On meditation and contemplation

Inner Explorations has a chapter dealing with the "spiritual" theology of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.: Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange and the Renewal of the Contemplative Life.

At first glance, these assertions may appear as subtle points of interest only to historians of Western Christian spirituality, or theologians of mystical theology. They are not. They give a very definite answer to the question of just what contemplation is. The universal call to contemplation, and this identification of contemplation with infused contemplation are the twin pillars that support Garrigou-LaGrange’s mystical theology, and instead of being forgotten, they ought to remain in the forefront of our minds when we look at the contemporary attempts to renew the contemplative life.

When a new interest in the contemplative life arose after the Second Vatican Council, these battles, when they were remembered at all, were remembered with distaste, and while Garrigou-LaGrange’s idea of the universal call to contemplation had gone mainstream, and thus survived, his insistence on contemplation as infused contemplation was forgotten.

Today movements to renew the Christian contemplative life, like centering prayer and the Christian meditation movement based on the teaching of John Main, OSB, have had the great merit of introducing people to the serious practice of the life of prayer.

How should we evaluate them in the light of the two foundational principles of Garrigou-LaGrange’s mystical theology? They both have clearly accepted the first one, that is, the call of all people to contemplation. In fact, it may even be wondered if they have overdone their acceptance of it and forgotten the nuances it had in the days when it was first formulated. They seem to invite everyone, even those at the beginning of their life of prayer, to practice contemplative prayer without inquiring how well they are grounded in the more discursive forms of prayer like meditation and affective prayer.

But how else can people be rather indiscriminately invited to practice contemplative prayer unless contemplation is understood as something within our power to do? But if it is something that we can do, then it is a matter of the exercise of the human faculties, however subtly we are urged to exercise them, and it is not the infused contemplation which Garrigou-LaGrange accepts at being at the heart of the Christian mystical tradition. In centering prayer, for example, which claims John of the Cross as part of its inspiration, the clear distinction in St. John between meditation and infused contemplation, that is, between the kinds of prayer we can do whenever we want, and the gracious gift on God’s part of contemplation, is blurred. Contemplation becomes something more akin to the kinds of acquired or active contemplation that flourished for a time in the 17th century.

Both centering prayer and the Christian meditation movement operate in a kind of historical and theological vacuum that prevents them from examining not only what happened in the first half of the 20th century, but what transpired in the centuries before that time. This is regrettable. The unresolved crisis in mystical theology that led to the dark night of the mystics in the 17th century came to light in the first years of the 20th century where Garrigou-LaGrange played a major role in unsuccessfully trying to resolve it. Will the now popular interest in contemplative spirituality lead to a similar crisis when it collides with this still unresolved question of the nature of contemplation?

The failure of centering prayer and the Christian meditation movement to come to grips with Garrigou-LaGrange’s ideas on the nature of contemplation, and through him with the debates of those times is a fitting symbol of a wider failure of contemporary Christian spirituality which is curiously blind to its own history when it comes to the question of the nature of contemplation. Contemplation is promoted as a way of praying accessible to all, while contemplation in the sense of the gift of infused contemplation and the goal and summit of the spiritual life is forgotten.

What is the heart of Christian spirituality? Does G-L claim that infused contemplation is the heart of Christian spirituality? Or is he looking instead at the goal in which the Christian spiritual life culminates? Or is it both? It depends on the stage of the Christian. What we do in the spiritual life is always in tandem with grace. All are called to holiness, and infused spirituality is a gift that God intends to make available to all who follow Him.

The author of this piece agrees with G-L that authentic meditation is not the same as infused contemplation. G-L discusses how mental prayer is important for beginners; he also teaches that meditation or acquired contemplation can develop into mental prayer and lead to the act of caritas, while contemplation follows it. I do not know if there is a more thorough critique of centering prayer and modern "meditation" practices at Inner Explorations, but for those interested in the history of Catholic spirituality, this might be interesting: From St. John of the Cross to Us: The Story of a 400 Year Long Misunderstanding and what it means for the Future of Christian Mysticism. However, the author seems to be too accepting of the claims of depth psychology? (The author has also written this book: St. John of the Cross and Dr. C.G. Jung.)

