Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Gender, Feminism, and Nihilism

I wanted to continue along yesterday's line of thought into a further discussion of manhood, and of sexual -- not "gender!" -- differences in general. With regard to gender, it is a leftist mind parasite with an interesting etiology. Mansfield points out that this weasel word was actually borrowed from grammar, which is surely no coincidence, given the convergence of feminism and infrahuman literary theories such as deconstruction. What looks like a superficially trivial (but coerced) change in language usage is actually an ontologically profound (but magical) manipulation of reality, i.e., changing sex, a rich essence with both immanent (horizontal) and transcendent (vertical) implications, into gender, an impoverished concept that is ultimately nihilistic to the core.

Sex is real. Gender is pure fantasy, a word game -- and another big reason why the left is ironically referred to as the "reality based community." Because brother, if you're not even sure if you're a boy or a girl -- or you think the differences are arbitrary, or assigned by culture, or self-selected -- then you are one messed up human being. And an even more messed up political party.

As I have mentioned before on numerous occasions, religion is the true humanism, whereas humanism always redounds to subhumanism or animalism. Yesterday I tried to show how the secular left doesn't really believe half of its own nonsense, at least not in any consistent way. For example, if they truly believe that Darwinism is a scientifically proven fact as opposed to flawed and partial theory, it leads in certain inescapable ways to an extreme right wing view (I won't say conservative or classical liberal, since they have entirely different implications) in which men are clearly superior to women in the only ways that matter. Since the leftist has already dispatched any appeals to transcendent truth, all that is left is power, and since men are more powerful than women, this seems the perfect recipe for a kind of Nietzschian fascism in which the strong rule the weak.

If we are reduced to obtaining our values from nature -- from the horizontal world only -- these are the values we will take away. Leftists don't like that brutal world of each against all, and with good reason. But since they also reject transcendent truth, they are essentially left with no choice but magic, including the word magic of "gender." Only religion properly deals with the world as it actually is and how it ought to be.

Again I refer back to Christopher Matthews' moronic question to the Republican candidates as to whether they believe in Darwinism or "creationism." For my part, I would not hesitate to say that so-called creationism -- including all of the inspired commentaries on Genesis -- explains much more about human beings than does Darwinism. Again, if we hew to a strict interpretation of Darwinism, we are left with some of the caricatures I outlined yesterday, of rigid sexual roles determined by millions of years of genetic evolution. Another way of saying it is that religion is actually much more scientific than Darwinism, if we expand science to mean understanding as much of reality as possible with our (capital R) Reason -- with the supernatural light of the intellect, or nous.

One reason doctrinaire Darwnians are so philosophically shallow is that they never trace the metaphysical implications of their own Darwinism, which quickly lead to hopelessly insoluble contradictions. For example, in Darwinism there can be no essences, only change. Nothing is fixed, everything is evolving, so that even the concept of "species" is problematic for Darwinians. Any "species" is just a temporary and random cluster of adaptations to shifting environmental conditions, so they don't really exist in any ontologically real way. They certainly have no value, let alone ultimate value.

And of course, human beings are just another species, which is to say "nothing" -- just a temporary chance collection of random genetic mutations. Human beings are entirely contingent and accidental, and certainly cannot be regarded as some kind of "end point" of evolution. Obviously there can be no such thing as "humanness," for that implies an essence, and essences are strictly forbidden in Darwinism. Whatever humans are today is temporary -- they were something different yesterday and will be something different again tomorrow.

Given such a simplistic view, how could quintessentially human categories such as "manliness" actually exist? For that matter, one naturally wonders how truth could exist, including the truth of Darwinism. In other words, how can a being that is intrinsically transient and therefore relative, built on the shifting sand of unceasing genetic change, ever arrive at the immutable?

