Thursday, April 30, 2009

Obama, the Avatar of Anti-Slack, or Sales of a Deathman (3.24.10)

While I'm warming up here, I just want to say that Obama is the messiah of false slack. I say this because, as a coonical pslackologist, I have spent a laughtime studying the source of human slack, and Obama -- and the left in general -- embodies the opposite principle.

As I explained in my book, as recently as a few hundred years ago, mankind at large was mired in a slackless existence that hadn't changed all that much for the average geezer in thousands of years. It was war, famine, plague, tyranny, oppression, stupidity, poverty, illiteracy, backbreaking toil, early death, very bad smells, and repeat as unnecessary.

However, one place on earth took a great leap forward into the realm of slack, a realm that too many medullards take for grunted today. The engine that drove this expansion of our slack was the free market, accompanied by its enablers such as private property, civil rights (founded upon the sanctity of the human person), and the rule of law.

There are a number of good books that analyze this miracle, so I don't want to review the whole story here (for example, Macfarlane's The Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality, or Mead's God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, the latter of which I discussed over several posts in 2007). The point I would like to make is that slack is the awesome and numinous "something-for-nothing," or the "free launch" we all long for. Some say it doesn't exist, and that we are condemned to a world in which everything averages out to zero. This is the attitude of atavistic leftists who constantly whine about "tax cuts for the rich" or "income inequality." As a result, they know nothing about creating wealth, only redistributing it.

But the magic of the free market is the engine of slack, since it endlessly creates wealth that wasn't there before, simply as a result of people doing what they do. Leftists are again opposed to this notion, since they think slack results from you doing what they want you to do. But clearly, this eliminates your slack right up front.

Dennis Prager cited a typical example the other day. Let's say I need brain surgery. I want my brain surgeon to be self interested, not motivated by kindness or empathy. After all, if I just want sympathy, I could have my neighbor do the job for free. Rather, I want a surgeon who cares about his reputation and wants to make a good income. And I certainly don't want a surgeon who is bitter about how little Obama is paying him to cut open my skull.

The penultimate lie of the left -- following on the heels of absolute relativity -- is that the state is the source of our slack, or that it can even create slack, which is an odious metacosmic blasphemy. Look at Obama's oft-cited claim that he is going to create or save x number of jobs. But the government can only "create" jobs by taking money out of the job-creating private sector, so he is truly selling us false slack, an entirely meretricious something-for-nothing, or "turd made flesh."

The state can surely protect slack. In fact, that is the president's primary job. His oath is to preserve and protect the Constitution, which is the guarantor of our pursuit of slack. But with FDR a line was crossed, and people began looking to the state as the source of slack, and we can all see what has resulted. And it's only going to get worse, because the state can only transfer slack that it has been appropriated from someone else. Thus the preposterous lie that Obama is going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, when some 50% don't pay any federal income tax at all.

So he's not giving them a tax cut, only purloined slack. But when people depend upon the state for their slack, the pool of slack is gradually dissipated in one way or another. For the state only has three sources of slack: taxation, printing money (as if slack grows on trees!), or borrowing. Two of these come down to outright theft, while the third is simply deferred theft from future generations. My son will have less slack because of Obama's larcenous actions today.

The bottom lyin' is that Obama is trying to increase the slack of the left by stealing it from the right. This was obviously the point of the Porkulus bill, which is the greatest transfer of stolen slack in human history, most of it to liberal interest groups. Note the fiendishness of the plot. The economy will recover on its own, unless Obama does too much damage to it at the outset. Therefore, the Porkulus project steals most of the slack in future years, after the economy has recovered. Obama and the left will then claim that Porkulus saved the economy, when the great slack robbery is just about to get underway. Brilliant!

In the real slack-generating economy, nothing happens until someone sells something. But in the anti-slack world of the left, nothing happens until some clever pinhead has sold you a bill of goods. You get stuck with the bill, while someone else gets the goods.

< abrupt but then surprisingly smooth segue >

That went on longer than anticipated. Back to the subject at hand. Which was? That "mystery is an abiding property of truth itself" (HvB). In other words, the possibility of knowledge depends upon there being a mysterious "gap" between being and appearance. This gap is hardly unrelated to my opening blast, since it is the ontological source of slack. Without it there would be no slack at all, because we would not be separate from the environment, but at one with it. Yes, we all want at-one-ment, not with matter, but with God, or O -- the cause, not the effect.

