic…. univalent norm”! OMG, a comedy tour for this guy; we could sell tickets! (Parochial German philosopher universality, you know: deeply do the schools try to imprint that on people, right….)

What’s up, New Orleans? Comedy Central Stand-up Presents…. Joseph Fletcher!

—Hey hey, so I’m having this conversation with my cat, and I’m like, Love is a monolithic, univalent norm, and he~
(rowdy heckler) What the fuck is wrong with you! Do you need some of my meds, fucker!

~Right?….

And what the fuck does univalent mean?…. Ok, unpaired, basically, ok…. I mean, has the fucker ever Read a romance novel, you know? It’s like he expects the Romantic Girl to sit there and give a monologue to the camera while the hero slinks off behind her back to go drink at the pub—not unlike what a lot of midcentury couples were like, you know, it’s like: Carefully Separate The Partners, for the good of the marriage/children/God, right…. But I mean, any romance plot worth reading has to be Love, and, Something Else, you know: that’s almost the main feature, from a certain point of view, right: anarchists and tax collectors at each others throats on the internet? Have an anarchist and tax collector fall in love, you know!…. It’s almost like he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about: oh, I know why: it’s because he’s a Christian; one mystery solved, right…. 🤓

…. It’s like, wouldn’t univalent love be pornography? I’m here all by myself, unpaired: but there’s love…. Or maybe univalent love is theology: I’m here all by myself, unpaired—but there’s love…. (snorts)

…. But the only one of three faces of univalent love that we can desire is desire-less, Christian Love, you know. A wife never really ~willed~ her husband’s good; she only felt little bitch feelings. She didn’t know the kind of Latin which allows you to say one thing and mean another, right—In the paragraph above he uses Latin to prove that Augustine, ~never Really said~, Love, and do what you will; he said ~get Latin~, and do what you will, right. 🏦 👨‍⚖️ 🪖

…. (Downfall Hitler) (giving an inspirational lecture about love)
(Eva Braun) (kneeling before him) I need you to shut up and go buy bread and milk for the children.
(D-H) (draws himself up) Love is my will! He is boss!

…. I don’t know what’s good Latin, but I think “study of cases” and “student of cases” is better English than “casuistry” and “casuist”, right. Legalism is bad, but there should be some penalty for writing words that ugly, right. It should be discouraged.

…. “justice is love distributed, nothing else”

Justice is anger distributed; perhaps love is anger: oo-la-la! 👹😘

Our grey-faced fearless leader stumbles around in the darkness, again…. For victory! ✌️

Literally no idea what he’s nerding about, ah. So funny. So many funnies.

…. But yeah, Luther: “…. a Christian should gouge out the eyes of reason…. the devil’s bride….” I guess the devil has good taste, according to you, right. And it’s very much: (in practice, right): YOU must gouge out the eyes of YOUR reason, but EYE have Figured It Out; ok….

But yeah; love doesn’t determine military strategy by himself, you know. His bride, the Morrigan, his ally, does that, right….

