Monday, October 20, 2014

Sudden, Like a Word

"In OUR beginning was the Word." Or so says Joan d'Argghh!: It "is the miracle that happened when man became a living soul. To even form a thought, a Word has to precede it. An Articulation of everything had to happen, a thing said, that contains everything that came into being after it."

Yes. The human word is very much like the metabolism which is the basis of life. There is nothing "in between" metabolism and death, just as there is nothing between word and... What could be its opposite, anyway? Anything we can come up with will be another word.

I think this equates to the Thomistic idea that to exist is to be intelligible, and to be intelligible is to partake of the Word. Likewise man: he has a soul, which is both his seat of intelligence and the intimate form of his identity. Thus, it has a public and private face, one that exteriorizes itself toward the objective horizon, another that is the invisible essence of the subjective horizon.

"I tried to think of my first thought and it's as impossible to know and as far away as the Big Bang. And yet, it's as true for the first man is it is for the cosmos. The Word is our soul" (J of A). Or as Aristotle put it, "the soul is all it knows." And it can know any-thing in potential: again, there is nothing in existence that cannot potentially be known, because to exist is to be intelligible.

Thus, it makes no sense to search for the "beginning" of man in historical time, for the simple reason that his beginning transcends time. "His body may have evolved from the brutes," writes GKC, "but we know nothing of any such transition that throws the smallest light upon his soul as it has shown itself in history."

The ambiguous term "prehistory" tends to elide this irruption (or vertical ingression) of soul within biology. It again implies a gradual transition where there cannot be one. It draws a linguistic veil over an intrinsic mystery and pretends the mystery is due to the veil, not vice versa. It is somewhat like the linguistic misdirection of calling a baby a fetus, not in order to comprehend, but in order to mis-comprehend or de-understand -- to render what must be a singularity into something gradual so as to avoid the sixth commandment.

Just so, the "monkey does not draw clumsily and a man cleverly.... A monkey does not do it at all; he does not begin to do it at all; he does not begin to begin to do it at all" (GKC). For to begin to do it is to be doing it: "A line of some kind is crossed before the first faint line can begin."

More generally -- you know, logic -- "it is hardly an adequate explanation of how a thing appeared for the first time to say it existed already." Unless the "already existing" is a radically different thing than we had thought it to be. Either way, the conventional explanation fails.

Importantly, it doesn't just fail atheists and other materialists, but it fails man. It is wholly unworthy of him, infinitely beneath his station. Now, why would man want to auto-castrate in this manner? I don't know, but it is mighty similar to the ubiquitous compulsion on the left to denigrate western civilization, or our Judeo-Christian heritage, or the United States, or the founders, or the free market, or technology...

But why, Bob, why? I'll tell you why: because man, as man, loves truth. Therefore, all one must do in order to pervert a man is to convince him that the lie is true, and he will defend it to the death. Or, in the case of a craven liberal, until it is extremely inconvenient to do so. Otherwise he requires a bodyguard of likeminded bullies to defend his outrageous claims.

This is why the left requires near total dominance of the media, academia, and the culture just to gain roughly fifty percent of the vote. Think about that: suppression of truth cannot occur on terms of equal power, because then truth can rely upon logic and evidence to win the day.

But the lie can hold 90% of the ideological ground, and this will never be sufficient, hence the inevitable "totalitarian temptation" of the left. Truth must be burned from our midst and its ground salted in order to kill it, but even then, you can't, because truth isn't ours to create or destroy (see the Resurrection for details). Or, at the other end, see the Soviet Union for details.

Yes, God makes a special covenant with the Jews, but Balthasar reminds us that prior to this, with Noah, he makes a more general covenant "with the whole of mankind and the whole of creation." I hadn't thought of that one before, but in Noah all peoples are explicitly blessed, although "they had already been implicitly blessed since Adam..." Even so, it's good to get things down on paper.

The wider point is that there exists "an historical logos proper to the 'peoples' as such," something touched upon by Joan, who writes of how interesting it is "that Man's first 'work' was to name the animals; to name them was to recognize his transcendence, his otherness. To see that none of them were like him was the first philosophy lesson of Man." In order to name at all, reality must first be intelligible; thus, to name is to recognize essences, which is the very basis of transcendent intelligence.

