Tuesday, July 19, 2011

It's My Narrative, and I'm Sticking With It

It just occurred to us this very second -- in fact, it's still coming down as we type -- that it is quite difficult if not impossible to articulate a Boundlessly Immense Grand Theory of Everything -- or BIG TOE -- in the absence of a tight little narrative.

I realize that this qualifies as a banality, but it just flashed into my melon as I stared at this page of Balthasar while awaiting the inspiration to flow, so it may or may not lead anywhere, much less toward its own denouement on the cosmic stage.

Speaking of narratives, von B. certainly had one, but not really. The sprawling, fifteen volume theological aesthetics that we spent most of 2009 dilating upon may look orderly on the shelf, but once one dives in, it is an unruly jungle of inexhaustible truth and extravagant beauty that one must hack through page by page. And while in the process of hacking, it really isn't possible to keep one eye on the big picture.

Speaking of hacks, this was the underlying purpose of the patented One Cosmos narrative, i.e., of cosmic evolution from Matter (or existence), to Life, to Mind, and on to Spirit. This seems not only like the most obvious structure to place one's Big Toe, but it also provides a dramatic arc, since there is purpose woven into the very fabric of being, both personally and collectively. Indeed, the main difference between us and the metaphysical Darwinians is that we take evolution seriously.

But as we were saying yesterday, it is not actually possible for man to "contain" existence, let alone being. Rather, we must rely upon abstractions and generalizations, and these almost always come down to narratives, either implicit or explicit. There are personal narratives, historical narratives, political narratives, scientific narratives, media narratives, weather narratives -- everywhere you look, a narrative.

But few of these narratives are sophisticated enough to account for the fact that man is an intrinsically narrative creating being whose fundamental way of knowing the world is to tell stories about it.

In other words, in an important sense, "the medium is the message," whether your particular narrative says that the cosmos just banged into being by itself and then came to life for no reason, or did so as a result of the god of the Witoto hawking a loogie on the earth to create the rain forest.

Clearly, there are religious myths and scientistic myths, but both have a kind of binding power that permits one to organize reality and think about what is otherwise unthinkable, but which can also cause us to distort reality in fundamental ways.

Amazing that in the 21st century we still have to remind people that the map is not the territory -- or that one cannot eat the menu -- and that if one confuses the two, one is about to enter a world of pain or indigestion. But what is there if we toss aside the map? Then we're back in the jungle of pure experience, and another kind of pain.

One thing you will have noticed is that our troll persists in the effort to place us in a fanciful narrative of his own creation (or partly his own, as it was mostly composed by more intelligent demons). We are nowhere in this narrative, but this poses no barrier, since one of the elements of the narrative is that it is a kind of "secret" known only through leftist gnosis.

Only the leftist can see into our being and know that we are racist, or homophobic, or anti-science, or misogynistic, or shills for the wealthy, and on and on. There is nothing we can say that could dislodge us from the narrative, since one cannot reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.

I was thinking about this while reading this typically deep meditation on the current political mindscape by Deepak Chopra. As with most everything he writes, it is way, way beyond parody, at least my sub-Iowahawk powers thereof. For example (and try to just read it in a dispassionate manner, like a therapist, and not react to it emotionally; it hurts a patient's feelings if you laugh at them):

"One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required. There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason.... Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount.... For thirty years and more, the progressive tradition has been severely undermined, dating back to Nixon's 'Southern strategy' (coddle the racists) and Ronald Reagan's smiling reactionary agenda (AIDS victims deserve what they get), through the first President Bush's Willie Horton strategy (another boost for racism) and the second President Bush's deceptive 'compassionate conservatism.'"

There is so much wrong -- even evil, what with the casual vilification of good people with whom he has policy disagreements -- with this narrative, that it is pointless to correct it. The deeper -- and more unsettling -- issue is that he undoubtedly believes what he writes, and is therefore completely imprisoned in his delusional narrative. It doesn't necessarily mean that he is delusional per se, but rather, that he is delusional by proxy, or "stupid through another's head." In this sense, he is not even crazy, but can only borrow the crazy from others.