When I say that this space is the source of our slack, what I mean is that it is the place -- the only place -- in the cosmos where truth, or beauty, or goodness, or liberty, or harmony, or love, or unity, can take place. Consider beauty, for example. HvB says that it is "the inexplicable active irradiation of the center of being into the expressive surface of the image, an irradiation that reflects itself in the image and confers upon it a unity, fullness, and depth surpassing what the image as such contains" (emphasis mine).

You see? There it is again, that divine something for nothing. Can this be created by the state? No, of course not. Look at the monstrosities funded by the cretins at the National Endowment for the Arts. Most of them demoralize and denigrate. They do not elevate and liberate, which is the very purpose of art.

Ah, here you are -- great minds think alike (by which I mean HvB and Schuon): "because of beauty, truth is always intrinsically a matter of grace. Something of this grace surrounds every truth insofar as it is an original disclosure of being. It is lacking to purely logical truth, which has been explicitly siphoned off from being; the truth it contains is altogether finite and perfectly comprehensible...." (HvB).

Thus, we see that Obama and the left will lavishly waste more money on the dysfunctional educational establishment, so long as all of the funds go to programs that explicitly siphon off truth from being, i.e., the absecular brainwash we are all subjected to by the state "for free" (to be exact, it only costs you your soul).

This is also the nature of anti-intellectual Queegism, in that the essence of metaphysical Darwinism is its "cheap comprehensibility," which only comes at the expense of any deep understanding of man as such. Again it is false slack, for it gives its nerdish bearer a totalistic vision of man, but no genuine understanding at all. It does not liberate, but saturates. It is intellectual security at the price of spiritual liberty, a fatal form of cardiomyopathy. It is a heart attack, which is to say, an attack on your own heart resulting from hardening of the categories.

HvB perfectly describes the ontological dimension of primordial slack (emphasis mine): "The excess transcending all that we can grasp by conceptual analysis, delimitation, and cataloging, this eternal "more" belonging to every being, saves the revelation of things and the knowledge of of them from immediately becoming insuperably boring."

And Obama, the Avatar of Anti-Slack, is nothing if not insuperably boring. But don't let that fool you. Passive boredom is only the residue of active Death. When I am in the presence of a boring patient, I always know that a soul murder has taken place.

*****

More on the left's sinful theft of slack from our children:

"The Left rules by constant fear, but none of its predicted catastrophes come true. Ever notice that? Instead, we do have real things to worry about, all right -- but half of them are the results of the Media Pandemonium Machine itself. Like one third of the little kids in our world who are now convinced -- by cynical or deluded adults -- that they won't live long enough to enjoy a healthy adulthood. That is a terrible burden imposed on little children by the Left, in its never-ending grab for power.

"There is an element of sadistic cruelty in the Leftist Pandemonium Machine. "Pandemonium" is the imaginary Hell of devils, and there is something truly demonic about the torrent of media madness we have to tolerate every day."

Again, this is why we must laugh at them. It is usually the only appropriate response.

31 comments:

julie said...

Thus, we see that Obama and the left will lavishly waste more money on the dysfunctional educational establishment, so long as all of the funds go to programs that explicitly siphon off truth from being.

I wonder how much more of this type of outstanding education we can expect?

julie said...

Instead, we do have real things to worry about, all right -- but half of them are the results of the Media Pandemonium Machine itself.

Yep - DH and I have been checking and updating our supplies since this weekend - not because we're worried about the flu, but because we recognize the possibility of massive panic about the flu (for instance, as Lileks tweeted yesterday that facemasks are completely sold out in his area. Nevermind that facemasks aren't actually all that helpful against the flu, given that if air can get through them so can viruses, and mostly people get the flu via hand contact, anyway. Obviously, people are afraid). And with this administration, if people start buying up all the bread, milk and toilet paper, it wouldn't be in the least surprising if rationing is swiftly mandated for our own good, until the crisis is past...

Now granted, we don't actually expect that it will come to that, but still it's better to be prepared.

