Status Updates From Dæmon Voices

Short pieces to “snack” and revisit, ideas for really deep books on some topics

"So the myth of the Republic of Heaven would explain both how we came about, in terms that are as true as they can be to what we know of the facts, the facts of biology and physics and history; and it would explain what our true purpose is. Our purpose is to understand and to help others understand, to explore, to speculate, to imagine—to increase the amount of consciousness in the universe." A good a purpose as any.

"No one in Middle Earth has any sexual relations at all. I think their children must be delivered by post." BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"If the Narnia stories had been composed...the children who have passed through all these adventures and presumably learned great truths from them would be free to live and grow up in the world...and use what they'd learned for the benefit for others. If you're wiser and stronger as the result of your experiences, then do something useful with that strength and wisdom—make the world a bit better."

"[C.S.] Lewis's position as a whole wasn't at all consistent. Whereas the Narnia books illustrate the very antithesis of the Republic of Heaven, his critical writing...often shows a more generous and sensible spirit...the sensible Lewis...was thrust aside in Narnia by the paranoid bigot who proclaimed an interest in lipstick and nylons was not an addition to the pleasures of life but a disqualification for heaven."

"[This belief of imperfect copies] is pernicious because it encourages us to disbelieve the evidence of our senses, and allows us to suspect everything of being false. It leads to a state of mind that's hostile to experience. It encourages us to see a toad lurking beneath every flower, and if we can't see one, it's because the toads are extra cunning and have learned to become invisible."

"Nothing that a human being can do unaided is any good at all, and the only way you can get anything decent or good out of a human being is by the grace of God. So we are to blame for our defects, but we are not allowed any credit for our merits. My view is that we are responsible for both."

"A large part...lies not only in what theocratic or totalitarian societies choose to read, but in the way they read. A word that's emblematic of this attitude is the word correct. We've become used to it in the cliché politically correct, which is a right-wing caricature of a left-wing tendency to emphasize one approved kind of language we should use, one single attitude we should adopt to social questions..."

"The first thing is that people with this cast of mind have low expectations of literature. They think that literature has only one purpose, which is ideological, and so its worth can be judged by how well it fulfills that ideological purpose." Not just literature either: films and TV can be applied as well.

"We find parallels in both religious and atheist forms of totalitarianism" He goes into concepts of heresy and punishment, apostasy, inquisition/secret police, complex procedure of betrayal and denunciation, a view of history leading to a golden age, fear and hatred of unbelievers, fear and hatred of internal threats, and pilgrimage to sacred places and holy relics. Makes me wonder if the final concept will apply now

3 left!

"But there are some flowers I return to again and again for the quality of their nectar, as a butterfly, or there some lights I can't help fluttering back to, as a moth. And this tiny insect-brain or insect-instinct knows what's good for it and what's bad; and little by little it's been gathering drops of nectar from here, and beams of light from there, and making them into something..." I love this analogy.

"Born-again people have all the certainty of the once-born, with an added and obnoxious self-righteousness." True.

"The point is that we cannot be free of these things; to claim that we have no system, that we see things as they are, that we write without any preconceptions or hidden ideology, is to deceive ourselves. We're already enslav'd." I don't agree, but neither do I disagree. Is it possible to write without thinking of certain preconceptions, beliefs, and attitudes? Yes, but that shouldn't stop you to not include them.

"As the sun moves round, the shadows change; and popular fiction of the first half of the twentieth century seems to a reader of today to be darkened by shadows that readers then didn't notice. Anti-Semitism, for example." Perhaps. Or perhaps the prevailing culture of the current reader is applied to the fiction even though said fiction was not consciously made with those attitudes and beliefs in mind.

This particular Gnostic belief reminds me of something in Marvel. There's an extreme nativist group called Sons of the Serpent. They believe that just like how the Serpent cast out Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, so too they will cast out non-Americans from the US. It's actually a group that's been around for a while in comics and often clashes with Captain America.

"The Ophites (the name comes from the Greek ophis, serpent) emerged in Egypt early in the Christian era, and according to an authority quoted by Nuttall, they believed that 'the serpent by which our first parents were deceived, was either Christ himself or Sophia [wisdom], concealed under the form of that animal.'" Pullman feels inspired by this for HDM trilogy, and honestly, I can't blame him. It's fascinating.

"But whatever your talent is, you have to discover its nature and go with the grain of it. Otherwise, not only will you be perpetually frustrated and dissatisfied, because making the will do the work of the imagination is a melancholy business; but the work you produce will not express the nature of what it's made of." It's a pity that I can't find recordings of these essays online to share. Ugh!

"It's a question of finding the grain of your own talent and going with it, not against it. You have to observe yourself closely and honestly, and see what you're good at, and what you enjoy, and what you can do with the imagination you have." Perfectly said!