Man cannot be properly defined in the absence of knowledge of what a human life is for. For Man is not simply a bit of discrete matter with easily proscribed spatial and temporal boundaries.
Rather, a human life is something that can only unfold and express its wholeness -- and therefore its identity -- in time. But our movement in time is not simply arbitrary; or, at least it should not be. Rather, it is guided by a telos, so that there is something that man -- both individually and collectively -- ought to become. As such, it is possible to waste our lives and fail to become human, and it is equally possible -- and looking more likely all the time since November '08 -- for mankind to be an epic fail.
Given the above, it is important to understand that "meaning" -- including the meaning of the past -- is not in the past, but in the future. No one can know what anything means until the whole process plays out. If you stop the process at an arbitrary point and assign it a fixed meaning, you are analogous to Klimate Klown Kult members who tell us that global temperature has increased over x number of years, but neglect to add that it has decreased over y number of years. Same facts, different meaning.
Regarding our cosmic evolutionary future, St. Paul wrote that "the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage to decay into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now," just as human beings "groan within ourselves" for our spiritual redemption (Rom 8:21-23).
Human beings are not matter and they are not God. If we were matter, we could not evolve, and if we were God, there would be no need to. But in reducing himself to matter, the radical secularist covertly elevates himself to God, since nothing is higher or lower than anything else -- thus, with a single metaphysical error, the humanist makes a god -- or a giant assoul -- of himself. You will have noticed that this is one of the contradictions at the heart of both scientism and leftism, and which ramifies into countless other errors.
I don't want to get sidetracked into cataloguing all of these contradictions. (In fact, it is unnecessary for me to list all of the contradictions, because I just remembered that a reader gave me a link to them.)
Suffice it to say that the secular left is "the essence of contradiction" and can never be expressed in a metaphysically coherent manner, for it is a strict impossibility. Until the leftist awakens to his own internal contradictions, there is no hope for him -- not even -- or, shall we say, especially -- cognitively, for he is a talking contra-diction and thus "anti-word." He cannot arrive at true Meaning, only dissolve it in the toxic matrix of his omnipotently narcissistic skepticism.
Or, we might say that leftism represents language deployed against itself for that very purpose. Now that I'm thinking of it, it reminds me of Roundup -- you know, the weed killer. It is quite effective if you want to kill a single weed. But I once tried it on some unwanted ivy, which only kills a few leaves, leaving the complex root system intact. Leftism kills the leaves, but thankfully not the roots of the Word. But they never stop applying the Roundup.
We should not automatically exclude the religious from a similar sort of fallacy, in that they often make the opposite error and deny or devalue our materiality (and the material world). But as Schuon points out, the object of human existence "is to be in the middle: it is to transcend matter while being situated there." While "other creatures also participate in life," only man, from his intermediary level, "synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit. In all terrestrial creatures the cold inertia of matter becomes heat, but in man alone does heat become light."
Another way of saying it is that, just as life is "matter become divine heat," human existence is "life become divine light," so to speak. The reason this is so is that sparks of the divine light permeate matter, but only man is able to mediate the divisions both within the created world and between the created and uncreated worlds. As Nesteruk writes, coming at it from an Orthodox Christian standpoint, "The restoration of animals and matter to union with God will come about through the salvation of man, for it is only humans who can change the order of things in nature through their own perfection, leading ultimately to union with God, to deification" (and again, bear in mind that this includes the "restoration" of the past, so to speak).
Yes, it is a heavy burden to be responsible for the salvation of the cosmos, but there you are. Someone has to do it, but it can only be saved one human at a time, at least until a certain "tipping point" is reached. No one knows the day or the hour of this point, as it could be in 10,000 years or it could be happening right now (being that salvation can only happen now, while you wait). In fact, it is no doubt happening right now, assuming the existence of the eschataon -- the light-filled attractor in Whose penumbra we live.