…. But yeah, it’s definitely Christian philosophy, although I don’t formally call things that…. Maybe I’ll read Aquinas the philosopher again, or a sourcebook of medieval philosophers, although it’s not an important goal…. When I read Aquinas I felt acutely the problem of how reading that stuff takes you out of the word of nature and women and food and money and children and marriages and work: but I don’t think I reacted sensibly; I just wanted to be loyal to the commanders even if they were going to take my regiment into Hades’ jaws, right; I don’t really know what love is, anymore: but I do know what happiness is, and I think it’s important, you know. And I’m not sure that Aquinas agrees, basically. But he certainly had a big brain that he used according to his own ideas of good faith, so it might be amusing to read Aquinas the philosopher again, right. (Aquinas the Jew-baiter witch-burner woman-otherer; Calvin who sacrificed people to his majestic mental statues; Luther the sewer-mouthed…. Something; yeah, well, you only learn these things by reading them: people don’t report it honestly generally—but yeah, as far as reading them again…. 😸…. Maybe a history book/biography. Augustine couldn’t deal with…. Augustine couldn’t deal, basically. He wrote a few very beautiful things, but he couldn’t deal with people who weren’t his mother or not-too-many-ideas-not-too-much-sex, right, non-co-religionists…. He’s an odd combination of very, very clever and not too clued into what was going on in his head, IMO, so I’d rather “promote”, by cataloging, a biography, which might be more enlightening, than to kinda…. I mean, he wrote in Latin. People can’t think sensibly about things originally written in Latin, right. They Downton Abbey him, you know. A biography might correct for that, while quoting some of the beautiful flower phrases, right. I’m not sure I’d reread his memoir, though…. It’s just, it’s a lot, right. He identified closer with Time, Mysterious Time, or something like that, than somebody’s wife, just somebody’s wife; but if you wanted to live in the desert and write strange poetry about Time, Mysterious Time, he’d send one of his loyal spies out there to keep tabs on you, and report back, you know…. Inevitably, I guess. If life is not a marriage-feast, or a restaurant, where you could take a date, at least (Gourmet Chinese!), then it must be a war, you know….

…. But yeah, Catholic vs Protestant (not very interesting) or Christianized-Plato vs Christianized-Aristotle (more interesting), don’t really matter much in the end, compared to the whole question of the Christian Male Philosophy vs the Missing Woman, basically. Joseph only quotes one woman, I think, and doesn’t notice that he dismisses her flatly, very much for ~being a woman~, whatever her other beliefs, perhaps strange or misguided, or whatever.

…. Re: the downgrading of eros and philia, erotic love and friendship, as opposed to theological…. ness…. LOVE, right: “there has been no serious debate”. Well, maybe it should start, right, because the reason why there wasn’t a debate, is because no debate was scheduled: debates were, rather, shut down, right. None of the “debaters” were women, and all of the “debaters” basically had to sign a statement saying that they agreed on keeping the little people down, you know, so the debate itself was very calm, you know. (Like, imagine if some other culture did this to people, not white men, right. (Japanese guy) “First agree; debate later.” “What the fuck is he saying?” “That doesn’t make any sense.” “Does he understand English.” (pulls out gun) “FIRST AGREE: DEBATE LATER.” (lots and lots of murmurs of assent, right).) There were a number of disagreements that the public had with the debate-unison, right. But no “serious” debate, you know. God, the Christian Church is positively Orwellian! What Soviet premier could get away with this shit, this garbage, right!

And yet, somehow, simultaneously—it really is Orwellian—there are also these sola’s, right: love is only…. Love is only…. Love is only…. Love is only!!!! It’s like the Reformation, you know: and you know what that led to. Long story short: people “had to” die, because the system wouldn’t compromise with them, and they wouldn’t compromise with the system, or each other, right. The Protestant sola’s were basically all one sola, which was the same as the Catholic sola: Only Me, Never You. But it’s frightfully moral, My Dear Poor Relation, because on the little-people-level everyone is terribly agreed that it leads to the little people, such as women and servants, for instance, sacrificing themselves, without counting the cost, you know…. If they had an objection to make, they could ~very well~ have made it at the debate they were debarred from being a part of, I dare say!

Incidentally, the opposite of love IS hate: it’s just that opposites, unlike random unrelated things, are related. The opposite of sour is sweet. Unrelated to sour and sweet is, I don’t know, balloons: not even the same part of speech. But sour and sweet are opposites. But theologians all but swear an oath to NOT understand things like that: the principle of opposites is too close to love, too far from monomania, you know!…. It’s like he practically brags about how wicked he is, you know, if only the poor brainiac had some idea of the words he were uttering in his madness, you know.