For Sarge:

God Yu Tekem Laef Blong Mi

2 by Jacob Obrecht

I am posting these two for the Feast of the Assumption...





Today in Palo Alto the St. Ann Choir will sing Tomás Luis de Victoria's Missa O Quam Gloriosum.

Magdalen College

There's a short interview with Tim Van Damm of Magdalen College on Life on the Rock. The archived video will be available until the next episode. The audio for Episode 675 can be found here. Mr. Van Damm discusses the liberal arts program offered at Magdalen -- it uses a Great Books program but modified by Dr. George Harne. There's a new musician in residence at the college, but no info at the website yet. There's also the Sacred Heart House (in Boston) for men. (For vocation discernment?) It's associated with St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine.


More:
A previous appearance: Tim Van Damm on "Life on the Rock" on Vimeo

From last year: Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. with Dr. Jeffrey Karls, President of Magdalen College and Dr. George Harn, Academic Dean of Magdalene College (download)

Related:
Mortimer Adler, The Great Ideas
Otto Bird (ND obit)

A lecture by Fr. Cassian Folsom, O.S.B. at Magdalen College, November 18, 2009:

Fr. Cassian Folsom O.S.B. from magdalen college on Vimeo.

Sedes Sapientiae Foundation

Articles by Fr. Cassian:
From One Eucharistic Prayer to Many
Sacred Signs and Active Participation at Mass

British army snipers

Paul Gottfried on contemporary states' rights rhetoric

A Convenient Doctrine
Out of Power, the Republicans Suddenly Discover States' Rights

Since this is an article at Alternative Right, I should mention that Jerry Salyer has some thoughts about the neo-paganism manifested at Alternative Right: Where the Demons Dwell: The Antichrist Right.

Imperial presidency + proposition nation + multiculturalism + ...

= Obama backs mosque near ground zero (AP)

Would George W. Bush have made the same endorsement? Or would he have been more circumspect?

Puts some native Canto speakers to shame..

Via EL--Two White Guys speaking wicked Chinese (Cantonese)


Some others that are at Youtube:






Gregory Rivers, who used to be on TVB alot...

Andrew Bacevich, America's Path to Permanent War

To my surprise, audio for Andrew Bacevich's talk has been uploaded before my post could be completed. You can find it here. No video has been uploaded it yet -- I'll try to finish my blog entry before that becomes available.

30 Giorni interview with Fr. Charles Morerod, O.P.

Byzantine, Texas: The value of a monasticism in Orthodox-Catholic relations

30 Giorni: Il non protagonismo aiuta l’ecumenismo

Education in South Korea

CLASSROOM WARS IN SOUTH KOREA , Part 1
An education paradox
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Hat etiquette

Lewis McCrary, Hats Off!

In East Asian cultures, wearing headgear indoors was mandatory -- one had to keep one's head covered for formal occasions (especially religious ceremonies) and day-to-day business. It was only removed before one went to sleep (or when one was relaxing in the bedroom?). In the East Asian liturgical rites, headgear was permitted for the men because of this custom.


(source)

How long can traditionalists in the West hold out? There are plenty of websites that provide information on traditional hat etiquette, which has mostly been forgotten since hats went out of fashion. The baseball cap has become ubiquitous, but other hats are starting to come back into fashion. (The influence of Mad Men?) I suspect that the traditional etiquette will not be recovered, as young men have no reason or incentive to observe it?

Discussion at The Fedora Lounge (link via Art of Manliness).

WikiHow
GQ: The Style Guy
Ask Andy
eHow
Jonathon Delacour
Lisa Plancich
Syndi Seid
GA
William M. Briggs
MySuitShop

R. J. Stove mentions trilbys, so I had to look it up.

Related:
eHow: Picking and Taking Care of Cowboy Hats
CrazyHorseWest
Art of Manliness: Old-School Fashion and Choosing Your Hat

Dave Cohen on economists

Economists — The high priests of progress (original)
Dave Cohen, Decline of the Empire
This essay is a follow-up to Monday's The Law Of Civilization And Decay, which you should be familiar with before proceeding. Economist James K. Galbraith posed the question Who Are These Economists, Anyway? Based on the historical investigations of Christopher Lasch, my answer was that they are the High Priests of Progress.