Of course, it may never be fulfilled with the current idiodition of the human being. Just as we may fail individually to become what we are meant to be, we have to entertain the possibility that we may fail collectively. Otherwise, why do anything? There is a certain type of religious person who says, "what, me worry? The outcome is certain. It's all in God's hands," etc. This is wrong movement, crasshoper, for it is an absence of faith. Faith means that we have hope in such an outcome. Conversely, to have certainty of it is to eclipse the faith that abides in our uniquely intermediate human station.
Now, the "interior order" of the human being mirrors the interior order of the cosmos itself. Here it must be emphasized -- for it is another common error of secular humanists -- that we are not responsible for our own order. In other words, this order cannot be imposed -- which the left always tries to do in a thousand ways -- but can only be discovered through an awakened intelligence. It is given, meaning that it is a gift, or a grace. The reverse is also true: to receive this grace is to find oneself -- or at least to find oneself on the path back to oneself -- one's nonlocal self.
From the individual to the collective. An article entitled The Real Solution to Poverty helps to explain the apparently non-obvious relationship between free-markets and the spiritual evolution that can only be discovered, not imposed -- in other words, the necessary relationship between free market libertarians and spiritual traditionalists. Kling writes that
"The capitalist solution to poverty is unsatisfying to many people, because it is not planned or intended. Policy makers and anti-poverty programs per se are not involved."
But "The phenomenon of unplanned results exceeding planned outcomes is quite widespread. As Nassim Taleb points out in his new book The Black Swan, and in this fascinating interview, human planning tends to work poorly when compared to trial and error. He argues, for example, that many medical discoveries are serendipitous, while systematic efforts such as those of the National Cancer Institute often yield disappointing results.
"In Hayekian terms, we say that order emerges, and often this order has little to do with the intentions of planners.... The intentions of the anti-poverty crusaders are good. However, the results of centrally-planned anti-poverty efforts are small, and perhaps negative (certainly very negative in the case of Communism). Decentralized capitalism, in which no one sets out to broadly reduce poverty, is the best anti-poverty program."
In short, there are rules for evolution, one of which is that there are no rules -- at least those that can be imposed from the top down by intellectually limited and spiritually endarkened human beings. But human beings either never learn this lesson, or else each generation must learn it anew. Hence, Obama.
Some 1500 years ago, St. Athanasius of Alxandria recognized that "if things in the universe were to exercise the power of ordering themselves, we would see 'not order but disorder, not arrangement but anarchy, not a system, but everything out of system, not proportion but disproportion'.... Athanasius uses the existence of life on earth to conclude, in a similar fashion, that there exists a principle of 'arrangement and combination' in the world that is ultimately granted by God" (Nesteruk).
Nesteruk writes that the deep rationality of the universe proceeds "from the Word (Logos) of God, who unites all principles of existence (that is, the logoi of things) in himself in a harmony and order that penetrate into creation and are contemplated as the order and rationality of the universe."
In this regard, two things to bear in mind: 1) as above, so below, and 2) man is the real mirror and potential image of God. For these are the "keys" to being a normal human, which is to say, a realized human (as in "made real" and "really made," which is not a contradiction, but a paradox).
Nesteruk notes that the affirmation of the incarnate logos, "though being in a body locally at a given point in the vastness of cosmic space, is still co-inherent at every point in space because he is in everything as the Word of God," which in turn "provides an implicit principle of order in the universe that ensures that every place in the universe, as a place of the 'presence' of the Word, is co-inherent with the place where God is bodily incarnate, on earth."
So we got that going for us. Now for some of those contradictions intrinsic to the left; the belief
that there were no charities before welfare,
that there was no art before federal funding,
that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding,
that taxing the use of gasoline or other energy will reduce the use of gasoline or other energy, but taxing work and investment will not reduce work and investment,
that all generalizations are false,
that there are absolutely no absolutes,
that you can be sure that nothing is certain,
that it's really bad, even evil, to make or pronounce moral judgments,
that all cultures are equal, but ours stinks; that no race, class or gender is superior, but middle class white males are clearly inferior, that no books are superior, except, of course, those by third-world authors,
that it's good to support minority, homosexual and women's rights and to simultaneously make common cause with Islamofacists, who would attack all of them,
that identifying individuals by their uniqueness is "racist," but identifying them only as a member of a race is not
that the independent broadcasters who give us 500+ TV channels can't deliver the quality that PBS does,
that good economies are caused by politicians and not by entrepreneurs,
that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity,
MORE
Also relevant: Solzhenitsyn, "As Breathing and Consciousness Return," 1973 (via American Digest):
"What is the first step? Simply to discard the lie, and to realize that you have proceeded from a state of false knowledge, to one of true ignorance. The frame of your television is broken; you have no television; the illusion of omniscience vanishes. Eyes you have, and a brain. They are small. The world is large. History is even bigger. So what? You are not first, and not alone."