Are there Republicans who also end up trapped in their narrative? Of course. Which is why conservatives are such an annoyance to them.

And only a poor or very sloppy reader could confuse my own narrative with the conservative one. If they were identical, then I would undoubtedly have more readers than I do. It requires no effort on my part to write a red-meat post that attracts a great deal of conservative attention, but rarely do these visitors return after the next post.

Nor do I want them to return, because it is wearying to start with someone from the ground up, and dredge up long-ago settled arguments; it took me decades to get here, and I expect nothing less of others, to say nothing of the fact that my Here can be no one else's Here without becoming a there, or an experience once-removed, which is to say a non-experience.

In my narrative, politics is always placed in a cosmic context. It is not, and cannot be, any kind of free-standing enterprise without man taking a steep fall from his true station. We are "in" politics, but unlike the left, not "of" it.

Importantly, the latter is in no way intended to be inflammatory or polemical, since it is an axiom of the Marxian left that man has no essence and is determined by the dialectic (read: narrative) of class struggle. This worldview is hopelessly outdated, but it nevertheless structures most everything Obama sees and says about the world. Recall that the greatest spiritual influence in his life was the Reverend Wright, whose transparent Marxism can be readily seen under the veneer of subChristian kookery.

Back to where we were. Suffice it to say that it has come as something of a shock to see just how closely my narrative hews to the one expressed by such leading-edge Christian theologians as Balthasar, Wojtyla, and Ratzinger. Sometimes I wonder whether the three got together and conspired to get the Christian narrative back on track, but it is certainly different from anything I learned while growing up nominally Christian before rejecting the whole thing by the age of nine.

For example, on this page before me, Balthasar expresses the Raccoon doctrine that the emergence of Life represented nothing less than a cosmic revolution -- or a transformation fraught with cosmic implications and consequences. It is not merely some local aberration in an otherwise dead cosmos, the latter being a hopelessly naive and temporo-centric view.

It is naive because it assumes that the emergence of life "took a long time" or what have you, but what is time from the standpoint of eternity? From this vantage point, is not a day a lifetime and a lifetime but a single day? It is such a childish projection to assume that our profane sense of time has anything to do with Time as such.

Indeed, I assume that even the most diehard atheist has belightful moments when the atemporal breaks through and illuminates the temporal. For us, these are sort of the point, not some aberration that can be ignored and explained away.

To put it another way, we are not less in touch with reality during these unmapped moments of extreme seeking on the ungroomed slopes, but more. Our troll would undoubtedly reduce them to "brain waves" or some other such scientistic nonsense, but this only emphasizes how desperately a person will cling to his dysfunctional narrative for a host of underlying motivations too numerous to catalogue. It would be easy to assume just one -- e.g., fear, omniscience, superiority, contempt -- but the reasons are usually mixed, plus a combination of personal and impersonal (i.e., historo-cultural) factors.

Here Balthasar describes exactly the shocking ontological discontinuity to which we attempted to give voice on pp. 55 - 61 (givortake) of the bʘʘk:

"With the emergence of the animal world, the intimate character of being enters a new phase. Although insentient life suggested an overflowingly rich interiority, this inward dimension remained veiled to itself. In the animal, by contrast, this inner space begins to grow light, to become luminous and accessible to itself. The animal represents a completely new fact that radically changes the situation of epistemology: the object is now a subject. The revolution that this new fact brings with it is fraught with immense consequences" (Balthasar, emphasis mine).

What consequences? Well, for starters, we discover that we inhabit an irreducibly intersubjective cosmos, in which it is possible to "know what another knows," but not "to know as he knows it."

This applies with particular force to the animal world. Yes, we are animals, but can anyone even imagine what it would be like to be a fly, or a snake, or a dog, or Al Sharpton? What would it be like to live in a world in which one's primary contact is via the nose, or to communicate out of one's ass? And would the naso-centric animal understand Sharpton better than we do?

