The Nameforms that Bitch Birth and Dog Death

Just a little flutterblast, since I'm short on time.

To review: existence is not a fact. Rather, "if anything," it is "the non-fact of a disturbing movement in the in-Between of ignorance and knowledge, of time and timelessness, of imperfection and perfection, of hope and fulfillment, and ultimately of life and death" (Voegelin).

For some reason, a passage from Finnegans Wake just popped into my melon. I'll pass it along without comment, just in case it's relevant:

In the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality.

If the ensuance of existentiality is a movement, then this movement extends in different directions: in, out, up, down, forward, back, etc. I would suggest that our freedom -- human freedom -- is synonymous with the movement that is possible within this pregnant space, i.e., the womb of time.

Socrates says that the true philosopher -- the lover of wisdom and seeker after truth -- endeavors "to make a reasoned choice between the better and worse life, with reference to the nature of the soul" (in Kimball).

Better. Worse. Freedom. What else is there?

Well yes, there is ObamaWorld, which consists of Better and Coercion, or you'd better!, for short. There is "what Obama thinks" and "what you must do about it." In the one minute monument to mendacity he's running during the Olympics, he says it's fair to ask the wealthy to give a little more to the state. I agree. That's fair. Ask away!

Unfortunately, the Chicago Way involves "asking" with a gun to the head.

Note that the left always promises "emancipation" from this or that external circumstance, even while removing or constraining our real movement, e.g., "be tolerant of all points of view, or else!", or "we believe in relativism, absolutely." Every left wing "freedom" is purchased at the cost of chains that bind the recipient elsewhere and elsewhen. Who knows how much my son is going to end up owing Obama?

At any rate, within the fulsome space of subjectivity there are not only directions but dimensions. For example, as we have discussed on many occasions, dreaming takes place in a hyperdimensional space that is governed by non-Aristotelian rules of logic.

Likewise, the upper vertical -- the "spiritual dimension," as it were -- cannot be reduced to a four-dimensional space with external relations and linear causation.

Once one understands this, then much of the otherwise inexplicable phenomena that accompanies the spiritual life has a context in which it not only makes sense, but is somewhat "inevitable," given the total structure of things. (To be clear, the "possibility" of spiritual phenomena is inevitable, not this or that particular phenomenon.)

To put it another way, things happen -- they are necessary and/or possible -- because of principles. Spiritual events are possible because of spiritual principles, just as physical events are possible because of immaterial principles, e.g., the laws of physics, or of chemistry, or of plumbing, whatever.

A specialist in any field should have a grasp of the principles governing it, but this is usually not the case. Most people fail to articulate their principles, with the result that they are bound by implicit assumptions of which they are unaware. This ends up limiting the space of freedom mentioned above in paragraph two.

Actually, there are times that things happen because of an absence of principles. But enough about Harry Reid.

Besides, there is a larger principle at work in Harry the unrepentant pedophile, which is: no human good goes unpunished by the left.

To cite one obvious example of how implicit principles limit one's vertical freedom, every doctrinaire atheist begins with materialist assumptions which result, in machine-like fashion, in materialist conclusions. Thus, all the atheist "proves" is that he is a faithful materialist, but we knew that already. Frankly, such pseudo-reason is irreligulous.

Any kind of linear reasoning is, in a sense, a tautology: tenure in, garbage out. If the universe actually worked this way -- this way only -- then we certainly wouldn't be sitting here in this hyperdimensional womb of timenow, would we then?

Of poetry, Eliot wrote that it communicates "before it is understood" (in Kimball again). This is quintessentially true of the spiritual dimension, but it is also true more generally.

For example, this "pre-understanding" is what guides the scientist's intuition that this this or that that would be a more fruitful avenue of research (this sort of intuition is what distinguishes the grade A scientist from the worker B). It is as if there is tacit foreknowledge of an as-yet-undiscovered reality. Another word for this is "faith," i.e., "evidence of things unSeen."

If only we called things what they are, by their proper names!

And O how well & truly fucked / When first we feign to deconstruct!