In reality, the gulf between humans and animals is not just vast, it is infinite. This is not to suggest that there are not continuities. Of course there are. But Darwinians fraudulently begin from the top-down (something their theory actually doesn't allow them to do) to explain the roots of human traits. In other words, they never start with a primitive animal and show how this or that trait will eventually transform into something "higher." Rather, they presuppose the higher, and try to find some rough analogue of it in a lower beast. In short, Darwinians accept the same intelligible hierarchy of being we all do, but simply deny it. They do not actually explain man's descent from animals, but simply project certain distinctly human traits onto animals, which explains nothing.

In reality, there is much more to our sexual differences than Darwinism can ever explain. Again, if we deconstruct human essence and locate its "parts" in the genetic past, we will be left with nothing more than an aggressive animal that will do anything to survive and reproduce, which really doesn't explain much. In order to understand the essential equilibrium between man and woman, there are at least three orders of being that must be analyzed, only one of which involves the "natural" world of Darwinism.

As Schuon points out, there is first the sexual, biological, psychological and social relationship, which no one would deny. But on top of that is the human and fraternal relationship, and finally "the properly spiritual and or sacred relationship." In the first relationship -- the only one that can be addressed by leftists, feminists, Darwinians, and secularists in general -- "there is obviously inequality, and from this results the social subordination of woman, a subordination already prefigured in her physical constitution and her psychology."

Again, this is where you are left with the narrow scientistic view of human beings. In order to transcend it, you must either evolve into a religious understanding or "make some shit up," which is what the secular left does -- for example, by denying the reality of these profound sexual differences with the word-magic of "gender."

But Schuon points out that this first relationship "is not everything," for in the dimension of essential humanness, "woman is equal to man since like him she belongs to the human species; this is the plane, not of subordination, but of friendship; and it goes without saying that on this level the wife may be superior to her husband since one human being may be superior to another, whatever the sex."

But the operative term is essential humanness, for here we are again talking about a transcendent essence which is both real and permanent -- and nothing which is permanent can be explained by the intrinsic transience of any temporary Darwinian adaptation. Or put it this way: no matter how de facto unequal men and women are as a result of the random and transient changes of Darwinian evolution, they are nevertheless eternally equal because they are human beings. This is a self-evident truth that can only be seen with the higher intellect, not one that could ever be arrived at through the application of Darwinian principles.

Now, a critical point is that in one limited sense, man and woman are more or less complementary, which implies partiality or incompleteness. But this too has a spiritual significance, being, for example, that "man stabilizes woman, [and] woman vivifies man." Elsewhere, Schuon notes that "Man, in his lunar and receptive aspect, 'withers away' without the woman-sun that infuses into the virile genius what it needs in order to blossom; inversely, man-sun confers on woman the light that permits her to realize her identity by prolonging the function of the sun."

But man and woman are not just complementary and therefore partial; rather, they are perfections, but of different archetypes. They are divine manifestations -- not in their "accidental or fallen state, but in [their] primordial and principial perfection." Thus, not only is there a human essence, but there is also a male and female essence, each of the latter representing the perfections of certain divine qualities. Looked at in this way, each sex is intrinsically perfect, something complete, whole, and not subject to fundamental change without rendering it false and ugly. As such, chastity, on its most profound level, is an "upward" escape "from the polarity of the sexes and a reintegration of the unity of the primordial pontifex, of man as such." Only on this higher level does man contain woman within himself, and vice versa

This is why it is such a great abomination for one sex to take on the attributes of the other except as something added to the essence -- and only after one's essence has been realized. One must first be a man before a gentleman -- let alone something from the complementary sex. It is also why "homosexual marriage" represents such a monstrosity -- literally. Nothing could be more nihilisitic, for again, it presupposes that man is just "anything" and therefore nothing. Either we have an essential being -- which includes sex -- or we are nothing. And if we are nothing, it hardly matters if a man marries a man, a woman, or a watermelon.

In the third relationship -- the properly spiritual or sacred -- there is, paradoxically, a kind of "reciprocal superiority": "in love... the woman assumes in regard to her husband a divine function, as does the man in regard to the woman." For on this level, the adoration of the essence of the other is "a search for the Essence or the lost paradise."

