What Does Owen Barfield Mean By Final Participation? (Saving The Appearances) (The Inklings)
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- I've been thinking about Owen Barfield's ideas lately. I thought I would share a few thoughts with you. And can you help Byrne Power get his library to Alaska! DONATE NOW!
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Appreciate these reflections, you know your Barfield! His thought is more salient than ever.
Indeed it is.
Listening to this, I feel like I almost grasped what Barfield was saying. How sure I am varies in intensity; sometimes I think I have Barfield down pat, and other times I feel I know nothing about his work. I do know I experience the world as noisily chaotic, and I am constantly amazed at things people do that makes no sense to me.
Barfield is a subtle thinker. I certainly don't follow him down every corner of his thinking. But there is a core of ideas that is crucial to getting to the future.
Enjoyed this in Georgia, USA.
Byrne, glad to have finally stumbled on your channel. First introduced to you through PVK. Will be looking forward to watching your on going work. Vaya con Dios, mi amigo!
Glad to have you aboard.
@@TheAnadromist Byrne...reading Jon Fosse recently, his collection called SEPTOLOGY and short story called SHINING. You may be familiar. I mention it as a link in my consciousness, that went through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung, Barfield, etc. Went directly to WHAT IS REALITY lecture. Thanks for your tip!
@@thomassimmons1950 Thanks for the good words. Stay tuned more to come.
You can think of people that are always taking pictures or video taping an experience -- but in reality they are missing the experience.
Yes there is a fine line between documenting and avoiding. When I visit certain places to do an interview, or to capture a moment in time, I have to be very careful NOT to film things I don't understand yet.
On the other hand arriving somewhere as a stranger gives me more latitude to explore. So when I arrived in Georgia as a visitor I captured so much, but then when I began to live here, I had to stop for while to really get to understand what I was seeing.
Thanks, Byrne for this presentation.
I first heard about Barfield years ago through an acquaintance involved with Anthroposophy, (and for those who don't know), this is a theosophical movement founded by the occultist Rudolf Steiner. (Only a few ever mention that Barfield was an ardent Anthroposophist, much to the dismay of his good friend C.S. Lewis). When I learned of this friendship, much-touted in Lewis's autobiography «Surprised by Joy», I began to look into Barfield to learn more about this relationship. In fact, Lucy, in the Narnia tales, is the namesake of Barfield's daughter..
I read “Saving the Appearances”, in the 1990s, and profound though it was, it was a bit over my head. Therefore, I really appreciate Byrne's attempt to explain “final participation”, though I don't know if I am much more the wiser. I find it hard to wrap my head around it, so I will probably listen to Byrne's introduction a couple of more times.
In addition, it is hard for me to believe that Byrne's ideas in these matters will ever seep into the Evangelical consciousness. I hope I am wrong and wish Byrne God's speed in this matter.
Larry Dean
Thanks Larry. I think Barfield is best if taken without Steiner. And if you listen to the lecture that I published by Dr. Hans Rookmaaker from the 1970s called What Is Reality? it shows the perhaps the best way to integrate Barfield's ideas. Check that out first.
@@TheAnadromist
Hi again Bryne,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Yes, Barfield can be studied without Steiner, especially since Steiner was a bit of a pariah, castigated in the philosophical world as well. Because of my friend, I tried to read Steiner but put it down very quickly, but am grateful that this led me to Barfieldl
I have several essays written by Barfield directly about Steiner. Interesting. Most of the essays we enjoy by Barfield for example about Coleridge were first published in the periodical "Towards" which was the official publication of the Anthroposophical society in Britain. Why would that be. Anthroposophy is also part of Barfield thought. What is there to be afraid of?
Back in the 1990s I felt really alone in my interest in Brafield. I am glad to see this changing both in the Christian and secular world. Your work included, Bryne. I will "try" to find the Rookmaker reference. I read his "Art and the Modern World" book many years ago. I have since forgot that whole field of but with this Barfield revival, I am interested what others are saying. I plan to re-watch your Barfield video soon as well. Take care
@@ldwenzel1 I understand about being alone with Barfield. I was that way since the mid-80s. And I was pleasantly surprised to hear his name and ideas surfacing amongst a certain set of UA-camrs. (I say surfacing rather than re-surfacing, because something has to have surfaced the first time to resurface. With Rookmaaker I'd go straight to his lectures. He is always much better as a speaker than a writer. Thanks for dropping in!
Thank you for the deep dive into these ideas, Byrne. I too have been really taken with Barfield's ideas and have a made an ongoing effort to reach out to current writers who take his work seriously. I'd like to make a few points of clarity regarding your three stages of Barfield's u-shaped journey: Original Participation, Idolatry, and Final Participation.
I'd want to say that Idolatry is really an intricate part of all three stages, and so maybe for the middle stage better to just call it Withdrawal as it represents us approaching a low point of participation. Barfield in Saving the Appearances makes the point that the commands that God gives Israel (that you alluded to) while leading them away from the rampant idolatry that reigned in the ancient world, also is a movement away from participation. Similar movements he mentions in the Greek mind that birth philosophy are also on this track leading out of original participation.
