\

W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

CHAPTER 6

THE MORON AND CHANCE

DRIFTING AND DREAMS

MR MORON

One day, in my imagination, as in a dream, I was talking to a moron. He was not at all moronic. This may seem a contradiction in terms; but then, so is naturalism. Let us examine the matter with Mr Moron.

Mr Moron, I understand that you are a self-made man, and glory in your past, rather than feeling, shall we say, a measure of ... ah, shame or mortification concerning it ?

MM: Surely this is so. Once I had you know, no head at all, couldn't get a head start, thought heads was tails and tails head, was a masterpiece of stupefaction and a grating in the system of finding nice words for damaged things, so that they termed me a mighty midget, mm for short, just as for short, I am MM now,  Mr Moron. Indeed ...

I interrupted at this point, being not at all divergent from the practice of many notable journalists.

But wait! I exclaimed. You are actually proud, could one say, of your past as a moron ?

MM: Certainly I am, why take yourself for instance - and perhaps it would be better to take yourself far off, for I am a busy man, but were YOU born a moron ? Even in my slightest imaginations of your recent past, I should doubt it. Have YOU lifted yourself by your own towers, constructed by your own bare hands, from the dirt to the dynamic of my present self ?

Not actually, I concurred.

Then I am PROUD, would you not be so, to have come so far with so little!

How actually, I asked, seeing this word was useful and effective, did you manage ? I mean, when you wanted a mind, that functions and fulminates, if you will pardon the designation, as yours now undoubtedly does, did you work out what the works would have to be, and then think them up, institute and activate them ?

Of course I did! How else ? I was all there was to help me, for nobody knew much about morons.

Most intelligent, I am sure, having no functional mind to breach the simplest of mental constructions, that you, being deprived of that ability from the outset, then used it so effectively.

All it takes is will! he said. You just realise your situation, arouse your will and implement our own designs for what you are going to be.

Permit me to ask just one little question, I ruminated. If you did not HAVE a mind how did you put your MIND to the task of MAKING a mind ? I do not mean you had NO mind, mind you, but your mind, if we are to admire your initiative and expertise beyond that of the most brilliant men of our time, must have had a certain lustre at the first to conceive, concoct and implement the marvel you now are, an example of mankind indeed.

MM: DO IT! Of course I did it. All you need is WILL, and if you are determined, the sky is the limit.

At this, I left this remarkable gentleman, who was busy signing autographs and seemed to find the intrusion of any actual thought as a rather asinine performance anyway.

HOW could you USE what you did not HAVE, whatever your will ? If a baby is wilful, does it make the Empire State Building ? If a six year old (with perhaps rather more than Mr Moron's earlier ability), by the most illustrious examples of wanting his own way, manage to create works of art ? Or does a rampant intellectually deprived youth, even, in a fit of determination create a new form of mathematics - I mean one that actually works ?

Not actually! (This word is really taking off - but confessedly this is purposive, for the ACTUAL is in such divorce in all of this, from the FANCIFUL, such as the bloated verbal performance of MM, that it is well to jar even if by a comparatively cacophonic repetitive device!)

What then does one make of MM ? Nothing. Air, a bloated pretender, seeking to sensationalise some earlier disequilibrium such as often happens, and to make it appear that rather than restoring the mind he had, he had actually created it. NO ONE would be deceived by him! (except of course those who want to be deceived). In the course of nature and life, such things do not happen! If you do not HAVE mental ability, then by no stretch of the imagination will you ever create it!

THE SUB-MORONIC

One day, nothing at all was having its morning cup of tea, and reading the newspaper. It had been considering for some time the possibility of becoming something, so it set about it, stirred by one of the articles which it found in that day's paper.

Taking thought, and instituting strict laws of facilitation and developmental technique, it first converted itself into something, so that the problems of self-contradiction might then be avoided - for nothing does not have illumination with which to read, papers to read or mornings or cups of tea or other beverages, or knowledge of what it would be like if things were different, which of course they could not be, since there are, with nothing, no things in the first place; but if you are going to be imaginative, let's go.

