Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Just Say Yes to Drags

(For those of you who missed the '60s or didn't see Austin Powers, a drag is a boring or tiresome person.)

There is a rabbinical saying that those who are kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind. I thought of this upon hearing how Muslim terrorists have been downgraded to human-mediated disaster facilitators (or whatever inane language they've come up with), whereas peaceful folks like us are just plain old domestic terrorists, without the suracloaking.

And when I say "people like us," we clearly fit the profile: we are not pleased with Obama's ceding of U.S. power and sovereignty to foreign powers, the expansion of government, his position on immigration, the infringement on our civil liberties, etc. As usual, the left is being inconsistent, because if the people fighting us in Iraq are the equivalent of our founding fathers, and they're not terrorists, then neither are we.

Anyway, back to The Truth of the World, which has nothing -- nothing whatsoever -- to do with Obama or with the left.

Speaking of which. Why is it not possible to coonvert trolls through argumentation? Because that is what they crave. Because they are the "substance of nothing," the troll feels a sort of counterfeit "heft" when his nothing collides with the substance of truth. It's like those giant particle accelerators, which mostly consist of vast stretches of subatomic space. Until the particle strikes against something, it doesn't properly exist.

In turn, you can see why the left is fundamentally narcissistic, as it primarily revolves around the "no" rather than the "yes." For those of you with children, you will have noticed that they first begin to define themselves and internalize boundaries with the "no!" They're too young to know what they are, but at least they can control what they're not with the "no." It's the earliest form of self-definition.

Most of us "move on." But the leftist remains in that stage, which is why, like mtraven, he prides himself on being someone who "questions authority," which again elevates reactionary adolescent rebellion to a lifetime project.

For the secret of life is to utter an enthusiastic yes! to authority, i.e., the authority of absolute truth, or the authority of the Constitution, or the authority of people who are more wise and elevated than we are. Obviously this cannot be an unqualified yes, for that can only be reserved for God. But there is no question that saying yes to genuine authority is a key that unlocks many doors.

Of course, I spent much of my life saying "no" to various legitimate authorities in a way that can now be seen as ludicrously self-flattering. (I even had the bumper sticker, "question authority.") Again, the existential "no" is a very powerful thing. Not for nothing is the last word of Ulysses a symbolic and multidimensional "yes" by Molly Bloom: and yes I said yes I will Yes...

Alert readers will have noticed the reference to this on p. 265 of the Coonifesto, where it is written, A Divine Child, a godsend, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' yes.

Obviously, "bloomin'" refers to Molly Bloom, but it also refers to flowers, which never fail to open up and say "yes" to the central sun. Likewise, in hindsight, I see my almost-too-late decision to have a child as the ultimate "yes" to existence. On the one hand, a child is a godsend; but the child is also "God's end," in more ways than one. After all, God wants us to be fruitful and multiply. But also, there is something "ultimate" in a child, so he can truly feel like "God's end." As you know, being with your child often feels like "heaven" (not to minimize the times that it feels like hell).

I could say more, but we're getting sidetracked. Let us just say that life truly begins when we say yes to God, the final authority. If that makes me an authoritarian, then I'm a so be it cosmonaught.

As HvB was saying, it is quite difficult to convert the errant person by simply pointing out his errors, for this only triggers the defensiveness, the "no," that lends him his false being. Think of a-theists. They define themselves by their opposition to God. Without God, what would they be? The "hole" at the center of their being would be exposed, so they would merely be a-holes.

Notice that Jesus rarely argued. Rather, he only offered. "Here it is. Take it or leave it." Thus, HvB says that the errant person is only "cured of his ways" by truly seeing the ideal, and then feeling repentance for his failure to live up to it. You might say that repentance is the measure of the gap between what we are and who we need to be. Which is why we never stop repenting, for we can never be God. And this, of course, is why no one repents more than the saint.

But unless another knower bears witness to the real you, it can be difficult to know of its existence in any positive sense. Rather, it will again manifest in the form of "present absences" or "absent presences," i.e., ghostly symptoms of soul illness.