Something which is "totally itself" is incapable of change, whereas something transient can only change, with no direction, goal or purpose. The human being is capable of humanness -- of discovering his true vocation -- because he is what he is but not altogether so. If he were simply a Darwinian machine, he would be a something, but a temporary and transient something, which is indistinguishible from nothing. Only humans can become themselves because they are simultaneously what they are and what they ought to be. And a human who fails to transcend himself and become what he ought to be is not even an animal. He is nothing. A gender. Or worse, a gender studies professor.

The ambiguity of the human state is that we are as it were suspended between God -- our essence -- and the human form, which is "made of clay"; we are so to speak a mixture of divinity and dust.... Hell is as it were the revolt of the cipher, of the nothingness that seeks to be all. When a man turns away from his divine Essence, his ego becomes like a stone dragging him downwards, and his Essence turns away from him; what then fills this vacuum is the dark essence, that of formal compression and the fall. -- F. Schuon

45 comments:

Gandalin said...

Bob,

Thank you for pointing out the way that the euphemism "gender" has degraded thinking on the subject of the two sexes. It would be interesting to trace this usage, as it had infiltrated the field of biology in which I was working almost 30 years ago, with descriptions of "gender-specific proteins." I always try to cajole the scientists with whom I work to use "sex" instead of "gender."

Anonymous said...

Same sex marriage isn't nihilist. Nihilists don't get married, duh.

Anonymous said...

Woof!

Magnus Itland said...

Actually, colleagues and I used "gender" instead of "sex" because software flags "sex" as a dirty word. For instance we are unable to send mail that contain the word "sex", even though it is important to our work. Luckily we have not had any creative responses to it.

Gandalin said...

"Because brother, if you're not even sure if you're a boy or a girl -- or you think the differences are arbitrary, or assigned by culture, or self-selected -- then you are one messed up human being."

I think that's quite true. We ought to consider hermaphrodites with the greatest compassion, but we should not argue that the anomalous defines the normal.

(Aside to Magnus, the infiltration of the euphemism "gender" was happening before e-mail and e-mail filtering programs existed.)

walt said...

Bob, you wrote that "... each sex is intrinsically perfect, something complete, whole, and not subject to fundamental change without rendering it false and ugly."

Like so many things in your posts, this is something I've intuited, but could probably never put into words myself.

It's an interesting quote. From one perspective, it could be seen as just fact, almost a banality, as you like to say. But taken differently, it has far-reaching implications.

NoMo said...

"What looks like a superficially trivial (but coerced) change in language usage is actually an ontologically profound (but magical) manipulation of reality..."

I don't know, Bob, doesn't it depend "...on what the meaning of the word 'is' is...if 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement..."? (BC)

Language is everything or nothing. Did the word become flesh or did flesh become the word?

CrypticLife said...

I find a disturbing undercurrent of bigotry in some of these posts.

No, I'm not talking about anti-homosexuality, for which you've given intelligible reasons.

I'm talking about the anti-animal bigotry here. With the exception of raccoons, there's rarely a positive mention of animals. In fact, you ascribe a set of characteristics to them they might not agree with, were they readers of your blog. You continue to assert they are not spiritual, yet I don't see any supporting evidence or even argument for this claim. You claim they don't appreciate music, but fail to account for their lack of funds and high likelihood of being shot for wolves' failure to attend performances at Carnegie Hall.

Science should rely on highly specific words. I always understood the word gender as referring to social constructs, while sex refers to physical. A homosexual male may take the feminine-gendered role. Frankly, I'd be more worried in that case if there was insistence that such a person was actually of the female sex than the female gender.

Magnus Itland said...

Incidentally, the censorship problem only arises when we write to English-speaking clients. In Norwegian, and I would wager most other languages, the word for sex and gender is the same. Nor is it considered a dirty word, or politically incorrect.

NoMo said...

