Thursday, May 17, 2012

We're the Deiciders!

On purely logical and dispassionate grounds, it seems to me that in the absence of God -- however conceptualized -- the existence of thought is a cruel hoax.

Except it can't be cruel, since there is no one responsible for this impractical joke. Rather, it's just an unnecessary, superfluous, and annoying activity that interferes with the real action of existence: food. Sex. Grog. Power. Or pleasure, for short.

It is therefore ironic that the people who most insist that thought has no ultimate significance are the most certain of the ultimate truth of their own thought. For the restavus, we have only faith, not certitude, (o) not (ø).

The world seems so obviously defective, why should it make sense? In other words, perhaps all the disorder in and around us results from the fact that the disorder is built in. We look for truth, for meaning, for order, but in vain, since there is none to be had.

That's certainly one way of looking at it, and we actually respect the person who looks at it this way, so long as he truly lives by it -- Nietzsche, for example.

One of Nietzsche's finer qualities was that he at least had the good sense to merely go insane, instead of trying to impose his insanity on the rest of us, as have so many other existentialists.

If you want to go nuts, hey, go nuts! But what gives you the right to impose your insanity on the collective? What, are you nuts? What if I don't want to be rescued by a bunch of statist nuts?

This gets to the nub of Voegelin's argument in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. In it he has a chapter called The Murder of God. It's funny that something that doesn't exist needs to be murdered at all, but that's just one more irony lost on the left. Shoot first, ask questions never.

In order to solve a murder, you need what? Motive, means, and opportunity. What could be the motive for this deicide? Hatred? Yes, but of what? Can't be God, can it?

Voegelin writes that the aim of political gnosticism "is to destroy the order of being, which is experienced as defective and unjust, and through man's creative power to replace it with a perfect and just order."

Now, if there is no God, then there is no intrinsic order, not to mention any basis for justice. Therefore, injustice and disorder are precisely what we should expect to see, and we have no right to expect otherwise. There's no crying in Darwinism. Deal with it.

Conversely, for the believer, order is necessary, disorder contingent. In fact, disorder has its own necessity -- "relative necessity," as it were -- because it is not the Order, precisely. Everyone and everything necessarily falls short of its ideal, since we are creature, not Creator.

Therefore, for us, the existence of disorder is a banality, not a crisis per se. Indeed, most of us learn by the age of seven or eight that "life's not fair," and move on. Others become Democrats.

The task of man is indeed to "repair the world" (ticoon O'lam), but this is because there is an ideal, precisely. It is not for us to reinvent the world order, because that's not repair, it's destruction. We are to be jehovial witnesses to this ideal, not witless juvenile idealists.

But for the gnostic, "the givenness of the order of being must be obliterated." The order of being is "essentially under man's control," and "taking control of being requires that the transcendent origin of being be obliterated: it requires the decapitation of being -- the murder of God."

That's a pretty bold statement. Are we seriously charging the left with deicide? Not necessarily. It could be abortion, i.e., killing him in the womb of speculative thought, for the gnostic insists that "man should stop creating gods because this sets absurd limits to his will and action; and he should realize that the gods he has already created have in fact been created by him" (Voegelin).

Beneath the destructiveness there is envy. Envy is built into man, but if unacknowledged and forced underground, it can take on literally cosmic proportions. Thus, one of the motives in deicide is envy of the Creator: "If there were gods, how could I endure not being a god!" Therefore, there are no gods, and I am he!

In the Marxist version, man is a product of nature, which is a process through which man is gradually revealed to himself. Thus, the final apocalypse of man leads to the murder of God, for this bang ain't big enough for the both of us. God and socialist man cannot coexist.

Now, to kill God is to kill man. Except the man survives the operation. But in what form? There is the trembling little man, murder weapon in hand, blood dripping from the blade. Now what?

First, get ahold of yourself! Don't you see what you have done! You have killed god, and only a god can kill a god! Thus "The madman does not go backward, he goes forward," like MSNBC. "[I]f the deed is too great for man, then man must rise up above himself to the greatness of the deed" and become the Olber-man.

But.... "the nature of a thing cannot be changed; whoever tries to 'alter' its nature destroys the thing. Man cannot transform himself into a superman; the attempt to create a superman is an attempt to murder man. Historically, the murder of God is not followed by the superman, but the murder of man: the deicide of the gnostic theoreticians is followed by the homicide of the revolutionary practitioners" (ibid).

In five days we are going to fundamentally transform America!

For we are the ones we've been waiting for, and we are the deiciders!

25 comments:

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Therefore, for us, the existence of disorder is a banality, not a crisis per se. Indeed, most of us learn by the age of seven or eight that "life's not fair," and move on. Others become Democrats."

Excuse me while I compose myself. Ha ha ha!

Bob Hope would be proud. :^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

It is therefore ironic that the people who most insist that thought has no ultimate significance are the most certain of the ultimate truth of their own thought. For the restavus, we have only faith, not certitude, (o) not (ø)."

Ironic indeed. They never can see the logical conclusions of their own logic.

And when the results are finally so vivid that even they see it, they blame their failures on those that pointed out long ago that their plans would go awry and result in chaos n' destruction.

mushroom said...

Now, if there is no God, then there is no intrinsic order, not to mention any basis for justice.

Null is god, and chaos is his prophet. There is an appeal to Nietzsche.

It's like that quote of Mencken's you see around, "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

The illusion is maintained, I think, because previous notions of order and justice stick around for long enough for people to think they're self evident.

At least you can say for the Jacobins that they didn't do no pretendin'.