These changes in participation make it possible for a person to gain a more distinct identity from their clan and tribe, which in some sense is a good thing. There is now a vessel for something unique to come from each of these distinct persons. In some sense, Barfield doesn't say it explicitly, but other commentators on him point in this direction, that this was a pre-requisite for the fullness of time in which Christ appears on the world stage. In many different ways Christ is the first real complete human person, who speaks fully with an identification as a unique person and is simultaneously fully identified with the creator God who is becoming "all in all" to quote St. Paul. And there is a lot more that could be said about this.
Now this movement in the locus of meaning having now a special emphasis in a person, does allow for the possibility where we are now. Where we conceive of ourselves as individuals, cut off from the mass of humanity, with a sense of a burden of trying to fruitlessly create a meaning that exists for us alone. So it seems at least according to Barfield that something was accomplished in the initial withdrawal but we've now swung out of balance in this direction.
Another thing poorly understood by most people (myself included until very recently) about Barfield's evolution of consciousness, is that he does not view this as we moderns tend to do as some sort of merely psychological change in people's habits of thought, although that is part of it. Barfield sees the evolution of consciousness as representing real changes in an ontological reality with which we participate. This is where Barfield takes the human role of sub-creator rather seriously (this idea impacts Tolkien and Lewis deeply).
We shape a real but unseen spiritual landscape by what we choose to participate with or fail to. And on this journey back to final participation there's going to be all sorts of new dangers of idolatry which we've forgotten can be portals to malignant spiritual realities which will manifest as some try to move toward a naive original participation or their own version of final participation that is not submitted to the true, the good, and the beautiful (as you allude to with Hitler).
Well said my friend
Of course it wasn't my intention to discuss all of Barfield's ideas. Thanks for mentioning much that I didn't have time for. And I alluded very specifically to the subcreator roll when I was reading the long quote. At the moment when I said if you get this you get Barfield. I suspect that the past was not at all how we imagine it. Paul VDK just shared a video where a western dude asked some truly primitive hunter gatherers in Africa what was the most important thing in life. The answer: Meat. And the more he asked them to clarify the deeper the conception of 'meat' gets.
I have seen in my own lifetime three completely different versions of 'common sense'. How hard it is to put one's self in the place of a soldier in 1944. The cultural allusions are almost completely other to a social media world. How would we explain what a meme is to a guy shipping back home from Iwo Jima in 1945? Yet I would say this the more unironically you can watch films from 1930's, Film Noir, read Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, watch a Broadway musicals, listen to swing music the closer you can get. But the key is in that word 'unironically', which is so hard for us to do. But that is how we can stretch our imagination to include that past, and collective representations now long past. And I don't just mean the cultural symbols. I mean literally looking at the world as much as possible with their eyes. Then we can start to get an idea of what collective representations we labor under. Or what CS Lewis called models of the universe. And of course Barfield isn't the only person whose work has had a strong impact on me. Other authors correct his Steinerisms, etc. (Check out my Book Recommendation videos.)
@@TheAnadromist “unironically” is a great point of clarity for how this has to be done. David Foster Wallace talks a lot about the distortion lens of irony laid upon irony that becomes embedded in popular culture which I think is really important to notice because it dulls our ability to see the sorts of absurdity that could pop us out of our current frame, or to imaginatively look at the world through the eyes of the other.
@@michael2l Exactly. When we look at things through that ironic media saturated postmodern lens we imagine ourselves to be superior to those from the past. There is a place for absurd irony, or even bitter irony. But that jokey pomo irony tends to extract the past of its meaning. And we need that to locate ourselves in history.
@Weapons Of Mass Distraction I was talking specifically about looking at the past unironically. Which at least in America is very hard for people to do.
As far as the politically insanity of the moment, seeing the bitter irony might be helpful.
And some laughter certainly can't hurt.
Part of today's problem is that we are losing that postmodern sense of irony today (which is good), but what is NOW replacing it are cultish kneejerk reactions (which is much worse). And personally I can't take part in that.
But still when people watch old movies etc from the past we tend to gaze through a lens of postmodern irony, which isn't helpful. That was what I was talking about.
JP: CLEAN YOUR ROOM
BP: CREATE YOUR BACKYARDS.
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This is ineffably fascinating thank you
Thanks! These phrases keep getting thrown around and it's helpful to have an explanation.
(I really ought to read that book.)
In his book Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Owen Barfield said that one of the reasons he wrote and published the book was to introduce his readers to Rudolf Steiner's work. In fact, Barfield said many times that his goal in most of his lecturing and published work was to introduce Steiner's thinking to those of his own readers that weren't familiar with Steiner.
Yes I indeed got his message. I also felt that Barfield's ideas were stronger than Steiner's. Steiner comes across as an esoteric in the mode the late 19th Century. Barfield is actually much different than that. Granted he sees developments in Steiner's view that are crucial to the inspiration of his own ideas. But whenever Barfield starts bringing Steiner into his discussions it feels more like he his shoehorning his own subtler philosophy into Steiner's much dodgier one.. It is Barfield's's area of weakness.