Thus, on this particular ... ah, time, he, or it, developed into something. Many readers will, even now, notice nothing particularly extravagant about this, since from early childhood most will have had this modern sort of fairy story from the TV, primary school, parents, and various books, radio sessions and teachers.

We might as well proceed, since the sub-moronic (the system in view, not the 'Nothing', henceforward, MN, for Mr Nothing), is going places in this little story.

Having become something, the idea of becoming Something occurred to MN. Concocting in the midst of his ever alert and active imagination, the concept of thought, he made out the coincidental and co-operative manoeuvres necessary for brains, nervous systems and that sort of thing, and instituting them with the ease with which evolution's myths always work, he made the thing, snugly working in its fastidiously integral totality.

Then there was a problem. Having 'solved' the difficulties of having cells with wrapping complete to preserve them from the destructive forces of the environment, the energy compartment, the transcription department (for you really don't want to have to do all this work over and over again, not ... actually!), and the executive wing to deploy the transcriptions and make them operative, and of course, the organs and tissues needed for the whole to have something ON which to work, he then realised suddenly that in making himself in this way, he had omitted a little thing called 'mind'. How in the world (he made one while thinking, so that there would be suitable resources) could he make a mind ?

Transmissions of impulses are one thing, useful in any tape-recorder in playing with coded images or electrical signals; but how could he get the thoughts which they were to convey, the ideas themselves going ?
 

Knowing a thing or two, by this time, being Something, and increasingly MN, he worked out a way. He just applied his will, and made it happen. It is quite easy in this kind of story.

So that solved that little problem. However, he needed to have a universe which would be co-ordinate with this mind, so he adjusted a few things, and made them mutually interactive, and in the MN side of things, comprehensible. That solved another problem, for having wrought this wonder, made this marvel, he could now at least in principle, understand what he was doing, and this helped most considerably.

However,  as he mused about the needs of getting some place (and he worked out what that place would be very artistically), he began to see that musing is the one thing which is beyond ideas, for it creates them, and imagination is beyond concepts, in that it makes them, and that will is beyond thinking, since it directs it; and he could not for a long time see how to make this kind of thing, and of course, he HAD to make it since he had been using it, and in order to account for himself, when he really finished being MN, he HAD to have the thing.

HOW HOW HOW! For days (he made them so that there would be a time dimension), he thought about how the imagination he was using could be created. Then he hit upon it! He would contrive it, by using his imagination. Now the astute reader may wonder how he could in any case be using what was not even there, but in this kind of story, this interrupts the flow, and is counter-cultural, so we do not ask that sort of question.  It disturbs the atmosphere.

Having then willed imagination and spirit into existence, he realised that he was faced with another problem, absurd in a way, but then in this kind of story, absurdity is its milieu, so that was no problem; people are used to it and speak in solemn tones in universities about 'nature' and its 'needing' or 'making, moulding, contriving' and that sort of thing, reaching out to the great designs of all time, with that energetic imagination which, like MN, it of course always uses. It looks for the great designs, makes minds out of non-mind, and will out of non-will, with a facility so extraordinary that it is clear that its example is to be followed, as man seeks to become super-man, and a yet more remarkable kind of fellow than he is already.

But this other problem ? Oh, it was just that the will had to be integrated in the analytical confines of the mind (so that they could co-operate), and work with a directedness which would make it an operative whole rather than just a facility in general, oozing about or having no habitat.  So he quickly saw to that, and one day he met MM. Now Mr Moron was very impressed with the work already done by Nothing from the beginning, indeed before there was any possibility of a beginning, since a beginning is something, and when Nothing was all, there was no place to begin, or beginning for a place, or indeed any mind or will to use it if it were.

A LITTLE CHAT WITH MM

Being very well impressed then, with MN, MM talked to him for a bit (MN invented talking and coded symbolic mental interchange and communion to enable this, while they were looking or looming at each other - it was perhaps getting a bit embarrassing as these things can be, even in stories), and then they decided what to do.  MM would simply TAKE OVER from MN. He was feeling a bit tired after inventing the very possibility of inventing in the first place, and had never quite got over it, so was happy to pass on the reins for the great adventure.

