CHRISTOPHER PETER Goodman

You are right of course

but the point remains if you are in charge it is useful

The important thing is the person and I would argue a spiritual humanism

that values human agency

I think all metaphysics is hubris

It is the first step which counts because there is no view from nowhere

I do not have beliefs I choose them

It just takes me to another room with only me there

When I re-click on the old link you are not there either

Oh ok

Why can't I hear you?

I can hear you

I can't hear you now

Shall I re-enter?

I heard you for a few seconds

then silence

ok

I can't hear anything

I heard you say hello

any letter?

Dune was on the video by the way

It was the last entry

Absolutely

It is a good idea. Send me a link at 9.

I am there but I cannot see or hear you

ok

ok

Thanks for understanding the significance of the breakthrough of me not having to write 20 lines per paragraph. Gien was bemused.

I think my education has been systematic exclusion with a view to promoting a narrative. In my Primary School (and at Church) there was a Christian narrative (which was exclusionary to the extent we were not taught other religions) but which sought through knowledge of the Bible to be open to the possibility of becoming better people. My education since then has had one purpose only, to promote Leftism (even in Primary School I remember a temporary teacher fresh from Teacher Training College full of Leftist dogma to a comical degree) but after that my education (with some exceptions such as the Scottish biology teacher I mentioned to you and a few others) the only narrative was Leftist. To me it was comic seeing the expression on Benjoe's face when I suggested going up the path to see the Church. It was a horror which was the result of years of Marxist propaganda. Of course I only suggested it to see Little John's Grave but that was not enough to overcome his horror. By the way that was never your reaction even though you have similar roots. That is to your credit. There was a whiff of getting on within the Party about Benjoe which could never be said about you! Anyway, all the discovery has had to be my own, which makes my dislike of the Left even stronger because I now know what they supressed. There are wonderful writings which I knew nothing about because of active suppression. The Left are pure evil in my view much as it is impolite to say so. I am not a person motivated by anger so they have always repelled me. I dislike them in proportion to I love those such as Glenice who simply do good.

Given this history I hope you understand why you presenting a Concept Suppression Complex as some sort of revelation that you are opening my eyes about is so annoying.

I watched the video. The claims made on the video are very familiar to me. If only because of you! As I keep saying it is not my religion. It is coherent and not evil and so I am happy to watch it through to the end, but I have my own experience pf life , and much of it does not ring true to me, even at the 64,000th repetition.

To each their own as they say.

ok

I sent you an email.

I am here

Just reading what you wrote

I can hear you but

you can't hear me

Anyway you better go

I only wanted to say one last thing

De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (The Dignity and Advancement of the Sciences sometimes referred to as De Augmentis Scientiarum) is a book by Francis Bacon, published in 1623. It is an expanded and Latinized version of his earlier English work, The Advancement of Learning (1605). It is a separate book from Novum Organum (1620) ('The New Tool') and both are parts of his unfinished magnum opus, the Instauratio Magna ('The Great Renewal'), which aimed to reform and advance human knowledge.Bacon wanted to create a tool not in order to identify necessary relations between words and objects but as a tool which enables you to make comparisons, and explore the advantages and disadvantages of different languages which are rooted in the customs of different nations. The concepts of language are not simply signs for objects they are signs for the ideas we form of them in our apprehension of things

The Earl of Shaftsbury inspired by Plato & Aristotle was interested in forms. He had a conception of genius as a creative agency. James Harris his son in law wrote a book HERMES (1751) which sought to create a universal grammar. Not a Port Royal type grammar but was rather a commentary on the creative process by which language imposes order on our experience. Hamann rejected any attempt to make the foundation of our experience rational but Herder as a pupil of Kant was interested in linguistic structure. In 1768 Hamann wrote a letter to Herder saying he has ordered a copy of the book HERMES from the publisher "a work which stuck me as indispensable for your work".

Leibniz sought to identify universal characteristics. The chaos of immediate impressions takes on order and clarity only when we name it. He sought to identify universal characteristics. His Mathesis Universalis sought to designate the sum and structure of all intellectual approaches using a finite number of signs which are combined in accordance with definite universal rules. There are a finite number of concepts and each of them stands to each other in a definite relation.

For Leibniz concepts and reality are indissoluble but Empiricists saw language as falsifying our experience. A characteristica realis represents the fundamental relations between things demanding a logical analysis of the contents of thought. It is an alphabet of thought. Empiricists saw language as an instrument of thought, concepts are names, but with Ideas psychological in nature rather than logical. Hobbes was a Nominalist who claimed that thoughts reside in signs not in things. For Leibniz concepts and reality are indissoluble but the Empiricists saw language as falsifying our experience. In Kant we impose necessary forms on our experience.

Hegel building on Kant does not conceive of reason as separate from the sensuous intuition, except that it does not proceed from the parts to the whole but the whole to the parts.

Descartes started with consciousness but let the concept relapse into synonymity with reason. The Phenomenology of Mind prepares the way for his logic. He reduces all thought to his logic, and all reality to logic. History is a study of this logic as it unfolds over time. God is the rational order of the universe which arises as a consequence at its attempt at self-understanding, because everything is spirit. Hegel gives you the key to this reality.

His ambition was to reconcile nature and the idea but what he did was subject nature to ideas, of which he supplies the science. He was a hubristic maniac.

By the way I have discovered a very Gyuri like feature of Taoism. In Buddhism the goal is to escape the cycle of birth and death by aspiring to nothingness (Nirvana) whereas Taoists seek to PROLONG a healthy existence. Significant difference! The circle is not an eternal cycle to be overcome, it is the sacred. Here is the link between Heraclitus and Hegel. Everything is process. Hegel claims to understand it. This by the way is why I am a Christian. I do not seek to overcome the separation of the self from God I embrace it - you can only eradicate alienation by giving up on the reality of the person. That is why Polanyi is a Christian - he is a Personalist. The person is sacred. More sacred than God, because we create the concept of God. Of course this approach risks nihilism, which is why you also need faith in the possibility of a meaningful life. We are separate from the rest of nature in that we create our own meaning but that does not mean we are God. We are explorers of the wonder of it all enriching our understanding of it through making use of symbols.

[Trigger Warning] Heraclitus’ philosophy of process, centered on an impersonal logos governing cosmic strife that only a few can comprehend, charts an anti-Christian trajectory by replacing personal agency, choice, sin, and forgiveness with a depersonalized “way.” German Romanticism reinforced this trend by fusing collectivist nationalism with anti-Christian paganism. Nietzsche celebrated heroic struggle and the affirmation of life, but Heidegger radicalized this critique by urging submission to a higher order. His concept of Being-rooted authenticity, tied to Volkish destiny, subordinated individuals to the unfolding Geist as expressed in the State and framed the will to power as the metaphysical source of modern science and technology—a force to be resisted through a humble “letting-be” that rejects Christian moral responsibility. Heidegger’s philosophy was even more anti-Western in its scope: as a Nazi Party member, he implicitly endorsed totalitarianism, the glorification of war, and policies of genocide. Similarly, Eugen Herrigel, the author of Zen in the Art of Archery, supported the Nazi Party. Both were Anglophobes who, like Marxists, viewed England and its Christian-infused bourgeois capitalist system as the source of alienation and inauthenticity in modernity, and therefore as something to oppose. This affinity for anti-Christian, anti-Western thought explains why certain Leftists have embraced Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the other Nazi supporter Carl Schmitt—a dynamic reminiscent of the struggle between Settembrini and Naphta in Mann’s The Magic Mountain, the latter figure modeled on György Lukács.