@@TheAnadromist I see strong parallels between Barfield's figuration, alpha thinking and beta thinking and Steiner's pre-esoteric content, primarily Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe's Worldview, Truth and Knowledge and finally The Philosophy of Freedom (TPOF). It is difficult to develop this point in a comment, but I take Barfield at his word when in the chapter "Final Participation" he states "he (Steiner) was writing his book TPOF, in which the metaphysic of final participation is fully and lucidly set forth" (p140 in Harbinger edition)
@@TheAnadromist I would be happy to develop this point further in conversation if that is of interest to you.
@@TheExceptionalState Let's think about. My email is the 'About' section. Write me there.
8:41 Participation is unavoidable, even in withdrawal, we just bury under meaningless abstractions.
Yes I think our need for connection is always there. We miss it like missing vitamin D in our diets.
@@TheAnadromist Yes! The vitamin D thing, that's perfect because it also calls attention to our being indoors all the time.
I don’t know if you have read Henri Bortoft but if not it is really related. He even has practical examples to observe how we co-create the world.
Haven't heard of him. Thanks for filling me in.
@@TheAnadromist No problem 🙂 I have read 'Saving the Appearances' twice and found it a fascinating book. Bortoft's second book is called 'Taking Appearance Seriously' (though better to start from his 'Wholeness of Nature' book). I think he is a great companion to Barfield. I have been trying to understand the role of the imagination for a few years now, if you feel like it I have an old video (not trying to promote my channel I haven't really paid attention to it for years 😁) titled "Jonathan Pageau, Is This Logos Talk Simply Gibberish?" where I actually do one of Bortoft's experiments for the viewer. I think it is a fascinating one because you can actually observe the imaginal layer and how the sensory frame remains the same while that layer changes (sorry if the terms don't resonate with you, these are just my preferred ones but it doesn't matter really). Once we 'see' the distinguishing and the already present imaginal layer we can observe it every time there is a new 'distinguishing' as in the contemplating plants which is another practice suggested by Bortoft (a continuation from Goethe which this whole stream of thought seems to connect to).
Thanks for the interesting video!
I have my quibbles but this was a noble effort, glad you made it.
Thanks a lot. Again it all off the top of my head.
@@TheAnadromist I thought you did I great job. Glad my question to Boyce lead to this.
Two quick thoughts (besides looking forward to your library coming out and having those resources utilized in future videos!): 1) The loss of participation/final participation reminds me of Card. Ratzinger in "Introduction to Christianity" where he uses the imagery of the modern man not just looking away from the heavens, but ending up on their hands and knees pushing around the dust and dirt with their finger "discovering" the universe, when it lies above them as it always has; and 2) I am so very pleased that I came of age in a time and place where much time was spent outside (especially outside in the "wilderness") discovering/participating in the various biomes I lived in/around, and also avoided much of the consuming nature of the pocket computer.
I hope to learn how to teach/participate with my family how to not be consumed by the tech/commercial society. I feel I'm knocking on Ellul/Barfield/Rookmaaker themes here...
Again: thanks for this!
Yes you probably grew up in a time where taking a hike was considered a 'cool' thing to do. The current mentality has difficulty understanding things more real than the screen. It's too 'slow'. It's not 'fun'. Modern science seems to explain everything but the modern scientists themselves. If you ever need ideas about ways to pass on reality to your family, get in touch. Also check out my video called Mediated /Unmediated.
Thought-provoking stuff. Goes a way in explaining my recent compulsion to start creating ambient music live and outside. More and more, I'm forcing myself away from the computer screen - and from solely watching - towards more and more creation. First music, then video stuff and god knows what's next. Thanks for this, it's helped put some of my more incoherent thoughts into a bit more focus.
When I was younger I remember carrying a boombox on a trail to listen to music, very cool music but music nonetheless, while hiking through the Rockies. I cringe at myself now. Sometimes we need something like photography or a journal to help us get to the point where we can 'tolerate' nature. Yesterday I walked the mountain next to me without a camera or any other mediation. Quite lovely. By the way check out some of the videos on my Georgian Crossroads channel, where I take walks through mountains.
What I understood is that final participation is simply what people call re-enchatment these days, although you have my solidarity on enchatment being a kind of misleading word.
What makes it final is that we themselves are aseerting it willfully, that's why it is final. The explanation of everything that comes with this idea - original part. , idolatry was certainly helpful to get into it
I wouldn't say it's the same thing at all. Barfield clearly says we cannot return to original participation. So I'd disagree withe the whole re-enchantment idea. Final Participation includes everything acquired through science and what he calls idolatry. There is no return to the Garden.
@@TheAnadromist I'm checking, re-reading some Tarkosvky stuff, thinking about art, when he says the following about the water. One of the reasons for sharing it, is that it alludes to the Rookmaaker water example in "What is reality?", yet Rookmaakers take being closer to 'original participation':
"water lives, it has depths, it moves, it changes, creates a mirror reflection, you can drown in it, swim in it, you can drink it..." - all the stuff that original participation can assert
"... and not even speaking about the fact that it consists out of one molecule. It's a monad" - knowledge, acquired through idolatrous science, that, at first, shatters the original participation, but then resolves in final participation that has even more depth.
In this frame of thinking idolatry is 'inevitable', yet it fuels the participation and, most importantly, lets us escape from the prison of superstition that accompanies the good qualities of original participation.
