I'll admit my smooth brain is trying to form a wrinkle following this.
I'm entirely lost on the greater "speech as a predicate of fate" thing, but here's my interpretation of the leaf mould analogy:
A work of genius flowers and inspires many who witness it. Over time, the work ages, withers, and dies. Its leaves and petals fall to the earth.
In a functioning system of fertilization and new growth, the decaying matter would nourish a new work of genius, its roots firmly in the soil of many past such works.
In our current system, where past works are fetishized and new works ignored/underdeveloped, that fertilizing matter, the dried up leaves and dead flowers, are exhumed from the soil, encased in glass, and paraded around to be worshipped.
But the original beauty, which was in the flowering, is long gone, and what is praised now is merely the memory of that flowering.
Meanwhile, the earth is unfertilized and fallow, new works of genius never spring forth.
The past continues to be fetishized, until you reach a point where no one remembers what a fresh and living work of genius looks like. instead, they try to recreate what once was without ever giving a chance to what could be.
And somehow, someone gets a billion dollars to make Rings of Power.
You got the sickness right, but the picture of the garden needs a small fix.
Tolkien’s leaf-mould is compost in a person’s mind. If you read or hear a bunch of stuff from books or sermons, you tend to forget a lot of details because you're human, but the most important stuff sinks in and has the propensity to grow.
Today, almost nothing gets time to sink in because of how quick the feed is and how many distractions there are. Metaphorically every leaf (every mind) is on top of the ground and nothing of substance can grow. So you get two bad outcomes that look different and work the same:
One: lock the old masterpiece in glass and sell tickets.
Two: paint over the old masterpiece and call the paint "new."
Rings of Power is the second one, as will be Gerwig’s Narnia.
Here is the speech idea in plain terms:
Some words follow you home. A kid hears “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” and that line can still own his soul when he becomes a fifty-year-old man. Most shows and trailers never form us like this. They just get loud for two hours and then they stop. And then the next show starts.
Good afternoon. First of all I must admit that I find your articles to be very constructive, entertaining and very educative Mr. Gray; kudos to you Sir. Now to the subject matter, I really recommend, if you haven't yet, that you (and everyone who reads this article and enjoyed it; or not) read the book: "The Great Controversy" by author Ellen G. White. Most of these happenings and deconstructions of the Gospel/The Bible are thoroughly explained in her work/s. I implore that you read it and pray that you do.
This is probably the passage that I've ever read about modern entertainment.
"Progressive preaching works the other way. It speaks past the reader toward a specimen the author prefers: less particular, more corrected, and already revised into the moral fashion the current year demands. That is why the Gerwig operation, and the wider leftover media that will carry it, will fail to hold. You cannot found a people by addressing a future self the present self is expected to discard. Formal speech binds the one who hears it in the here and now. Leftover speech lectures an avatar that expires within the season. The reader who met Aslan at ten and still answers at forty was spoken to as a soul. The campaign that wants him otherwise has to keep talking and propagating because the first word never took."
I've never read or watched any of Tolkien's or Martin's work, but from what I understand, their works are built to last among people. Now every thing is disenchanted and generic. And this generation will lap it up. But will move in a week as always.
I regret to inform you that George McDonald sounds like a fell priest. He succumed to temptation I am afraid. His books have many Satanic influences. Witches as good people, familiars, Lilith(!). I wonder why devout Catholics like Tolien and Lewis were influenced by that man. Didn;t they see the signs? Strange....
The name is "MacDonald." Lewis was Church of England. Tolkien was Catholic. Neither missed the “signs.” They could tell a fairy tale from a coven.
Lilith is a book about a proud spirit who has to die before she can live. That is a Christian plot with an old name on the door. Witches and grandmothers and talking animals are staples. They are how a Protestant minister, after a pulpit fight, still preached mercy to children. Lewis called that baptism of the imagination. He meant the stories trained him to recognize holiness before he could argue for it.
If every old symbol is already Satanic, then Dante, the Revelation, and the lion on the Stone Table are already lost. The danger in MacDonald is the opposite of what you fear. He makes evil costly and goodness strange. A culture that can only see a pentagram in a fairy tale has already lost the ability to read.
I'll admit my smooth brain is trying to form a wrinkle following this.