…. Chapter VII is okay, although it would have been even better if he had just developed it as the odd paragraph or two in a more worthy topic for analysis. Christian ethicists merely enjoy using the phrase “does not justify” right: but as man cannot be allowed not to justify God, and God not justifying man must be kept a secret from the children, right—Oh, God DOES justify you…. Why else would he demand that you sacrifice your love and ruthlessly knife your most cherished ambitions? It is because you stand before the HIM loved, justified and clothed with Christmas platitudes before the Throne of Glass, sorry, Grace…. Etc, etc…. So the answer is no. Go suffer more.—right, I mean…. Although the more proper thing to say, I think, would be: the ends ARE the means; and the means ARE the end. They appear separate because of the apparent separation between the energy you offer and the fossilized energy of materiality, but whatever does “you reap as you sow” mean, if not, “the means are the ends, the ends, means”, right?…. Yeah, but, “…. DOES NOT JUSTIFY” for the win: no, don’t ask what it means; the answer is No…. (happy bride) I said No…. (shakes) I mean— ~You know: but rationalism accepted uncritically is useless; it’s being given a crock of gold and finding it too heavy, too uncomfy; the mind will find a problem in anything, right…. The mind kinda has to be shocked into seeing the truth; you cannot always simply talk to it in its dream-images, you know…. The rational mind can be used well, but it must be used with discernment: if you simply find a delusion and fly at it with swords and daggers, you will find hopefully, eventually, you have to first see whether you are actually weakening the will-to-misery-and-delusion or merely poking and amusing it, right…. To simply find a popular phrase without much truth in it and to spend many pages “disproving” it, you know…. I mean, are you addressing the emotive content of the delusion, or simply providing the delusion with ideas it has no taste for, like bouncing arrows off a dragon’s scaly side while it sleeps, and sleeps well, right….

…. He could have mentioned that Lenin was a thug, as well. God, Lenin thugs and Tolstoy dolls: what a wonderful country. I can’t imagine why people leave, you know. And that’s before the issue of the climate, lol. “Who was the Russian sun deity, in ancient times?” (dour, gloomy, sad Russian) “Sun not visible in Russian land: no word for Sun in our language. (alcohol).”

…. And Kant was a fucker, you know. In the Encyclopedia of Kant, the World Population is 1: the Universal Man of the World, right. There are no individuals, lol.

…. And he does support abortion rights: but it’s very paternal—the males have got you covered, dear. He seems to never quote with approval a woman writer, not even a novelist. All the novels are written by men, about men, usually at war, right. For women it’s like, vassalage/serfdom with benefits, rights.

…. It’s just endlessly funny how he supports his endless-specificity theory with (what feels like) endless grey theory and almost no (and very brief) examples, right. Physician, heal yo’ ass….

And that “…. But you can’t get the ghetto out of the girl” aspect is funny, right. Passionate, working-class people fear passion/intensity and to deal with this, they punish their kids with great passion and intensity, until they’re literally standing over them, beating their prostrate bleeding form, right. Whereas delicate paleface boys fear the coming of the Unkind, Untrue Abstraction, and in response, they dream of a world without philosophers, without theory, without anything but the children sitting and holding hands, and smelling the flowers, right.

Because you need to smell the flowers. Clear your schedule. Cancel all your other commitments: we’re gonna smell some goddamn roses, and anybody who wants to go out and work they job, they can sit they ass down, ‘cause we doin’ this shit, right here. Word up.

~White boys is a miracle of affliction, right.

…. And some of the examples, he gives, right.

(1841 distraught woman) “Why wouldn’t they let my brother in the lifeboat; ah, I know there wasn’t enough room for everyone, but to Choose him, just because he was somebody’s BROTHER!…. (cries)
(1841 senator) Look, at it this way: he had to do this for someone else’s sister, so that you could be here, instead of in Parliament, where I belong. Ah, even though I have no head for figures.
(woman) (crying)
(man) (contemptuous) Look at it this way, woman: should EYE or someone like ME have to be slobbering wreck, right now, or should it be you? History, nature, the world, and especially me: we all say that it should be YOU!