As Balthasar writes, "the world of sensory images is purely subjective and, as such, cannot be objectified." This is, of course, why there are no "brute facts" in the cosmos, and why it is so naive to insist otherwise.

Ack! Out of time. Narrative to be continued...

59 comments:

anon said...

There is so much wrong -- even evil, what with the casual vilification of good people with whom he has policy disagreements

LOL. Either you are being funny, or you must be trying for the title of "least self-reflective psychologist in history".

Gagdad Bob said...

Where is a naso-centric animal when you need one?

Rick said...

Bob,
How is "narrative" different than "metaphysic"? (as you use the terms)

Gagdad Bob said...

The short answer is that metaphysic is in space, while narrative is in time. Thus, for example, the Judeo-Christian "arc of salvation" can be understood as a horizontal prolongation and exteriorization of the vertical/interior metaphysic.

Rick said...

Oh, So metaphysic can't include both?

Rick said...

WV: lingu

Is there an echo in here?

julie said...

The really disturbing thing about Chopra is that people listen to him. It's not just that he's thinking someone else's thoughts, he's transmitting them on a vast scale. We all think for ourselves. Now it's time to stop thinking for ourselves...

Gagdad Bob said...

Rick: good question. Schuon would say no, while an orthodox Christian would say yes, in the sense that for the latter theology trumps metaphysics. Schuon would say that the theology is always an instantiation of the metaphysic, which is both timeless and universal.

Gagdad Bob said...

Julie:

Yes, it is as if he has literally never met an actual conservative in his life, much less had a friendly relationship with one -- very much like Muslims who obsess over Jews but have never even met one.

julie said...

Indeed, I assume that even the most diehard atheist has belightful moments when the atemporal breaks through and illuminates the temporal. For us, these are sort of the point, not some aberration that can be ignored and explained away.

And they happen in the most ordinary of places, all of the time. All it takes to notice is to slow down, open your eyes and see. And eventually, remember to shut your mouth before the flies get in...

Gagdad Bob said...

Conversely, I have countless friends and relatives who are liberals, and know for a fact that they mean well.

julie said...

Indeed. In my experience, for a conservative it is almost impossible not see the person in the liberal, because we are surrounded by them and often love them. For someone like Chopra, even if he has met a conservative or many conservatives, he's never met them in any meaningful sense; he cannot see their personhood. Even if it's someone he "knows," once the conservatism is revealed the personhood disappears.

Jewel posted this link in the comments at American Digest the other day:

"There is a phenomenon here in the Northeast where being conservative—no, wait, being not left—is to turn everyone in the room into Donald Sutherland from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, screaming and pointing at you as if you’re an alien pod person."

Gagdad Bob said...

So true. I don't even reveal my conservatism in such contexts, since it's not worth the hate.

Rick said...

Lol. I have the opposite feeling than Jewel. So I try not to fall asleep when I visit.
You think it's easy? See yesterday's post.

Rick said...

Looks like I can't go wrong with "metaphysic". I'll consider "narrative" a subset.

Rick said...

OT but NR:
Bob, wondering if you know this guy..or can vouch for him:
The Last Psychiatrist

mushroom said...

We are "in" politics, but unlike the left, not "of" it.

Well said.

The Christian Coalition idea arose out of a sense that Christians -- and that meant primarily evangelical protestants -- were not engaged in politics. The claim was that the Church had come to consider politics too much "of the world".

It is true that as Christians came to see the fallacy of the early-20th Century Social[ist] Gospel, they tended to disengage or at least compartmentalized religion and politics.

I think the Raccoon view is the healthy one, i.e., politics and government are to some extent necessary evils -- rather like castor oil. It may be needed to regulate, but you don't want too much, and it always generates a lot of crap.

Gagdad Bob said...

