Monday, March 02, 2015

God's Not Only Merely True, But Really Most Sincerely True

A few more words about Poetic Knowledge and the Recovery of Education. Bottom line: the former is possible while the latter is not. You might say that the education establishment is ineducable.

Worse, poetic knowledge is not just possible but necessary in order for a man to become one, while the education industry -- or industrialized education -- renders this impossible (unless you're very lucky).

But for the most part, if you're going to activate your poetic knowledge, or plot your gnoetry implosion, you're pretty much on your own, because the government has no interest in nurturing individuals, only mindless statebots.

But hasn't education always really been for the few? How many of the many do you meet who are actually educable? The majority are trainable, while a smaller portion are tamable. That's funny, because for the past fifty years or so we've been laboring under the delusion that everyone should attend college.

However, this doesn't make the tamable educated. Rather, it is more likely to merely tame or train the educable, or pacify the wild intellect and consign it to the secular ghetto. It's how we end up with all these credentialed yahoos who fill academia and run the government. They don't shed light, they extinguish it.

So, poetic knowledge is a retail thingummy, never wholesale. In fact, not even retail, more door-to-door, or maybe some guy selling it out of his trunk. Most people who have it don't even bother trying to sell it, because the demand is so low.

So, if you're not homeschooled, then you're probably not schooled at all. The most we can hope for in a public education is that it doesn't kill the natural desire to homeschool oneself, i.e., snuff out the naturally supernatural love of learning.

The philo-sophical life revolves around being in love with, and seeking after, Wisdom, forever. But not only do these blighted infrahumans not desire wisdom, they don't even desire the desire. In other words, they are not even aware of this death in their perichoretic family! This is not even poverty, let alone mourning, because they are so full of themselves, and IT besides. No Cross for you!

Not only has the vast majority of my education taken place in the post-postgraduate slackatoreum inside my cloud-hidden bobservatory, but I have had to simultaneously disabuse mysoph of so much of the abusive sophistry assumilated during my quote unquote education. Just yesterday I was talking to a newfriend about how shocking it is that we have a president who really believes the shit I believed in college. Perhaps you don't realize how frightening this is.

This weekend I was reading in a book by F.J. Sheed of the distinction between knowledge and understanding. Specifically, he talks about how understanding can obscure knowledge. I would put it the other way around, but it's the same difference: a premature understanding of the the world -- or of human beings, or of oneself, or of God, or of history -- serves to prevent new learning.

Again, take the example of our idiot president, whose Deep Understanding of the ways of the world was set in concrete by his mid-twenties. Since then the rest has been commentary -- and deception, since he at least knows enough that he cannot reveal his gnostic understanding to the masses.

In the book, I talked about how words can deceive, especially if they are saturated with premature and unevolving meaning. Sheen writes that if one wants to take theology seriously, "the intellect must go to work, pierce through the words to the meaning, and enrich the words with the meaning -- that they may be real words" (emphasis mine).

How do we make mere words real words? Via poetic knowledge. Through this the intellect is able to make "the reality its own, then the whole man takes over -- will, emotions, imagination" (Sheed). This is how we give birth to the word: a -- or the -- word is a womb for the growth of meaning. And when the word grows in this way, "It means making the truths our own, a living part of our being" (ibid.).

Yes, "it is in the taking possession of truth by the whole man that the whole man lives." Only through this does the otherwise one- or two-dimensional word become three- or four-dimensional (i.e., vital and/or mystical). This is real intimacy with truth, i.e., knowing knaked knowledge, knucklehead.

For "Knowledge serves love, each new truth learnt is a new reason for loving God. Love craves knowledge, craves to know: it would be strange to love God and not want to know more and more about him." And "every truth revealed by God plunges deeper than [the] finite mind can follow it," but follow we must. Or are privileged to follow!

Blessed are the poor in spirit. The corollary of this is cursed are the asssouls who are wealthy in their own eyes. Or in other words, "There are three stages in spiritual growing:

"We begin from a condition of destitution, / pass from that into a second stage of true ownership, / and from that into a third, which seems to be a return / to the first, but no longer destitute" (ibid.).

To put it another way, "We begin with silence," then "progress from that into speech," and finally transition "into silence again, not a silence we lapse into but a silence we rise into..."

So with that I'll bow to the holy STFU.

[I]nfinite love has exploded into our universe; theology is an effort to diagram the explosion. --Sheed

18 comments:

Solomon said...

Therefore I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.

I preferred her to scepter and throne,
And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her, nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;

Because all gold, in view of her, is a bit of sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.

Beyond health and beauty I loved her,
And I chose to have her rather than the light,
because her radiance never ceases.