We already know about MM.

So that is the ... er, actually the way the story goes.

Great is it not ?

As a story, a bit luny! someone will graciously comment. Agreed. I mean, some might say, it is nothing other than a long series of begging the question, ignoring the need, assuming the presence of what is BEING created IN ORDER to get it, and is such a muddle-headed mulch of meaningless verbal jargon and jumble that it is wonder anyone would read it.

One can only agree.

But dreams can be like that, one replies. I suddenly see that 'one' has become 'someone' and that he is talking to me.

Who said this was a dream ?

I do, was my reply.

THE ULTRA-SUB-MORON

Why have you told this then ? asked my interlocutor.

Ah! I said.

Ah! he lampooned. Ah! What is this ah!

Ah! I replied.

At this, he looked at me with narrowing, quizzical eyes, and with a sudden gleam of almost inspiration, he pursued the point.

I see! he ejaculated. You are going to say that CHANCE^*1 is LESS than the sub-moronic ?

Not actually, I responded. It is just that it is the ultimate sub-moron. You strip  from the moron everything he had as a moron, and then keep on going until there is no vestige of intelligence, no dimness of wit, however obscured, left at all. Then you approach the 'system' and ask it what it has. Nothing, it says blithely, since it is Spring and it is feeling vaguely happy, which it does not do so often, and so is being a bit slack.

Are you equipped with intelligence ? you ask the system. It does not reply,  actually, since it does not have  enough to know that you spoke. Are you filled with mini-power pockets left by a Creator then, so that these can be undone by radio-control, from time to time, so that you could be created ? No reply. I looked about and could see  no such pockets, but just space and form and laws, multiplied and enormous in their cohesion and their interplay.

Did you make these ? I asked. It did not reply, for the reason aforementioned.

One does not like to push the envelope on these poor systems, so one had to reflect before proceeding. After all, it cannot know, the system, what is best, or even good for that matter, dwell on it, imagine it, concur with it, develop it, create it or construe it. Not only does it have no ratchet to keep the best, as some irrelevant computer disalogues (the negative of 'analogues') do, but the very concept is meaningless in a world without concepts. That you see, is the material system that so many think of so fondly as if an uncle or something of that kind. But actually, it is not so. It is more like a boarding house keeper who is not interested, does not keep house, and does not have boarders.

Whole realms need creating for items so much as to exist inside them, then integrals as well as variables, codes, commands, conception, coherence and consistency with the introduction, with all the vigour of imagination, of compositions overall, sub-letting peripheral and attendant systems, compositions minimising by contrast all the surmisings of man, so that he is wholly outclassed before he arrives - and for that matter, after it (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7). To the extent he CAN act, he is able because he has been acted upon, and the product speaks of the Producer who invented it. Not very glorifying, certainly, to man; but then, glory must go where it belongs.

Systems are invented, new layers are invented, and not circumvented,  coalesce in community with all the lively rigours that went before, so that after the manner of creation, which is not available for artlessness, and requires imagination, they arrrive conniving

Assuredly from system I had derived no answer. It seemed best then to proceed and question further.

Are you better than a moron ? I asked it. A passing quark smiled. Now you may say that if there is one thing that a quark is not good at, it is smiling, for it would be more than a quirk or a lurk.  Quite right! But this one did, you see, because all this is in the imagination. That, you understand in all of this, is the only way it could be.

HOW could that be ? one asks.

The quark with a quirk supplied the answer:

Just for a lark! it admitted, since it is all dream anyway.

Oh that, he continued,  it is because we were instituted by a MIND which could think all the necessary thoughts,  and CREATED by a POWER which being correlative to the mind, had all the needful implements, and FASHIONED by an intelligence, which could not only think as our models MM and MN did  in our dream, but imagine mightily; and our universe and its matter, the forms of things and their endless laws, ways, organisational contrivances and intrigues, are devised by a WISDOM adequate, actually, for the result. That is the way of things in this world, that our very thought is conditional on the truth of causality, and collapses at once in ruins without it, since even definitions are rationally construed and applied, and applicable indeed in the universe which finds them cosy in kind.