Thinking in this way, the Judaic assertion that God created the heaven and the earth is another side of idolatry, having the same de-participative effect on the world, as when Rookmaaker gives the example of St. Paul opening the Bible - but yet it gives some kind of hope that is fullfilled in Christ and then gives the key to final participation.
You can get at it as such:
1) original participation is a sort of "Garden+sin in a latent form (pre-temptation Eve, sin boiling in her heart, corresponds really well to Eve being afraid of even touching the tree of knowledge of good and evil as a superstition)"
2) and 'idolatry' is "Garden+ sin in a hostile form (hiding naked in the fig leaves or being crucified)"
3) and final participation as "leaving the Garden (garments of skin or putting on Christ)" - one representing the evil, incomplete final participation and another a proper integration of a man into Being.
1:55 It was me Byrne
I'd like to see a conversation between you and Byrne on your channel.
This is helpful. I have Barfield books on the shelf I've been meaning to delve. Thanks for the primer.
Glad it was helpful!
Finally a video I can send to people to introduce them to this stuff I've been learning about. Great video - subscribed.
Excellent I hope you can explain a bit of Barfield to your friends. By the way if you listen to the lecture which I have annotated form 1976 by Hans Rookmaaker called "What Is Reality?" this is where I first heard about Barfield. I think you'll find that and several other videos of mine most interesting.
@@TheAnadromist I will definitely check it out. I'm currently watching your How We Got Here series. I really like your channel about Georgia too, I live in America and have developed a hobby of going to small towns and looking at the old architecture in the downtown areas. There are so many beautiful structures that are long abandoned sitting there mostly unnoticed.
41:59 That is very much on point.
It's not disconnected entirely from the eschaton because it is the final stage of consciousness evolution, a prerequisite to Parousia which we are not merely bystanders awaiting, but participants in bringing forth. I any case I had heard Boyce talk about Barfield before and assumed he had more of an idea of what I was on about that he did. My real point was the the woke want a return to original participation (which Barfield explicitly identifies with paganism in Saving the Appearances), that they are angry that withdrawal has left them with a world of dead objects. Probably should have just asked, do you know Barfield first.
Sometimes what happens in this little corner of the web doesn't directly translate even to those living adjacent to us. And I agree there is an eschatological dimension to FP. But I never hit that very hard, because Barfield explicitly said not to. And the wrong kind of FP can indeed lead to antichrist.
This is helpful, going to dive into "Saving The Appearances" soon. Little aside, Wordsworth was a popularizer of picnicking.
I had a very unusual experience last night while watching this video, @The_Anadromist . My 79 year-old mother-in-law lives with us, and she's the only one who will tolerate my watching long-form video discussions on the big screen. She was really interested in this, and asked me a lot of questions. Just to my left I had a stack of books, one of which was Saving the Appearances. I checked my Amazon account and confirmed I bought it Nov 2016. I didn't start reading until 2020 after listening to "Pints with Jack" (a C. S. Lewis podcast) and Paul Vander Klay (which is how I found you). I didn't start on PVK until 2019. I picked up the book, and noticed I'd stuffed a bookmark randomly in the back...and when I opened to that very page, that was precisely where you started reading the quote...very, very strange, indeed!
A message? Or simply a coincidence? Glad your mother liked it too!
I have been struggling with SAVING THE APPEARANCE for yeras.
This year I finally got to study the book. Amazing.
The title SAVING THE APPEARANCE can have a DOUBLE meaning: Idolatry and Identity.
Idolatry as in Worshiping the Appearances.
Identity as in putting the Appearances in their proper place in the order of reality. Rescuing them.
Yes it is a tough book first time through. But once you start to get what he is saying it gets easier. Thanks for watching!
@@TheAnadromist
Do you believe there is a connection with the FLOW STATE and PARTICIPATION?
If so, would it be ORIGINAL or FINAL?
@@mosesgarcia9443 Good question. I think the Flow State as I understand it has to do with focus and concentration. That is a jet pilot has to enter such a state or crash. Or it comes at those times when when you can attend without distraction, or even amidst distractions. I think what Barfield is describing is very different than that.
A gamer can easily enter a flow state while playing a game. Yet that is no way is a choice. The technology, as with the jet pilot, forces him into this. And so this condition would be neither OP nor FP. Barfield emphasizes that Final Participation is a conscious choice. One could say video games make one hyper-aware, but of what? And where is the choice here. A flow state when I'm writing is good thing. But it isn't by itself anything resembling FP or OP. It could happen at any period of history.
25:15 Objectivity is called objectivity for a reason. The reason Barfield is so hard to understand is that he's deconstructing several dualisms while trying to do so it a way that a dualistic mind can be brought to see it's error. There is no easy way to do that.
22:04 Loss of the Analogia Entis and Univocal Being are necessary precursors (early 14th century Scotus, Ockham)
Noice.
9:11 Yes it's being as participation (which is the only way a contingent creature can actually exist, we merely have being, on loan via participation in Ipsum Esse (God).
Loved this, Byrne. Have you read Zygmunt Baumman’s essay on the Pilgrim vs. Tourist? I imagine yes with your analysis of the discourse on nature
Nope haven't heard of it. Thanks for mentioning it. Like most folks I have only read a fraction of a fraction of the books I should read.
