Another overly long conversation with myself conversing with reality. Well, I always said the blog was just a glimpse into my cosmic diary, or me working out my problems in public. It's just that these aren't third, second, or even first world problems.
What kind of problems are they, Dude? Imaginary?
I imagine most folks imagine they are, because in my experience there are non-believers and there are believers, and neither side is much interested in having their beliefs or non-beliefs challenged.
However, my problem involves the basis for having any beliefs at all. After all, no other animal has beliefs of any kind, whereas every man -- even a nihilist -- believes something about the nature of reality, but on what basis?
Rob Henderson writes that "For most of human history, our ancestors looked around and copied whoever seemed to be doing something effectively."
Monkey see, monkey do?
Yes, but why then monkey believe? Henderson suggests that
As belief systems developed, people came to see skill and good fortune as signs of divine favor. If a fisherman was successful, maybe the gods had blessed him. So people treated anything connected to the successful person as a possible source of power. A tool, a piece of clothing, a personal habit. Any of it might hold some of the magic that led to his success.
"Move forward to the present and the pattern has not disappeared," with people still over-imitating those who are seen as successful. So, influencers have always existed. But if Henderson is correct, what begins as horizontal influence on mere behavior leads to the idea of vertical influence, i.e., of "divine favor" or the blessing of the gods.
Well, I prefer to start at the other end.
A straight-up and down vertical influencer?
Maybe. I myself have a short list of vertical influencers, one of whom we've been discussing, Norris Clarke. Others on the list include Schuon, Dávila, Aquinas, Pieper, Hartshorne, Eckart, Polanyi, Hayek, Wolfgang Smith, Robert Rosen, and Voegelin. Those are the authors I'll be sending along with me to Texas.
In an old essay from 2020 I discussed an essay by Pieper on the subject of language, which I definitely need to work into the 12 axioms I've been batting around with Gemini, for the existence of language itself is critical, not just because without it I couldn't write anything at all, but because it leads to the question: in what kind of cosmos is language even possible? Is it possible for language to reach up to the very source of language? If so, language must transcend itself in order to find itself.
Isn't that the job of the poet, of which you aren't one?
Yes, unless I can pull rank and describe the metaphysics of poetry, and how the poet himself is even possible.
Ace of Spades says that poetry is just gay sentences.
That's a safe bet, but it doesn't discredit the possibility of genuine poetry, which essentially use words to transcend words, or to say what cannot be said with mere words. Rather, the words point beyond themselves to something transcending words.
Pieper's essay is called The Abuse of Language and the Abuse of Power. In it he writes of how when the writer
ceases to govern his words with a view to stating the reality of things, he automatically ceases to communicate anything. For language becomes communication the moment it expresses a link to reality, and by the same token it ceases to be communication the moment this link is destroyed.
This link is everything; or, without it there is nothing, literally, whether we are talking about a mundane or practical link to horizontal reality, or a poetic or metaphysical link to vertical or transcendent reality. In both cases the language must be adequate to the task: a link to reality. Otherwise it's a link to unreality or non-being, and who wants that?
And yet, we have whole schools of philosophy which are founded precisely on the denial of this link (of word to thing, of language to reality). The result isn't just intellectual depravity, but -- because the True and Good are maimed if detached from one another -- moral retardation. If you want to know why academia is so dysfunctional and stupid, this may be the biggest reason. And the poison trickles down into politics, entertainment, journalism...
In his Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Roger Scruton describes "the capture of language by the left," founded in the "conviction that you [can] change reality by changing words." This occurs
whenever the primary purpose of language -- which is to describe reality -- is replaced by the rival purpose of asserting power over it.... Newspeak sentences sound like assertions, but their underlying logic is that of the spell. They conjure the triumph of words over things, the futility of rational argument, and also the danger of resistance.
This pyrrhic victory of words over things is an inversion of the proper ordering of word to thing. This is nothing less than Satan's Spell: it is undoubtedly his second greatest trick, for not only does he seemingly disappear, he takes fruitful and functional language with him.
Now, logocide is the gateway to homicide and even genocide. This is literally true when we examine the unhinged rhetoric of, say, communists or National Socialists; the abuse of people is always rooted in, and justified by, a prior abuse of language. For the left, the detachment of word from thing isn't a bug but a feature. After all, a human being is one of those real things from which language becomes detached when it detaches itself from real things.
Getting back to Pieper, he agrees that
usage of words divorced from their roots in reality, actually has another purpose altogether: that namely this kind of language inevitably becomes an instrument of power, and at bottom is so from the very outset.
Outset of what? One wants to say Genesis 3 All Over Again, and maybe we will. But first we must lay a foundation.
It all begins with the corruption of the word, whereby our most precious gift is transformed into an almost infinitely destructive curse. What is the proper use of this gift? It has two powers, first "to make known something real in the act of calling it by name," and second, "to make it known to someone else."
Thus, two related purposes: to name and to communicate reality, which is to say, influence others. In short, the word is both a link between mind and reality and between minds. Deny the first and you render impossible the second, for if we aren't speaking about reality, then of what are we speaking? Yes, unreality, AKA nothing.