In The Magic Mountain, Settembrini—Mann’s humanist liberal generally interpreted as a stand-in for Mann’s Anglophile values: reasonableness, progress, tolerance, and opposition to totalitarian ideologies such as Naphta’s.

Update

Context - I was thinking of going to Saint Andrews university and went with my parents to Scotland. We visited a castle in Fife called Kellie Castle and my mother was amazed to hear the guide say that the Olivant family lived there for 400 years! That is her surname. As you know we are a Midlands family (the furthest north Sheffield) but we wondered if there was a connection.

Long term project to see if there is a connection. Here is the message I sent on Ancestry to my third cousin who has the surname Olivant. My maternal cousin Pauline paid for him to take a Y chromosome 700 test with Family Tree DNA in Houston in Texas.

Hi Chris O, Pauline says that you have got your Y chromosome upgrade results, and so looking at the numbers on the Family Tree DNA site (and with the help of the computer processing power of CHAT GPT) I am fairly confident of the following claims 1) Our Olivant line came from Cumberland in England 2) Tracing it back further back they came from Fife in Scotland (the match is with Anstruther) 3) The North Carolina Olivant's are a branch of the Cumberland Olivant's 4) Kellie Castle in Fife is where the Olivant family lived for 400 years. They were a cadet branch of the Oliphant clan who held the principal title and lands. Over time, the Kellie branch became prominent in its own right, acquiring its own estates in Fife. I do not know if we are genetically connected with the Kellie Castle Oliphant's (our ancestors may have been servants or tenants of the family who adopted the surname) but we are almost certainly connected in some way to the Oliphant family who lived at Kellie castle in Fife. 5) The Family Tree DNA results show that there are several independent Olivant lines that are NOT genetically related to each other a) Duncan Olivant's b) Irish Olivant's c) Scottish Border Olivant's d) Dalmeny/West Lothian Olivant's. We are related to the Cumberland Olivant's, the North Carolina Olivant's, and to the Anstruther Olivant's. My email address is [email protected] the old address is no longer working as I changed to Vodaphone and they discontinued the old e-mail. Thank you for taking the test. It has solved a lot of puzzles!Chris G

The distance between Anstruther and Kellie Castle in Fife, Scotland is 4.1 miles

UPDATE - I have done a GROK analysis and it confirms the Cumberland connection but not the Anstruther connection.

The Scottish results are split into several distinct, unrelated paternal groups.Big Y-700 sorts them into different terminal haplogroups = different biological lines that split thousands of years ago (long before the Oliphant surname existed).Related Scottish Clusters (that DO share a recent common paternal ancestor)Carpow Olyphants + Dalmeny (W. Lothian)Terminal: R-FTG91212Kits: 110188 (Scotland, Carpow) and 129967 (Dalmeny group)These two are on the same branch. Their most recent common ancestor was probably 200–600 years ago (well within surname times). So this is one tight Scottish family.Anstruther (and the North Carolina Olivant line)Terminal: R-FTF65092Kits: 150276 (Scotland, Anstruther) + 936104 (Henry H. Olivent, NC)These are connected — one Scottish-origin line that migrated to America.Some Duncan Oliphant linesTerminal: R-FTE26995Kits: 87207 (Scotland) and 100158 (Henry Oliphant, Scotland)These two Duncan lines are the same paternal family.Scottish Oliver lines (John Oliver 1657, Andrew Oli 1616, William Oliver 1812, etc.)*Terminal: R-FT49845Multiple kits in the 0740 Scotland Borders groupingThese Scottish Oliver testers form one clear cluster.Unrelated Scottish Groups (no recent connection to each other or to the above)The other Duncan Oliphant line (0720): R-FTD4056 → separate branchScotland Borders (part of 0740): R-FT50751 (e.g. IN49095) → its own lineAnd any remaining “Unknown Origin – Scotland” that fall under yet different terminals.Bottom lineThe Scottish Oliphant/Oliver results are not one big related clan. They fall into at least 5–6 independent paternal lines.Your Nottinghamshire/Cumberland Olivant line (R-FTH32181) remains completely separate from all of these Scottish clusters — with no connection within the last several thousand years.

Hello

You have been ill, you are not used to it

1) It takes a long time to recover

2) You will have dark thoughts

3) You will not be able to get any work done

4) From your radio silence I knew it must be bad

I almost rang you yesterday to find out what is going on but I left it to see if you contacted me this morning. I was late (I have been distracted by two cousins asking me difficult family history questions to solve and also the Internet can be distracting) and tried to read a bit (I am halfway through the last Cassirer and want to read a couple more before I re-write ) but was too tired to last through and left it to my body to decide how much sleep I needed.

It is a bad strain of flu going round, the important thing is not to push too hard and let the recovery take its course.

I will read now I desperately need to catch up.

Glad to hear from you.

I am here again

Everything is fine.

I assumed you were asleep.

I read a bit and fell asleep, obviously I am catching up.

In summary. I have read a few books, not picked at random but superficially picked at random, and they all focus on the same issue I am preoccupied with, and written by educated people. I have arrived at my views independently so this has the advantage that I read them from a point of view of understanding (I think the problem with education is if you don't have a starting point you just repeat stuff without understanding but because I have formed a view based on my own discoveries I understand what they are saying) I think all true understanding has to be based on self-understanding rooted in your own experience.

I am amazed to read my own insights arrived at by other people although of course with their own idiosyncrasies.

The books are by Voegelin, Cassirer, the Regensburg lecture by the Pope, a book by Mark Lilla, there are three more to read.

When I have finished I will go back and revise. Not in order to change it but to bring out more clearly what I have already said, in order to enhance its readability.

It is interesting that our arguments about Gnosticism and transcendence and Hegel reappear in these books, in a sense it is a landscape which is already there to be discovered, although of course I am selecting for those books.

Family history wise a cousin sent me something for me to work out which I did, which was irrelevant because it is not my direct line but was interesting. I did deep research into the Olivant's prompted by the DNA result and now know the place they came from based on early documents. It is a problem solved.

I am strangely disconnected from the world situation but living in a world at war is not a pleasant experience, combined with the fact that in the last three years alone 7% of the population of the UK has been replaced by 3rd world emigrants, crime is going through the roof, we have the worst government possibly ever, everywhere there is financial irresponsibility and everybody knows a crash is coming.

The whole rotten Leftist establishment has been exposed, but too late, most people write Europe (including the UK) off as beyond repair.

Connecting to my work it is all easy to explain (people like Voegelin [who was an optimist] pointed it all out 70 years ago, it is like watching a car crash in slow motion.

I have not even got around to McGilchrist yet but there is no point in producing a superficial and unread book just to complete the task in time. The re-write will be quick but intense although I am sure Henry will wonder why I have not written the McGilchrist chapters yet (well one or two)

I knew this last couple of months have been the most important of all.