I was discussing this with an acquaintance just yesterday, a fellow psychologist whom I did not know was a secret conservative -- which you must be if you are to maintain harmonious relations with the kooky world of psychology. Once we realized that we were on the same page, we were free to discuss the collective madness of the left.

I made the point that the structure of a political perversion is really no different than the structure of a sexual one. For example, I remember a patient who had a lifetime shoe fetish. I won't bore you or gross you out with the details, but the point is that he had a sex drive, just like anyone else, except that it had become focused on a dysfunctional end: shoes instead of.

Now, we all have a "spiritual drive." That much is certain. But just like the sex drive, it can be derailed from its true end -- which can only be God -- and focused on other things. This, I believe, is perhaps the "universal key" that opens all forms of leftism, which are otherwise so impenetrable to reason.

To cite the most obvious example, look at the wave of messianic energy Obama rode in on. Does any truly religious person see him as anything more than a cipher for the projection of the misplaced spiritual energy of the left?

I didn't think so.

Think of your own experience, when you "broke through" to your real being, to the ground -- were "born again" in spirit, bobtized, or however you wish to characterize it. Wasn't it a bit like this: "He will observe with amazement that the one thing that he never would have dared believe is possible: the annihilation of the reality that should not be through creative knowledge" (HvB).

In other words, it's not so much a case of saying "no" to the false self, but saying "yes" to the true self that is "eternally known" by God, but also potentially by certain deputized I-amissaries in the herebelow. For someone else to see, know, and love the real you is critical. Truly, we can only be "loved into being." This then gives one the strength to scorn what has no right to exist within oneself.

Here you go. The authoritative HvB even says so: "He will accustom himself, when he falls back into his old errors, to realize that at bottom he is living an already obsolete, no longer real reality."

Right? Right. The old patterns just won't give you the same "thrill," now that you've seen through them. Furthermore, to touch truth is to suddenly be given a grave responsibility: the responsibility to be, specifically, to be what God intended. HvB: "He is not only to know what is but also what should be and, through knowledge, to secure validity and reality for it."

In other words, you must now begin the process of aligning your life around your highest aspiration, for you know in your heart that anything less than this is a kind of waste, or dissipation, of your life. Therefore, you will now be followed by a kind of guilt when you fail to meet your cosmic responsibility. You can never go back to the "blissful ignorance" of the average man.

To live as the average man is to live as effect rather than cause. This is why it so easily leads to the mechanical "no" rather than the living "yes." If you are just a machine with no divine center, then you are indeed determined by race, by class, by gender, by whatever other bogus limitation the left can come up with, and for which they will sell you the "cure." When they talk about "root causes," they're really talking about what they think makes the human machine tick, or the human tick a machine.

But for the Raccoon, the root cause is above, not below; again, the universe is a tree of life, with its nonlocal roots aloft, its local branches below. Do you see the profound difference it makes as to where you find your roots?

For another baleful consequence follows from the left's planting its roots below. Man must transcend, or he is not a man. Every man knows in his heart that something is wrong, something from which we must "escape" (or inscape). Now, if the upper reaches are sealed off, what do you suppose happens?

That is correct. Man will attempt to transcend himself in the darkness and ignorance of the "below," the subconscious world of animal instinct, of ungoverned desire, of moral impulses detached from God, etc. Art moves from the ideal-real to the sub-real; religion goes from worship of God to worship of the ego or the earth (or worse); "science" goes from the unveiling of being to the worship of facts; politics goes from liberty directed toward the good to collectivism enforced by the state. Etc. Put it all together, and you end up with our postmodern stone soup, which surely cannot nourish the soul.

But you can't just tell these soup nazis to stop eating. Rather, you have to somehow get them to try yours. But again, for those of you with small children, you know how difficult it can be to get them to try a new food.

44 comments:

lame duck said...

A beauty. Thanks Bob.

Van Harvey said...

"...then I'm a so be it cosmonaught"

Arou? er... hmmm... gotta be something there (reads back up and then over again)... hmmm... here Pun... come out, come out where ever you are...... hmm... AH! Got it! Multi-word sound pun!

heh heh.

hoarhey said...