34:12 Good point on Lady Hawk's soundtrack, it was terrible.
I meant to also add that as an act of imagination it was sullied by contemporary convention. But that we could learn enough to see through that and thus imagine history a bit more honestly.
@@TheAnadromist Honestly it had never occured to me. But as soon as you said it ..Yes, he's right
30:39 Yes he follows Coleridge's distinction between imagination and fancy.
29:27 Enchant=to sing into being, and there is not a better word.
It carries too much sentimental Romantic era magical baggage to be useful. (Yes I know about Pageau's use of the word.)
@@TheAnadromist The Inklings used it long before Pageau. People are going to need to learn the difference between sorcery and enchantment eventually. The supersensible world approaches ever nearer and if you don't understand enchantment you will be vulnerable to sorcery
@@grailcountry There are many words that get ruined over time. Enchanted for me is one of those words. Awesome is an excellent example of another. It would be silly of me to say that we want the world to be awesome again. I could say to 'inspire awe' but awesome? It's in the trash now. Likewise that's where enchantment is. As a stand alone word and concept. Sounds great. After far too many tourism commercials, Disney movies, and New Age gift stores, I'm sorry it's just mush now, regardless of what anyone says. Besides, when people find a word to express an idea, and suddenly too many folks are using this same word to express this idea it's already on the way to the propaganda mill. If the word actually dies it can be repurposed. But not before then. Plus we should be able to put what we know into our own words to show that we understand the concept. You'll notice I rarely use new concept words. That's the reason.
@@TheAnadromist It's not a new concept word. It's was used by the Inklings and the people who are using it now are picking it up from them. This sorcery vs. enchantment theme is particular strong in Charles Williams work but the same idea of enchantment is common to all of them, and George MacDonald as well. There isn't a better word, the people using it no exactly what they mean, and they are recapturing the word from the debased use you are complaining about. I have other issues with Pageau (political ones) but his use of enchantment isn't one of them.
@@grailcountry Many people when I was young used the word awesome in it's dictionary meaning of full of awe. But that doesn't mean it means that today. Try typing the word enchantment into a visual search sometime. That will give you an idea of why I'm not on the re-enchantment program. The word still has value. But alas the popular perception of it is for at least a generation or more spoiled.
Byrne, would you join me on The Meaning Code channel to discuss this, plus the elements and principles of art? We have been hovering around these ideas for a year and you have zeroed in on some very vital intersections. I’m especially interested in the overlap with complexity theory and the outside/inside paradigm.
Find my email address in the About section of my channel page and write to me there. Sounds doable.
@@TheAnadromist I looked, but couldn’t find it there. Could you email me at KL Wong 43@ gmail.com?
I read Saving the Appearances back-to-back with a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and together they were the most mind-blowing thing I've ever read. The idea of gods (in the pagan sense) never made sense to me until I read those two books. The explanation given by teachers, professors and historians is always something like "Oh, well I guess they were bored and needed to invent stories to motivate themselves." In the case of the latter book, it adds a whole new dimension to Jesus being the incarnation of "the word."
Indeed Barfield does spade the ground quite a bit and turn up new layers.
Barfield hated Julian Jaynes, fyi.
@@grailcountry Really? In Barfield's review of Jayne's book (www.owenbarfield.org/read-online/articles/bicameral-mind/), he doesn't find fault with his ideas so much as his tendency to present them from a naturalist perspective. It doesn't seem like hate, but more akin to Chesterton's critique of his contemporaries in Heretics.
@@IndyDefense I've read it
@@IndyDefense This is down right viscous by British standards:" I personally should not much like the job of distinguishing ontologically between a figment and a hallucination; or alternatively between hallucination, as Jaynes chooses to extend the term, and perception. Why could not the Muses, and so forth, equally well have been things - not less, but certainly not more metaphorically - “outside” the physical-behavioral world that do not have a spatial quality? Perhaps because that might mean beginning to take seriously people like Rudolf Steiner. And yet so slight a readjustment would have made the whole book so much clearer, leaving its convincing central narrative stripped athletically bare of all the uneasy hairsplittings. It seems strange that one who has no difficulty in attributing practically the whole of modern consciousness, including its science, to the “dualism” that, since Descartes, has been “one of the great spurious (my italics) quandaries of modern psychology” should stop precisely at that point. Surely it must be staring him in the face that our whole scientistic and popular picture of a quondam mindless universe is the product of that very dualism as it culminated in the still more spurious uniformitarianism of Lyell and Darwin" He is saying he's trapped by his dualism and cannot see the implications of his own line of thought.
In light of the Swiss mountain example, would Barfield agree with the idea the world used to be flat (but isn't anymore)?
I seriously doubt it. Especially since he was educated well enough to know that neither in the Middles Ages not in Classical antiquity did anyone believe that. This is a strange modern legend that grew up somewhere when someone wanted to prove that people in the past were simply much stupider that we are. An illiterate peasant may have thought such things. But the educated people never did.
(See C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image or listen the Hans Rookmaaker lecture I have on the channel called What Is Reality?
@@TheAnadromist I think I was picturing something like the Ancient Near Eastern image of the tiered world with depths above and below. I'll listen to the Rookmaaker lecture!