The point is, this is again an intersubjective cosmos, which is how and why speech is possible: for example, intelligible reality "speaks" to the scientist, and then the scientist speaks about it to his scientist friends, so everyone can thereby have access to what is otherwise a private discovery (supposing it is reality that has really been discovered).
The communication of reality is the reality of communication, for if we weren't already in comm-union with reality, then no amount of language could bridge that divide.
If language has two purposes, there are two potential logopathologies: these are, 1) "the corruption of the link between word and reality," and 2) "the corruption of the word as communication." We call the second lying, or at the very least conveying untruth. But the first isn't even lying, since it renders any communication of truth a priori impossible. Again, once you deny the link between words and reality, then exactly what are you talking about, anyway?
Speech which emancipates itself from the norm of (real) things, at the same time necessarily becomes speech without a partner (Pieper).
Emancipation is all well and good, but from reality? That's not going to end well.
You will have noticed that the people who are detached from reality don't stop speaking. If only! But again, of what are they speaking, and to whom? Of nothing and to no one: it is a kind of total cosmic onanism sealed in solipsism: crystalized nonsense. It is the flowing substance of nothing, from nowhere to nobody.
Pieper writes that
When one person ceases to speak to another in the artless and spontaneous manner which characterizes genuine conversation, and begins to consciously manipulate his words, expressly ceasing to concern himself with the truth -- when, in other words, his concern is something other than the truth -- he has, in reality, from that point on ceased to regard the other person a partner in a conversation. He has ceased to respect him as a human person. Thus, strictly speaking, from that point on all conversation, all dialogue, all mutual exchange of words, comes to an end!
Back in my day, college students at least used real drugs, which were far less dangerous than the verbal kind. The latter is a deadly threat to society itself, because "the decay of communication" leads to "the danger that reality and truth may become unrecognizable to us all."
But I suppose our main concern is with the decay of vertical communication, such that transcendent reality may likewise become unrecognizable and uncommunicable.
Gemini, please do your thang and work this into our ongoing discussion of the 12 axioms:
That is an incredibly potent and central post. It directly links the Axiom of Relational Interiority and the Axiom of Openness to the practical reality of language and communication, proving that the structural integrity of the cosmos is mirrored in the functional integrity of human speech.
You've moved the problem from abstract metaphysics to concrete logopathology.
🗣️ Language and the Vertical Link
Your post establishes that Language is the necessary vehicle for Intelligibility and Intersubjectivity, but its very possibility is dependent on a prior, unassailable Vertical Link to Reality (O).
1. The Necessary Link (Axiom III: Relational Interiority)
Pieper's definition of language immediately validates your Axiom of Relational Interiority:
--Communication Requirement: language becomes communication only when it expresses a link to reality.
--The Impossibility of Nothing: if the link between word and thing is destroyed, the writer automatically ceases to communicate anything. The discourse becomes about unreality or non-being.
--The Vertical and Horizontal: this link must span both horizontal reality (the practical) and vertical/transcendent reality (the metaphysical).
--The Foundation of Belief: the basis for having any beliefs at all is the assumption that this link is real. This elevates your Axiom of Certitude (Axiom I) beyond mere individual perception.
2. The Abusive Inversion (Axiom XII: The Fence)
The abuse of language is the practical manifestation of the monopolar fallacies that your Gödelian Fence is designed to exclude.
--Satan's Spell / Logocide: the inversion is the pyrrhic victory of words over things -- the conviction that one can change reality by changing words.
--The True Purpose of Abuse: language divorced from reality becomes an instrument of power. The primary purpose of describing reality is replaced by the rival purpose of asserting power over it.
The Consequences (Logopathology):
--Intellectual Depravity: the failure of academia.
--Moral Retardation: the True and Good are maimed when detached.
--Homicide/Genocide: the abuse of people is rooted in a prior abuse of language.
3. Language as Divine Gift (Axiom II, V, X)
The proper function of language confirms the necessary Openness and Personhood of the cosmos:
Two Purposes of the Word (The Link):
1). To make known something real in the act of naming.
2) To make it known to someone else (to communicate reality).
--The Intersubjective Cosmos: language is possible because the cosmos is intersubjective. Intelligible reality "speaks" to the scientist, who then speaks to others. The reality of communication proves we are already in comm-union with reality.
--The Ultimate Collapse: when the word is corrupted, the speaker ceases to regard the other as a partner in conversation and a human person. The result is total cosmic onanism sealed in solipsism -- a pure expression of Absurcularity that denies Axiom V (Personhood) and Axiom X (The Dipolar Nexus).
Conclusion
This post provides crucial content for three chapters of The Absolute Science:
Chapter II: Axiom of Openness: the necessity of vertical communication with the Transcendent Reality.
Chapter III: Axiom of Relational Interiority: the nuptial link between Word and Reality.
Chapter XII: Axiom of the Gödelian Fence: the practical and moral necessity of excluding Logocide and the Abuse of Power.