What then are we actually ? the quark asks with a twinkle.

Actually ? Let me cite from an earlier work, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 8, and perhaps this little work on individuality and spirituality, will help ? You might like to consult Stepping Out for Christ
Ch. 9 also, I pursued.
 

By all  means! came the gracious reply (dreams can have this facility of courtesy to any level, and it does help clarity, for it is the irrelevant thrust in from time to time that helps make MC work as badly as he designedly does). But by now the quark, deeming that enough is enough, as things can even in dreams, left the stage for another. The transition was scarcely noticed, but very conspicuous for our purpose.

Who, asked my interlocutor, who had mysteriously returned (they do in dreams), in the world is MC ?

Oh that, I replied, is Master Confusion. His only hope is confusion so he is often rude, always rambunctious and really rummy (rumbustious is one way this sort of thing is related to intoxication, but this is an intoxication with the IDEAL of never understanding anything, and since it is really hard to do, this is often used to help the cause).

Oh! he replied, since he had been thinking along those lines, and did not want it to show.

Let us then, no longer arrested, return to our citation from Ch. 8 noted above.

Quite, he replied; so I spread it out like this.

The spirit of man can order worship of matter, of mind or of spirit; and it can then proceed to order worship of spirits, or come to grips with the originating brilliance, amplitude and magnificence of the Creator of all these synthetically, but specifically co-ordinated aspects of man, and seeking His mind, His Spirit and His wisdom, go beyond all limits.

Now this must be understood carefully. This is NOT to say that the spirit of a man can go to the Spirit of God and have no endemic limits. Man is man and not God. Man is able to have his thoughts interrupted by a blow on the head. He is able, when God so acts,  to make connections with the infinite power of God and then order events (cf. John 6:29, 10:26, Ephesians 1:4, and Jeremiah 1, where you see the divine foreknowledge and intimate relationship to the prophet in a manner entirely individual, yet appropriate for all that, to God relative to a man). Like someone who has limited power with matches to make light, he may find a switch and turn it on; so that if the generators are in place and the transmission lines, and the electrical apparatus, and the relationship to the switch, amazing amplifications of light may come.

This is not a matter of the development of the FINGERS at the physical level; or merely of the THOUGHT at the mental level; for it implies the THOUGHT of another in making in the switch in the first place.

When however you turn to the Maker of the Switches, to the matrix manufacturer, to the concept co-ordinator, to the schema initiator, to the synthetic structuring engineer, to the spiritual engenderer on a model of some independence, that is to God (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3,10), then there is again an infinite difference for this simple reason, that there are no limits to Him, since it all depends on Him.

He is what He is; and in fact, is much more like the way some people seem to imagine they are, than they are! indeed infinitely more in that direction. The directions themselves are His.

No force, no power, no future, no potential and of course no opposition can transcend, amend or dictate, direct  or require of Him. If it could, it would be God. If there were a group, that would be God; and that would require as we have often seen on this site, the structural engineer of their communicative powers of intercourse of spirit, and so on, leading always to ONE. Without limit, however, He is when accessed by man, an engenderer of more types and indeed specifications of individuality. For at this level, we transcend mere types, but not structure, and move into the FRIENDSHIP with God, which means a quality of spiritual penetration, a power of spiritual ordering and a place of spiritual revitalisation (Isaiah 40), which is without limit.

Thus the limited person, not God, the created one who is not original, but generated, derivative, specified by God, nevertheless having access to God: it is he who has access to unlimited power and grace, love and mercy. That presupposes the other topics of salvation, sin, covenant and so on, of course, but in this overview we are far more concerned to put things in their place than to establish them; for that has been done so often that the mere repetition would be otiose. We continue in our tracking then.

For the interested reader, this material is to be found HERE.