Sacramentality however, in terms of for instance Baptim and Eucharist goes back to the very beginning and the participation there is even more intense and real than in the case of icons, where careful distinctions are always made.
Again, the participation Barfield is talking about is the old paganism.
@@TheAnadromist you mentioned iconography though and I was just saying if there are participatory ideas in it, there are even more so in the sacraments.
@@greenchristendom4116 Yes but I wouldn't call the Sacraments Original Participation in Barfield's terms. They are something else, closer perhaps to Final Participation, since they require an element of choice.
@@TheAnadromist they require a certain receptivity in terms of adults receiving them, but their grace is caused rather by God's freely but once and for all covenant bound will expressed in the institution of Christ, His Divine Presence and action in the essential words and bodily ceremony. Sacramentals like icons much more depend upon the will and devotion of the believer for them to have an effect (though the prayers and blessings of the Church are there, so it's a little more than just the individuals devotion even there). In any case it's not an imaginative construction but realities, the "powers of the age to come" of which St. Paul says in Hebrews believers have tasted.
Okay, Mr. Anadromist. Let us begin our discussion here. This is a beautiful place. This is where we can meet each other for the best possible mutual metanoia. Let us disregard that great sage advice from the warriors of spiritual darkness, the Ghostbusters, to "never cross the streams." You go one way, I go the other, at 10 paces we turn. Is there a better way to contact you? I don't Facebook. 1 hour of your time in dialogue is what I request. Given the highlighted comment from Paul, I assume we receive his blessing.
Again you'll find what you need on my channel. But let's not engage in a dialogue until you've dealt with a few of my videos. Thanks. That will take some time. Enjoy!
@@TheAnadromist Dealt with? I don't need anything from your virtual channel, nor do I have the time to watch much more, but I accept this as a polite refusal to...participate shall we say? I may not be worth your time. Good luck with getting your books, Byrne. If you change your mind, I'm sure you can find me.
@@theplebistocrat Again you assume who I am. I was putting a barrier to that sort of assumption. Cross it and the discussion flows freely.
@@TheAnadromist Byrne, imputing assumptions is the act of assuming. Can you point to an assumption I've made about your character as such? I made a request to have a dialogue regarding comments we engaged in on another channel. You seemed to be open to the idea, but now you have "put a barrier" up, and the character of that barrier was directing to me engage with your virtual self until you have deemed me worthy of discussion.
If I may make an observation- this seems at odds with your decrying of the virtual. I'm fine with contradictions, we all carry them, but I find it ever so much more likely to resolve them in real time, with as real a presence as we can muster. Again, I make no claims on *who* you are, Byrne. I only speak to what actions I see you performing. I don't offer to speak to just anyone. It is usually an admission of interest and hope. I feel as though you rebuffed that by pointing me to your virtual self, somewhat dismissively. I really do wish you well and I retract the offer with all due respect. Perhaps we can clear up any assumptions you assume I have some time down the road. Cheers.
@@theplebistocrat "If I may make an observation..... " Again you are painting a picture of me without knowing anything, which is exactly what is setting off my warning signals. Rather than taking me at my word to go ahead and watch a couple of videos, you have interpreted my intentions without taking any steps to correct them.
This is ALL virtual.
Yet I am hoping for the real to break through. I gave you conditions because of how much you created a strange caricature of me, without taking a moment to see if there was anything else to me besides one comment. You have hidden yourself, so I only have your immediate words to go by. They aren't exactly inviting. You don't have to watch any videos at all.
do you think videogames fall into idolatry category? I haven't played any for a while and decided to do so for a little and I felt reality being completely irrelevant and the stuff going on in the video game being the principle reality.
Remember that 'idolatry' as Barfield is using the word isn't exactly the same as the biblical usage. Barfield means the reduction of reality to its most material prosaic aspects. This isn't simply about materialism. So that the important connection between the two concepts is that in the Bible the idols have eyes but do see, and ears but do not hear. So while not exactly material, the imagery is very empty. Flat. While addictive it is a lot like salt and sugar in food. Tastes good, but doesn't include nutrition.
While some have argued that video games are full of mythological symbolism, Jonathan Pageau often takes this approach. But I tend to look at the texture of the imagery, something video games are desperate to add, the hollowness of it, which can certainly evoke smiles and worry. Though often it is the pattern that that does this more than the story. There is something in us that gets trapped by patterns. You see this in games, especially in gambling, in driving a car, in daily life. But especially in games. The patterns grip us in the most addictive way imaginable. And these patterns are essentially numerical. Like algorithms feeding us the next video. And in the empty calories of these patterns we are essentially in the heart of Barfield's notions of idolatry. It isn't about worshiping an object. It's about turning the object in a dead thing. Numerical patterns are simply prosaic without any poetry. Poetry is about meaning and depth. The prosaic is merely utilitarian, blank.
Or to put it another way. A dopamine rush is purely prosaic. Joy is poetry. Video games are closer to the compulsion of the dopamine hit. Not all of them, but generally. Getting to the end of a long one isn't about joy, it's about being released from the pattern.
@@TheAnadromist thank you for a thoughtfull comment.