Writing a book helps to concentrate your mind because it forces you to articulate what turn out to be deep preoccupations.

You then discover that all thinking people have the same preoccupations as you do.

.

.

You are on two different pages!

So have you recovered yet?

if the world is already destroyed,let there be flowers on his grave. is a great line

You did not sleep!

ok

Don't worry about it. Next Friday is fine.

First time I heard her name.

Terka.

Beautiful name.

Ah

She is a cousin

1st cousin

I told you I now know the place (within a few miles) where all the English Olivant's came from.

You have mentioned her before I just never knew her name.

Are the genes being passed on?

Yes

Has Veronika been in contact?

Oh!

It is definitely in the family, even you have talent.

So does Terka have children?

Even though you took me to the wrong art gallery (Yes I will never let you forget that)

But you got points for having a favourite painting but it was not there that day it was in an exhibition at Buda Castle.

The guide you talked to was thrilled that you noticed.

Snake?

ok

"Snake learned that, did a course and all. " That is what I was wondering.

ok

That sounds great news!

Your children are both becoming very Hungarian.

Guilia is in Canada at the moment.

Ha Ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not until after the marriage.

Isn't the father meant to pay for it?

It was in a different Country.

My oldest sister says it is the women who chose.

There have been times when women have been after me and boy you know it

Very wise

But you still got two children you can be proud of

truly

True

I always knew I was going to be alone and that it was my choice

The unselfishness of my parents is a wonder to me as you know

I completely understand

It is an experience I have heard more than one father say

My Goodman cousin has children but he says he does not like them very much lol

My other cousin had IVF and went straight back to work when it was born!

Sorry I mean grandchildren

Yes

I never met them but I can see the two halves of your nature in them

Anything not your mother I attribute to your father

Don't you want to ask where the Olivant's came from?

I think what makes you distinct is the unusual combination of the two sides

You can make up for it by being a great grandparent

when Hanka has children

Does she not want children?

Don't be ridiculous

You have a mental age of about 24

I think you would be a good grandfather

Anyway stop talking about you. Inglewood Forest.

A beautiful valley on the Eden river in Cumberland.

Yes

I don't know why but all my ancestors lived in beautiful places.

The Sheffield family lived in part which is still unspoilt to this day to the N-W Sheffield

the houses they lived in are still there

little hamlets

Expect to feel depressed for a bit if you had had flu

don't push yourself too hard

besides the world is going to hell and a handbasket so you need work to insulate yourself

Wu Wei is about aligning with the natural flow of the universe (the Dao/道) rather than forcing things unnaturally.

By the time they are in their Sixties many people are total fixed in their ways but I am learning new things every day

ok you go now

I am here

?

About time! I was getting worried.

Yes, the last time we communicated you sounded VERY depressed.

I think a cleaner is a good idea in the circumstances. My mother had a cleaner who came twice a week.

We you have to be clinically insane not to be tempted by depression with all that is going on. I am not depressed but I am in a bubble.

Your house was built in a time when people employed cleaners.

I am impressed by your cooking skills!!!!!!!!!!

I had a thought where I thought "Gyuri is right" a rare enough occurrence for me to note it.

It is really bad to arrange a meeting and not turn up and not contact me until late the next day. Don't do that again!

Because it is you I factored it in but with anybody else I would have assumed that had been hit by a car and were in hospital.

Take a compliment when it is given.

When I visit Pauline it is all bought pre-prepared from a shop.

No, I mean I do not follow the news now because it is all so bad, although I heard that Russia knows it is losing the war (for complicated reasons which are too long to explain here)

I have just re-read a book by another very sane female philosopher

Aa I pointed out to you I have a long list of favourite C20th female philosophers (it does not included Arendt although she can be thoughtful at her best)

Don't you want to know what caused me to say Gyuri is right about something!

I was going to tell you on Friday.

That is fine but you must tell me ok!

You are right about The Iliad. It is a council of despair. We advanced human civilization by rejecting it.

Good, Matyi keeps you on your toes.

I mean the Jewish prophets for example said "we can do better"

Re-imagine a better life

become better human beings

It opened a space up for striving to be better

Jaspers called it the AXIAL AGE

because he was anti-Christian.

I know you are not your usual strong self. You thought I might attack you but a good man does not attack a person when they are down.

I try to find things I agree with you about but I realize in writing it has to be an ego trip to some extent otherwise there is not point.

Yes that is one of Hegel's better arguments, he is simply right about that.

But his worship of the State is very German and very bad.

A whole heap of evil came from it.

I can give you a quick summary of the Olivant findings now I have digested the results.

I used 5 different AI engines and learned a lot about their strengths and weaknesses.

Powerful but they have to be used intelligently.

You can put that up as a badge on the "Gyuri was Right" wall. There are a few others up there.

Such as the importance of language as a tool for creating the human.

I told you that you sound like Harmann

My mother said her favourite bit was when they are helpless babies but the men like it when they begin to talk.

She also said the favourite bit of her life was early marriage.

My father used to go home for lunch from work!

My mother was an amazing cook.

After 5 children she got tired of it.

Yes, but Jules Verne had to build a boat to do his writing in to get away from family distractions

He moored it on the river.

I am amazed I am still alive at 63 and have (essentially) never had a job. That I know what to do and writing up my thoughts does not surprise me.

If I had a "wife" I would have been more productive I think.

My mother started to get dementia at exactly my age.

My father told me.

So do you want to know about the Olivant's?

The DNA shows all the realted branches of the Oliphant family in Scotland who went there in 1150. It is the same family. That is an amazing result. There are also several groups in Scotland that are genetically different but they just adopted the name. My Olivant family are unrelated to the Scottish Oliphant's, but all date back to c1150 and my particular branch dates back from 1300. The continuity of the English spelling of Olivant (instead of Oliphant) over the centuries (combined with its extreme rarity) almost certainly means a male ancestor married an Oliphant heiress in England and adopted the surname to inherit. Their lands were in England, the Scottish Oliphants are a later branch. Their lands were in the midlands where my family comes from - so always back to middle middle England. They never went anywhere although they are Anglo-Saxon.

My Goodman lines goes back to a single village in the C15th and were there or close by for the next few hundred years. But prior to that there is a big gap to an ancestor who lived c2000 BC. My Olivant line goes back to c800 AD. As it stand my male line could be Bronze Age, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, or Norman, there is a genetic gap in the haplotree which means they do not know.

They know the genetic sequence but how it relates to the history has to be interpreted. Both lines go back to the Beaker Folk migration

So ultimately I am Indo-European and come from the Ukraine.

I can trace my maternal line via mitochondria.

But it changes so slowly it is less useful genealogically.

It is very stable.

I told you the story of listening to James Tarbor and while listening I happened to look at my mitochondria and saw his picture!

He has identical mitochondria to me. Only about 4 people who have taken the test match perfectly with me all from a single county in North Carolina in the USA.

Your mitochondria likely goes back to Trier in Germany then Italy then the Eastern Mediterranean to Israel.

Most Ashkenazy Jews fit into that pattern.

Jews are very keen on finding out about their DNA. My Heritage is an Israeli company.

Your Y chromosome almost certainly goes back to the Steppes.

Cuman

ok you go

Just updating you.