I'm entirely lost on the greater "speech as a predicate of fate" thing, but here's my interpretation of the leaf mould analogy:
A work of genius flowers and inspires many who witness it. Over time, the work ages, withers, and dies. Its leaves and petals fall to the earth.
In a functioning system of fertilization and new growth, the decaying matter would nourish a new work of genius, its roots firmly in the soil of many past such works.
In our current system, where past works are fetishized and new works ignored/underdeveloped, that fertilizing matter, the dried up leaves and dead flowers, are exhumed from the soil, encased in glass, and paraded around to be worshipped.
But the original beauty, which was in the flowering, is long gone, and what is praised now is merely the memory of that flowering.
Meanwhile, the earth is unfertilized and fallow, new works of genius never spring forth.
The past continues to be fetishized, until you reach a point where no one remembers what a fresh and living work of genius looks like. instead, they try to recreate what once was without ever giving a chance to what could be.
And somehow, someone gets a billion dollars to make Rings of Power.
You got the sickness right, but the picture of the garden needs a small fix.
Tolkien’s leaf-mould is compost in a person’s mind. If you read or hear a bunch of stuff from books or sermons, you tend to forget a lot of details because you're human, but the most important stuff sinks in and has the propensity to grow.
Today, almost nothing gets time to sink in because of how quick the feed is and how many distractions there are. Metaphorically every leaf (every mind) is on top of the ground and nothing of substance can grow. So you get two bad outcomes that look different and work the same:
One: lock the old masterpiece in glass and sell tickets.
Two: paint over the old masterpiece and call the paint "new."
Rings of Power is the second one, as will be Gerwig’s Narnia.
Here is the speech idea in plain terms:
Some words follow you home. A kid hears “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” and that line can still own his soul when he becomes a fifty-year-old man. Most shows and trailers never form us like this. They just get loud for two hours and then they stop. And then the next show starts.
I have long been a fan of Narnia and I enjoy "classic rock," but together? Not so much...
C.S. Lewis will be remembered long after these "Netflix creatives" are forgotten.
Good afternoon. First of all I must admit that I find your articles to be very constructive, entertaining and very educative Mr. Gray; kudos to you Sir. Now to the subject matter, I really recommend, if you haven't yet, that you (and everyone who reads this article and enjoyed it; or not) read the book: "The Great Controversy" by author Ellen G. White. Most of these happenings and deconstructions of the Gospel/The Bible are thoroughly explained in her work/s. I implore that you read it and pray that you do.
This is probably the passage that I've ever read about modern entertainment.
"Progressive preaching works the other way. It speaks past the reader toward a specimen the author prefers: less particular, more corrected, and already revised into the moral fashion the current year demands. That is why the Gerwig operation, and the wider leftover media that will carry it, will fail to hold. You cannot found a people by addressing a future self the present self is expected to discard. Formal speech binds the one who hears it in the here and now. Leftover speech lectures an avatar that expires within the season. The reader who met Aslan at ten and still answers at forty was spoken to as a soul. The campaign that wants him otherwise has to keep talking and propagating because the first word never took."
I've never read or watched any of Tolkien's or Martin's work, but from what I understand, their works are built to last among people. Now every thing is disenchanted and generic. And this generation will lap it up. But will move in a week as always.
I regret to inform you that George McDonald sounds like a fell priest. He succumed to temptation I am afraid. His books have many Satanic influences. Witches as good people, familiars, Lilith(!). I wonder why devout Catholics like Tolien and Lewis were influenced by that man. Didn;t they see the signs? Strange....
The name is "MacDonald." Lewis was Church of England. Tolkien was Catholic. Neither missed the “signs.” They could tell a fairy tale from a coven.
Lilith is a book about a proud spirit who has to die before she can live. That is a Christian plot with an old name on the door. Witches and grandmothers and talking animals are staples. They are how a Protestant minister, after a pulpit fight, still preached mercy to children. Lewis called that baptism of the imagination. He meant the stories trained him to recognize holiness before he could argue for it.
If every old symbol is already Satanic, then Dante, the Revelation, and the lion on the Stone Table are already lost. The danger in MacDonald is the opposite of what you fear. He makes evil costly and goodness strange. A culture that can only see a pentagram in a fairy tale has already lost the ability to read.