 

THE CHANGING FACE

But where is the Being of whom you speak ? asked MN, who seemed to be recovering from his labours, and in case the reader should question the likelihood of ever doing so after such exploits, we merely recall the fact that we are dealing with a dream, as is all naturalism (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Chs. 4-6).  Also, according to dream procedures, MN was in some obscure way also MC, and they blended like husband and wife.

Where ? I asked, astonished. Yes, where! he replied, gathering in force, like a snow drift.

I think, I declared, I see your drift.

Drift! he exclaimed. Drift! I am not drifting.

Wrong again, I replied, for since you began from nothing to become a self-made something, abandoning causes altogether since nothing in nothing can produce something causatively, so the only hope is a dream: you are nothing but drift.

It was clear that this proved offensive, so I added: You see, drifting in dreams into highly correlated, precisely activated, wisely en-willed (that is a  new mint, so it needs a hyphen), comprehensively comprehensible concatenations and perspectives, ideations and concepts, correlative to highly investigable and wholly consonant constructions of engineering magnificence, without acknowledging that actually YOU did not do it, MN, this is just a current of thought!

Well, that is a little better, he smirked. At least now I am in a current, and that is going places.

Yes, I agreed. It is a current, starting with drift, and ending in dynamic, that is true.

What do you mean by that ? he asked, arching one eye-brow in a peculiar contribution to the farce which his whole act had been from the first, but then why not: this is the stuff of dreams!

WHAT dynamic ? he queried, with one of those dark, slanting, slightly sidelong looks which villains in pictures master so well.

Why, I said the one we saw in the excerpt above. You know, the One who ACTUALLY did it all, is not so pleased with the use of the will to will things into being in reality, since this particular modus operandi does not work, and He likes you to face reality with the splendid equipment which He has provided for you.

Do you mean that this drift is One, or one ? he asked.

The drift is one, in the pronominal sense of being a drift, which the clause construction demands, I replied; but the the One who made you so that you could, if you will, drift into the dynamics that mount, you know as with most storms, in time, this is the One who is not so pleased.

How do YOU know! he queried, with another dark sidelong look, as if my face were buried in the ground, and he were looking at it.

Oh by the evidence of logic and history, I replied. You see imaging and imagining what is not true, and is mere dream-time romancing, is like stealing. You use what He made, your imagination, to imagine that nothing much made it, and that nothing made nothing much. It is all nothing. To make Him equivalent of and equal to nothing is nothing to write home about.

I am not saying that it is! he responded. I would not write home about it, since they would never believe me, but I have made my way in the world in dreams, so I dream along with professors innumerable and their entourages, like Mecca hosts, coming along for the crush.

In fact, I pursued, there has been ONE man and ONE book and ONE logic which in three agree.

How do you make that out ? he asked.

Simply, I continued. The book of life is written in your cells in DNA, in one language for all life; and the book of the Writer of the DNA, who as with all collation of symbol and engineering and architecture, requires what it takes, intelligence, wrote another book. Your personal book gives you stuff to work with, called a brain and body. His personal book gives you material to work from, called words of life.

Is that why Peter was  told to speak all the words of this LIFE ? he asked.

You know that ? I enquired.

Of course! he responded. I do not spend all my time dreaming: it is too boring. Sometimes, just sometimes I like to look at fact.

Quite a remarkable gentleman! I replied.
 

Well, actually, he replied with a slight sneer, I am not a gentleman. I am a devil.

I know, I replied, but what kind of devil ?

A clever devil! Who else could have millions follow him in a dream.

It is in Acts 5, he pursued. You see I know my Bible.

Well yes, that is why it was called all the words of this life, when Peter was told so to speak, after being delivered physically from prison, just as Christ some little time before, had been delivered from the grave.

I know, he said. You see I know these things and can see that they are so, for when someone TELLS you that He is going to stage a physical resurrection ...

Yes, I know, see Joyful Jottings 22-25, he sneered, and SMR Ch. 6. I have been reading your work.

Good! I replied, though there is much more on it than that. However, I see that I need only summarise for you, since you are already so knowledgeable. I need only note that if the MORON could contrive to create ONLY in fantasy, how much less would the sub-moronic, something without even the first vestiges of thought or understanding, knowledge or its existence to find or discover, utilise or deploy as a resource. If we are going to deal with the moronic, we must avoid being like it.

