Monday, December 03, 2012

Obama's a Success, but the Country Died

Are we all done with Karl Rahner? Yes, more or less. I've moved on to a new subject.

However, I don't want to just leave it at that, as if we'd never met. I need some closure. Therefore, a brief wrap-up of Foundations of Christian Faith, if I can manage it. I'll just flip through and hone in on some of the things I highlighted.

"But in reality freedom is first of all the subject's being responsible for himself.... Ultimately he [the subject] does not do something, but does himself."

Freedom is selfhood lived, just as selfhood is freedom lived.

Painful, I know, but imagine an alternate universe with an educational system in which such spiritually healthy attitudes were inculcated from kindergarten on. That's how they do it at my son's private religious school: he knows that every moment confronts him with choices.

As things stand, the left employs a bait-and-switch tactic to rob people of their freedom-slack. For when the state bestows its free stuff upon the grazing 47%, it absolves them of responsibility and thereby disenfreedoms them.

Such a strategy also destroys religion at the root, for "freedom is the capacity for the eternal." In a horizontalized world there is no finality and therefore no meaningful freedom.

In fact, just this weekend I read a quote along these lines by the father of the moonbat educational establishment, John Dewey. For those with ears to hear, his advice is truly demonic:

"To abandon the pursuit of reality and the search for absolute and immutable value can seem like a sacrifice. But this renunciation is the condition for entering upon a vocation of greater vitality," i.e., social control engineered by the benevolent and all-wise state.

This is the very opposite of freedom, and it is why we dread the left. For "Freedom is the event of something eternal," and we are perpetually "forming the eternity which we ourselves are and are becoming."

Nor is freedom conceivable in the absence of God, for to understand freedom is to realize the absolute:

"For wherever there is no such infinite horizon, such an existent is locked up within itself in a definite and intrinsic limitation... and for this reason it is not free either."

No God, no freedom. Simple as. The left doesn't have to murder God directly. Rather, they accomplish the identical goal through the backdoor by simply eroding our freedom.

The leftist lives in hell and naturally wants you to live there as well. What do we mean by this stinkbombast?

Since a "free" rejection of God is nevertheless "based on a transcendental and necessary 'yes' to God in transcendence, and otherwise could not take place," it "entails a free self-destruction of the subject."

In other words, the leftist freely chooses hell for himself, but then imposes it on everyone else. Only he is free to choose, which ultimately results in only the man at the top being truly free.

I'm sure Obama has no idea that the exercise of his fake freedom redounds to the loss of your real freedoms.

This is all strictly orthoparadoxical: "For every 'no' always derives the life which it has from a 'yes,' because the 'no' always becomes intelligible only in light of the 'yes.'" In short, no Yes, no No.

Obviously, an explicit No to God requires an implicit Yes. Same with freedom, truth, and any other transcendental reality: no doesn't really mean no.

Rahner's whole discussion of freedom is in the context of capital G Guilt, and I found it to be quite helpful in that regard.

As it so happens, my study of Rahner was partly motivated by a desire to more deeply understand this whole question of guilt and redemption, for redemption is unnecessary if man isn't Guilty.

But it seems that Guilt and Freedom are necessary partners so long as we exist "outside" paradise, so to speak. We are condemned to freedom, as the existentialists say, and we are bound to misuse it, as Genesis says.

As Rahner expresses it, "a free subject continues to be threatened by himself," and there is no way we can eliminate this permanent threat with some sort of ultimate act, short of suicide.

Which again goes to the left's perversion of this principle: "the Utopian idea that a world functioning in perfect harmony can be created by man himself only leads inevitably to still greater violence and greater cruelty..."

You might say that original sin results in the left's extremely unoriginal solution to it. It works, of course, at the cost of killing the host. You know the old wise crack: "the operation was a success, but the patient died."

21 comments:

Tony said...

In a horizontalized world there is no finality and therefore no meaningful freedom.

An atheist colleague once replied: "no, there are just *many* meanings of freedom." She agreed that there was plenty of meaningless freedom, and plenty of the mere feeling or facsimile of freedom.

a free subject continues to be threatened by himself"

Ain't that the truth.

The only thing that pierces one's finitude in my experience is love, usually sharpened and made more sublime by loss, or impending loss. That is why the Gimme & Whatever Culture is such fertile petri dish for foggy, temporary, self-centered people.

the Utopian idea that a world functioning in perfect harmony can be created by man himself only leads inevitably to still greater violence and greater cruelty

Perfect harmony first requires perfect (i.e. complete) control. Then comes the violence and cruelty. "It has to scale," you understand.

mushroom said...

I guess it might just be my mood this morning, but this all seems to align perfectly with a rant I did elsewhere.

But it seems that Guilt and Freedom are necessary partners so long as we exist "outside" paradise, so to speak.