Gagdad Bob said...

Quite true. The left lives off the fumes of Christian civilization.

Van Harvey said...

I haven't read the post yet, but I'm betting that this quote, supposedly from Mark Twain, isn't too far off topic:

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled - Mark Twain

Paul Griffin said...

Personally, I have always felt that Cormac McCarthy's "The Sunset Limited" was an attempt to paint a rather vivid portrait of an internally consistent and personally committed nihilist/materialist, unafraid to draw out and act on the implications of his stated beliefs. In fact, I think most of his work attempts a similar portrait in some form or another (think of Anton Chigurh from "No Country for Old Men").

Held up to McCarthy's terrifying portraits, most self-described nihilists or materialists have barely gotten their big toe out of the church, although they cannot see how much they depend on her. They are more like Big Lebowski Nihilists: "We are nihilists! We don't believe in nothing! Now give us ze money!"

Gagdad Bob said...

These men are cowards, Paul.

Gagdad Bob said...

BTW, if you want a toe, I can get you a toe by 2:00. With nail polish on it.

John Lien said...

When I went for a short walk down the materialistic path a few years back I had to force myself to believe it. I mean, I hated it. That should have been my first clue. How many atheists are happy being atheists or is it something they've resigned themselves to?

Anyhow, thanks Bob for hammering into me the fact that, in the absence of God, human existence devolves into POWER, BITCHEZ! It explains so much.

Gagdad Bob said...

I just read that minority babies are now the majority in the US. This means that finally we are the Juans we've been waiting for.

Gagdad Bob said...

José can you see...

Gagdad Bob said...

Best of all, July 4th is now Drinko de Julio!

Gabe Ruth said...

You want a guy who walked the walk, don't look at Nietzsche, go for Emile Cioran. What always fascinates me is the drive such people (not that there are many) to enlighten the rest of humanity. It's either sadism or self-promotion for lucre. Or demons.

mushroom said...

I say chaos; you say pandemonium.

Good call on McCarthy. The Judge in Blood Meridan is perhaps even more the Overman than Chigurh.

Van Harvey said...

" That's a pretty bold statement. Are we seriously charging the left with deicide? Not necessarily. It could be abortion, i.e., killing him in the womb of speculative thought, for the gnostic insists that "man should stop creating gods because this sets absurd limits to his will and action; and he should realize that the gods he has already created have in fact been created by him" (Voegelin)."

It's more like the reverse of "The Matrix", unlike Neo, they plug the cord into the back of their heads, climb into the cozy bucket of goo, relax and float downstream, having aborted their on stage character, their relation to reality is only virtual.

Sweet dreams are made of these....

EbonyRaptor said...

If there is no God - then it's every man for himself, with no incentive for anything else. Why that isn't obvious to everyone with an intellect above idiot is one of life's most perplexing and annoying mysteries.

Gagdad Bob said...

I read somewhere that the left imagines a brotherhood of man with no father.

ge said...

Cioran, eh?! i just love his aphorisms, and in a sense not wholly like the term has been used here of late, call him a 'gnostic philosopher'

his cosmic complaints read joyfully

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

A car prowler shattered a window of a parked Jeep, stole nothing and left behind a little something for the car's owner _ a dozen tortillas scattered across the floor. The crime happened last week near the University of Washington.

Bemused by the break-in, police were moved to pun, saying, "The Seattle Police Department would like to take this opportunity to remind car prowlers that you shouldn't break in to something that's nachos."

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Well, you can believe in all sorts of substitute Gods that kind of take the place of him without forcing you to think directly about him.

Like.. Karma! God's Justice without his mercy (and without the need to address him directly.)

Van Harvey said...

OT, but come witness the amazing and astounding power of IowaHawk, whose abilities are so powerful, they even punched a hole in Anthony Robbins' armor and compelled him to see sense.

Bill Whittle covered the same essay awhile ago, but just to see Robbins admit it is worth the price of his presence, as kicking & screaming & warning the unwary about the 'inflammatory language' of the 'conservative blogger IowaHawk', whose numbers he had his own staff double check ('independents' like Robbins require teams of people before they can acknowledge sense), he faces it and I gotta give him some credit, once the light dawned, he put some effort into passing it on.

Mirabile dictu.

Gagdad Bob said...

Churchill quote at PowerLine:

'And what is society? I will tell you what society is. Translated into concrete terms, Socialistic “society” is a set of disagreeable individuals who obtained a majority for their caucus at some recent election, and whose officials in consequence would look upon humanity through innumerable grills and pigeon-holes and across innumerable counters, and say to them, “Tickets, please.” Truly this grey old world has never seen so grim a joke.'

julie said...

This is somewhat off topic, but over at House of Eratosthenes this morning there's an interesting observation about the tendency of leftist politicians to make certain claims or implications about themselves when it seems convenient, or dropping the charade when such claims are no longer useful.

"See how it works? If Professor Warren feels like she’s part-Indian, she must be. If Obama feels like running for President, then He must have been born in Hawaii. Otherwise, if He’s struggling with His ethnic identity crisis that’s been so thoroughly documented by His ghostwriter…maybe, for today, He was born in Kenya. Feel, feel, feel. That’s the lodestar."

Mizz E said...

Without a doubt, during WWII, Churchill was Britian's greatest asset!

Cowboy and I recently returned from a trip to the UK. I spent hours in the National Gallery, while he spent hours in the Churchill War Rooms, the only major museum in the world dedicated to Sir Winston Churchill, which sheltered the people at the heart of Britain's wartime government during the Blitz.

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