Anonymous said...

Excellent critique. I found that I could insert the name Bush for Obama in each instance and the sentence was equally true.
On the tax issue, though I generally agree, I am, in each and every case, in favor of tax cuts, regardless of who they are for. Tax cuts for the rich--the more the better. Tax cuts for the poor, the more the better. No federal income tax--best of all.
I am by no means poor, and I pay a great deal of federal income tax, with this last tax cut, I recieved a lovely decrease in federal income tax. That is always a good thing.
Somehow, as a nation, we managed to survive, until the advent of Wilson, without both the Federal Reserve and the Federal Income Tax (they are linked by design, as they go hand in hand). I would bet we could do it again.

CrypticLife said...

I'm beginning to get this sneaking suspicion that you think Obama might not be a good President.

Anonymous said...

"..we must laugh at them. It is usually the only appopriate response." - sez Bob

But you're also angry, no?
I sure am NOT amused at stupidity of those Obama worshipers who decided to present to the world Obama painted with a freaking halo around his head!!! etc...

Ahyah, the Saviour has come.

Shall we bow humbly before his holy idol-image and pray?

There's a thought!

Maybe praying will unseat his holy holiness ........
(I was gona be rude and everything, but will keep mouth shut:)

Theofilia

julie said...

But the magic of the free market is the engine of slack, since it endlessly creates wealth that wasn't there before, simply as a result of people doing what they do.

Sacred Slack is what nourishes the mustard seed of creativity. Going back to the analogy of plants, Slack is the fertilizing spark that sets the creative process in motion. With the right combination of diligence, determination, play and vision, all suspended in a fertile ground of Slack, anything is possible. Such as this conversation, or the fact that I can spend an afternoon taking extremely close-up pictures of odd little marvelous things and share them with people all over the world in a matter of minutes.

On the other hand, doled-out pre-processed government slack is a different sort of thing altogether. It may resemble nourishment, but really it's designed to stunt the growth of those who consume it. It comes with a short supply of diligence or determination, an excess of only certain approved variants of play, and the vision sustained within it is deeply distorted. It does, however contain addictive trace elements designed to make the consumer "feel" "good," hence its popularity.

Alan said...

laughtime - love it. The left just can't live there.

Is that the new love child of the lifetime and comedy central networks?

NoMo said...

The left will only ever be validated once they get everyone sucked into their zero-sum game. Only those who realize their "human vocation" and actually live in Reality can truly understand this - and what is at stake (as GB mentioned yesterday).

Only so much slack to go around you know. Got to make sure its divided up all equal and fair you know. That the only way to get there is by force or deception says something...ya think?

Man, there is so much scripture I'd love to cite, but, always on topic - wv is mozin...me too.

NoMo said...

I wonder why more and more I am reminded of this funky, funny little B sci-fi film from the 80's.

They Live!;^)

robinstarfish said...

the machines have hatched
but a mere pig will slay them
like war of the worlds

ximeze said...

Nomo -
Youtube has They Live! in 9 parts

will said...

>>I want my brain surgeon to be self interested, not motivated by kindness or empathy<<

On the other hand, you probably don't want him to be Josef Mengele.

I do tend to think that healing must have some element of kindness/empathy, as well as a spiritual clarity, for it to be effective at all.

9 out of 10 doctor mystics agree - a truly spiritual approach to healing - to anything, actually - is the ultimate in self-interested, if you get down to it.

Northern Bandit said...

Government does create "wealth" in certain ways. The US Marines, for example.

Gagdad Bob said...

Of course. We have no objection to the legitimate functions of government.

JWM said...

They Live!
With Rowdy Roddy Piper, who was a way better actor than you'd expect, given his day job as a pro wrestler.
Coonfession: I used to be a die hard WWF fan. I saw the Rowdy One Live a few times at the LA Sports Arena.

JWM

julie said...

Here is a purse of monies, which I'm not going to give you.

julie said...

But the magic of the free market is the engine of slack, since it endlessly creates wealth that wasn't there before, simply as a result of people doing what they do. Leftists are again opposed to this notion, since they think slack results from you doing what they want you to do. But clearly, this eliminates your slack right up front.