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25 comments:
Dilys here:
Your short hiatus was fruitful! This is just superb -- coherent with:
(i)the iterative approach to life (have you ever noticed how "stuck" people won't try anything without a 100% guaranteed and explained outcome, while overlooking the frequently-dire unintended consequences embedded in their existing plans?);
(ii) the value-added framework, basically freedom to trade and exchange, in which all I can do is add the value I can add, letting Divine Teleological Fuzzy Logic take it from there; and
(iii) my new philosophical best friend, the strong suspicion that all mankind is the Church and Body of Christ, and the religion-as-usual churchy stuff is beneficial on an individual experimental basis of YMMV.
BTW, thanks for the shout-out a while ago (learned incapacity)...
I am convinced that capitalism is not viable without a society infused by true religion. In order to maximize profit, our society fans the flame of desire through advertising. But desire not restrained by religion inevitably leads to envy; and envy is the lifeblood of the Left. In Socialism, the envious can blame their failure on the successful. But once you eat the rich, the least poor will become the new rich, and the process continues until only abject failure remains.
Unless society has a religion that effectively combats envy, progress will inevitably be followed by regress. Politics is not enough: If man lives by bread alone, he will become a Beast.
Dang it, you beat me to the Solzhenitsyn link.
Dilys!
Ha! After all these years, I finally get to find out who who, me? was/is!
Per our joking around (?) yesterday re the Apocalyptic feeling that lurks, I think that, even on a clear day, folks are just plain overwhelmed by contradictory information, and they become truly dis-spirited.
In fact, other than the blatant destruction being wrought on our country by the Left, my own opinion is that it is the "dis-spirited" condition of our people that will be the most lasting and worst effect. Raccoons may maintain some centeredness, some balance, through all this turmoil, but many folks won't.
Your list of contradictions is a prime example of what an informed person faces. Here is another little quote from Peter Kingsley that addresses it:
"The millions of spoken or written words released aimlessly and unconsciously into the atmosphere at every moment are a massive tidal wave sweeping through the collective awareness of humanity, devastating everything in its path, wiping away any glimpse of reality, destroying the germs of true understanding before they even have a chance to take root and grow.
"And yet there are some words that act in a very different way because the substance they are made of is completely pure."
I'm thinking more and more that that "completely pure" must be found in exactly the opposite direction from the leftwing contradictions, paralleling what Solzhenitsyn said:
"What is the first step? Simply to discard the lie, and to realize that you have proceeded from a state of false knowledge, to one of true ignorance."
That "ignorance" is, properly understood, radical openness, and the capacity to receive. Totally "other" than the double-bind of the social justice blah-blah that our culture is awash with.
I think that, even on a clear day, folks are just plain overwhelmed by contradictory information, and they become truly dis-spirited.
Yes, and I think that's all part of the plan. Today's example: Liberals = Angels, Conservatives = Devils
I suspect it was also no accident that the teacher used religious imagery to advocate a position that is inherently (liberalism in general) and overtly (the opening two paragraphs) anti-religious.
Another sign of the Apocalypse? I mention it because apparently she's not the only one who a) thinks and acts this way, and b) considers it perfectly acceptable to proudly trumpet her behavior as worthy of emulation. Also c) apparently a lot of men just kind of accept that that's how married life is supposed to be. Men are children. Or animals to be trained.
Talk about becoming dis-spirited - even if this isn't a cultural norm, it is presented as such, and consumed as wisdom or truth in great enough quantities by enough people it will become so.