Never underestimate how long it takes to recover from Flu

By the way you have plenty of years to go. I have an idea of how long you are going to live and you have plenty of time left. No don't ask me how long.

The fact that you look after yourself makes a big difference.

Great picture ;-)

I forgot your father was illegitimate

If you say Gypsy your deep ancestor male will be from India

Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science by Paolo Rossi.Published: 1968Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Note the date

Renaissance thinkers influenced by Corpus Hermeticum believed nature contained hidden correspondences that could be discovered through symbolic knowledge. This Hermetic worldview treated the universe as a network of analogies, where knowledge gave humans power over nature.Rossi argues that Francis Bacon rejected the mystical aspects of Hermeticism but retained the idea that knowledge can give humans practical power to transform nature.Bacon replaced speculation with systematic experiment, observation, and method.Thus, Bacon kept the Hermetic goal of understanding nature, but replaced magical insight with empirical investigation.Rossi’s key pointModern science grew by transforming the aims of the Hermetic tradition, not by rejecting them. In Rossi’s view:Hermeticism → desire for power over natureBaconian science → experimental method to achieve it

Interest in Hermeticism exploded in the 16th–17th centuries because Europeans suddenly believed they had rediscovered an ancient source of divine wisdom which promised deep knowledge of nature.1. A “lost wisdom of the ancients” suddenly rediscoveredIn 1463, the Greek Hermetic texts known as the Corpus Hermeticum were translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino at the request of Cosimo de' Medici.Scholars believed these writings came from Hermes Trismegistus, whom they thought lived before Moses.That meant people thought they had discovered a wisdom older than Greek philosophy that revealed the original truths about God and the cosmos. To Renaissance thinkers this was thrilling. It was a vision of human potentialHermetic texts presented a radically optimistic view of humanity.Humans were described as:divine-like creatorsable to understand and shape natureThis fit with Renaissance humanism, especially the ideas of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who celebrated human freedom and intellectual power. Hermeticism suggested that knowledge could restore humanity’s lost abilities.3. It promised practical power over nature Hermeticism blended easily with alchemy astrology natural magic. If you understood these hidden relationships, you could:heal diseaseinfluence eventsmanipulate natural forcesSo Hermeticism offered both spiritual meaning and practical techniques.4. It seemed to reconcile religion and science at a time of religious confliuct.Hermeticism appeared to offer a cosmic philosophy in which Nature, God, and humanity all fit together in a single system. For many thinkers this looked like a new foundation for knowledge.5. In 1614, the scholar Isaac Casaubon proved the Hermetic texts were not ancient Egyptian, but actually written in the early centuries of the Roman Empire. This discovery undermined their authority — but by then Hermetic ideas had already helped shape the intellectual climate that produced early modern science.

I have only read the first paragraph of what you wrote. Responding to it I would distinguish three different claims 1) I am a humanist and so view texts as human articulations taking place at a particular place and time as identified by the techniques of scholarship. These date those texts to the C3rd-C2nd BC in the Eastern Mediterranean probably in Alexandria. 2) Scholars such as Frances Yates have identified the influence of Hermetic ideas on early modern scientists as a result of translations of the Greek texts by Ficino in Florence in the C15th. 3) The New Age Sixties claim that there was a secret wisdom that antedates the Greeks and the Jews.

In his novel Foucault's Pendulum (1988) Umberto Eco satirizes the kind of intellectual narrative associated with Paolo Rossi—especially Rossi’s idea (in From Magic to Science) about the hermetic origins of modern science.

Summary Eco doesn’t reject Rossi outright he playfully undermines the neatness of that story. Here’s how:1. Rossi describes a historical shift away from magical thinking toward rational science. Eco flips this by showing that educated people are still deeply susceptible to magical thinking.The protagonists—editors steeped in theory—start inventing a fake grand conspiracy (“The Plan”) linking the Knights Templar, Rosicrucian's, and other occult traditions.Despite knowing it’s fabricated, they begin to believe it themselves. Satirical point: The impulse toward myth and occult patterns never disappeared—it just changed form.2. Overinterpretation as a parody of scholarshipEco exaggerates scholarly methods—close reading, pattern-finding, intertextuality—until they become absurd.Every symbol connects to every other symbol.Random data becomes “evidence” of a hidden truth.This mocks the idea that rational inquiry naturally leads to truth, suggesting instead that it can spiral into paranoia if unchecked.3. Conspiracy thinking as “failed science” The invented Plan mimics scientific reasoning:It seeks hidden laws governing history.It treats coincidence as causation.It builds a totalizing system explaining everything. Eco’s satire shows that conspiracy theories resemble distorted science, blurring Rossi’s clean divide between magic and rationality.4. The persistence of esotericismRossi frames magic as something largely superseded. Eco shows it as continuously recycled:Occult traditions don’t vanish—they reappear in new guises.Modern culture (publishing, media, academia) becomes a vehicle for spreading them.5. Irony about Enlightenment confidenceEco ultimately questions the Enlightenment narrative itself:The belief in steady progress from irrationality to reason becomes another kind of “myth.”The characters’ downfall suggests that intellectual arrogance can recreate the very irrationality it claims to overcome.Eco’s novel acts as a meta-critique of Rossi’s “magic → science” progression:Rossi: a historical movement toward rational clarityEco: a cyclical, unstable interplay where rationality and irrationality constantly feed each other

With regard to what you say later I sent it to you not as a challenge but only because I thought you might find it interesting given your project. To put it in neutral language, you can see why some of the creators of modern science got interested in such ideas.

Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz and so forth.

As for the Chinese point Leibniz explicitly saw China as a source of wisdom, as did Hegel.

It fits in with a Central European mystical tradition.

I was reading a book and it referenced a book by Geoffrey Cantor. He is very interested in the relationship between science and religion. He is the one who mentioned Jaki to us.

One of the more interesting members of the department in my opinion.

His book on Faraday's interest in religion is now a classic.

If it was not for HPS and you I would probably have topped myself.

By the way somebody who writes all about this was a former member of the HPS department called Walter Pagel. Jerry Ravetz talked about him with reference to Bacon and Harvey.

For some reason there was a falling out but I never got to the bottom of it.

For sure yes.

Polanyi gave a talk at the HPS division and Marjorie Grene was there

as well as Toulmin of course who founded it

I chose Leeds because it said it was the biggest philosophy department outside Oxbridge, and so more chance of diversity, and it was a good call by me

I think Geoffrey had high hopes of you and was fond of our year generally.

He was painfully shy

but real quality.

Remember that Robert Iliffe is now Professor of Intellectual history at Oxford University!

He is a lightweight but I never begrudged his academic career because he always worked hard.

Yes

It is like your joke about luck, you have to buy the ticket.

As I keep telling you knowing what I now know now about philosophy and universities them wanting to give my LONG ESSAY a 3rd is shocking. I am still living off it 40 years later!

Yes it is one of your best qualities.

You live them

Oh we are both retarded in that respect

but we know where we are going

that is the difference

It is like working out my family history, it was a crazy task but I got there in the end through sheer determination and attention to detail.

With a lot of help from Information Technology.

It amazes me it is DNA proved my ancestor Lydia Trout lived in Hathersage.

I mean seriously proved.

Scientifically.

Baptised at the same font.