It's party time! Time to go forth and question the authority of the Marxist Theoretician In Chief.

jp said...

So be it cosmonaughts were the subject one of my major middle school projects.

That's back in the day when slide shows were still a going concern but well after the 60s. In fact, that was before I knew that such a thing as hippies had once walked the earth.

That was about the time of my first and only trip to both Disneyland and Vegas.

Cousin Dupree said...

Woo hoo! Party like it's 1776!

julie said...

Van - good catch; I missed the first three words before :)

But you can't just tell these soup nazis to stop eating. Rather, you have to somehow get them to try yours. But again, for those of you with small children, you know how difficult it can be to get them to try a new food.Overheard at a birthday party last week (from one 4-year-old to another, on green beans):

"You're eating that?!? But it's healthy!!"

Funny how so many people never really get past that stage.

In other words, it's not so much a case of saying "no" to the false self, but saying "yes" to the true self that is "eternally known" by God, but also potentially by certain deputized I-amissaries in the herebelow. For someone else to see, know, and love the real you is critical. Truly, we can only be "loved into being." This then gives one the strength to scorn what has no right to exist within oneself.To which I can only wholeheartedly agree.

julie said...

Oops - pimf. There should have been a line space in there, between "food" and "overheard".

robinstarfish said...

man the hungered shark
needs ply polluted waters
bite or be bitten

Van Harvey said...

"Thus, HvB says that the errant person is only "cured of his ways" by truly seeing the ideal, and then feeling repentance for his failure to live up to it. You might say that repentance is the measure of the gap between what we are and who we need to be. Which is why we never stop repenting, for we can never be God."

Nothing to add... just like it being seen.

Bulletproof Monk said...

As a follow-up to Bob's excellent post, I offer "It's nothing personal"
by Fr. Stephen.

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/its-nothing-personal/

Pray for me, a sinner who still has not learned to say "yes" and become a true Person.

will said...

>> . . . just like the sex drive, it (the spiritual drive) can be derailed from its true end -- which can only be God . . <<

I think that to a great extent the spiritual drive *is* the sex drive, sublimated, made sublime. We all have a Kundalini life-force, after all - it's the same life force whether sublimated or not. In any event, when the spiritual drive is displaced, it descends, "un-sublimates", into mere animal sexuality.

The Left's messianic worship of Obama is, I suspect, a lot more overtly sexual (un-sublimated, to be sure) than they may like to let on. You know, Obama's "rock star" status, the NY Times article re: sexual dreams about Obama, Hollywood's infatuation with him.

I think it comes down to "glamour", which is fantasy, which is corrupted imagination. Glamour is basically a projecting of animal sexuality in a glimmering, magical way - but it amounts to nothing more than an aping of genuine spirituality.

wv: "change", I swear. Huh. Wonder if that's a command.

Sal said...

That is correct. Man will attempt to transcend himself in the darkness and ignorance of the "below," the subconscious world of animal instinct, of ungoverned desire, of moral impulses detached from God, etc. Art moves from the ideal-real to the sub-real; religion goes from worship of God to worship of the ego or the earth (or worse); "science" goes from the unveiling of being to the worship of facts; politics goes from liberty directed toward the good to collectivism enforced by the state. Etc. Put it all together, and you end up with our postmodern stone soup, which surely cannot nourish the soul. Nutshell! Thanks, Bob

julie said...

Hi Sal! How did it go today?

And Now, For Something Completely Different said...

Bacon. Is there anything it can't do?

Anonymous said...

I must say, it is odd to critique, now, suddenly, the Bush created DHS, when, as anyone could have predicted, once an openly leftist president took office (rather than the closeted one in Bush/Cheney), they would use the DHS to lock in on "right-wing" folks. The police in Missouri recently issued a similar report to watch out for anyone with a Ron Paul bumper sticker.
Once you bring so much power into the executive branch, all of which is, by definition, unconstitutional, all kinds of mayhem will without doubt emerge. Unfortunately, you folks here all supported draconian measures from your beloved left-wing Bush, heaven only knows why, and, you still do it. Bush started this nonsense, including the financial bailouts. Deal with it: there is no difference in the political parties as they are all run by leftists with globalist agendas. Remember Poppy's New World Order prophecies? They are being fulfilled, every jot and tittle.