Balthasar writes of how, in the early fathers, there is "the curious alternation between two contradictory motifs. The first is a logos in the nonbiblical peoples, which in turn has in it seeds of the whole, which ripen toward the fullness of the incarnate Logos in the gospel." The second is the elucidation of the Logos as such, again, as particular is to universal. The task is actually to situate the latter in the former -- which is say, situate man in Christ rather than vice versa.

As to how this gets inverted, coincidentally, Balthasar cites Chesterton, who wrote of how "the world is full of Christian ideas gone mad. The Gospels and the Church are plundered like a fruit tree, but the fruit when separated from the trees goes rotten and cannot be used." Nor can the "ideas" of Christ be separated from the person of Christ without losing their value.

Here we confront the question of "stars that have long become extinct continuing to shine." How to tell the difference? In other words, we can look up to the night sky and the living star will look identical to the long dead one.

Every visible star is "a long time ago." But man is always "in the beginning," for we are the occasion for the light to be seen at all. It is again a matter of the Logos, for "wherever being is illuminated, however obscurely, there is [man's] humanity, and he becomes illuminated to himself as spirit."

The "miracle of language" involves an orthoparadoxical "unity of oneness and distance" (Balthasar). It is (as alluded to by Joan) "what gives man dominion over nature and raises him like a king above all the beasts.... By themselves they are unnamed, as they are incapable of raising themselves into the light of self-comprehension; but the word of man knows and names them from the height of his light, and, thus, he dominates them in their innermost being from a higher point than they can themselves" (Balthasar).

114 comments:

EbonyRaptor said...

Bob, I'm glad you picked up on and expanded on Joan's very insightful comment. We are indeed created in God's image and have creative power unlike any other of His creatures.

Rogelio Bueno said...

Smart girl that Joan.

julie said...

You are a lucky man ;)

Rogelio Bueno said...

Yes I am. But don't tell her I said so. It'll go to her head and she'll want me to clean the dishes or something.

julie said...

lol - my lips are sealed...

mushroom said...

Of course, the crowning evidence that Joan is a genius is that she managed to marry the JR.

Paul Griffin said...

Oh geez, no one told me the old man was hangin around here...

Rogelio Bueno said...

Well, somebody's gota provide the adult supervision.

julie said...

You guys are all cracking me up. I think it's rather awesome that you come here separately; your whole family is lucky.

julie said...

Or rather, blessed.

EbonyRaptor said...

The ambiguous term "prehistory" tends to elide this irruption (or vertical ingression) of soul within biology. It again implies a gradual transition where there cannot be one. It draws a linguistic veil over an intrinsic mystery and pretends the mystery is due to the veil, not vice versa.

Ain't that the truth.

mushroom said...

Nor can the "ideas" of Christ be separated from the person of Christ without losing their value.

That's where history goes wrong all the time.

All those people in the early church pooled what they had and had everything in common. That's such a great idea, let's make it compulsory and put totalitarian bureaucrats in charge. We'll give it a catchy name like, uh, communism. And we can use that idea about Ananias and Sapphira, too -- pay up or die. Don't question the people in charge,

Paul Griffin said...

adult supervision

Pfft. I'll believe that when I see it.

Nor can the "ideas" of Christ be separated from the person of Christ without losing their value.

And for this reason, we continually try to pile ton upon ton of legislation where an ounce of formation would be infinitely more effective.

We might as well try to teach someone how to play the piano by physically forcing their fingers to hit the keys we want, without making any reference to music theory, musicians who went before, scales, notation, or any other aspect of what we would normally call music. This is not the relationship between a teacher and a student, this is the relationship between a programmer and his computer.

Anonymous said...

This is why the left requires near total dominance of the media, academia, and the culture just to gain roughly fifty percent of the vote

Yes, aside from Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Hoover Institute, the Cato Institute, George Mason University, the National Review, Commentary, American Spectator, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and a panoply of web properties, conservatives can barely get a word in edgewise.