I never knew my family came from here. But we somehow knew.

I have told you a thousand times I can hear your ancestors in you even though we do not know their names.

I feel it strongly.

I can tell you had some interesting ancestors.

I have also told you a thousand times that your "spiritual side" marked you out from the moment I saw you.

No wonder two of your family think you are mad.

You either have it or you don't.

Isn't paying attention a Taoist virtue?

My only comparable experience (I have told you this before) was doing an English comprehension test aged 7 and finishing it before everybody else and the teacher taking my exam paper and giving it top marks before the others had even finished.

I remember reading fluently at my first class but have no memory of being taught at home.

I remember that moment vividly.

I loved that teacher.

I love sensitivity and kindness in people.

She loved children.

Attention is sacred is McGilchrist

I am going to listen to a talk by a sensible woman now

No idea what it is about but I know she is sound

People tell me things and forget that I always remember. I think most people are not interested enough in other people to recall. I remember every detail of whole conversations. Of course I remember the story with your teacher.

ok I listen to Mary Harrington

7 is better for me

Actually I go for food reductions in the shop at 7:30

so 7:45 would be best for me

The spiritual level of existence is fundamentally unknowable. No discipline, argument, or metaphysical system can claim knowledge of it, and both theism and atheism, in asserting or denying it, make overclaims that exceed what we can know. Many philosophers approach the spiritual but spoil their claims by trying to describe, justify, or measure it. The correct approach, exemplified by Polanyi, Voegelin, and Pirsig, is to recognize it as a presupposition that we in fact rely upon, even if we deny it. Its existence is sustained only by belief, not certainty, utility, or analysis. Any attempt to treat it otherwise—claiming it is necessary or knowable—is self-delusion. Acknowledging its unknowable, yet existentially presupposed, character is the foundation of a truly humanistic philosophy.

I am here

Just back from the shop

I am here

Do you want me to re-load as well?

ok

I watched some YOUTUBE videos recently (you watch one and they keep sending them) looking at how household food products in Britain no longer taste the same. The answer is the producers have been taken over by food giants who re-engineer them to make them more cheaply and longer lasting and in EVERY case it makes the product worse. The motive is simple - to maximize profit and minimize costs. As Adam Smith pointed out it is a conspiracy against the consumer. There is a political conspiracy for people working for the State to desire more power and money for themselves, so there are two different conspiracies for starters. There are a diverse set of competing interests not a single masterplan, and there are a diverse variety of causes of our doom.

It was Victor Davies Hanson who said students now in the USA are ignorant in a way that was not true of earlier generations.

Traditional Jews in the USA have much lower abortion rates than the general population because their religious customs discourage it, but secular Jews have much higher rates of abortion because of an appeal to Leftist values.

Every single conversation becomes about the same conspiracy claim! A conversation about Balzac or about anything else would be a welcome change.

1) William Fox, born as Fried Vilmos in 1879 in the small Hungarian village of Tolcsva, 2) Adolph Zukor the Founder of Paramount Pictures born in 1873 in the Hungarian town of Ricse. 3) Bela Lugosi 4) Michael Curtiz 5) Andrew G. Vajna (producer of The Terminator) 6) ISTVÁN SZABÓ 7)VILMOS ZSIGMOND 8) George Cukor 9) Miklós Rózsa, 10)Joe Eszterhas 11)Rachel Weisz 12)Drew Barrymore 12)Fanny Brice - (1891-1951) born Fania Borach in Manhattan to a Hungarian mother. 13)Adrien Brody - (1973-) Academy Award Best Actor winner for The Pianist (2002) and for The Brutalist (2024). His mother is the noted Hungarian born photographer Sylvia Plachy. 14) Louis C.K. - comedian 15) Jamie Lee Curtis - (1959-) actor and daughter of actors Tony Curtis. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Immigrants. 14) Rodney Dangerfield 15)Peter Falk - (1927-2011) born in New York of Hungarian ancestry on his mother's side. 16)ZSA ZSA Gabor - (1917-2016) born Gábor Sári in Budapest she was an actress and socialite. 17) Goldie Hawn - grandparents Hungarian Jews 18) Lisa Kudrow 18) Hedda Lamarr 19) Peter Lorre 20) Ali MacGraw 21 Bill Maher 22) Paul Newman 23) River Phoenix 24) Jerry Seinfelt 25) Carl Reiner 26) William Shatner 27) Johnny Weissmuller

In Britain Literature and mediaOscar Deutsch (1893–1941) – founder of Odeon Cinemas[13]Sir Alexander Korda (1893-1956) – producer, directorMina Loy – artist, poet, playwright, novelistGeorge Mikes (Mikes György) (1912–1987) – writerBaroness Emma Orczy (Orczy Emma) (1865–1947) – writerEmeric Pressburger (1902–1988) – screenwriter, film director, producerEgon Ronay (Rónay Egon) (1915–2010) – food criticPetronella Wyatt – journalistStephen Fry – writer, actorArthur KoestlerLeslie Howard (1893–1943) – actorKerry Katona – singerMark Knopfler – singer, songwriter (Dire Straits)Michael McIntyre – comedianCatherine Schell – actressSir Georg Solti (Solti György) (1912–1997) – conductor

I try to talk about different topics, but our conversations keep returning to the same one, in the same phrases and in very black-and-white terms, even when I’ve said I don’t want to keep going over the same ground. I make an effort to bring up things that might interest you, but it feels like you’re not interested in anything else, and that makes it hard for me to engage. I’d really like more variety of topics and some genuine back-and-forth in a mutual learning experience, because as it is I find the conversations are getting quite one-sided and, to be honest, quite tedious.

I think you risk getting carried away by the Engelbart or Vannevar Bush rhetoric ignoring inconvenient realities. AI is making us stupider. It is very convenient of you to say this is being caused by a conspiracy against understanding because this allows you to ignore inconvenient realities that do not fit the rhetoric. Mathematics is hard because ultimately it is we who give it meaning, and we are fallible exploratory creatures who try to make sense of things by relating articulations to our experience. AI makes us stupider because it delivers answers for us without any effort on our part. The machine does the thinking for us, but of course it is not actually thinking it is just following rules. Intelligence corrects articulation with reference to reality, something we experience and are striving to make sense of it. Machines can be tools for facilitating thinking but they are not thought itself. That is an AI delusion. Machines used correctly are useful, but we are there at the beginning and the end and are even guiding the process itself. All this conspiracy talk tacitly assumes utopianism. Of course everything is a conspiracy, where were you when life was going on, have you not noticed? It needs you to point it out? But claiming there is a single conspiracy is an illusion. Anyway I am going to avoid only talking about your ideas I have my own ideas which (as is the way of things) I believe to be correct and demand my attention.

Philosophers are constantly getting deluded by language, or at least are attracted by fairy tales about magic thinking. We are human, and the order of existence (and meaning) is a project of continual discovery, inspired by ideals that we can never wholly realize, indeed the concept of absolute understanding makes no sense because all knowing is situated. Our experience is our starting point. Just focus on making better tools and put delusions about discovering a Royal Road to one side. Neither language nor AI is a Royal Road to what is real and any claim that it is, is a Rationalist delusion.