Mr. Cohen mentions one writer whose work is published over at Counterpunch:

Economics became ahistorical. The triumph of Progress was so all-encompassing that there was no longer any need to study past financial crises or past anything else, including the rise & fall of civilizations. The Tech & Housing bubbles best illustrate this blindness. Economists were so sure that nothing could go wrong that they not only ignored the historical lessons of past financial crises that John Kenneth Galbraith laid out in A Short History Of Financial Euphoria, but they also denied that the bubbles were happening, period. Our High Priests would wonder aloud if it was even possible to identify bubbles, or simply praised the apparent "growth" you get as bubbles inflate.

In banishing history & philosophy, economists became mere technicians (sometimes called technocrats) with a very limited perspective regarding how civilizations (or Empires) progress over time. The most famous economic engineers in the Modern Age are former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and current chairman Ben Bernanke, who has laid out detailed policy arguments in speeches on fighting deflation (helicopter money drops) or the Great Moderation (~1983-2007). It was this period of ever-growing "prosperity"—interrupted only occasionally by mild, brief recessions—that fooled economists into thinking that Progress was inevitable, irreversible, and endless. Ironically, it was during this very period that the events occurred that signify & define the American Empire's decline today.

James Galbraith, who is Kenneth's son and author of The Predator State, acknowledges the great failure of economists to understand what was going on in the period leading up to the crash. He then chooses to focus on those economists who got it right, which is to say, those economists (e.g. Dean Baker, who called the bubbles) whose insights would have led to better policy decisions, thus allowing us to avoid the meltdown. You will notice immediately that Galbraith is arguing inside the box, meaning that Progress is still inevitable, irreversible and endless had only the right policy choices been made, and the right regulatory structures implemented. For Galbraith, since it is never too late to change course, all we need to do now is to revert to Good Policies to set things right, to get us back on the Progress ladder.

To take up Galbraith's faith, you must also believe that all the corruption in Congress (e.g. midnight deregulation), the grotesque wealth inequality in America, our broken, dysfunctional politics, the predatory behavior of all-powerful Finance, the existence of Too-Big-To-Fail, the disconnect between Imperial agendas and what is best for Main Street, the existence of what I call the Money World, the exploding deficits, our unmanageable future entitlements debt, etc, etc. can all be placed at the feet of Bad Policy over the last 30 years. And not just misguided policy, but policy that was also well-intended and sincere whether it emanated from the Left or the Right—policy untainted by the corruption great political power creates. That's a lot to swallow.

Mr. Cohen's criticisms of James Galbraith is applicable to both Dean Baker and Mike Whitney?

David Fridley on urban energy use

Embodied energy: An alternative approach to understanding urban energy use (original)
David Fridley, The Oil Drum
Everyone knows that it takes energy to produce anything. The energy used in mining, transport, processing, manufacturing, delivery, and disposal is “embodied” in every product we consume, from food to diapers to televisions and insurance policies. Our traditional way of looking at energy, however, highlights only current consumption, traditionally disaggregated into agricultural, industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sectors.

Gene Logsdon, Good Hoes/Bad Hoes

Good hoes/bad hoes (original)
On the good hoe, the angle of blade to handle is more acute, so that when the hoer chops down, the blade meets the earth at a slicing angle--- more easily skims through weeds or soil surface. The muscular effort involved is appreciably less. The old hoe makers knew a thing or two about hoeing that has evidently become lost to new hoe makers.

LaRue OBR

LaRue Tactical

Spike Tactical 6.8 SPC

Saw an article on it in Special Weapons for Military and Police. (Manufacturer's page here.) Also saw an insert on Spike Tactical's Adjustable Muzzle Brake in the magazine.

