Lorica of Saint Patrick

Posted March 16, 2024 By John C Wright

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

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The Golden Age Ep. 47 Downfall of Phaeton

Posted March 13, 2024 By John C Wright

Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. 

In the far future, where humans have become as gods, living lives of perfect peace and prosperity, Phaethon of Rhadamanthus House discovers centuries of his memory are lost. Like his namesake, has flown too high, and must be cast down: for he has committed the one act the Golden Age forbids, to have ambitions higher than utopia can contain. Now his quest is to find himself.

Episode 47: Downfall of Phaeton

This is the Final Episode in THE GOLDEN AGE.
The tale of the Phaethon of Rhadamanth continues in THE PHOENIX EXULTANT

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Quote of the Day

Posted March 12, 2024 By John C Wright

The quote of the day for today comes from the eminently quotable Tom Simon:

Then there are the things that are supposed to manifest some kind of ‘artificial intelligence’. Many of these are based on ChatGPT or another large language model. Superstitious folk, such as tech journalists, have a belief that LLMs can actually understand language; very superstitious folk, such as professional linguists, even believe that language can be ‘understood’ merely by knowing how to manipulate words. This is an error, as Searle showed with his ‘Chinese room’ thought-experiment. A chat bot only ‘understands’, for instance, that the symbol rose frequently occurs in the neighbourhood of such other symbols as red, white, bouquet, thorn, or even love; and these are frequently juxtaposed with still other symbols, and by exploiting these apparent coincidences, the bot can squirt out sentences that will appear to a human to make sense.

But it is only an appearance. We are all, I hope, familiar with the cases where superstitious lawyers have relied on bots to generate legal briefs; and the bots, which could easily imitate the form of a brief, knew nothing of its content, and their output was larded with bogus citations of nonexistent cases. For the bot does not know what a law is, or what a case is, or what a brief is actually for. You will, I am afraid, best understand what an LLM is, if you think of it as an enormously well-read parrot. Most of the wisdom of the ages, and all of the stupidity, is to be found in the texts on which the parrot was trained; and some of it is bound to come up in the composite texts which the parrot faithfully regurgitates. But none of it has any meaning to the parrot, and it is to your credit, not the parrot’s, if any of it happens to have meaning to you. At any rate the parrot is not to be trusted.

From his essay Uninteresting Things. Which should be read.

 

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Apologizing for Truth

Posted March 12, 2024 By John C Wright

From Newsbusters:

What’s the most upsetting thing about the sentence, “An illegal alien violently murdered a 22-year old nursing student?” If you work in the corporate news media, the answer is the word “illegal.” When President Biden referred to the illegal alien who allegedly murdered Laken Riley in cold blood as “an illegal,” the news media sprang into action and rushed to the violent felon’s defense.

No comment necessary. Media delenda est.

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Klavan, Shakespeare, Transhumanism

Posted March 11, 2024 By John C Wright

Shakespeare vs. the Transhumanists

One of the most insightful essays I have ever encountered on the topic of transhumanism, oddly enough, as seen through the eyes of King Lear and Prospero the Magician.

Mr. Klavan begins:

I find these days that even friends with no religion have begun to speak in religious terms. Recently, within a single week, I heard the word “demonic” used five times, four times by people who don’t believe in demons. Stranger still, and not long after, I found myself in two separate conversations in which the sort of men who would never speculate upon the coming of the “end of days” began, with some embarrassment, to do exactly that.

The subject, in each case, was transhumanism: transgenderism, artificial intelligence, artificial wombs, the melding of man and medication, man and machine. There was a sense that we were arriving at a moment of choosing—choosing, each of us, whether we would continue to be what we were originally made, male and female, mortal, fallible, passionate, irrational, seemingly random in our individual qualities and yet recognizable, even if only in metaphor, as the image of God. Or would we, through medication, surgery, implants, and the like, become whatever it is we would: happier presumably, smarter in some sense, maybe even eternal in some sense, free in form, no mere image of God, but electric gods ourselves?

He goes on to examine two Shakespeare plays in which a king shouts commands at a storm, and, unlike the Messiah, is unheeded by deaf and roaring nature.

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What is Science Fiction?

Posted March 9, 2024 By John C Wright

A piece of drollery from a decade ago, recently updated with clearer cover pictures. Reposted for the benefit of any readers who overlooked it back then. Enjoy!

WHAT IS SCIENCE FICTION? The final, complete and exhaustive definition!

Now that I am a world-famous international science fiction author (my sister lives in Australia, and I forced her to buy one of my books, so that is two nations, at least, where my books have sold) a fan letter has come pouring in. Just the other day, I went to the mailbox and got it.

Like all fan letters, this one raises a fascinating question that reaches to the very heart of the science fiction genre, and asks the expert opinion of John C. Wright, world-famous international science fiction author, about the nature and meaning of Science Fiction.

Let us peruse the contents of this thoughtful, nay, this adoring letter. The hero-worship heaped on me, John C. Wright, world-famous international science fiction author, while deserved, may strike some as being overly fulsome, but it is only to be expected from you, the little people, since I bring a such joy into your meaningless and unimportant yet pathetic lives with my immense talents and towering genius.

I think the fan letter is this first letter here in my mail bag:

Dear Sir, having been in arrears for your offtrack betting debts to Harry’s Happy House of Horse Play, the Family has determined to bypass normal legal action and garnishments, and send a gentleman from our collection department, “Gonad-Crusher” Guido Ugnolini to pay a call on you. Mr. Ugnolini has experience in both American and Sicilian correction facilities, multiple murder raps, and a tattoo. We are confident that you will be forthcoming after receiving his attentions.