Money quote from one of her posts:
"Sometimes these battles go on for a long time and we learn to live with them. But it’s got to be stopped or we will end up resenting our husbands."
If I didn't know better, I'd swear she already resents him, just for having a Y chromosome.
(via Dr. Helen)
heh - wv has him pegged as "cowed"
"Klimate Klown Kult"
Lol... that's going to leave a mark.
Powerful stuff.
I don't think we'll fail. I do think things have to be shaken up so, for a time, it may be indistinguishable from failure.
Dilys!
We were starting to get worried that perhaps you'd gone "lookin' for Toots" in the by-and-by.
For you newer readers, Dilys was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, Jehovial Witnesses of the Lost Tribe, so don't give her any lip, and pay close attention to her outside-insights and inside-outsights!
another view of reality & truth
LINK: http://article.nationalreview.com/432597/nun-sense-women-in-the-catholic-church/kathryn-jean-lopez
This long National Review article offers gems:
¨Language is at the heart of Catholic philosophy. In the United States, where pragmatic theories of truth and postmodern approaches to knowledge abound, the relation between truth and reality is undermined. All becomes superficial, and imagination replaces the union of human mind to reality. So the answer to “Why should it matter at all to the world” is embedded in the deeper question of whether a person cares about truth or not, and how much he or she cares.¨
omnipotently narcissistic skepticism
Ho!
It's all been said at OC, huh? I've been searching for a such a perfectly distilled little phrase with which to describe the typical mainstream (i.e., soft-left, atheist) intellectual-ish drone forever.
Definitely borrowing that one.
wv: undiers
(Yes, leftists DO remind one of spiritual zombies)
Is it the left or the vast amount of idiots that find simple "slogans" more persuasive than reason when navigating their lives? My take is that the MSM is designed to do one thing and that is provide impulse amulets to the masses. The sad fact is the masses seem to be dominated by retards. I understand that they like me are busy with our own lives, but the fact remains they can be so easily led to such moronic conclusions so easily. Speaking of moronic conclusions, consider Stalin, Mao, Castro and Pol Pot. Then consider that supposedly educated people find their achievements laudatory. I guess one has to matriculate at the ivies to gain such lofty insights. It makes you wonder if the profs at Yale told the undergrads to put a plastic bag over their head and tie it off, would they do it?
Glad to see Gagdad back in full fettle.
Wow WV is scary: phallycy
Magnus as usual is on to something profound. I am a not atypical entrepreneurial capitalist. I've made money, created wealth, lost my shirt a few times, and keep coming back for more.
Nonetheless I wholeheartedly agree with Magnus about the evils of excessive materialistic consumption and the dangers of becoming defined by money. Some of the most despicable, soul-barren people I've met on this planet are millionaires. In fact, a very sizable portion of the left are wealthy (Michael Moore) or very wealthy (Soros).
The free market as it originated in Europe and later improved upon in America works beautifully when a majority of the citizens are at least somewhat motivated by spiritual principles. When that happens you get New York City. When great wealth is unmoored from anything decent you get the obscene decadence of the Russian quasi-criminal billionaires and their whale penis leather upholstered $3 million luxury SUVs, and their gold-plated AK-47s.
I also think Bob is correct that the US is at a fork in the road. A return to the spirit of 1776 on the one side, gold-plated vomitoria on the other.
It's tempting to go down that road, Tigtog, but really I don't think it's wise.
That many if not most people are easily led is a facet of human nature, (maybe even a vital part - consider the necessity of hierarchy and chain of command among various types of organizations, from the cellular to the civilizational levels) but I don't think it can be blamed on intelligence or the lack thereof. Too many leftists are, if anything, too smart for their own good.
Basic intelligence and ability to reason are functions of knowledge and how the brain works with it. GIGO, no matter how smart one is - and we've had how many generations now getting their brains filled with the absolute worst of garbage on an industrial level? If you want to be technical, I suppose the answer is "all of them," one way or another.