~Like, he was in favor of “love”; didn’t know what it was, you know.

…. (pince-nez, etc.) ….”their childish rules.”

Sometimes with people like this it is a greater affliction if they are on one’s side, so to speak.

Really they are on the side of…. Finger-wagging, you know. There really doesn’t have to be a reason. Whether your room needs to be tidied up, or, whether we need to decriminalize adultery, it’s like, the main thing is that your feelings don’t matter, because I don’t have any, right. Like Noam Chomsky—such an angry man; he’s lost so much: not least his ability to have feelings, right. He has these slogans or equations, right: “In wicked capitalism, the government such and such, and the private sector thus and so”: and it’s so vague and abstract, it could mean almost anything, you know. Do “we” have more control over the government or the private sector? Who are “we”? What are “we” like? Who’s in government and in companies, and what are they like? What are the situations that would lead to A being good or bad, and conversely with B, right? (Incidentally, I suppose that is what Fletcher imagines that he would ask, right: although frankly I don’t trust Fletcher very much.) But yeah, Noam imagines that, as a staid white man trained not to have feelings, his loyalty lies with government/bureaucracy—although frankly many companies also have bureaucracies filled with staid white men, although that’s not the image they promote right, and that infuriates Noam. (You can kinda see more room for healthy rationalism in the government in a fitting society: although who knows what rusted, jagged steel we have in there now, right. Sometimes, anyway.) But yeah: Noam wants more power, and when he has more power to punish and shame, and to protect the children: then that’s justice. And Fletcher kinda represents the world as it was when he was in power: it wasn’t a pretty world, you know; George Bailey In Power, vs, “I Want George Bailey Back”, right….

People grow so used to hypocrisy, right: you call something hypocritical, people wave their hands wearily: yeah yeah the sky is blue….

…. I do think that there are patterns in life, more patterns than Fletcher imagines. There should be certain guidelines, you know: incitement to riot; incitement to riot against minorities or vulnerable populations; although it wouldn’t make any difference to the law whether the victims were, say, Black Muslims or, I don’t know, the Queer Rainbow Band, or something, you know. But it doesn’t just “all depend”, there should be patterns. It shouldn’t be like, the swing juror has a spat with his wife on a particular day, and then somebody goes away for a LONG time, right….

Incidentally, it’s a lot like “Gran Torino”, the Clint Eastwood movie: you can do restorative justice, for the epithet you like, right: it’s a new age. We feel good about it. And you can literally commit suicide, basically, to make sure that punitive justice happens to the other twenty epithets, because that makes yourself feel good too. Many yellow faces make you feel bad; dragon lady doctors make you feel bad; you make yourself feel bad; Jesus sacrifice and punitive justice make you feel good. Optional restorative justice makes you feel good. It all depends. They’re never be able to figure out what goes on in the wisdom of the white man’s mind, right. It all depends.

…. And it’s like, he never says, I, Joseph Fletcher think that in my opinion ~ right, after his two-sentence scenarios, right. It’s always “The Christian Situationist Says”, you know. What I want to know is how the fuck can he guarantee the unanimity of all the decide-for-yourself people, right? Is he a god? Do all white men arise from the dead after three days?

…. And just on and on, you know. Not so many words, but so many of them repetitions. He won’t say “I”, you know. It’s like: “my school, the think-for-yourself school, demands that you think….” That your opponents aren’t “genuinely critical”, you know. And of course the conservatives or whatever, don’t like that: they DO want love, for THEM. They don’t want to be told that they aren’t grown-ups, you know…. And yeah, they’re fuckers: but you give people want they deserve for long enough, you might become something of a devil, you know; eventually, you might even become a Christian!