The destruction and denial of guilt is typified and illustrated in the Jovan Belcher tragedy which Bob Costas blamed on those damn guns.

I say, thank God Belcher had a gun. Otherwise he would have had to beat his girlfriend to death or use a Swiss Army Knife like O.J. -- who would want to put a man who makes a living by violently hitting people through something like that? It's horrible to contemplate.

I grew up with a Chiefs' poster on my bedroom wall, but I'll never watch them again until the coach and whoever else was responsible for not cancelling yesterday's game is gone. They made Belcher the VICTIM because he blew his worthless brains out after murdering his girlfriend in cold blood. In front of his mother. Who may the real cause of the "tragedy" for naming her son after cheap perfume.

Did I mention I'm in a really bad mood? If I sound clearly irrational and that is too off-topic, please remove it.

Gagdad Bob said...

A Righteous Rant is never off topic.

Don't get me started on the Rams abandoning Los Angeles.

Tony said...

I'm glad I missed Costas on this Belcher thing. I would've put a bullet-hole in my TV.

JP said...

"I grew up with a Chiefs' poster on my bedroom wall, but I'll never watch them again until the coach and whoever else was responsible for not cancelling yesterday's game is gone. They made Belcher the VICTIM because he blew his worthless brains out after murdering his girlfriend in cold blood. In front of his mother. Who may the real cause of the "tragedy" for naming her son after cheap perfume.

Did I mention I'm in a really bad mood? If I sound clearly irrational and that is too off-topic, please remove it."

I just don't like the cheap perfume part.

The rest seems perfectly rational.

EbonyRaptor said...

As the "Greatest Generation" dies away, so too does much of what is left of the moral fiber that has held this country together. My generation - the baby boomers - has fast-tracked the squandering of our American inheritance to the point were rugged American exceptionalism is no longer the norm and considered something to be admired, but it is now looked at as something extreme and something to be ridiculed.

My heart breaks for what was once my country - the greatest country in history - not without fault, but with more virtue than any other.

Tony said...

Every new kid is new.

"Right, John didn't help you clean the basement at all, but now I'm going to give him just as much screen time as you. Fair enough?"

"NO."

They get it right every time. It's the teachers that screw them up.

Magnus Itland said...

"forming the eternity which we ourselves are and are becoming."

That's the horror of having even a little bit of spirituality, knowing that one won't just end like a flame extinguished.

"a free subject continues to be threatened by himself"

And indeed, in the stark light in which we must look back at our tenure in the flesh, there was no greater threat... or perhaps even, there was no other threat.

julie said...

Mushroom, amen to all of that. Not a "tragedy," an atrocity, and to call it otherwise, as though the murderous impulse were something that just fell out of the sky and "happened" to his girlfriend and then himself, is unimaginably sick. But lots of people are doing exactly that.

julie said...

"But in reality freedom is first of all the subject's being responsible for himself.... Ultimately he [the subject] does not do something, but does himself."

Yes, just so.

JP said...

"That's the horror of having even a little bit of spirituality, knowing that one won't just end like a flame extinguished."

Yeah. Or, as I like to say:

My problem isn't that I'm going to die someday in the coming decades.

My problem is that I'm immortal.

Leslie Godwin said...

I was on a plane Sunday morning and was watching the ESPN pregame show. The guys were going around the table talking about Belcher and how sad that he got to the point where killing himself was an option, blah blah blah.

Tom Jackson finally interrupted and said that he's sick of everyone seeing Belcher as the victim and feeling bad for him. He pointed out that he murdered a 22 y.o. new mom of a 3 month old. I've always liked Jackson from back when he was a Bronco to his years as an analyst. But was so grateful he cut through the B.S. and shook up the rest of the idiots feeling sorry for Belcher!!

Mrs. G

Esther said...

Freely chooses hell, but imposes it on everyone else - that's a quote to remember.

Matthew C Smallwood said...

Freely choose hell, but impose it on everyone else - great quote.

Van Harvey said...

"As Rahner expresses it, "a free subject continues to be threatened by himself," and there is no way we can eliminate this permanent threat with some sort of ultimate act, short of suicide."

There is no way to eliminate it... but you can promise to! Leftist marketing plan in a nutshall.

Gagdad Bob said...

No time for a post -- maybe this afternoon.

ge said...

John Cage on 1960 tv quiz show
[intro bla-bla lasts 5:40; actually a funny anti-union detail is discussed then]

Van Harvey said...

A suitable soundtrack for the unveiling of the 'Piss-Christ.'

Van Harvey said...

The people politely giggling in the audience, if still alive, are the ones wondering what the hell happened to their country.

Serves 'em right.

Yes, GE, I understand.

Piss on 'em.

ge said...

that's no way to talk
about Nicholas Cage's dad!
[the gigglers got it/get it]

Bob's Blog said...

Leslie,
You are right. Tom Jackson is a class act through and through.

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