Essential Idiocy and Absolute Power

When a boy reaches 13, all of his thoughts turn toward forming a band. Indeed, there is no real mystery as to why human bands formed, since they are just the exteriorization of our interior, which is intersubjective and trimorphic right down to the Ground.

In this regard, John Lennon's creation myth is as good as anyone else's: "I had a vision that a man came unto us on a flaming pie, and he said, 'You are Beatles with an A.' And so we were."

But how and why did humans leave intimate and independent bands for more anonymous corporate record labels? While one could argue (I wouldn't) that the formation of bands is fully explained by natural selection, this cannot account for the evolution to tribal societies, i.e, for something that only emerges much later.

Obviously, natural selection does not plan ahead. If it did, then mosquitos, or dysentery, or MSNBC would not exist.

Right away we meet that troublesome word "evolution," which means very different things to different primates. For if one is going to maintain an intellectually consistent Darwinism, one cannot distinguish between bands and tribes on the basis of "evolution."

From the Darwinian perspective, human beings are "complete" as of 200,000 years ago, so anything we happen to do afterwards with our genetic endowment is entirely beside the point. To put it another way, whatever "point" there was to the human genome, it was established way back in the archaic environment to which we are an adaptation even now.

In this regard, our recent troll was more or less correct (or at least consistent) in his explanation of human origins. For him, and for all materialists, we are just a transient adaptation to an environment (including the weather) which no longer exists.

Thus, we are truly orphaned in the biosphere, just as Genesis says we are. Everything was beautiful back in the archaic environment of Eden. But ever since then we've been wandering in the desert bewilderness, looking for home in all the wrong places. Any existential pain is really a kind of phantom limb pain resulting from being a bunch of saps amputated from the tree of life.

Speaking of tree-buggers, I think this is what the environmental fanatics are on to. Since they are generally pagans or atheists, for them there can be no Reality above or ahead; instead, reality for them is below (in nature) and in the past (our genes).

In this romantic creation myth, they would like us all to revert to living as our primitive furbears, which would reinstate peace and harmony and recreate heaven on earth. To them I do not say "earth first" but you first!

Now, either one is a relativist or one is an absolutist; there can be no in between, just as there can be nothing in between something and nothing. One cannot be a little bit pregnant with being. Either you is or you isn't. O or Ø.

A Raccoon is an unyielding absOlutist, and this is the ultimate source of virtually all of the disputes with our detractors. Whatever the issue, we can usually mark the difference down to this single question: what is your lexical Orientation -- O or Ø?

Is a tribe more developed than a band? We say yes, no question. Why? Because we believe in evolution. Is the tribe the end of evolution? Clearly, no. Evolution -- if it is to be called evolution and not just change -- has a point.

Thus, like anything with a point, we judge it not in terms of the past but the future; we look at it in terms of its archetype, which is to say, its truth, or essence.

Is a man more developed than an infant? Yes, because the essence of the infant is to develop toward its archetype, which is implicit in the present but actualized in the present-and-future.

Does this mean that the man is more valuable than the infant? Obviously and emphatically, NO! Rather, the infant is precious precisely because of what he is in essence: a human being. Existence has no value in the absence of essence.

Now, to say that a Raccoon is an absolutist is another way of saying that he is an essentialist. For us, essence is prior to existence; for the vast and powerful anti-Bob community, existence is prior to essence. Simple as. For our distinguished adversaries from nowhere, essentialist is a bad word.

For the Raccoon, the very purpose of existence is to disclose our essence, which is to say, achieve a deustiny that is ultimately union with our source and ground. Like any destination, it is again not down and back but up and ahead; in short, it is O, not Ø.

But for the relativist, there can be no purpose to existence. To the extent that the relativist insists that there is a purpose, you must continue vigorously applying the cluebat upside their head until this elementary truth sinks in. Either he is a nihilist or he is lying to himself, most likely the latter, for the consistent nihilist is rara avis cerebellus, or a true birdbrain.

I apollogaze for the preluminary refractions. But we do need to define our terms and establish our metacosmic position at the outset, for it will prevent any number of dis- and misunderstandings in what follows, and allow us to cut straight through to the nub of the gist of the essence. Armed with our mighty metaphysical bullshit detector, we may proceed anywhere in the cosmos without fear of getting lost or even tenured.

Fukuyama properly notes that "One of the biggest issues separating Right and Left since the French Revolution has been that of private property."

Rousseau, in one of his seminal tractpot rants, "traced the origins of injustice to the first man who fenced off land and declared it his own." Karl Marx took over from there, and you know the rest of the story, which continues to unfold.

For the Raccoon, the origin of injustice is -- obviously -- Justice. Justice is prior to injustice, certainly not anything bipedal apes could establish on earth. We can only know of an explicit injustice because of our tacit knowledge of justice. Obviously, natural selection does not know of, and cannot speak of, injustice. Is it just that the lion eats the lamb? That the Lakers defeat the Hornets? Of course not. It just is.

Marx is the quintessential example of an absolutist masquerading as a relativist. Please note that an insistent relativism always results in tyranny, for in the end it will devolve to the enforcement of one man's opinion, to which the rest of us must conform. Don't like Obamacare? Too bad. It's all about the power, baby.

Please note that absolute relativism is the very foundation and essence of fascism. Absolutism proper is its converse.

The American founders are the opposite of Marx, not just in the details, but again, in essence. For in essence they were absolutists.

For example, to say that human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, is an absolute statement beyond which one cannot go (and governments may not transgress). It is now and forever.

This is what we meant when we said that man (as such, not such-and-such a man) cannot be surpassed, because the Absolute cannot be surpassed. You are born free. Now deal with it. And I don't mean by diminishing my freedom, moron.

Fukuyama notes that Madison, in Federalist #10, asserts that one of the most important functions of governments is to protect private property rights. Thus, for the modern Marxist, this is the very codification of Cosmic Injustice. For example, recall Obama's indictment of the Founders, and his gnostrum for how to remedy their cosmic errors. The Supreme Court must address

"the issues of redistribution of wealth and the more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent, as radical as, I think, people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical; it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.... You can craft theoretical justification for it legally, and any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts."

Right. It's easy. The way one does this is to find a nuanced, subtle position situated between what the Constitution says and what Obama would like for it to say. In short, one establishes a shadowy area between Truth and the lie, or between O or Ø. Then call it "settled law," which absolutizes the newly minted relativism.

But again, there is no place between O or Ø, unless it is understood to be a kind of shadow -- or better, prolongation -- of O. Indeed, "shadow" is a misleading term, as it may lead one to regard the world as maya, or illusion (which it must be under the constraints of any post-Kantian metaphysic).

But the fact of the matter -- and of matter! -- is that the world is precisely real, or "relatively absolute," because it is sponsored and nourished by the same O in which our intelligence is rooted. Ultimately -- or in essence -- intelligence and intelligibility are the same thing, complements to O.

To be continued....