The solstice is past; the year is renewed.

I have returned to Germany from the land of my ancestors, where I visited family and friends, including the famed and terrible Elberry. I supplied him with absinthe and he supplied me with wine and whisky and a good time was had by all.

Between drinks and viewings of such cinematic masterworks as the Seventh Seal and American Psycho, Elberry opined that there is danger in abstraction, and the possibility of great evil. Unfortunately I forget his exact words, because I have a memory like a sieve, but I agree. The abstract and invisible and ideal can seduce you not merely into doing evil for the greater good, but also into hypocrisy and slacking off in doing good.

Not that the evil necessarily lies in the invisible and conceptual - it's the disconnect between concept and reality, between thought and action. You can do evil with genuinely good intentions, or you can do evil with good intentions as a cover story (i.e. lie to yourself); it's easy to swap between the two. You can also wallow in admiration of a virtue so much you fail to practice it (thinking yourself, or any group you belong to, righteous because of the virtues you admire is dangerous - "we're better than they are because we care!", in any of its forms, is just asking for trouble). There's a world of quantitative difference between admiring charity and practicing it; self-sacrifice is a concept far easier to fall in love with than to practice.

Similarly for treating weakness. We are all sinners, all broken creatures in need of grace and forgiveness; this is not any big secret. Knowing this does not make it easier to forgive, nor confer immunity to despising people for their weakness. "$ACQUAINTANCE is a sinner and a stumbler" is easier to take when we don't know that, specifically, $ACQUAINTANCE does drugs, has cheated on their significant other, or looks at internet porn. Know the details and it may become yet harder to take.

Similarly for how we relate to God. Faith should be a lived experience - with dark nights of the soul when the experience dries up, admittedly, but there should be some reality to the soul's contact with God. A dry creed and/or intricate system of belief is, by itself, worthless (as all things are vanity and emptiness on their own). The soul hungers for God, not for a fundamental philosophical principle doubling as a distant imaginary friend. Our concept of God - or of anyone, for that matter - is limited, a spook in our heads that needs to engage in constant friction with the reality that corrects and transcends it to keep it alive. "No man shall teach his neighbour, saying 'know God'" - no man can teach his neighbour to know God, any more than he can teach his neighbour to know Fred down the road. (Which isn't to say he cannot tell his neighbour useful things about God (or Fred, for that matter), or that objective statements cannot be made about God (or Fred), or that God (or Fred) is merely an anthropomorphic expression of some existential principle, &c. &c.)

So, how does this apply to art? Art can be damaging (among other ways) if it encourages an attitude of complacency or superiority mentioned earlier, which it can do if it leaves a message of "you are better than X, as you care more than they do"; but it can also not only propose virtues but prime them for action. Art isn't real, but it isn't abstract either, so when it encourages, say, compassion, it's in the context of compassion to human beings flawed in particular, specific ways; when it encourages charity, it shows the action in a specific circumstance. (The power of a good example is similar; whether art should be said to provide canned good examples, or whether setting a good example is a form of performance art, is a question I have no answer for.)

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Regarding atheist morality, I shall return to the subject at some point, but not quite yet. I may also post extracts from recent reading material, including Robert Sheckley's excellent Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?, which I have almost finished. Happy new year, peeps.