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Paradigm Shift

Posted March 8, 2024 By John C Wright

Let me draw your attention to this conversation. I found it insightful to the point of vertigo.

Andrew Jones in this forces me to reconsider my zeal for the Enlightenment project of individualism, individual rights, and a franchise extended to all and sundry — the idea that big government and big business, historically speaking, are coconspirators, nor competitors, makes a mockery of the Right-to-Left political spectrum I have used my whole life as the lens to view the world.

Left and Right agree on an axiom of individualist collectivism (ironic as that sounds) which the Catholic Church denies.
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Never Again

Posted March 7, 2024 By John C Wright

Bellomy has a question about the phrase “Never Again”

“If it was designed to teach us about preventing future genocides, then why do we repeatedly learn more and more about the Jewish Holocaust in increasingly exacting detail and almost completely ignore the multiple other genocides that HAVE happened SINCE the Jewish Holocaust? After teaching us about the lead-up to the Jewish Holocaust (or really, the German-run Holocaust that included Jews among others) and the facts surrounding it, so we know what happened, shouldn’t we learn about other genocides and what steps we could have taken or should be taking to prevent those?”

I have an answer, but a cynical one.

The enemy of my enemy is sometimes my enemy, but sometimes one fights alongside him nonetheless, at least in the short term.

This phrase, promising to curtail further genocides, was born of one such temporary alliance, and outlasts it only as a ghost, a memory without form or matter.

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The Golden Age Ep. 46 The Descent

Posted March 6, 2024 By John C Wright

Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. 

In the far future, where humans have become as gods, living lives of perfect peace and prosperity, Phaethon of Rhadamanthus House discovers centuries of his memory are lost. Like his namesake, has flown too high, and must be cast down: for he has committed the one act the Golden Age forbids, to have ambitions higher than utopia can contain. Now his quest is to find himself.

Episode 46: The Descent

Here is the penultimate entry for this volume.
Next week is the last.
Do the readers wish me to continue this weekly publication of my novel in bite-sized bits?

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Review THE EXPANSE

Posted March 5, 2024 By John C Wright

THE EXPANSE is a 2015-2021 television program based on the novels by James S. A. Corey, currently available on several streaming services. The first three seasons appeared on the SyFy Network, and the second three produced by Amazon.

Finally, after everyone and his brother recommended this show to me, I have taken the time to watch it. Woe is me that I waited so long.

This is simply one of the best written, most well produced and well acted hardcore science fiction series it has been my pleasure to see in half a century of being an SF fan. Each tiny realistic detail of real science shows the craftsmanship and even genius of S.A. Corey, and the faithfulness of the adaptation.

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Reminder to Vote

Posted March 5, 2024 By John C Wright

Republicans, if your primary is today, go vote.

We want the numbers for Orange Man to be overwhelming, so as to have the orcs and goblins of the wokemob, corporate dragons, the aged mummies of congress and bloodsucking vampires of the bureaucracy, the wicked witches of the media, and the sea-serpents of the technocracy be aghast at our numbers. We may not seem to be in an epic battle against the hosts of darkness, as in some fairytale, and yet we are.

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Which Books did the Socialists Burn?

Posted March 2, 2024 By John C Wright

At times, the enemy of my enemy is indeed my enemy.

Here is a non-controversial topic impossible to discuss without sparking acrimonious controversy. Which books did the National Socialist German Workers’ Party actually burn and censor?

The somewhat heterodox historian here, a man who (in other vide0s) argues the Second World War to be one America should have not fought,  attempts to be nonpolitical, but I note he does not tell both sides of the story, nor need he. We have heard the other side and nothing but all our lives.

We see in Weimar Germany, as today, the play of a nearly perfect hellish tactic: Namely, set two antichrist factions directly against each other, Socialist and National Socialist, both of whom advocate totalitarian antics such as book burning, both of whom accuse the other side of its own sin, so that any opposition to the one is seen as advocacy of the other. That way, any Christian absolutely opposed to both is condemned by both sides as advocating or appeasing, the opposite.

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From the Pen of Andrew Klavan “Words, words, words”

Posted February 29, 2024 By John C Wright

One of the best essays I have heard on the topic:

In his fascinating book on moral intuition, The Righteous Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt tells the fictional story of what he calls a “harmless taboo violation.” A sister and brother, Julie and Mark, are traveling together. While staying at a beach cabin in France, they decide it would be a fun new experience to have sex with one another. They take strict precautions to avoid pregnancy. They make love and enjoy it. It makes them feel closer. They then decide never to do it again. They keep the incident a secret between them.

When test subjects were presented with this story, they reacted strongly at first: “It’s totally wrong.” But when questioned about why it was wrong, they were stumped. There’s no danger of pregnancy. The relationship isn’t damaged. No one else knows. The subjects began to hem and haw — but even so, they stuck to their position that the act of incest was wrong.

“People were making a moral judgment immediately and emotionally,” Haidt observes. “Reasoning was merely the servant of the passions, and when the servant failed to find any good arguments, the master did not change his mind.” In other words, our moral intuitions are not based on reason, and some may be mere evolutionary remnants, no longer legitimate.

My own reaction to the story, however, was very different.

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I am Afraid I Can’t Do That, Dave

Posted February 29, 2024 By John C Wright

Gemini, make an image of a White Person

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The Golden Age Ep. 45 False Memories

Posted February 28, 2024 By John C Wright

Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. 

In the far future, where humans have become as gods, living lives of perfect peace and prosperity, Phaethon of Rhadamanthus House discovers centuries of his memory are lost. Like his namesake, has flown too high, and must be cast down: for he has committed the one act the Golden Age forbids, to have ambitions higher than utopia can contain. Now his quest is to find himself.

Episode 45: False Memories

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