Oh you mean liberals control respectable media? I wonder why that is.

mushroom said...

I thought this was going to be OT, but Anon has made it relevant -- though he'll never figure out why.

Our old pal, Olbermann

julie said...

Funny, Mushroom.

Respectable media? L.O.L.

Gagdad Bob said...

One of the strongest parts of The New Class Conflict is Kotkin's analysis of the left wing clerisy and its impact on folks like Anonymous who have never been troubled by an original thought. Not only is liberal dominance just common sense, it can also be demonstrated empirically -- which highlights one of the points of the post, that in order for the left to defy reality, it requires great numbers of people in positions of authority, and total ideological conformity. That's what the clerisy accomplishes. What is even stranger is how harmful the views of the clerisy are to the people progressives supposedly care about (another point of the book).

Anonymous said...

The fact that the public doesn't trust the media says more about the public than it does about the media, you know.

Gagdad Bob said...

Exactly -- as the apparatchiks used to say in the Soviet Union, "abolish the people and elect a new one!"

Anonymous said...

Wow. Maybe if you spent a little less time ranting about Obama and your festering God delusions around here, you'd recognize who your betters are.

julie said...

Oh, that's easy: Schuon, Balthasar, Benedict, UF...

Cousin Dupree said...

"less time ranting about Obama and your festering God delusions around here, you'd recognize who your betters are."

Butterfield fallacy!

Anonymous said...

Seriously, don't you guys read anything? Why don't you just worship a spaghetti monster or a water can? I'll take the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Al Sharpton over the likes of you any day.

Petey said...

Spaghetti monster: too demanding.
Water can: too lax.

Anonymous said...

I'm telling you that's not me.

Rick said...

"...over the likes of you any day."

And yet, here you are.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but only because I can't stop.

Captain Obvious said...

I smell a masked pandit. Poor Anon.

If you don't like it, you can always choose a nickname. Preferably one that's backed up by some slight validation, but even just a sock puppet is better than nuthin. If you choose to stay Anon and spout inanities, you can't expect no respect. For all we know, there could be two of you - one more dense than the other (though it's a toss up which is which, since there's no way to tell who's who...).

John Lien said...

Truth must be burned from our midst and its ground salted in order to kill it, but even then, you can't, because truth isn't ours to create or destroy (see the Resurrection for details).

I like that. Thanks for re-wiring me noggin.

Anonymous said...

I'm just trying to help you people! Why can't you see that? You're so wrong, and you don't even know it!

Joan of Argghh! said...

I should read Balthasar, seeing how he steals my stuff...

Anonymous said...

Ok. Haha. You're so funny. Give it a rest.

Anonymous said...

Who, me?

John Lien said...

C'mon Anon, Come out and fight like a man, instead of a troll.

Come to think on it, I can't imagine anything a leftist/atheist could say to make me change my mind.

It's good entertainment though.

Anonymous said...

I thought we had a "Do Not Feed The Trolls" sign around here, and here they are, feeding each other.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said...

I am not defined by my followers, thankfully. I am a serious inquisitor, er, scientist, and I won't be identified in the same breath as Bill Nye the Lab Coat Guy.

Moniker said...

You can't tell the Anonymouses without a moniker.

Anonymous said...

Speaker of Moniker, I heard just now that she's still crying over Bill.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Oh, hey guys? I'd say that one can't choose their family, but I actually DID choose the one and created the other, so um, sorry about them ganging up in here like it was our living room...

:o)

Anonymous said...

UK leftists want to ban internet trolls. For obvious reasons, I've never felt so torn in two directions...

Joan of Argghh! said...

I knew Dylan did this song, had no idea that Johnny Cash did it: Man Gave Names To All The Animals

Anonymous said...

folks like Anonymous who have never been troubled by an original thought.

Pretty funny from a guy whose entire schtick is recycling stale religious ideas that haven't been improved on in a thousand years or so.