As you've said and adding to it: games for the most part are empty and are out of reality, taking some patterns out of this world to make games addictive and pleasure-inducing, read malicious. The fact that most-most of the games are about some kind of fantasy only amplifies this. Games become escapism, they draw us away from reality and present what is on the screen as more real, meaningful, worth caring for and outside world starts to become muted- that is my biggest argument for games as idolatry.
I wanna say, judging from my experience, that the hope isn't lost. I think that games are very potent, which leads to them being so misused. There has been a recent Russian videogame called Pathologic 2, you might want to check it out, I think it's an important beacon in videogames. I probably wouldn't wanna say that this game is "following in the footsteps" but it is certainly "standing on the shoulders" of Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky, etc. - no kidding, it certainly has that artistic touch
I hope there would be more things like that, a visible movement into this direction, since so many young people are into videogames But what are young people? Maturing is a choice and unfortunately the gaming sphere is mostly about making the opposite one.
@@TheAnadromist sorry if I don't really operate within Barfields categories with videogames, I'll certainly read that book.
I think what you are trying to point out is that Barfields notion of idolatry is really a very simple concept, maybe close to the concept of simulacra, where one puts this thing on a shelf and says 'done, I have it!'.
For example, we participate in some kind of thing that is supposed to have meaning but actually doesn't have it and everyone is pretending that it has.
The point which I made about videogames is something a little different, thanks again for explaining it all.
As I've said, I think it's a big problem with young people and the world certainly needs better videogames. My idea is that they can produce experiences that will open up some aspects of reality for us, will rather make us feel like the man next door then like Spider Man.
But then again, producing some kind of experience in some kind of controlled environement in order to have it with you in reality... isn't that was religion should be about?
The Prodigal Son exemplifies an initial unselfconscious participation that is 'lost' or covered over by a mis-taken identity of inheritance of self-imaged 'reality' of the 'appearances as meanings taken out of context and therefore manipulatable as a seemingly external source of gratification or fulfilment that depletes and hollows, not only the objects of our affection or affliction but our sense of shared being in felt qualities that are fulfilling to receive and give or participate in (being of).
Bottoming out is in some sense our opening to the Holy Spirit of discernment as a new point of reference - for we can of such a gift observe our thought in act - in place of conditioned reactions that are derivative of the meanings we took or identified from as a self-consciousness that is set over separation trauma. The Holy Spirit (Who can also be seen as the Voice for God) is the Restoration of Inherence to the willingness to serve in our father's House - which is to be re-aligned with the direction of Creation by willingness.
The Holy Spirit uses what is in our mind (and therefore our appearances/world) to teach us the difference between truth & illusion, that our own thinking can not be the guide or voice for - as we wanted to create in our own image out from a sense of self-lack associated with thinking - that then met both inflation and Fall to mask and distance in body as a limit, and substitute for created Soul.
"And WHO told you you were naked?" said the Lord - Is our innate ability to question our results or 'reality-experience' - the reference point of a curiosity or questioning that uncovers the already Answer - in line with willing desire to know, rather than boost a sense of lack-driven conflict.
Alpha thinking creates myths and models that are never wholly false or without some spark of divinity that is redeemed or saved from false context to shine true.
To arrive at our starting place and know it for the first time - "Behold I make all things New!" - not merely in physically symbol-setting Apocalypse - but as the unveiling of Eternity in the moment at hand.
I also found Saving the Appearances a difficult read - but more for the manner of his delivery.
I sense that he knew he was writing something 'heretical' relative to the era in which he lived, and so couched it in a meandering monologue by which to ward off unwanted attention.
The journey of willingness is the intuitive glimpse or prompt that initiates a search we engage despite or sometimes because of the mind not knowing why - or thinking to know but finding what it does not expect.
Thanks for sharing!
28:03 This isn't right at all. Barfield makes it clear that the reason withdrawal has an escape hatch is that we very much do feel it in our heart before we abstract it away with our layers of abstractions, we cannot avoid participation. Your primary experience, your felt sense of things is very much still participatory. You are being a phony when you abstract away your primary experience. The problem isn't that we aren't as empirical as we ought to be, we allow our rationality to rob us of our experience as they are experienced.
What Barfield says is that our 'common sense' is collectively created. Thus each era has a mode of being shaped by collective representations. Consider the modernist nuts and bolts world of the mid-20th Century compared to the post-Sixties 'new consciousness': the people living within those to mindsets saw completely different worlds. What was participated in, and how it was participated, was very different. And likewise our highly media virtual aquarium produces another set of 'common sense'. Barfield is trying to strip away the lies. But at a very deep level. Thus when I look out at the world I can see things from the 'common sense' of today's 'realities' or I can take the parallax view to try see things as they might be. Which is to say I can see what CS Lewis discusses at the end of the Discarded Image, our temporary model as temporary.
I was discussing the New Age mentality. Where people pretend, and I really feel it's pretend, that they can find the spirits in the trees, etc. I may have made that statement a little too broad. I still stand behind it. Until meaning is restored in an individual they can't see it simply by wanting imagining it. But you are free to disagree with what I was trying to say.