Related:
A forum for the 6.8 SPC

Paul Craig Roberts: If I had known...

Paul Craig Roberts, The Big Things That Matter

Had Don Regan and I known that the high speed Internet was in our future and that American corporations would use it to destroy the jobs traditionally filled by US university graduates, possibly we would have decided to save the regulated telephone monopoly and to deliver the economy over to stagflation.

The reason is that sooner or later something would have been done about stagflation, but nothing whatsoever has been done about offshoring. Saving the economy from offshoring would have been a greater achievement than saving the economy from stagflation. However, in my time stagflation, not offshoring, was the problem.

I regret that I did not have a crystal ball.

Deregulation proponents will say that the breakup of AT&T gave us cell phones and broadband, as if foreign regulated communication companies and state monopolies do not provide cell phone service or high speed Internet connections. I can remember attending corporate board meetings years ago at which the European members had digital cell phones with which they could call most anywhere on earth, while we Americans with our analogue cell phones could hardly connect down the street.

What deregulation did was to permit Wall Street to push the deregulated industries-- phone service, airlines, trucking, and later Wall Street itself-- to focus on profits and not on service. Profits were increased by curtailing service, by pushing up prices and by Wall Street creating fraudulent financial instruments, which the banksters used America’s reputation to market to the gullible at home and abroad.

Also from Counterpunch:
Winslow T. Wheeler, Talking With Gates About the Defense Budget

Some conversations have only beginnings and middles

That was the catch-phrase for a Blackberry ad I saw today. But if there is no end, can there really be a middle?

Jackie Evancho

(alt)

website

It's been a long day, but at least I had the opportunity to see Andrew Bacevich today. A video of his talk will eventually be made available, but I will type up my notes when I get a chance--perhaps later tonight.

It does seem that high fructose corn syrup tastes "sweeter" than cane sugar; I had my fill of that today, and I think I will soon be ready to swear off soda with that as an ingredient. If my mother's flight hadn't been delayed I would have spent less time at In and Out, but I managed to stay awake this afternoon. A visit to the B&N at Tanforan was next; after I picked her up I felt really tired. The inevitable crash in blood sugar level? It seemed different from what I feel during a food coma.

Christopher Tollefsen on the New Natural Law Theory

I've put up a link to the article with some notes about its account of the political common good over at Diligite Iustitiam.

The Archdruid Report: Thinking like an Ecosystem

The Archdruid Report: Thinking like an Ecosystem: "Last week’s post on composting had, as my more perceptive readers will probably have noted, more than one agenda. First on the list, obviou..."

Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity

Energy and Equity (alternate sites: here and here)

The energy crisis

It has recently become fashionable to insist on an impending energy crisis. This euphemistic term conceals a contradiction and consecrates an illusion. It masks the contradiction implicit in the joint pursuit of equity and industrial growth. It safeguards the illusion that machine power can indefinitely take the place of manpower. To resolve this contradiction and dispel this illusion, it is urgent to clarify the reality that the language of crisis obscures: high quanta of energy degrade social relations just as inevitably as they destroy the physical milieu.

The advocates of an energy crisis believe in and continue to propagate a peculiar vision of man. According to this notion, man is born into perpetual dependence on slaves which he must painfully learn to master. If he does not employ prisoners, then he needs machines to do most of his work. According to this doctrine, the well-being of a society can be measured by the number of years its members have gone to school and by the number of energy slaves they have thereby learned to command. This belief is common to the conflicting economic ideologies now in vogue. It is threatened by the obvious inequity, harriedness, and impotence that appear everywhere once the voracious hordes of energy slaves outnumber people by a certain proportion. The energy crisis focuses concern on the scarcity of fodder for these slaves. I prefer to ask whether free men need them.

The energy policies adopted during the current decade will determine the range and character of social relationships a society will be able to enjoy by the year 2000. A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of life-styles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labeled capitalist or socialist.