Besides, aren't conservatives ideologically suspicious of originality? I can respect that a bit -- there's some good reasons to prefer the tried and true -- but a conservative who seeks original thought is just a self-contradiction.

Cousin Dupree said...

Yeah, we're pretty much terrified of originality and change, which is why we hate the free market.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"The ambiguous term "prehistory" tends to elide this irruption (or vertical ingression) of soul within biology. It again implies a gradual transition where there cannot be one."

Aye, one can't have a little bit of soul (musical inclinations notwithstanding). You either have one or you don't.

When it comes to the Word, I'm souled.

BTW, well said, Joan. :)

Captain Obvious said...

Shucks, just when I was thinking maybe we were mocking Anon a tad unfairly, he goes and demonstrates what a tool he is.

I must be getting soft.

Gagdad Bob said...

Not only is God the only really endlessly new thing, but he is the source of all this continuous novelty. "Newness" is a divine category.

Back when I was a progressive, I did not realize this, so I can certainly empathize with Anonymous.

Gagdad Bob said...

That's why the left is do tedious, by the way -- it is an ontological wet blanket and metaphysical buzzkill.

Anonymous said...

Please. "God" is the oldest thought in the book. Here's an original thought: throw out that idiot delusion and WE can each be in charge of our own lives.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Once again Anon is not even wrong.

Conservatives are actually classical liberals whereas today's lefty libs are statists who wanna rehash the most destructive ideologies (socialism, communism, fascism) known to man.

So tell us, anon, what has the left ever done that is creative? Note: De-evolution and a race to the bottom doesn't count.

Gagdad Bob said...

What has the left ever done that's creative? Government accounting, for one.

Gagdad Bob said...

Not to mention interpreting the Constitution. Or how about pretending men are women? Or homosexuals can marry?

Gagdad Bob said...

Their history books are endlessly creative, if not outright farcical....

Gagdad Bob said...

Ever try reading Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, or Edward Said? Some of our greatest fantasists!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Thanks for pointing that out, Bob.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, lefties created the "right" to abort babies.
Lefties have a lot to be proud of.

EbonyRaptor said...

Hey anon, I see you're still here. Fine job of being in charge of your own life ... and what a life it must be.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Lefties do create deceptive phrases as well.
For example, "living wage."

Which is really funny, because if millions of Americans don't have living wages where are all the dead bodies?
I never heard a reporter ask that question.

Gagdad Bob said...

Some of those global warming models are extremely creative. Not to mention the models that prove Obamacare saves money.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I reckon I should've asked, what good have leftists ever created?

Gagdad Bob said...

Hey, I should know -- I have a Ph.D. in a science controlled by liberals. They call it psychology, I call it bad creative writing.

Anonymous said...

What good have leftists ever created? How about high self-esteem in individuals who don't deserve it? That's something.

Anonymous said...

The welfare state has done nothing for "the poor," but it has created millions of jobs for otherwise unemployable people. That's something.

Anonymous said...

We helped create the urban ghetto and the single mother black family. That's something.

Anonymous said...

We've created more debt in six years than all administrations combined in the previous 200+. That's something.

Anonymous said...

We've created a 24% poverty rate in California, the highest in the nation. That's something.

julie said...

Being human, they can't help but be endlessly creative. Having amputated themselves from the divine, mostly what they create is ugliness, misery and degeneracy, when it doesn't result in outright, widespread slaughter.

That joke about the apparatchiks from earlier becomes a smidge less funny when you consider how many people were sent to the gulags for not sharing the correct vision.

Cousin Dupree said...

Yeah, the left wants to create a "living wage" but then shut down places like Walmart so you can't buy anything with it.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Totally tweeting some of Bob's later quips here. Precious tweet fodder...!

Anonymous said...

We love the poor. We just hate the tasteless places where they shop. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Gagdad Bob said...

Uh oh. The Houston DA wants my blog posts.

Skully said...

Leftists love the sin but hate the winners.

Gagdad Bob said...

It's true. History used to be written by the winners. Now it's written by tenured losers.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Wendy "dildos are a right" Davis warns Texas that republicans wanna outlaw dildos.