It seems that the Christian political movement really got underway with the judicial usurpation of Roe v. Wade, which, instead of "settling" the law, deeply unsettled it. If nothing else, the time wasn't "ripe" for such a high-handed assault on the values of at least half the population. Recall also that the first candidate they got behind was Jimmy Carter, who was the first guy I ever heard talk about being "born again."

Gagdad Bob said...

Rick:

Don't know the psychiatrist.

Re metaphysic, I think I have developed an interesting sort of hybrid, because while I would agree with Schuon that metaphysic is prior to theology, his metaphysic was Vedandin, while mine would be Christian, in the sense that I have concluded -- independent of Christian dogma -- that ultimate reality must be trinitarian in nature. Still a work in progress, but this has become one of my rock-bottom principles, since it explains and ties together so much.

julie said...

Rick - re. the Last Psychiatrist, I've come across him now and then. He seems insightful, but he rubs me the wrong way - I think he's an atheist, so his perspective tends toward the materialistic (if memory serves). Or maybe he's been right about something that I didn't like; always a possibility. That said, his "interview" with Michael Bay was kind of hilarious...

mushroom said...

That's true about abortion being a political motivator. It has also contributed to dialog and cooperation between Catholics and Protestants.

You're right about Carter -- 'born-again Christian' was the 1976 equivalent of 'African-American' in '08. That was the first year I voted Libertarian.

I was not so impressed with Carter's born-again-ness, or even his confession that he had lusted in his heart, but with the suggestion that he might legalize marijuana. When it came time to mark my ballot, though, I realized my right hand was connected to my left brain, and it simply would not mark under 'D'.

Rick, did you read about the caffeine withdrawal? Classic.

Gagdad Bob said...

My first two presidential votes went to Carter, but he was by no means liberal enough for me. I was actually for Barry Commoner in 1980, of the Citizens Party, but I don't remember him being on the California ballot.

Rick said...

Bob at 10:52,
I can't argue with your metaphysic. Since it sounds just like mine (when you put it that way). It may be a hand-me-down, but so.
Truth is Truth, as they say..
:-)

Rick said...

Julie,
"but he rubs me the wrong way - I think he's an atheist, so his perspective tends toward the materialistic (if memory serves)."

Yeah, he rubs me the wrong way too, much of the time. You're right about the materialist tendency. Seems a bit more horny than I care for (I'm not a prude, it just seems kind of immature). Then I think it's just his kind of humor (which I think he thinks he's funny with that more than he actually is.) Ah..his blog..his taste.
Not so sure about the atheism. I think he keeps that close to the chest. He doesn't seem to be militant/anti-religion at all, so..
I've read most of his archives just recently and as you sort of say, I'm intrigued how often he makes me "check myself". That must be a good thing. He's for certain not a lib. According to Bob, that's rare, so that's why I bring him up.

Rick said...

Mush, I must have missed that one ...due to these allergy meds.
:-)

julie said...

Re. the atheism, perhaps it's someone else I'm thinking of. I can take him in small doses; beneath the crassness I think there's genuine compassion, but it gets abrasive. Reminds me of some of the pick-up artists, now that I think of it - underneath the asshole exterior, there's some real insight into human behavior, but there's only so much of that style of presentation I can take. Of course, it also works for them because a lot of people can't get enough of the combo of intelligence and crudity; hell, I used to be one of them. Now it just makes me tired after a while. I actually find it a bit depressing. Maybe it's the seeming jadedness of their insight, but again I could be wrong.

Rick said...

I don't think you can be wrong about how he makes you feel.
And I think your assessment is right.
Part of me wonders though if that's how he has decided to prove his point. He seems to be a fan of pointing out all the narcissism in our culture. Any (every) chance he gets. Yet, I can't help wanting to point back at him :-) But according to him, I'm not using the term correctly.
Cooncur about small doses.
I can't tell if he's 18 or 50.
He does push-ups like my old man so he must be at least 50.
:-)
(sorry for the diversion, Bob)

William said...

"One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required.

You can see the obedience factor in every part of conservative politics from Grover Norquest's anti-tax pledge to the Global Climate Change science deniers. There is very little diversity of thought.