At this moment, most societies—especially the poor ones—are still free to set their energy policies by any of three guidelines. Well-being can be identified with high amounts of per capita energy use, with high efficiency of energy transformation, or with the least possible use of mechanical energy by the most powerful members of society. The first approach would stress tight management of scarce and destructive fuels on behalf of industry, whereas the second would emphasize the retooling of industry in the interest of thermodynamic thrift. These first two attitudes necessarily imply huge public expenditures and increased social control; both rationalize the emergence of a computerized Leviathan, and both are at present widely discussed.

The possibility of a third option is barely noticed. While people have begun to accept ecological limits on maximum per capita energy use as a condition for physical survival, they do not yet think about the use of minimum feasible power as the foundation of any of various social orders that would be both modern and desirable. Yet only a ceiling on energy use can lead to social relations that are characterized by high levels of equity. The one option that is at present neglected is the only choice within the reach of all nations. It is also the only strategy by which a political process can be used to set limits on the power of even the most motorized bureaucrat. Participatory democracy postulates low-energy technology. Only participatory democracy creates the conditions for rational technology.

What is generally overlooked is that equity and energy can grow concurrently only to a point. Below a threshold of per capita wattage, motors improve the conditions for social progress. Above this threshold, energy grows at the expense of equity. Further energy affluence then means decreased distribution of control over that energy.

The widespread belief that clean and abundant energy is the panacea for social ills is due to a political fallacy, according to which equity and energy consumption can be indefinitely correlated, at least under some ideal political conditions. Laboring under this illusion, we tend to discount any social limit on the growth of energy consumption. But if ecologists are right to assert that nonmetabolic power pollutes, it is in fact just as inevitable that, beyond a certain threshold, mechanical power corrupts. The threshold of social disintegration by high energy quanta is independent from the threshold at which energy conversion produces physical destruction. Expressed in horsepower, it is undoubtedly lower. This is the fact which must be theoretically recognized before a political issue can be made of the per capita wattage to which a society will limit its members.

Even if nonpolluting power were feasible and abundant, the use of energy on a massive scale acts on society like a drug that is physically harmless but psychically enslaving. A community can choose between Methadone and “cold turkey”—between maintaining its addiction to alien energy and kicking it in painful cramps—but no society can have a population that is hooked on progressively larger numbers of energy slaves and whose members are also autonomously active.

In previous discussions, I have shown that, beyond a certain level of per capita GNP, the cost of social control must rise faster than total output and become the major institutional activity within an economy. Therapy administered by educators, psychiatrists, and social workers must converge with the designs of planners, managers, and salesmen, and complement the services of security agencies, the military, and the police. I now want to indicate one reason why increased affluence requires increased control over people. I argue that beyond a certain median per capita energy level, the political system and cultural context of any society must decay. Once the critical quantum of per capita energy is surpassed, education for the abstract goals of a bureaucracy must supplant the legal guarantees of personal and concrete initiative. This quantum is the limit of social order.

I will argue here that technocracy must prevail as soon as the ratio of mechanical power to metabolic energy oversteps a definite, identifiable threshold. The order of magnitude within which this threshold lies is largely independent of the level of technology applied, yet its very existence has slipped into the blind-spot of social imagination in both rich and medium-rich countries. Both the United States and Mexico have passed the critical divide. In both countries, further energy inputs increase inequality, inefficiency, and personal impotence. Although one country has a per capita income of $500 and the other, one of nearly $5,000, huge vested interest in an industrial infrastructure prods both of them to further escalate the use of energy. As a result, both North American and Mexican ideologues put the label of “energy crisis” on their frustration, and both countries are blinded to the fact that the threat of social breakdown is due neither to a shortage of fuel nor to the wasteful, polluting, and irrational use of available wattage, but to the attempt of industries to gorge society with energy quanta that inevitably degrade, deprive, and frustrate most people.