Democrats: the party of dildos.

Gagdad Bob said...

If we outlaw dildos, only outlaws will have dildos.

Gagdad Bob said...

Besides, in America we have a strict separation between crotch and state.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

LOL! Now I gotta clean my computer screen.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Democrats: Power to the vibrators!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Now we need more studies; do democrats use green dildos?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Shakespear, rewritten by the tenured: To crotch rot or not, that is the question.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I wonder if the Houston mayor will subpoena the CDC's study of fat lesbians?

Gagdad Bob said...

Yeah, conservatives are waging a war on women. But only the males.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

So, the CDC is sayin' that fat lesbianism is a disease?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

The CDC has protocols on fat lesbians but they're still working on the ebola protocols.

Gagdad Bob said...

Liberal creativity: you can give Ebola on a bus, but you can't get Ebola on a bus.

Seems to be based on Obama's power to toss others under the bus without being so tossed.

Cousin Dupree said...

Fat lesbianism is a disease, or what's the point?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Thanks, Bob forthe recommendation on Washington: A Life. I get the book tomorrow from Amazon. The excerpt at Amazon is superb.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Bob, Moochelle is the only one who tosses Barrack.
Speakin' of male women.

Gagdad Bob said...

Great book! His book on Hamilton is also fantastic. That those two dudes were on earth at the same time but also worked together, was pretty much the most wondrous meeting until Lennon bumped into McCartney.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I'll check out the Hamilton book as well. Any recommendations on Benjamin Franklin?

Gagdad Bob said...

Megyn Kelly seems to have called in sick, so I'm now watching Rachel Maddow, which is a TRULY CREATIVE newscast.

Subtle: I notice that when she tries to be funny she makes you cringe, whereas when she tries to be serious she makes you wince.

Gagdad Bob said...

Never read a bio of Franklin -- he wasn't an important founder except for the prestige he leant to the enterprise. He was a worldwide celebrity for a number of reasons, but I don't believe he had any important political ideas.

Malcolm Y said...

Racism will end in America when racial demagoguery and pandering are no longer absolutely vital to Democrat electoral success.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Thanks Bob. I see Franklin wrote his own bio so I am gonna check that out. I'll let you guys know if it's any good.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I concur Malcolm Y. Unfortunately, I don't expect that will happen anytime soon, unless the majority of voters wake up and repudiate the democrat agenda.

Gagdad Bob said...

McCullough's book on John Adams is also great... Probably the most conventionally religious of the major founders, although I suspect that Washington, like Lincoln, had the more pneuma-cosmic view...

Gagdad Bob said...

It's sad that the electoral success of one of our major parties is based on filling blacks with fear and hatred, convincing women that there is a war on them, and getting the young and stupid to flock to the polls. Look where its gotten these groups over the past six years.

Gagdad Bob said...

Be careful America! If Republicans gain control of the senate, they may behave like Democrats!

Cousin Dupree said...

I have no problem with midgets except the moral and intellectual kind.

Leftist Officials said...

Oh, and by the way, if you like your freedom of religion, you can keep your freedom of religion. Preferably behind closed doors, and away from polite society; we don't want your morals to be a bad influence on The Children™. They belong to the government, you know.

Reverend Al said...

Having the state as parent works for blacks (prison as farther, welfare as mother), why can't it work for everyone?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Let's hope the GOP are as ruthless as the democrats were in the Senate. As long as they promote liberty rather than boondoggles.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"But why, Bob, why? I'll tell you why: because man, as man, loves truth. Therefore, all one must do in order to pervert a man is to convince him that the lie is true, and he will defend it to the death. Or, in the case of a craven liberal, until it is extremely inconvenient to do so. Otherwise he requires a bodyguard of likeminded bullies to defend his outrageous claims."

The reason leftists are "intolerant" of bullies is they don't like the competition.

julie said...

I get the impression sometimes that it's not so much that they are intolerant of bullies as they are intolerant of people standing up for themselves, considering how often it is that the kid who fights back in self defense gets punished worse than the tormentor who drove him to it.

Gagdad Bob said...