Gagdad Bob said...

Coincidence -- just read a passage by HvB: Jesus "is something no other man can be, God's ultimate Yes to the world..."

julie said...

Not coincidence - coonincidence, which as we know is something much more than happenstance...

ximeze said...

"A wrapping of less-flammable uncooked prosciutto focuses the flame into an intense bacon-plasma torch"

bacon-plasma torchs?

Kewl

Hmmmm, bacon-plasma flamethrowers + caves + Jihadii....

Sal said...

Julie-
It was fun. A good turn-out, for the suburbs. A lot of people were going to the Dallas event, as well.
The Gov. is going to be at that one. Popular guy, after yesterday.

wv: retampa How 'bout we just let it alone, in the first place?

will said...

Julie -

>>coonincidence<<

Or a syncoonicity.

sehoy said...

Definitely syncoonicity. :D

Going to watch "The Night of the Hunter," tonight.

The church I live near used to be on the edge of the frontier and sent missionaries to the Republic of Texas back in the eighteen thirties.

will said...

>>But you can't just tell these soup nazis to stop eating. Rather, you have to somehow get them to try yours<<

Yeah, but I think they have to come to you - definitely not you to them.

Advertise the life. Live with courage and humor and light-hearted-ness in all circumstance. Make it seem like it really is. This will enrage some of course, but some, exhausted from the material treadmill, will eventually sidle over and ask what you're having. That's the time to share.

Retriever said...

Great post. While unsuccessfully trying to find a Jonathan Edwards quote it reminded me of, found this from Augustine:

"How is it then that miserable human beings dare to be proud, either of their free will, before they are set free, or of their own strength, if they have been set free? They do not observe that in the very mention of free will they pronounce the name of liberty. But ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’ (2 Cor.3:17). If, therefore, they are the slaves of sin, why do they boast of free will? For ‘by whatever a person is overcome, to that he is delivered as a slave’ (2 Pet.2:19). But if they have been set free, why do they puff themselves up as if it were by their own doing? Why do they boast, as if their freedom were not a gift? Or are they so free that they will not have Him for their Lord Who says to them, ‘Without Me, you can do nothing’ (Jn.15:5), and, ‘If the Son sets you free, you shall be truly free?’ (Jn.8:36)."

Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 52

julie said...

At the party, it's a "Life of Brian" moment...
There's speechifying going on, but it's so crowded I keep expecting to hear "Blessed are the cheesemakers?!"

julie said...

On the ground estimate 7-10,000 People

mushroom said...

Right? Right. The old patterns just won't give you the same "thrill," now that you've seen through them.

I hear B.B. King.

It's very true, and it's not just old age and cynicism because I see other people my age still caught up in the same old cycles.

wv says stolinme -- I knew I was missing something.

Gagdad Bob said...

I'm always snooping around Amazon for musical bargains. Hard to top this one: Pure Genius, the Complete Atlantic Recordings of Ray Charles (his artistic peak years, between '53 and '60). 7 CDs / 1 DVD. List price: 149.98. Used copies for around $30.00. I just ordered one. Without a doubt, among the finest cosmic American music of the 20th century.

Gagdad Bob said...

As Donald Fagen once said, Charles "solved the mind/body problem."

Van Harvey said...

Sal & Julie, good to hear the turnout was nationwide. We had a pretty good turn out in St. Louis too this evening, 8-10,000 people... not a bad turnout for the efforts of a couple local bloggers.

Darn good feeling to see others waking up to our constitutional peril.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

In other words, it's not so much a case of saying "no" to the false self, but saying "yes" to the true self that is "eternally known" by God, but also potentially by certain deputized I-amissaries in the herebelow."

Aye!

Skully said...