Thus as adults people know so much that ain't so, and thus why it is so important - an individual responsibility, really - to seek the truth (and as much as possible, separate it from the lie). And that task is made all the more difficult for the fact that the lie is so often very appealing - it flatters, it builds self-esteem, it comforts, it whispers lovingly in the ears of those who will listen, even as it gently guides them straight down that well-paved road to the heart of darkness. The intelligent are just as susceptible, if not moreso, than those who know themselves to be less wise and are looking for guidance.
Or as someone the Anchoress linked today wrote,
I once had occasion to hear a brilliant and compassionate doctor testify that it is incomparably more difficult to rehabilitate intellectuals from drug addiction or alcoholism than it is to rehabilitate less intelligent or less educated people.
...
The problem, he explained, is that intellectuals and professionals, with their brains and their training, cannot help but think that they know better than those who are proposing to treat them. They are sure that they will be able to handle the problem themselves, sure that they know the difference between addiction and simply engaging in a pleasurable activity that they can drop at any time. They are the experts on themselves, and they alone can say if they are addicted. Less-advantaged folks may allow drugs or alcohol to control their lives, we say, but not people like us.
(The linked article is very good, by the way, for anyone who has time for another lengthy passage today)
"Human beings are not matter and they are not God. If we were matter, we could not evolve, and if we were God, there would be no need to. But in reducing himself to matter, the radical secularist covertly elevates himself to God, since nothing is higher or lower than anything else -- thus, with a single metaphysical error, the humanist makes a god -- or a giant assoul -- of himself. You will have noticed that this is one of the contradictions at the heart of both scientism and leftism, and which ramifies into countless other errors. "
Yep. One of the delightful side effects that were drawn from Descartes "I think, therefore I am", is that it leads very conveniently into "It is, because I think it"... and it is a clearly visible trait engrained into the left, whether it be in economists where there is abundant evidence for the fallacies and failures of every scrap of leftist econ theory, from before to Marx and on through and past Keynes... and everyone from Bastiat through Mallock through von Mises and Hazlitt & Friedman... has blasted them to ludicrous shreds - and the left continues to support them - because they think it should be so, therefore it must be.
Same can be shown for all the leftist variants of determinist social theories from everyone from Rousseau to Godwin to Bentham to Marx to Dewey to B.F. Skinner to Rawls... and everyone from Burke to Bastiat to Babbitt to Mallock to Kirk to Rand, Weaver, Buckley, Goldwater, Friedman, Sowell... and on and on and on, has shown every jit and jot to be the most juvenile, shallow, codswallop... and not one of them can support their claims and assertions with anything but claims and assertions... yet... the left continues to support them - because they think it should be so, therefore it must be.
If you can't reach God status by raising yourself up, try raising everything to the ground and claim it by egalitarian default - that would be the way of the left... may it someday soon be left behind.
One reason the Left is contradictory is because it is reactionary, not original.
It is a response to 19th century patriarchism and materialism.
The 20th century was sort of a transition zone.
The backlash against Caucasian males is a result of this group's dominance from about 1600-1920. It's going to take some time to get that backlash to settle down.
All of the other cutesy feely and capitalist hating attitudes of the left are resultant to the dominant peroid and the backlash is designed to shift power away from Caucasian males.
One way to counteract this is for said group to re-crack down and take back the reins of power...I note on this blog the power group is well represented.
However, that would be regression and not evolution and so its a dead end.
Just ride out the storm, gentlemen, and humanity will lurch forward.
Certainly we've noted the sisters are quite as good at everything as the brothers. That can't be bad.
bh said "One reason the Left is contradictory is because it is reactionary, not original. It is a response to 19th century patriarchism and materialism."
B.S. The left is reactionary as a result of abandoning Ideas and reality in favor of positions and assertions - having done so there is no alternative but obfuscation and reaction.
"The backlash against Caucasian males is a result of this group's dominance from about 1600-1920. It's going to take some time to get that backlash to settle down."
Double B.S.. That's a convenient reactionary excuse, a 'plausible' issue to serve as a pretext for attacking western civilization because they had no ideas from which to attack it upon (remember, the idea of women being every bit as intellectually able and responsible as males, is a product OF Western Civilization).