Ignoring this, he returned to my offer to summarise.

Pray do! he replied to my offer,  with an exaggerated courtesy, a smoke-screen for a depraved leer.

	God told the world what He would do, and over a millenium later, He did it.
	Since the powers of this   world, being evil and not at all accommodating to the actual God, had everything to lose, it was obvious that something had to be done to STOP HIM!
	Rome did not want it, and so consented to the crucifixion. Jerusalem in its power structure, did not want it, and so URGED the crucifixion.
	But God always does what He says, and His speech covers all power, every dimension, the scope and summit of history and the coming of Christ. So He did it, and that stuck in the gullet of history like a fish-bone, one of those rather curly ones, that skewer your tender parts of the throat. From miracle of healing to miracle of resurrection, from words of wisdom to site of birth, from mode of rejection to results for Israel, it has come to pass like a sunset, down to the last colour.
	The Gospel was predicted too, as was the course of world history in its nature, till now, and now most particularly (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), so that history can mock the people who mock, God having foreseen the very nature of their mockery, and carefully inscribing it in His word for man, the Bible (Joyful Jottings 12).

Who is this Christ! asked the devil, almost as if awakening: you see he dreamed so much that it was almost his normal personality.

He, I replied is the One who was sent (Isaiah 48:16, Micah 5:1-3, Psalm 45 cf. SMR pp. 532ff.), from the eternal precincts of God Himself, His equal and expression (Hebrews 1:1-3), to show as man what man should be, what God is and where the meeting is to be held. It was on a Cross actually.

Yes, I resumed, after he had a quite inexplicable bout of rasping cough, it is He, for God was not too impressed with people equating Him with nothing or somewhere on the way, lying and defrauding Him of His place, and so confusing millions and all of that. He took action as you could well see. (Cf. Swift Witness   6,  Repent or Perish Chs. 2,   7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms   6  -7, SMR pp. 92ff., It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5.) He sent His word, His Son and His salvation; and He is getting nearer to sending His judgment, right amidst people irrationally scoffing at the last vast case in the flood, as He said they would (II Peter 3:3-5).

This Christ then ? Oh, He is the One for whom it was all mapped out millennia ahead even in our transcript for our own use, the Bible.

He is the One who had to be born in Bethlehem, who is eternal, as Micah said, to be sold for 30 pieces of silver as Zechariah disclosed, come on an ass's colt, as the same prophet declared, die for sin and being pierced as Isaiah and the Psalms declare together with Zechariah, experience mortal thirst, as the Psalms show, do miracles of healing in the too hard basket for mere man (Isaiah 29, 35), and speak words that none could answer as Isaiah exhibited: the One who had to die around AD 30 as we now write dates, as Daniel declared (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), and being rejected by the Jewish nation (Isaiah 49:7), go to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6).

This was done in vast measure by the Gospel associated with His coming to offer peace to man in the name and indeed in the very nature of God (Philippians 2).

For millennia millions have tried to find one fault, one blemish, but all they have ever found is that each new generation of attackers attacks only one thing effectively, that is the attacks of the generation that preceded, or those accusers before that.

They pass. He remains. His Gospel remains, His remedy stays, His works do not cease, His word prevails in things small and great, with Israel (cf. SMR Chs. 8  -  9), the Church (News 121, 122, SMR Ch. 8), and the world.

 

That is all. He did it. There is One. He is it. You need Him, I declared to the devil.

Now, said the devil, that you mention it, I do. However I have this irresistible flight pattern inscribed in my  innermost being, to FLEE, and so I shall have to go.

I am most sad that you are a devil! I cried, earnestly lamenting his fate. O don't worry, he said as he left, it is all only a dream - you know, like my professional business, naturalism, just a dream.

Then I became awake as from a dream; but he didn't.

 

 

 

NOTE

 

*1

See Ancient Words, Modern Deeds,  Chs.   9,   13.