GCC is a classic example. When a scientific reality becomes so universally denied by one political side, the obedience issue becomes really apparent. You even have people like Gingrich, who've because of political pressure to fall in line, have checked their intellect at the GOP door and flip-flopped on this issue.

About what percentage of the fundamentalist 'young earth creationists' do you think are Democrats? Or GCC deniers? As Julie commented, she claimed I was confused on this issue because I don't subscribe to the eco-liberal view on this issue, and she couldn't put me in a box.... so confusing for a conservative, I know.

The real enemy here is absolute certainty.

By their nature, agnostic don't suffer from this ailment.

Gagdad Bob said...

Well, so long as you're certain about it.

julie said...

Zzzzzz....

Gagdad Bob said...

Clearly a ferrous cranus with a dollop of weenie.

Rick said...

"About what percentage of the fundamentalist 'young earth creationists'.."

If I ever meet one, I'll run the numbers...

Gagdad Bob said...

I've also never met a young earth creationist. But I have met plenty of Keynesians.

julie said...

Ow! Dang fire ants... Funny, I dozed off for some reason a bit ago, and it's the darnedest thing but I found myself watching a nature show, of all things:

British Voice-over Narrator in hushed tones: Ah! And here we see the Billious Yelvertonus Mendouchionis, otherwise known as the common twatwaffler...

Van Harvey said...

"But few of these narratives are sophisticated enough to account for the fact that man is an intrinsically narrative creating being whose fundamental way of knowing the world is to tell stories about it. "

I should probably read on first, but seriously, how do they expect people, students, to learn what they need to know, from their desiccated lifeless textbooks? ... Citizens to know or care about their country? ... People to care about their culture? ... Anyone to care about their lives?... without the narratives needed to hold them all together with?

The attempt to teach those few facts still deemed worth knowing, without a story to situate their all important facts within, leaves nihil behind but isolated factoids without a narrative to stitch them together with and even less of a reason for why they should - harking back to yesterday's post, we're left with a boredom within which the mind has no way to hold onto any facts, a whirled where know-it-alls no everything and know nothing.

The narrative isn't something to be dismissed, it is the web which catches and holds the facts... without it, all the important facts, simply fall right through the brain pan and out the anonymous hole below.

Arghhh.
(rant off)

Gagdad Bob said...

If only socialists just "believed" in their theory instead of imposing it on the rest of us!

Rick said...

Julie,
I'm still thinking about your comment, "I think he's an atheist, so his perspective tends toward the materialistic..".

I want to say I've read a few things here and there where he could have easily made an atheistic-type comment. Like I was surprised (refreshing) that he didn't. That aside, your comment made me think that it is possible for a person to be both a believer and materialistic. A ran across a tumblr the other day by a young Orthodox Christian man. I was checking in on it here and there and one day he posted a pic of his new tattoo of the Orthodox cross on his back. I couldn't wrap my head around that one. I don't doubt his devotion or even his knowledge of his faith.
(Plus, I could no doubt make do with less "stuff" :-)
Anyway, I'm not critisising your comment. It just made me realize something from a different angle..

mushroom said...

I think I'm the proto-typical Evil Clown.

I note that "global warming" is a lot more popular during the north hemisphere summers than it is when we are experiencing record cold during the winter months.

It's hot and dry here right now. Must be global warming. I mean this never happened back in the '30's when my father and grandfather were walking behind mules and double-shovels.

Climate change. Right.


When you believe in things you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way.

julie said...

You may well be right, Rick. I only thought that because I had a vague recollection of him (or someone similar - on further thought, in fact, I think it was probably this guy, about whom I essentially feel the same) saying outright that he was an atheist.

Re. materialist believers, yes, there is no shortage of those, either.

Rick said...

Mush,
I believe in man made global warming. Completely serious. But it is a matter of proportion. As in, William's cat purrs on Saturday and it affects the weather in Tokyo a year later.
But I only believe in American made global warming. None o that foriegn crap.