I have just realised something. You know I told you that my LONG ESSAY contained the germ of what I am writing now. It was essentially a review essay of a book that had just come out by Richard Rorty that I found in the bookshop. I pointed out that everything he was saying had already been said in the C19th, that he undermined himself because he assumed what he was attacking, and that philosophy is a continual process of discovery. The latter point was undeveloped, Hacking led me to Pirsig and then back to Polanyi. McGilchrist had not yet written anything but this all lay in the future. They said it deserved a Third. I got this from an indiscreet member of staff. With hindsight me picking Rorty was brilliant because Post-Modernism was the thing (as it happens) which was to dominate the next 30 years and I was ahead of the curve. I also realise in retrospect that when the results came out I was asked to stay behind and knowing my weakest bit was political philosophy I popped back to get a book on political philosophy to read expecting a long wait and they obviously asked for me and I was not there, even though I had not gone for long, so they were obviously giving me a chance to bump me up to a 2:1. I was totally disengaged and depressed so I had not done the work to deserve a 2:1. These things have a logic to them. But I have only just realised something. They said (the indiscreet member of staff said) I must have copied my Long Essay from a book and I only now realize why they thought that. It was brilliant and original. The only book I used was Rorty. I now realize they could nor believe I had the knowledge of the history of philosophy that I did. To understand and undermine what Rorty was saying about the history of philosophy for example. They could not believe I knew so much. I only have realised it now. Knowing what I know now. I had not settled my ideas but I already knew so much. It was not just their prejudice (although that as well) in retrospect I had a more profound understanding than they did (even then) and they thought I must have copied it from some professor. It is still not to their credit because I later gave them some thoughts where I developed my ideas and they still rejected me whereas Sheffield snapped me up and I was the favourite of their most distinguished Professor. Even that I only realize now. He gave the the highest marks he had ever given and they all viewed me with respect, even though they knew better than I did that I was in the enemy camp. As I told you I new realize that Cantor had some of the same preoccupations as me even though I knew nothing about that at the time because I barely spoke to him.

1. Miłosz’s Nobel Prize Lecture (1980)Miłosz mentions how Blake helped to shape his understanding of religion, imagination, and modern crisis:He says that through Blake he gained “a deeper understanding of the religion of the Old and New Testaments” and a sense of spiritual seriousness, not just intellectual debate.He quotes his relative Oscar’s use of Blake to diagnose the spiritual problems of modernity and the need for imaginative renewal.He treated him as a prophetic voice about the spiritual condition of the modern world. 2. “The Land of Ulro”Miłosz’s The Land of Ulro is his key work about the modern spiritual crisis. The title and concept come directly from Blake’s mythic geography:Ulro in Blake’s mythology (a materialistic, spiritually dead world) appears in Miłosz’s book as a symbol for a world cut off from deeper spiritual meaning. In The Land of Ulro, Miłosz discusses Blake as somebody who tried to resist a purely scientific/mechanistic worldview and keep alive the role of imagination and spiritual depth. Blake is part of Miłosz’s intellectual “lineage” for understanding why modern life feels hollow and how imagination might be part of a remedy. 3. Blake and ImaginationIn essays by Miłosz he explicitly highlights Blake’s focus on imagination as something essential—not merely aesthetic, but ontological (part of how we see reality):For Blake imagination isn’t just creative play—it’s the fundamental way humans engage with meaning and spirit.Miłosz contrasts this with reductive scientific views of the world. Why Miłosz loved BlakeShared concern with oppression and evil: Both writers see systems and spiritual blindness as imprisoningImagination as salvation: For Miłosz, as for Blake, spiritual and artistic imagination is what rescues the human soulProphetic moral vision: Blake’s critique of materialism, rationalism, and authority resonates with Miłosz. He rejects a world focused on quantitative thinking where imagination is sidelinedwhere people feel alienated from spiritual depthHe argues these trends aren’t just intellectual errors but produce a “wasteland”.

I am here

Just reading what you wrote

"I was not feeling well last couple of days"

Still!

It is probably taking you longer to recover

because you are nearer 70 to 20

the body takes longer to recover

but you are still healing

I can't watch tv news now

it is all so pre-packaged

by idiots

All they know is the agenda

the Internet gives you more freedom of choice

but you are right you have to be discriminating

I was expecting a ping (there was no ping) so I had a bath and was listening to a wonderful speaker

his voice was so soft I did not get all the words as I was in the bath but I got enough to know what he was saying

I am getting nothing, I will carry on reading

No YouTube is great, but you have to be in control,

People can learn more in a day on You Tube that 3 years at university

So Linux is still a thing

Open to chat hours is how professors organize their time

I noticed it but only now see the significance

I have been here 20 minutes and no response from you

Well you can't say I didn't try to divert you from your hyper-focused mania. I am living in a Country in a state of collapse being caused by something that has nothing to do with information processing (it was happening long before the invention of the computer) and has everything to do with a false philosophy, with its roots in the whole modern project, but I can see your mania is too deep to be adjusted so I will leave it there. As long as you don't try to convince me that yours is the only topic worth talking about, it will be fine. I am not saying you (and others like you) are not right to focus on the problem that you do, but viewing it as one among other problems is the best I can do. My project (and like you there are others who share my view) against nihilism has more than enough to occupy me, and as l say as long as you do not expect every conversation be about your project it will be fine. You are not fighting an illusion.

I read today that a bookshop in LEEDS suggest that their customer vandalize a designated copy of Harry Potter, because J.K.Rowling liked a tweet that said trans women are "men in dresses". Fortunately she can afford 24/7 security.

Recent scholarship on the origins of Islam is telling us that the biographies (sira), sayings of the Prophet (hadith) were not written until 200 to 300 years after Muhammad died in 632 CE — so historians now understand them as shaped by later politics. Early on, the movement looks like a group of monotheists [Monophysites] which included Jews and Christians. Then came the Arab conquests. From Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705 CE), a brand-new Arab religion was created to hold the empire together, heavily relying upon but cutting ties with its Jewish and Christian roots, to make Arabs feel like the new chosen people with their own identity and symbols (building the Dome of the Rock and standardizing Arabic and the Quran). Some researchers question how central Mecca was at the start — there are almost no mentions of the city in the earliest sources, and the prayer walls (qibla) of the very first mosques point to Petra in Jordan and sometimes Jerusalem instead of Mecca. Dan Gibson and others suggests the orientation to Mecca took place later, possibly under Abd al-Malik who for political reasons created an Arab holy center. The ancient manuscripts found in the mosque at Sana’a in Yemen showing textual differences support the idea that the Quran was being continually being re-shaped. Some of the writings in the Koran make sense once you put in different vowels and it is revealed that they are copies of Christian hymns.

This song does not need any explanation, it is there in the music, but it is an old Armenian folk song.

The Muslim Turks massacred 75% of all the Armenians on the grounds that they were Christians and were envied.

Dle Yaman means "Oh my heart"

You know I bet you cannot say (however vaguely) what my insight was which so impressed McGilchrist that he put in in his book, which some are describing as one of the great works of philosophy in our time. This is what I mean by your vehemently denied narcissism. I am focusing on sending Henry my next draft, so I will not be able to talk tomorrow. You saying that Gien does not like the way in which you are moving away from Personal Knowledge Management sounded ominous.