And again...

Gagdad Bob said...

Good stuff about British treatment of captured nazis at Gateway Pundit. Obama might be the most brazen liar we've ever had in the White House. Either that, or the most ignorant.

Good comments too. I agree 100% with this one:

"The concern with waterboarding is one of those foolproof indicators of somebody's mental health."

Van Harvey said...

"The engine that drove this expansion of our slack was the free market, accompanied by its enablers such as private property, civil rights (founded upon the sanctity of the human person), and the rule of law."

It is the simple key to it all - a moral people at liberty to exercise their free will, capital 'R' Reason, and a mutual respect for objective law and the government which sustains it.

If the power hungry were after true power, they'd just stand back and unleash it's nearly boundless power. But they're not, it's the con game they play on us all and their own selves first and foremost. They only want to destroy, and mask it from themselves as much as possible.

Very nice post.

wv:boxented
?

Van Harvey said...

They LIVE!

AWEsome movie!

Van Harvey said...

Northern Bandit said "Government does create "wealth" in certain ways. The US Marines, for example."

Oh... as much as I want to aye-aye! that, I think that the most you can say is that they make creating wealth, and of course protecting our lives, possible... and of course without which, nihil would remain.

I used to say that government creates absolutely nothing, but that isn't quite the case. An honest slactocracy, of the Classical Liberal variety, does create something - it creates the space (through its citizenry) where Law can exist, and where Individual Rights can exist between them.

I hasten to add, govt does not CREATE Rights, and it certainly can't manufacture Rights (it only canibolizes true rights in the attempt), but political rights and objective law cannot exist without a legitimate government.

There is no other earthly power as powerful as a government which upholds and defends individual rights, objective law and justice - I just wish that those who governed would realize that the attempt to expand its power only harms and weakens it, and us.

Anonymous said...

Bob wrote:

"When I am in the presence of a boring patient, I always know that a soul murder has taken place."

On one level I get exactly what you mean by "soul murder." Upbringing and educatation have stifled the soul's proper turning towards the Divine. The turning will come late or not at all in the lifetime.

On the other hand you utter a falshood, because souls are eternal and cannot be murdered. They can be submerged, minimized and covered over, but not killed. A distinction should be made between soul murder and soul obscuration, because soul murder per se, if someone starts to believe in it, will distort a person's thinking, make them fearful, and drive them farther away from the Master. An awareness of their soul's immutability, antiquity, and immortality is an essential step forward on the path. I might say one cannot be at peace until one remembers that one is eternal.


Parse your words carefully, wise one, for many innocent and naiive eyes read and your responsibility is to serve them well.

Anonymous said...

Julie I wish to see a recent image of you.

julie said...

Which is why Jesus said, "Let the dead bury the dead."

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"In other words, the possibility of knowledge depends upon there being a mysterious "gap" between being and appearance. This gap is hardly unrelated to my opening blast, since it is the ontological source of slack. Without it there would be no slack at all, because we would not be separate from the environment, but at one with it. Yes, we all want at-one-ment, not with matter, but with God, or O -- the cause, not the effect."

Outstanding post, Bob! Just
Be-cause.

Skully said...

They Live! Rocks!

Skully said...

Anon 10:39:00 PM-

Hey ain't you the one that advised Bob to drop the humor? Y'know, advisin' against humor is also soul murder.

BTW, Bob parses more than a pickled parson and is racoonmended by any 10 out of 10 raccoons, so wtf you talkin' 'bout?

Skully said...

All these young punks thinkin' they can dicktate terms to the Bobfather. Pshaw!
I gotta tell ya, yer just damn lucky I got me some grog to drink tonight, that's fer sure!

Yer like these idjits that claim enhanced interrogation techniques don't work.
Well, tell me somethin', why don't they prove it? I'd be willin' to test their theory out. I'd even place a side wager that they would spill the beans faster than I can say "you want bottled water or tap?"

Petey said...

Parse your words carefully, wise guy. One of your readers might be a literal-minded bore.

mushroom said...

When Piper wears the sunglasses doesn't he remind you of a raccoon?

julie said...

Scipio:
"Why do Godless men become angry when you call them Godless men? They should complement you on your power of discernment."

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