And now this shocking news from

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/06/18/MNG7SQH1E51.DTL

"We can say confidently, and more and more confidently all the time, that the ways males and females on average are processing information is not the same," said Larry Cahill, a fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UC Irvine who last year published a review of studies on neurology and gender. "It's kind of a zeitgeist shift from the belief that this doesn't matter very much to, 'This might matter big time, and we need to figure out how.' "

Anonymous said...

Yeah, what he said!

Magnus Itland said...

Crypticlife,
barnyard animals at least do have some sense of song. My father, my brother and I used to sing while working, and the animals reacted to this by relaxing visibly. They are not very discerning, though; my father and especially I have a bad song voice.

robinstarfish said...

Waiting Game Part II
bride in reverie
trailing light across the floor
groom wilts in the sun


wv: ringwq

NoMo said...

Cryptic - You have the perfect nic...except for the "life" part, of course.

dweller on the threshold said...

"In the first relationship ... 'there is obviously inequality, and from this results the social subordination of woman, a subordination already prefigured in her physical constitution and her psychology.'"

"But Schuon points out that this first relationship "is not everything,' for in the dimension of essential humanness, "woman is equal to man since like him she belongs to the human species; this is the plane, not of subordination, but of friendship; and it goes without saying that on this level the wife may be superior to her husband since one human being may be superior to another, whatever the sex.'"

This explains something I've struggled to reconcile for a long time: The obvious differences in ability between men and women versus their equality before O as his creations. As you pointed out, you need the vertical dimension to completely explain reality.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Man, every-once-in-awhile, I go back to AllieMack's site to see what he's afraid of today, but phew, its been difficult lately. Crypt's post reminded me to check up on him.

The equivocation post he made? Priceless. I think the implication is that the 'religious person' is certain that 'faith' means the same thing in both cases, which is why they'd make that argument.

Also, adorable how he twists Islam's madness into an attack on God in general.

And, his poster designs have been deteriorating as far as rationality (Even!) is concerned.

But, no linky.

---

Not much to say about today's post, but I do agree. I think of relationships like multiplication - 1 * 1 = 1. The more complete each part is the more complete the whole is.

Anonymous said...

wow, you really made a fool of yourself with that post. Good thing for you your regulars don't have a clue either.

Stick to somewhat clever wordplay and leave philosophizing to those who actually know something about what they are talking about. Your 'ideas' about Darwin and its implications are laughable at best.

Blake said "The fool who persists in his folly will become wise"

I hope for your sake this is true.

julie said...

Cryptic,
There is a cosmos of difference between being "anti-animal," as you call us, and recognizing that animals and humans are not the same, and that in fact humans are more than animals.

When a beast behaves beastly, it acts according to its nature; few people are shocked when a male lion eats the young of another male lion he plans to replace. Nobody, I wager would suggest he be held accountable for the vile crime.

When a human is beastly, it is lower than its nature, it is monstrous; if a human man were to do the same as the male lion, it would rightly be shocking and horrific.

Unknown said...

You should collect all your Bobservations, categorize them, and put them into a book with a really provocative/interesting title. I'd choose provocative over interesting as it would garner more attention.

I'm an average Joe, not the sharpest tool in the shed by a long shot. I enjoyed your book (the parts I grasped). But I'll be honest here, I enjoy your blog even more.

Some of the stuff you write everyday, at least to me, is more powerful, hard hitting, and goes directly to the core of issues that are discussed in the mainstream.

If you repackaged these blog posts or "mini-essays" into a book you'd get exposure to a wider audience as much of what you write on an every day basis is more accessible to most people than your book. In the same vein it could give your worst selling book more exposure.

Plus, from a PR stand point, you'd get a lot of press (if you did it right) by being the first blog to be turned into a book.

Imagine "Christopher Hitchens is not Great" or the name of yesterdays post " Manliness, Maleness, and Mannish Women"... or a title that takes on one the left's sacred cows. You could come at it from a political point of view to gain a larger audience, "sucker them in", and give them a doorway to walk into other truths.

One of the things you could do to market it is by submitting one of your more politically provocative post to conservative radio talk show hosts. Give Rush, O'Reilly, whatever other big names a signed book! :)

Perhaps you could have your readers here brain storm on the most provocative title.