Ximeze said...
"A wrapping of less-flammable uncooked prosciutto focuses the flame into an intense bacon-plasma torch"


This is the bacon we have been waiting for.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Muslim terrorists have been downgraded to human-mediated disaster facilitators (or whatever inane language they've come up with), whereas peaceful folks like us are just plain old domestic terrorists, without the suracloaking."

Besides, only the Obamulans have the suracloaking tickgnawlogy.

Skully said...

Yeah, but we have intense bacon-plasma torches!
A surafired weapon against jihadists and jihadist lovers everywhere.

Er...can we still say jihadist or ilamofascist?
Yes we can!

Anonymous said...

I don't get it. You say we should be subservient to authority, but then you rail against obama. Science is also an authority, but you don't seem to be very fond of that either.

I seems to me when you say we should respect authority, we should respect your authorities, namely Yaweh and the bible, perhaps bush as well. I mean, sure claim that all you want. But don't claim that they're the only authorities out there.

Gagdad Bob said...

Not only does the secret protect itself, but it can occasionally lash out and cause some real brain damage. Let this troll be an example.

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse, something tells me that you are no authority on Authority.

Tamquam Leo Rugiens said...

How to get them to stop chowing down on rock soup and get them to try the good stuff?

I am reminded of the time I was visiting some folks who were hosting some of their son's 5 year old friends. The Mom had made tapioca pudding for them, but one little boy would not be persuaded to eat it. I whispered to him that it was really stewed monkey brains, upon which he had to have some. Sigh. White lies in the service of tapioca.

mtraven said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mtraven said...

For the secret of life is to utter an enthusiastic yes! to authority...That's one of the most pathetic things I've ever read.

For contrast, here is Thomas Jefferson, another one of those adolescent, developmentally retarded rebellious types:

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

Petey said...

Good argument from authority.

Van Harvey said...

mtcraven said "That's one of the most pathetic things I've ever read."

Oh no, can't be, I'm pretty sure you've read what you've written, so obviously that can't be true.

wv:diescur
huh.

mtraven said...

BTW, I always thought that "Question Authority" was the wimpiest of slogans. "Seize Authority's castle, cut off its head and parade it around the market on a pike" -- now that's adolescent. Questioning authority is for meek middle-class middle-aged NPR-flavored liberals (like myself). If you see even the uggestion that one question authority as somehow overly rebellious, then (once again) you aren't a classical liberal (like Jefferson and other Enlightenment figures), but something more like a divine-right monarchist who believes that earthly authority is a direct manifestation of God's own.

Van Harvey said...

Pointless to say, I know, but try and pay attention dufus, Jefferson's whole quote relied upon the idea of Truth being attainable, and it being THE Authority, else Reason, and any pretense to reasoning, is idiotic. Enter the position of skeptics and cynics such as yourself.

Mike O'Malley said...

mtraven said... For contrast, here is Thomas Jefferson, another one of those adolescent, developmentally retarded rebellious types:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.'
.

Adolescents who are oppositional to religious, civil and parental authority, "developmentally retarded" extended adolescent types, seem to spend much energy parading Thomas Jefferson as some kind of icon. However Thomas Jefferson is a problematic icon at best. He was a racist and a man whose judgment and hypocrisies should receive considerable criticism.

I'll paraphrase Forrest McDonald. Thomas Jefferson had a considerable anti-authority bloodlust. In the abstract, T. Jefferson wrote apropos of Shays's Rebellion that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of . . . tyrants." (When Timothy McVeigh was arrested after the Oklahoma City bombing, he was wearing a T-shirt bearing that inscription.) Regarding the Shaysites he also wrote, "the spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive." Writing of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, he declared that rather than have the Revolution fail, "I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is." Jefferson penned many such things, often not so pithy but equally grisly thereby feeding flammable excelerant to the French Revolution and the Terror... The Terror, perhaps the blood soaked model for the Left-wing Nazi and Marxism horrors of the 20th Century.


See the "The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800", by Conor Cruise O'Brien.


http://findarticles.com/p/
articles/mi_m1282/is_n22_v48/
ai_18914542/

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