Yes that was an awesome achievement by Matyi. I never said don't try to do the best you can.

I am also very proud of what Hanka is doing. As their father you are rightly proud of what what they have both achieved. At the moment Giulia is in Ontario in Canada studying Forensic psychology.

P.S. You are not a blind hen.

"I learned about a new to me project that seems on a par with Peergos" Interesting.

"pancake and chestnut cake" WOW

Fission folded?

"By the end of last year IPFS Desktop released a new version which actually, for the first time in a decade delivered fully on the original promise." Great news.

"I am combining IPFS Desktop and Peergos to deliver an end to end full development spiral to bootstrap the seed for the IndyWeb." Sounds promising.

"This one also means that I'll be able to produce compelling exemplars of the vision, and practically useful examples. Hopefully I'll have something worth showing in 2 or 4 weeks time to the people we had that second call with on Wednesday" Excellent!

I trusted myself (I do not know where that trust from but I can guess) to come up with improvements to what I have written so far, even though I also have pressing deadlines (it is how reality makes its presence felt to mortals) and what am am writing is pretty brilliant. It is demanding but sets out what I want to say. It is analogous to your sense of where you want to go and setting out what it means. I think anybody who has done creative work know that process and the complete failure to understand it reveals only somebody who is wholly disconnected from the creative process. We have a common enemy even if we understand it in different terms, those who oppose civilization and a free society and want to replace it with an order they can direct. I despise these people and universities are a natural habit for them. So is Trump hating. He asks himself what is the right thing to do instead of asking what can I say that will help me get on in life and get me a house in the Hampton's. Trump already had a house in the Hampton's because his father made a fortune in property, but it was the wrong sort of fortune, in downtown New York, so Trump never felt part of the establishment, indeed he despised them. I have a vivid sense of the banality of evil but even I am shocked when mid-news report they shift from saying Trump is a madman wanting to destroy Iran to Trump is a coward for wanting negotiations.

You do not have to pay attention to my garden (your intentions are good but even that is a narcissistic way of putting it) I do not need your attention only that there are other people in the world doing things they think are more important than what you are doing and that only talking about what you are doing is immoral and boring. I share the same craziness as you which is why I understand what you are doing but my tolerance is not infinite.

Nor should it be, we are all trying to be the best humans we can be.

ok

I know exactly what you mean when you say it is not about ego (you could argue that ego is everything we are against) but it is about what it is to be a good person.

To be honest I am doing great

I am finding life worth living.

I have a theory about this I want to put to you.

Exactly

"If I did not love other men because they are in the image of God I would have no reason to love them because they are horrible" But we ARE made in the image of God to use the metaphor and so life is worth living.

Don't worry you do what you have to do.

I think I had a bit of a fever last night and did not feel good when I woke up but I feel fine now so it was very minor.

My body does not like irregulars houses but my mind prefers it.

I had no idea things are so positive.

But I remember you were positive a few weeks back and nothing seems to have happened as a result.

I hope it is not simply a manic depression cycle.

It is intelligent to worry it shows you are connected to reality.

It only becomes a problem if it leads to paralysis.

What you have written about your progress is very inspring

It has a fluency and clarity that you rarely achieve which is very encouraging.

I think you are more preoccupied by the fact you are 70 and time is running out but you always did leave anything to the last minute.

The way you live would drive most people insane and for all your faults you have always stuck me as a sane person.

Didn't you once go to therapy to address a "finishing problem"?

I thought Gien was helping you address that

and the American bloke

(Hey I have problem with names Alan Kay took me months to remember)

But you did have therapy for it?

Somebody must have thought you did.

Well that is certainly true.

You are lucky to live in these times in a previous era we would be both be dead by now.

The problem now is people are living too long.

It came back to me in a way that I had obviously being suppressing (although not at the time) that I accidentally killed my mother.

It was for the best because the quality of her life was no longer good but that was not what was in my mind.

She was 90.

If she had lived longer her life would have been awful.

Well I think both things can be true at the same time. You can delay because you are engaging in a real task not pretending, in order to hit your work targets, but this can be true and going for the final run can be a problem. It requires particular qualities.

It all depends on your state of health.

ok

You usually know yourself in what state you body is in

it tells you

There are 6 rules to a long healthy life I hear. 3 do's and 3 don'ts

DON'T Smoke Drink Alcohol Get Fat DO exercise, get enough sleep, and interact with people.

I think writing is enough interaction for me.

Yes it is a form of interaction for sure.

It is one of the glories of writing

That is fine

Good I am glad you have cut back.

I have put on weight recently

It is not in my nature to be restrained, you could say I am greedy.

I think whoever invented a paNCAKE/CHESNUT CAKE SHOULD BE ELEVATED TO THE PEERAGE.

My ankles swelled yesterday, which is my body saying go on a diet please

What you are doing sounds very exciting. I am pleased.

Deliver please.

They are one of my favourites.

I think the best way to know what I am saying is to read what I wrote. It is fine not to but it is there.

Even I am amazed how things fit together.

The thing is to trust yourself.

It is a confirmation of the claim we know more than we can say.

To be honest (although it will come as no surprise) I avoid Leftists like the plague. They make me ill.

No, all knowledge is personal

with me there would be nothing.

Meaning comes through individuals - it is personal.

Voegelin is very good on Leftists (he does not use that term because it is broader than that because it includes Nazi's) they are psychologically disturbed.

I found out that Hitler's wrote down Voegelin's name in his own personal list of people to be eliminated.

He only escaped because he was tipped off.

The age of darkness started in 1914

it includes our parents generation and those before them.

All this madness is just more of the same.

I read the comments on Trump and people are mentally ill for sure

It reminds me of the reaction to Margaret Thatcher

Insane

ok

We will never agree on this.

You are not a Buddhist thank God

I find them irritating

but I am a Westerner

Asia repels me

West is best

Yes

As Popper put it knowing without persons

that is the delusion

But I view Polanyi as moderating Western civilization

not repudiating it

Taoism is a repudiuation

Throwing the baby out with the bath water

Polanyi was not a Taoist but he would have loved what you are doing

I think you should believe him when he said he was a Christian but he rightly refused to talk about it because he was very unorthodox.

Well you know my opinion

People talking about things they nothing about

You can only be a Taoist if you are living in Imperial China

and speak Chinese

Yes I let you off because you say that ;-)

But you have may have noticed that our entire culture is anti-Western and going "Zen" is part of that

No, experience is what is real

and all experience is interpreted

I am always telling you how Communist your assumptions are. much to your annoyance

because that was your background

No Phenomenology has two defects

it is all about ideas and it is subjective

Experience is contact with reality

Fair enough

You are actually a heuristic philosopher corrupted by Hegelianism

I am talking about Phenomenology as it is understood in the German tradition, a BAD tradition

in love with system building

I know, what you are in reality is better than your justification for it

no Hungarian can be a Hegelian

you have to be German

I keep telling you that you are better than Hegel

Dating back to King Matthias Hungary has been a humanist civilization

It is not a myth, he promoted humanism in Eastern Europe

for example in Poland

Rosenkranz?

All I know about is Rosenzweig

Unfortunately you are right about that

Hermeticism WAS a Renaissance tradition.

