"But there is (as the greatest of the ancient Greeks discovered) a certain indissoluble Trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. You cannot deny or attack one of these three without at the same time denying or attacking both the others.”
Jordan Peterson interview of Camille Paglia
"But there is (as the greatest of the ancient Greeks discovered) a certain indissoluble Trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. You cannot deny or attack one of these three without at the same time denying or attacking both the others.”
- Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies
"The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.
Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is forever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers...
In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this: that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other
“Just as those who lose their religion feel an urge to mock the faith they have lost, so do artists today feel an urge to treat human life in demeaning ways and to mock the pursuit of beauty. This willful desecration is also a denial of love, an attempt to remake the world as though love were no longer a part of it. And this, it seems to me, is the most important part of our post-modern culture: that it is a loveless culture, determined to portray the human world as unlovable.”
Roger Scruton
The podcast linked to above is a great conversation (2017) between two Noble Pagans (Peterson sees the Light but can't quite embrace it), who honor the Good, the True, and the Beautiful! Camille Paglia is as she has been throughout her public career - brilliant and amazing. Jordan Peterson is her equal intellectually, if not in verbal expressive energy, and I enjoyed his story about the Zebra’s stripes.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/youngfogey/2019/05/jordan-peterson-and-the-unbearable-task/
An O’Reilly article on Peterson discussing his reluctance to believe in God, the tragic view of life, and other related issues, as expressed in this fascinating video of a very transparent Peterson, with Dennis Prager:
CONCLUSION, (from an Esther O’Reilly, aka these days by her real name, Bethel McGrew, essay on Peterson):
It should be a painting: Shy Woman with a Dog. The woman looks down, as she always does, shading her eyes as if an overpowering light were emanating from everyone she met. She is about thirty-five years old, but she looks fifty, with no beauty that anyone should desire her. Dirt clings about her clothes and hair. Her teeth are yellowed. Beside her is the dog she faithfully walks every day, her only friend and companion. Standing above her, looking down, is a young psychology postdoc. He is one of a team who has been working, with little success, to raise her social IQ. He is tall and lanky, handsome and driven. His future is bright. But in this moment, his dark brows are knit in attentive concentration, as he leans forward to catch what the barely verbal woman is saying. She’s trying to ask for his help with something. Something about the inpatients at the hospital associated with the outpatient clinic where they’re meeting. Something about her dog. Finally, understanding dawns: She hasn’t been coming to the clinic for herself. Four or five times she’s come now, but not to get help for her own numerous problems. She’s come to find someone who can help her help the inpatients who are worse off than she is, if that can be imagined. But he can imagine it, because he knows exactly the ones she means. They’re the ones who are too shattered to be deinstitutionalized. They’re the ones who huddle together in the basement during frigid Montreal winters, gibbering and wandering around the vending machines, like souls in Dante’s Inferno. Compared to them, the shy woman with a dog feels lucky. Perhaps, she suggests, she could take one of them out for a walk too. Perhaps he could play with the dog. Perhaps he could see the sunlight and hear the city. But she’d have to get permission first. Could the young doctor help her? Is he even the right one to ask? She wouldn’t know. The people who look down to look at her are all the same in her mind. He hardly knows what to say or do, but he promises to help if he can. As it happens, he cannot. She thanks him simply and goes her way, and he goes his. But wherever he goes, she follows. He writes her into his first book. He works her story into his university lectures. He tells it to small classrooms of students at Harvard. He tells it again to students at the University of Toronto. He tells it on podcasts. He tells it in panel discussions, when the evolutionary biologist suggests that surely in cases of very low intelligence, wisdom would “fail to emerge.” He tells it to an applauding crowd at the Beacon Theater in New York. He shakes his head, gray now: “I never forgot her. I’ll never forget her.” Even now, we might close our eyes and see the tableau in our mind: the woman, and the dog, and the doctor. If we listen closely, perhaps we might hear a voice whispering in the doctor’s ear, inviting him to look down, as Thon Taddeo {Walter E. Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz} invites the monsignor to look down. “Look at her,” it invites. “Look at the woman who cannot look at you. What do you see?” Perhaps, from depths no man can measure, we might hear the doctor’s soul give reply: “The image of Christ. What did you expect me to see?”
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full...
1 John 1:1-4
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. An she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
John 20:11-18
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God
Job 19:25-26
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