@@TheAnadromist I see what you mean. My point is that trusting your primary felt sense of things is important, it's the way out. I guarantee you that an Atheist listening to Mozart feels he is listening to the music of the spheres. His primary experience listening to Mozart participates, but he then withdraws participation because "he knows" it's just an electrical signal in his brain. My point was that the way you framed it didn't drive home that you have every reason to trust your primary experience of Mozart, you are listening to the music of the spheres.
@@grailcountry Yes of course. But that sort of participation is not what Barfield is referring to as Original Participation. Otherwise he wouldn't mention the idolatry. And also I can think of multitudes of people, and for different reasons, for whom the phrase "music of the spheres" would be meaningless. And does everyone hear Mozart the same way? For myself, I really like Mozart but he is not in my Pantheon of composers. I tend to look at his music as a step down from the Baroque Era. Off the top of my head I can think of perhaps 30 or 40 composers I prefer to him. So to say you know the experience of an atheist listening to Mozart is perhaps a bit presumptuous. If Mozart spoke that deeply to all people of the 21st Century we'd hear Mozart's music coming out of speakers daily in every grocery store and cafe. We don't. So do I think people 'participate' in Mozart today? Not a whole lot. Some obviously. But alas on the city streets I live on I hear far more of the endless electronic beats that signify a lowest common denominator. That's what people are participating in. The sheen, the glitter, the commercial allure, the illusion of sensuality. So I guess we have a stark disagreement here. Which is fine.
@@TheAnadromist No it's not the same as original participation, it's an faint echo of it. Were there no echo of it, there would be no possibility of final participation, withdrawal and further descent into materiality would be inevitable. I'm a poet and I prefer music with words, but I do know people who who participate with Mozart. The late John Tavener definitely did. I could have used as my example any beautiful music that's not strictly libidinous. One feels as if one is transported somewhere, it feels not of this world. This experience is as common to the materialist atheist as it is with anyone else. The consciousness of withdrawal decides it's just my own internal feeling, and that it doesn't mean anything. The consciousness or original participation wouldn't have even had that discarding of the participatory sensation open as an option (and here is where you see the idolatrous risk inherent in it, though withdrawal has it's own idols of abstraction as well). I really can think of no better depiction of what Final Participation looks like than Susan Clarke's novel Piranesi.
@@TheAnadromist Also maybe we should just talk sometime I think there's more common ground than disagreement and the disagreement is likely perspectival and not fundamental.
"Society is the world's biggest cult, and you're a member, like it or not"
- Mtsar (Unslaved)
Let me see if I understand. What Barfield teach us is to look at the natural objects of the world as if they were musical instruments. There is undoubtedly some spirit in them, but it is not enough to worship them, we have to ring them, breathe our musical imagination into them in order to make them sound. Only in this way the sublime they contain is revealed.
Does it makes sense?
Interesting analogy. I would say that they used to be played automatically by us. Then we learned that the instruments were just brass or wood. But evidently that's not all they were.
@@TheAnadromist Studying the wood of the violin we have forgotten the art of harmony.
43:27 So you are conflating collective representations and final participation. It is the collective representations of an increasingly powerful civilization (withdrawal offers real power) still in the clutches of withdrawal Barfield is warning against. Not least because it uses the power of Imagination ignorantly because it doesn't understand it to be a truth bearing faculty.
You misunderstood me. I was saying what happened in the mind on an Austrian Corporal imaginatively eventually was reproduced in reality. I see this more as Final Participation in the worst sense. The collective representations of the times were indeed of an increasingly deadened world. But you are right as you point out elsewhere here. That we do feel the loss of participation. The Corporal tapped into that feeling of alienation in the longings of a late Symbolist world.
I'm simple minded so I boil things down to simple concepts. IMO, our ancestors were into animism .. spirits in everything -original participation. Seems simple and superstitious. Yet, today, we still have residual animism. In my location we have people who actually drive towards tornados; are attracted to house fires, and watch tsunamis on UA-cam. They are fascinated by these so called acts of God, these spirits in whirlwinds, these spirits in ocean waves. Why is it when I work on machinery , and I skin my knuckles, I curse the object as though it were a god, a spirit of non-cooperation? Is that not original participation? I ride my motorcycle and worship her like she was a goddess - a form of idolatry right? IMO, we never really left original participation, but we call it superstition. Is that the idolatry Barfield was getting at? A self deception to get away from the spirt world that really exists but we are 'too smart' for it? I'm too left brained at times, but Barfield has it right IMO. Is my above analysis too simple minded or am I on track?
I think you are on to something here. Superstition is indeed often the residue of the old participation. And yes we are tempted to worship the things themselves. There still is something in all this stuff that calls to us. A motorcycle is indeed a powerful thing. Which is why Hell's Angels wouldn't think twice about smashing someone in the face who knocked over their Harley. The same could be said about any collection of things. I collected books and LPs. But what do these things represent? The vinyl LP represents musicians in a studio playing. One cannot keep the musicians singing live in front of you, but you can take the smaller thing to represent them. A motorcycle represents power and freedom. Much more abstract. More powerful as an idol. Now these things don't have to be idols. I've long since gotten to the point where I can forgive accidental abuses of my library. People are always more important than things. I think matter though does have it's temptations. Always. But we can't live without it. And it is also very good. It is up to us to keep things in their proper order.