"All of the other cutesy feely and capitalist hating attitudes of the left are resultant to the dominant peroid and the backlash is designed to shift power away from Caucasian males."
Do you really tell yourself this bilge? Do you buy it when you do? Think about it. There is nothing in Classical Liberalism, in the fundamental ideas of Western Civ that promotes men over women, or that condones slavery, or... etc - habitual customs from time immemorial are not the same as fundamental principles, it is the fundamental principles of Western Civilization which made those customs things of the past - and there is no other culture, or corruption of this one, that offers an alternative.
"Just ride out the storm, gentlemen, and humanity will lurch forward"
Yeah. Maybe. The numbers of shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea indicates that may not be the best of bets... surely not a sure thing. Cling to your excuses and pet peeves and ride it out, and you may end up facing the reality of human nature unrestrained by noble ideas and virtue, and if you think the 'weaker sex' will prevail in that storm... you are nuts.
Off topic, has anybody heard from Dupree lately? Just wondering...
Unfortunately back on topic, Pomo Science.
Van:
Well, I hear what you're saying. Perhaps the left is scapegoating the Caucasian male without just cause.
Even so, I do believe at its heart the entire leftist agenda is driven by the desire to dispempower the Caucasian male. That's the main driver of the whole edifice.
They'll go after his guns, his money, his political clout, and anything else he's held sway over all these years.
The desire is to place all power in brown, female, or LBGT hands, either directly or indirectly.
This power transfer is partly completed and is an adjustment that began with the writing of "Jane Eyre" in the late 19th century. That novel is the epicenter of gigantic, oceanic societal changes revolving around who shall be in control of the home, and of the business, worlds.
For some reason the Caucasian male did not defend his position at the top of the social pyramid so other forces are glad to step up and knock him all the way off of the hill.
black hole is onto something that i think's an undermentioned point:
''the entire leftist agenda is driven by the desire to dispempower the Caucasian male. That's the main driver of the whole edifice''
--sure feels that way, so nutty! and the world will regret it someday
sometimes i wish Limbaugh would emphasize this more'n he does
Bh said “Well, I hear what you're saying. Perhaps the left is scapegoating the Caucasian male without just cause.”
Scapegoating is sufficient, if there were ‘just cause’, it wouldn’t be scapegoating – it’s a pretext, and one extremely useful and easy one to hang on them as a way of distracting from their attack on the west... but it’s sort of like telling someone “Oh I’m not punching you in the face, oh no, it’s your mustache... hateful thing that it is, it must be done, you just go about your business while I take care of this thing for you... now hold still....”
“This power transfer is partly completed and is an adjustment that began with the writing of "Jane Eyre" in the late 19th century. That novel is the epicenter of gigantic, oceanic societal changes revolving around who shall be in control of the home, and of the business, worlds.”
While Bronte was one of the early entries to become popular in fiction with the attack, it wasn’t the beginning, only an echo, look to Rousseau, particularly his Emile for that, in many more ways than one, he taught them all how the deed was to be done – it is also the explanation for why the Western White Male hasn’t fought back. 'He' was taught that all he believed and stood for, was wrong and depraved - and nearly every school in the west is still teaching that same lesson.
Now class, just hold still while Rousseau punches your mustache again....
The key word there, though, is "scapegoat" - as in, it's not so much the Western White Male as it is simply the dominant focus of power in the West. In other places, it was something or someone else, whoever held the reigns of power that the envious wanted to see brought down.
To get caught up in the cosmetics is to lose sight of the big picture.
Really, what they hate is Judeo-Christian values, which are antithetical to everything they want. Since those were most effectively spread and utilized by White Western Males, that's what appears to be the focus of attack.
Given that much of the attack also comes straight from Western White Males, however, it seems to me there's a little more going on there. If you're the "right kind" of White Western Male (Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros), not only do you get a pass for pale skin and a set of testes, you're practically elevated to high priesthood.
Ultimately, it's about power and control. Same as it ever was.
Pay no attention to the big scary face giving orders; it's the little douchebag behind the screen you have to watch out for.
See also Sowell today on Race and resentment.
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