I normally try to stay away from giving unsolicited advice and I know you didn't ask for my opinion but you should really think about it. I don't know what everyone here thinks, but I think a lot of what you write here has perhaps a wider audience that just your loyal coons, people who pass by, and the occasional troll.

Maybe some others would like to give their two cents on this.

Van Harvey said...

Gandalin said "It would be interesting to trace this usage ... "sex" instead of "gender." "

I don't know for sure, but it seems to have a certain pomofo air about it...I wouldn't be surprised to find that it came about around the same time that 'texts' began to be substituted for books, plays, etc.

Van Harvey said...

cryptlife said "I'm talking about the anti-animal bigotry here. With the exception of raccoons, there's rarely a positive mention of animals."

Beaky, Fergus and all the rest are having a good laugh at your expense right about now.

Van Harvey said...

Za said... "blah... blah-blah blah"
That is the sound of conclusions from assertions with no reasoning at all, a regressive tendency you are apparently comfortable with, you know, going z to a, rather than A to Z. I suppose it would be kinder to speak to you on your level,

Woof!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm really making a fool of myself with this empty, pointless post. Good thing for me your regulars are so accomodating.

I'll stick to a dullards wordplay and leave philosophizing to those who actually know something about what they are talking about. My "ideas" about about Darwin and its implications are laughable at best.

Blake said "The fool who persists in his folly will become wise"

I hope for my sake this is true.

CrypticLife said...

van, julie;

Um, yeah -- it was a joke, some in ways the readers here would regard as positive and some as negative. I'll avoid that sort of subtlety in the future. Suffice to say I do expect different standards from humans than from animals.

magnus -- interesting notes on the Norwegian language. I'm only familiar with Japanese, but even though they have several words for male/female, none are pejorative. Additionally, the kanji are quite evocative of archetypical male/female traits.

Anonymous said...

za-za,
My quotes weren't given for fools to twist out of context.
Now write the quote 100 times and see if any of its true meaning rubs off.







Didn't think so.

Van Harvey said...

"Rather, they presuppose the higher, and try to find some rough analogue of it in a lower beast. In short, Darwinians accept the same intelligible hierarchy of being we all do, but simply deny it. They do not actually explain man's descent from animals, but simply project certain distinctly human traits onto animals, which explains nothing."

Yeah. Not unlike them to seize the fruit of a concept, while denying it's source. Fairly typical tactics, lefties are by nature philosophical taxidermists - they seize a concept, gut it, stuff it with fluff, and continue to pass it off as the same concept based on its appearance alone.

Take 'Liberal' for example.

Van Harvey said...

cryptlife said "I'll avoid that sort of subtlety in the future."

Yeah probably best, ham handedness and subtlety don't go so well together.

(sorry, couldn't resist)

Mizz E said...

Nick,

A couple of blogs that I'm aware of developed into a book. One is Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, but don't believe a word of the Editorial Review at Amazon that contains phrases like "save her soul" and "inspiration that sets this memoir apart from most tales of personal redemption." I read the blog during it's last months of production because I'm a Julia Child fan and I thought the task Julie set for herself was heroic and her writing about her cooking forays was amusing, but redemptive is not an appropriate term to use to describe her experience. BTW, I highly recommend not ever eating "Baked Cucumbers" - while they are delicious to eat, they are not easy on the GI tract.

The other blog I read for a few months was by an anonymous Texas preacher, called "Real Live Preacher".

He eventually was approached by a publisher to produce a book, which he did. He also revealed his identity at the time. Gordon is a fine narrative writer and a loving Christian pastor to his San Antonio congregation, but alas we do not agree theologically.

If Bob ever feels called to pull his blog posts into book form, "first dibs" on first autographed copy.

Anonymous said...

Van,
That was decidedly anti-pig. Pigot.

Van Harvey said...

Joseph said... "That was decidedly anti-pig. Pigot."