Yet all good things together came to me with her,
and countless riches at her hands;

I rejoiced in them all, because Wisdom is their leader,
though I had not known that she is their mother.

julie said...

That's funny, because for the past fifty years or so we've been laboring under the delusion that everyone should attend college.

Apropos, Williamson discusses the racism of trigonometry. Actually, what seems fitting is his mention of the 80s battle against "the rising tide of mediocrity." I had to wonder, what's so bad about mediocrity anyway? At least, in the way it was meant, which translates roughly to the awfulness of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs and living ordinary lives. In 80s America, there was actually nothing awful about any of that. Most of the world should be so lucky!

But of course, none of that speaks to the meat of the post, with which I can only agree wholeheartedly. Most days, I think I'm pretty normal, but then I'm always caught up by surprise when people are surprised at the things I know...

Gagdad Bob said...

Or how Asians are docked like 50 SAT points just for being too smart, while blacks are granted 250 for reasons that cannot be spoken of. The first is like a continuation of Roosevelt's WWII policy, while the second is reparations

Gagdad Bob said...

There is a suffering -- or sophering -- that goes with Being Smart. In fact, if it didn't come with a cross, it wouldn't be worth much.

This weekend I stumbled upon a great quote by Keirkegaard:

"Yes, this is the highest thing that can be said of any human being: one is sacrificed. The only question is whether it is the highest for which one is sacrificed. But, in the eternal sense, to be sacrificed is and continues to be, as long as the world remains the world, a far greater achievement than being victorious; for the world is not so perfect that to be victorious in the world by conformity to the world does not involve a dubious mixture of the world's paltriness. Being victorious in the world is like becoming something great in the world; usually it is a dubious matter to become something great in the world, because the world is not so excellent that its judgment of greatness has especially great significance -- except as unconscious sarcasm."

So yeah, we're soooooo smart....

julie said...

I'm reminded of the old joke about the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence: why look elsewhere when we haven't proven it exists here yet?

ted said...

To put it another way, "We begin with silence," then "progress from that into speech," and finally transition "into silence again, not a silence we lapse into but a silence we rise into..."

Sounds like we're back to that old asymmetrical Trinitarian nature of reality!

Magnus Itland said...

Just to expound on our joy-spreading fellow Scandinavian, Kierkegaard (the name is still the common Scandinavian word for cemetery). He did have a way with words, but he wasn't the first to suspect that the world was a terrible judge of character:
"Woe whenever all people speak well of you, for their fathers used to do the same things to the false prophets." (Luke 6.) So, he was in good company there.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"So, poetic knowledge is a retail thingummy, never wholesale. In fact, not even retail, more door-to-door, or maybe some guy selling it out of his trunk. Most people who have it don't even bother trying to sell it, because the demand is so low."

True, there is no Slack Market for poetic knowledge.
There is, however a Hack Market for stupid tricks based on hack magic (or Chak magic).

John Lien said...

For "Knowledge serves love, each new truth learnt is a new reason for loving God. Love craves knowledge, craves to know: it would be strange to love God and not want to know more and more about him."

Me like.

julie said...

Magnus!

And of course - "Kierkegaard" - literally "church garden," right?

mushroom said...

... a premature understanding of the the world -- or of human beings, or of oneself, or of God, or of history -- serves to prevent new learning.

They have it all summed up and figured out -- premature encapsulation.

Magnus Itland said...

Hi Julie! Yes, Kierkegaard means churchyard and generally refers to the "hallowed ground" where graves are kept. I can only try to imagine how it feels to grow up with a family name like that. Not conductive to excessive levity, I would guess! Søren was a man who took humor very, very seriously.

John Lien said...

Hi Magnus! Good to see you commenting. Been wondering how you have been.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Hei Magnus!
Hvordan har du det?

Magnus Itland said...

Hei! Yes, I'm still around and been watching the recent Schuonigans.

Van Harvey said...

"This weekend I was reading in a book by F.J. Sheed of the distinction between knowledge and understanding. Specifically, he talks about how understanding can obscure knowledge. I would put it the other way around, but it's the same difference: a premature understanding of the the world -- or of human beings, or of oneself, or of God, or of history -- serves to prevent new learning."

And going another way around to saying the same thing, I'd say that concluding that you need know no more in order to Understand, is the means of limiting the depth of your potential understanding.

Van Harvey said...

Mushroom hits with more tweetable gold: "They have it all summed up and figured out -- premature encapsulation."

Hey ya Magnus!

Bren Murphy said...

Love your pictures and the magical way you have put your story across - you're an inspiration and I am following your journey - awesome work!

Theme Song

Theme Song