A people can be just as dangerously overpowered by the wattage of its tools as by the caloric content of its foods, but it is much harder to confess to a national overindulgence in wattage than to a sickening diet. The per capita wattage that is critical for social well-being lies within an order of magnitude which is far above the horsepower known to four-fifths of humanity and far below the power commanded by any Volkswagen driver. It eludes the underconsumer and the overconsumer alike. Neither is willing to face the facts. For the primitive, the elimination of slavery and drudgery depends on the introduction of appropriate modern technology, and for the rich, the avoidance of an even more horrible degradation depends on the effective recognition of a threshold in energy consumption beyond which technical processes begin to dictate social relations. Calories are both biologically and socially healthy only as long as they stay within the narrow range that separates enough from too much.

The so-called energy crisis is, then, a politically ambiguous issue. Public interest in the quantity of power and in the distribution of controls over the use of energy can lead in two opposite directions. On the one hand, questions can be posed that would open the way to political reconstruction by unblocking the search for a postindustrial, labor-intensive, low-energy and high-equity economy. On the other hand, hysterical concern with machine fodder can reinforce the present escalation of capital-intensive institutional growth, and carry us past the last turnoff from a hyperindustrial Armageddon. Political reconstruction presupposes the recognition of the fact that there exist critical per capita quanta beyond which energy can no longer be controlled by political process. A universal social straitjacket will be the inevitable outcome of ecological restraints on total energy use imposed by industrial-minded planners bent on keeping industrial production at some hypothetical maximum.

Rich countries like the United States, Japan, or France might never reach the point of choking on their own waste, but only because their societies will have already collapsed into a sociocultural energy coma. Countries like India, Burma, and, for another short while at least, China are in the inverse position of being still muscle-powered enough to stop short of an energy stroke. They could choose, right now, to stay within those limits to which the rich will be forced back through a total loss of their freedoms.

The choice of a minimum-energy economy compels the poor to abandon fantastical expectations and the rich to recognize their vested interest as a ghastly liability. Both must reject the fatal image of man the slaveholder currently promoted by an ideologically stimulated hunger for more energy. In countries that were made affluent by industrial development, the energy crisis serves as a pretext for raising the taxes that will be needed to substitute new, more “rational,” and socially more deadly industrial processes for those that have been rendered obsolete by inefficient overexpansion. For the leaders of people who are not yet dominated by the same process of industrialization, the energy crisis serves as a historical imperative to centralize production, pollution, and their control in a last-ditch effort to catch up with the more highly powered. By exporting their crisis and by preaching the new gospel of puritan energy worship, the rich do even more damage to the poor than they did by selling them the products of now outdated factories. As soon as a poor country accepts the doctrine that more energy more carefully managed will always yield more goods for more people, that country locks itself into the cage of enslavement to maximum industrial outputs. Inevitably the poor lose the option for rational technology when they choose to modernize their poverty by increasing their dependence on energy. Inevitably the poor deny themselves the possibility of liberating technology and participatory politics when, together with maximum feasible energy use, they accept maximum feasible social control.

The energy crisis cannot be overwhelmed by more energy inputs. It can only be dissolved, along with the illusion that well-being depends on the number of energy slaves a man has at his command. For this purpose, it is necessary to identify the thresholds beyond which energy corrupts, and to do so by a political process that associates the community in the search for limits. Because this kind of research runs counter to that now done by experts and for institutions, I shall continue to call it counterfoil research. It has three steps. First, the need for limits on the per capita use of energy must be theoretically recognized as a social imperative. Then, the range must be located wherein the critical magnitude might be found. Finally, each community has to identify the levels of inequity, harrying, and operant conditioning that its members are willing to accept in exchange for the satisfaction that comes of idolizing powerful devices and joining in rituals directed by the professionals who control their operation.

My first thoughts: some of the statements need to be developed -- the relation of energy to equity may sound too abstract and mechanistic. Illich seems focus primarily on conditions that were then current (197). "Certain social conditions require a so that b can be brought about." What needs to be discussed is the use of energy by the few in the past to concentrate political and economic power through the removal of economic freedom from the rest, and so on, thus leading to the current situation. This would reinforce the thesis that historically, "capitalism" has always necessitated that the state to acquire more and more power (in order to preserve some semblance of 'peace' or a false 'peace').

I'll try to continue reading this later today, after I get some real work done.