Of course I have the utmost respect for the many fine cultural contributions of those of the swinish descent, and am decidedly pro-pig... er Swine - our own culture would be much diminished without their uplifting input into our national main course... er, I mean discourse, now, now... I don't mean to imply that they are only good for eating, why some of my spiders best friends are pigs - I mean pork, I mean... oh the heck with it. Squash the spiders and pass the bacon.

Van Harvey said...

Of course I mean that in a pro-animal sense.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

At least you aren't the Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den...

Susannah said...

"Thus, not only is there a human essence, but there is also a male and female essence, each of the latter representing the perfections of certain divine qualities."

C.S. Lewis illustrated this vividly in his novel Perelandra and in other writings as well.

"...with no direction, goal or purpose."

This is exactly why "Darwin is God" requires so *much* faith. Human being simply cannot operate on the basis of such an assumption. Like you said, they start making "stuff" up. As anonymous pointed out (unintentionally?), there's really no such thing as a true nihilist.

Putting God in the picture explains everything, especially maleness and femaleness.

I'm so glad you stuck a well-deserved pin in that "gender" business. That particular rape of the language has always bothered me. Leftism is infamous for its illegitimate redefinitions and ought to be called on it more often.

NoMo said...

Dr. Bob is linking to this today and it is excellent on what is happening NOW in Iraq...

http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/be-not-afraid.htm

Mizz E said...

"Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning" - Phew! Luckily it's all not real then.

- from a reader's comment posted to this article: The World Will Not End Before 2060.

Online exhibit here.

julie said...

Cryptic,
My apologies for misinterpreting you; I took you seriously because we've had people here who actually thought that way (if not in those words :), and to be honest I'm not entirely familiar with your "voice" as of yet.

Van, are you sharing that bacon?

julie said...

Mizze - I read that article, earlier today. It's too bad they don't have a link to a typed version of the text, (Newton's handwriting is worse than mine!) it would be interesting to see how he came to that conclusion.

Magnus Itland said...

While my more arctic language does not have a separate word for gender, we still have the clever expression "sex roles" (gender roles). This is particularly clever because the word - in both our languages - has two meanings. A role can be a function, like the role of police in a city, or it can be play-acting, like on a theater scene or in a role playing game.

Lisa said...

Pinky update: Pet detective and bloodhounds turned out to be unrealistic at $2000 for a 62% chance of success. The good news is I have recruited the cool guys (m & f sex/gender) at UPS, Postal Office, and the police and FBI are aware. Well, just one agent but I couldn't resist greeting him with "I need the FBI, Pinky ran away, put out an Amber Alert!". Had one false hope call but it was a male chi and not nearly as cute. Covered all the vets, markets and some coffee shops around the area. Everyone has been so helpful and amazing. I'm just trying to keep the faith and keep picturing our reunion...;)

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Lise, I'll pray for Pinky's doggie-GPS system to come back on line!

Anonymous said...

Hippo, Vulture, Ram, Lion--these are steeds of Vishnu and carry His essence.

The gap between animals and people is "virtually infinite" indeed--infinitely small.

Any animal can carry Vishnu and allow Him to look from its eyes.

You have to be able to see an animal with special vision--then you will see which ones are carrying the essence.

Individual animals of any given species vary as to which are spiritual and which are not.

People are more spiritual than animals, but the disparity is amount and not type.

Anonymous said...

What abject nonsense. If the gap between animals and humans were not infinite, you wouldn't be capable of denying it.

NoMo said...

Raccoons everywhere...join me -

PIN-KY PIN-KY PIN-KEEEEEEE!!!

Lisa - Expecting the best.

Anonymous said...

Most coons would agree - there's a man, Michael Yon - a hero with heros blogging away. Thanks for all you do, Bob.

" . . .and while the battle rages, that prayer card will be in my pocket".

Be Not Afraid

You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way. You shall speak your words in foreign lands and all will understand. You shall see the face of God and live.

Be not afraid.
I go before you always;
Come follow me, and I will give you rest.

Anonymous said...

Pinky, Pinkee-ee, come home Pinke EEEE

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