Marsilio Ficino in Florence

THAT Is your religion

True

I can hardly dispute that

but Hungarians never aspired to be Dr Faustus

that is the difference.

The Germans did.

Just follow your instinct that is enough.

You flirt with it but are too Hungarian to go threre

Take that as a compliment

I find Hungarians and Poles (and even Russians in some moods) much more congenial than Germans

they start from the human

not the system

as do you

I bet Hungarians interpreted Newton differently from the French

I bet they did not see him as a total explanation for everything

like Voltaire did

Hungarians are maniacs of course and God intoxicated but they do not see themselves as God. I must read that Madocs book you got me

Mardoch?

I am sure that will contain a Hungarian perspective.

It is a pity Matyi does not study him instead of Blake.

I will get the book

The Tragedy of Man

Madach

Everybody knows Blake but people don't know Hungarian

He should focus on Hungarian poets

because he is bilingual

He is put off by the chauvinism probably

His father sounding off about Hungarian poetry

If it enough to put anybody off

All the English poets have been thoroughly explored

Oh wonderful

Yes Blake certainly fits in with something in the Hungarian character it is NO ACCIDENT as the Marxists used to say the recent Blake exhibition was in Budapest

but you know more about that than I do

I have a feeling some famous Hungarian wrote about Blake

Really!

Great sign for Hungary.

You have to laugh, Hungary is now viewed as one of the mentally healthiest countries in the world.

Whenever it is mentioned it is with praise.

Of course I move in very conservative circles.

How things change. Esterhazy in Tinker,Tailor, Solider, Spy is viewed as a clever opportunist. A man essentially with no principles.

No, I do not think it is crazy at all.

Anglo-Saxon culture is in a state of total decadence.

Yes

I go now as well

Happy shopping!

I am here

I am in a curious state of serenity.

No it is good to talk.

I am here

I am there

ok

Maybe it was all the shouting

ok

I can hear you

ok

John Vervaeke

ok

I was the one who told you Bohm's father was Hungarian. Rudolf Steiner's family are Austrian not Hungarian.

It is possibility which is explored

The big sin is to think you can understand it

You can only experience it

Maybe it is possible to understand it retroactively but even this is not correct

What, say, the Middle Ages, was about is still being discovered

Just found out that the two volume 1,500 page The Matter with Things by Iain Mc Gilchrist published a few years ago and retailing at £50 has sold over 100,000 copies. His earlier The Mind and His Emissary has sold over 150,000 copies.

Mutual arising is too Hegelian for me, but not offensively so, it is obviously true to some extent, but it is far too neat. It has taken me a long time to work out what I am exploring. It arises from my life experience and the time you live in and particular interests and personal history and writers who I am drawn at particular phases that I may outgrow and personal influences and sheer originality. That whole Lakatos thing of intellectual reconstruction is far too mechanical to the point of myth making. It has taken me at least 40 years of thinking to work out what the Left is all about (I have never explained it to you because you are not interested and you have your own obsessions) and it is not about following or even responding to a book it is more like watching how Leftists behave and getting flashes of insight into why they say what they do and these insights are unpredictable but gradually accumulate and clarify what is going on. Any concept of method is an overclaim in my eyes, which is why I say you are better than Hegel because you are much more aware of the complexity, although my impression is you hanker after something more Hegelian than I am comfortable with. Polanyi gives a much more accurate account of the process of exploration, he saw it to some extent as a feedback loop which is not a million miles away from mutual arising, facilitated by the power of articulation, but which cannot be wholly described and relies on disparate sources. It is the creation of a work of art so to speak, a way of making sense of things that is of course partial and not complete. I am still leaning about the Leftist mentality although I suspect to a far greater degree than you I view it with utter contempt on moral grounds and think there is a good chance it will completely destroy our civilization if it has not already done so. Any really deep question like what is real is a continuous object of inquiry, the more defined it is the easier it is to solve it, and I suspect 42 has more attraction to you than it does to me because I am not mathematically minded. At our time in Leeds there was an ENTS [Entertainment] Manager called Andy Kershaw who from his office in the Student Union because relatively famous in that world (sleeping with all the girls he could and generally making a mess of his personal life as a result) and I notice he has just died. They say you are officially old (as opposed to Middle Aged) when you are 69. It used to be earlier of course, even a few years ago it was 63 I believe. It is noticeable how many people (for example Iain McGilchrist) are peaking in their 70's these days but I am talking about people who are semi-detached from any profession. Jonathon Sumption for example finished his masterpiece a 5 volume history of the Hundred Years War aged 75 but he kept his his day job he earned a fortune in the law and he lives in a castle in France.

Taoism has never had any appeal to me, not in the slightest. I am interested in the human person.

Trying to make sense of thing is the core, yes.

What people call religion is natural to us because we look for meaning over and above the material and biological and social - this what what the three people I am writing about totally get. Jesus explained it this "Man lives on more than bread alone"

In my book I deliberately emphasised the personal in Polanyi because it would be all to easy to emphasize the tacit instead, but the personal is his primary insight.

Your religion was never my religion. The impact of Christianity has been enormous.

"wholeness and implicate order" is deep characteristics of the Hungarian soul. It is broader than that I think, there is a whole Central European tradition of mysticism which is not Christian. Polanyi is very much affected by it but he understands it from a Christian perspective.

Interesting about Rudolf Steiner's Hungarian influences. I don't think that is unusual. I can give English examples of Hungarians who settled in England who were profoundly influential. They were often seen as eccentric but Hungarians are easy to love from an English perspective. I think it is because they value autonomy and are not cynical.

I told you that Bernard Williams (a man I despise) to his credit ensured that Aurel Kolnai was given a job at London University so he could keep body and soul together just because he was Hungarian. He is another Christian Hungarian Jew. Most Hungarians are seen as Far Right (in the good sense of the word - the Nazi Party were nationalist Leftists they were the absolute opposite of conservatives that particular Stalinist lie has served then well) but Camila Paglia says there were Hungarian Marxists in the USA but they are the exception rather than the rule having a certain mania about them like Napata in The Magic Mountain that taken from life. A.J.NOCK recounts a conversation he had with a Hungarian Jew in San Francisco c1900 in which he asked him what he will do after he has destroyed the existing society and his persecutors and he said we shall then take revenge and become the persecutors, but this seems more Jewish than Hungarian. I think Lukacs for example had a religious sensibility that was picked up by Thomas Mann. He was not a Stalinist in this sense.

I read quite a bit about the Communists in Hungary and they come over as a very opportunistic bunch who were basically interested in filling their boots. The Galileo Society types were ideologues like the Fabians but the actual Communists seem like careerists to me of a very local type. Polanyi's brother Karl was a Christian Anglophile was not a careerist but he got out of Hungary as soon as he could but his wife was a ghastly fanatic with a Slavic surname.

Alas it is a type that settled in England. Ed Miliband is a good example. There are a whole bunch of Jewish Leftist fanatics but they are Polish rather than Hungarian where the anti-Semiticism was much stronger because of the Catholicism.

Supplying a one sided diet of examples is the entire strategy of Search Engines. Put in Donald Trump and get 999 negative reports and one positive. A State education tells you about Leftism and never gives you a single example of why it does not work.