…. He does seem a little anti-Jew, too. I’m not saying that he can’t disagree, or say the odd criticism and then bid them adieu, but he never really shuts up about the mirthless, legalistic Jew, you know, and that is far from kind…. But he’s not a Palestinian, you know: the Palestinians are like the Global Sacrifice for World Anti-Semitism, you know. They really ought to get their act together and commit suicide, you know: stop having such a problematic national background. But it is far different in this part of the world. I stand before the Throne of Glass made righteous by their sacrifice. If I want to twist the arms and cut the legs of mirthless, legalistic Jew-boy, then that is certainly my right, you know. I am, after all, a very Relevant sort of fellow—and relevant of course means white: the New White, right.

…. And yeah: conservatives don’t impose on Jews at all; they just want Jew-boy to get measured for his coffin, so that he can die with Jesus, you know.

(The Child Hermes bursts through a closed door with a boss sword and a shield embossed with the Tree of Life, right) But I won’t let them! Save Jewie! Let’s save Jewie, mommy! Jewie is my friend! He helpéd me, mommy! He did!

~He Cabalah’d me, right.

…. He briefly compliments “pagan and secular” thought, but is very vague—no names; no books, certainly not modern ones; no specifics—and at least as important, this pagan virtue “shames” Christians with inferior virtue, right. Because they are engaged in a competition, I suppose…. The goal is to assimilate your enemy’s virtues like the Borg from Star Trek assimilate shit, right: and then out-compete and destroy him, and wear his fossilized skull around your neck as a symbol of victory, you know. I suppose that’s one way to “love your enemies”, right—in a sorta, necrophilic way, right.

…. Some punk lads need to do a song about how things were before: and it can be like, People in general are men; I like myself a lot: I like myself a lot….

~’What really makes us men who we are is JESUS CHRIST….’

Lord, how easy it would be to hate Jesus Christ, you know….

Perhaps better to simply pity him, you know. It’s not like he has what I want, from what I can tell. “I will give you all this, (the Christian Church), and in exchange you need only (the gospels).”

“Yeah, alright. Sure. We’ll call it a deal.”

“Really? Wow, that’s so—I mean—I mean, yes, yes; you see the truth. You perceive deeply what a good deal this is for you. The planet only has a few thousand miles around it, but it’s really not such a bad thing to be lord of, right….”

…. “mint and dill and cummin”

Maybe the Pharisees knew about herbs, right—herbs are real, and do have various powers that both actually and simply exist, on earth, and can symbolize all sorts of other, more airy things, right. I think sometimes I’d rather have “mint and dill and cummin”, than Kant and can’t and cant—right. The airy-scary abstract stuff just kinda, like it’s all the same vague crap over and over again: the same vague labels, multiplied to no profit, basically.

…. God, and then he, with his last breath, provides a couple of case-studies of decent length: and then provides no opinion as to what is right! Perfect-pompous-vagueness to the end, right! “I advise correct behavior. All sorts of correct behavior. What sorts, specifically. Well, anyway. I’m pretty great, you know. Never done it any wrong yet—never done it any sort of way, at all, in fact.”

🤦‍♂️

…. I trust Fletcher about as much as I trust the local archer with a mysteriously vague alibi in the recent murder-by-longbow case, right…. Just put situation ethics in the hands of untrustworthy…. Christians, right. What could go wrong?

…. And he’s obsessed with war, you know: all four of his “case-studies” are war stories, you know. I guess all we really have to do in life is put the torch to the red man’s corn fields, and then we’re home free, you know.

I trust him like I trust a dead dog to bark, you know.… (meer)

A book by the author of my situational ethics text in college, and a useful one for exploring the issues raised by the ability to control or manipulate human genetics and reproduction. The book is a bit dated, but handily anticipates issues raised by today's advances in medicine, with the exception of stem cell research, undreamed of in 1974. The author attempts to provide answers to some of the questions raised, without being rigid or didactic. The book is a useful springboard for any discussion or paper on the topics within.… (meer)