Rick said...

LOL, Julie. I didn't know about that other site. But if you need to tell people you're a real doctor... :-)

I remember Bob mentioning one of the psychologist bloggers was a fraud.

julie said...

That was Siggy. I think he still blogs.

Rick said...

:-D

I wonder about The Last Psychologist.

julie said...

Off-topic, but here's a very good article discussing the problem of envy in Haiti. He doesn't put it that way; nonetheless that is what's happening:

"The regime, no matter who is in charge, is like a voracious dog on the loose, seeking to devour any private wealth that happens to emerge."

Brazentide said...

re: Haiti

I find that we are swiftly gaining the ability to empathize with that particular situation.

Gagdad Bob said...

Why liberalism creates worse people.

julie said...

From the Prager article,

"The welfare state corrupts family life. Even many Democrats have acknowledged the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. It has rendered vast numbers of males unnecessary to females, who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband."

Maybe this is an odd thought, but it struck me just now that the long-term welfare queen is in a strange way like an inverted nun. Instead of being married to Christ she is married to the state, and instead of vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, she maintains a life framed by incontinence, handouts from the state and narcissistic selfishness.

Corrupted life, indeed...

Gagdad Bob said...

Exactly. And prison serves as the surrogate father for the children they bring into the world. But it's a father who is all justice and no mercy. I suppose the mercy comes in via liberals who are soft on crime, but it's a false mercy.

Guildofcannonballs said...

NotquiteunBuckley said...
At 5600 columns, documented, there's a certain amount of, at one point once was called, albeit perhaps in naivete, "evidence."

IT was assumed conflicting evidence would arise; Existence being just that.

There are the books. 56. Plus. Some fiction. Most not.

TV.

WFB was accussed by some of not writing one masterpiece.

One Grand Encompass.

WFB chose instead to document calling it as he saw it.

Cruising Speed.

Overdrive.

7/20/11 3:09 AM

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Great post, Bob!

That Deep-ack (like all lefties) can say that without a hint of irony shows just how irony deficient he is.

I would venture to say he is so irony deficient...

"How irony deficient is he?"

Why thanks for asking. He is so irony deficient I dare say he hasn't got one red blood cell in his entire body.

All leftists suffer from this deficiency (I believe they call it "efficiency." Again, without the slightest hint of irony nor humor for that matter).

BTW, leftists are also deficient in vitamin see, which is why Skully calls them "scurvy dogs."

I believe Skully may be on to something here, only I think it's much worse than that. I believe they also have spiritual scurvy.

Sadly, it's entirely preventable, but you can't force them to take their daily dose of see vitamins (nor would we even if we could).

They think see vitamins is a red heiring devised by Big Karma to fool them into not taking their
quantum, a-hole-istic herbs (organically grown on monkeyshit island no less).

Gagdad Bob said...

I was wondering what Skully thought of this seductively rendered glamor shot of our troll, which appeared in Cat Lover's Monthly. Lock up your daughters!

Gagdad Bob said...

Or sons, as the case may be....

julie said...

Heh - I was going to say, I don't think it's the daughters we need to be worried about. Maybe not the sons, either. But if you have a pretty little kitty, there may be cause for concern...

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Egads! Skully sez: "men doin' glamor shots is a sign of severe salt deficiency! It's probably already too late for this pathetic, french cabin boy. And that poor cat will need lifetime therapy because of this tragedy! Remember men, if yer gonna do shots you should be doin' tequila shots (note: you may substitute rum, whiskey, white lightnin', gin or vodka instead of, or along with tequila-ed). Friends don't let friends do glamor shots."

Gagdad Bob said...

It may also confuse the guy at the One Hour Photo, like what happened to George Costanza.

Rick said...

Does he have a pinkish hue?

Gagdad Bob said...

Ah, the timeless art of seduction.

Gagdad Bob said...

Classic. I just hope Serr8ed sees that.

Van Harvey said...

Ben & Julie... timely LOL's!

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