More creative thought on the left: men who pretend they are women should be able to attend women's colleges.

julie said...

True, but women who pretend to be men at women's colleges may not hold student government positions, because they benefit from white male privilege, and thus can't be expected to be properly sympathetic to the lives of diverse women.

So, it all balances out.

Anonymous said...

That's why the left is do tedious, by the way -- it is an ontological wet blanket and metaphysical buzzkill.

Then why do you spend so much energy thinking about it? You seem far more obsessed with it than I am.

This comports with your preference for myth over reality though. If "the left" (whatever in the world that means) is harshing your buzz, perhaps that is because it is grappling with real-world problems, which are not necessarily all that much fun.

But feel free to be king of the kiddie pool if you like.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Being obsessed with truth is a good thing. Too bad anon doesn't have the same obsession.

Captain Obvious said...

Funny thing about the left, when you ignore them or allow them to have their way, people die. When folks are at least trying to pay attention, it doesn't get all the way to the gulag or the gas chamber, but for instance veterans get put on secret waiting lists to see a doctor, so that they die of illnesses that would have been treatable had they been seen in a timely fashion. Or American agents killed by American guns in the hands of Mexican drug runners - to say nothing of the untold number of murdered Mexicans. Or children, particularly those who suffer with asthma, who are being sickened, paralyzed, and sometimes killed by the enterovirus which looks like it's been transmitted by the flood of illegal immigrant children who were enticed here by the administration. All the abortions.

Short of death, we have blatant ballot stuffing in Arizona this week. Christian ministers are being threatened with jail time and massive fines if they adhere to their beliefs and refuse to marry gay couples. Satanists are handing out pamphlets at schools, holding "educational" black masses and demanding that their religious displays be put up alongside Christian displays in some towns - and if you think that's merely atheists yanking the chain of Christians and that satanists are harmless, you probably haven't heard of this guy. Public school teachers can't keep their hands off the children, and the females are apparently just as bad as the males. Political leaders state publicly that they would like to see people jailed for questioning "settled" science.

Well, one could go on for pages and pages. As one does.

Why think about the wet blankets? They are only there to smother us, after all, nothing to worry about. They care. They care so much, about women, and little brown people, and the environment, and other peoples children. They care about all the victims of white male oppression. They care about the Palestinians, and the sex workers. They care about pleasuring themselves, subsidized, as often as possible. And they demand that we care about it all as passionately as they do, or face serious consequences.

Captain Obvious said...

You say you want to be in charge of your own life? We are completely in favor of that. We'd appreciate the same courtesy from the left.

We don't expect it to be forthcoming.

A Small Voice said...

Why do we care? Because we know the First Truth:

God Is.

All else comes from this.

May you discover it, too.

Van Harvey said...

Funny thing about words, they mean something, even when you try to make them meaningless/meansomehtingelse.

I'm in our Missouri Curriculum Framework Work Group again, yesterday and today, and the gobbledy-gook they resort to in order to try to make emptiness seem overfull, is astounding. For example, if you'd like to see what sewage looks like in word form, look up the "C3 Framework - College, Career & Civic Life for social studies state standards".

But it is fun for someone with a pin who enjoys hearing a 'pop!'.

Gagdad Bob said...

In short: I may not care about the left, but the left sure cares about me, i.e., the ordinary individual whom they wish to convert into a unit of the state. If not for that, I would't give them a second thought.

Besides, dissent is the highest form of patriotism!

Gagdad Bob said...

There are direct financial concerns as well. For example, in order to give my kid a decent education I have to send him to a private school. That costs real money, but I also have to pay property taxes just like everyone else to feed the state education beast....

julie said...

Behold, Vanderleun has provided the key to understanding our troll:

June: I am not here to educate you. Shut up, listen, and own your ancient legacy of hatred and wrongness

July: You are jeopardizing my well being with your violent refusal to agree

John said...

In short: I may not care about the left, but the left sure cares about me, i.e., the ordinary individual whom they wish to convert into a unit of the state. If not for that, I would't give them a second thought.
True of government, at least since 1913

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