Earthers & Lumin Beings

Can we not all agree that man is possessed of no less than two natures?

I guess not. Anyone on the secular atheistic/scientistic side of the spectrum rejects any nature -- i.e., essences -- although never in a coherent way, mind you.

The leftist, for example, will insist that everyone is inherently racist except for blacks (and their white liberal scaretakers); or homosexuality is "fixed" whereas for the rest of us, gender is just a cultural construct.

So, let me get this straight: all sexuality is an arbitrary cultural construct except for homosexuality, which is why members of the latter group are entitled to special rights plus cash and other valuable prizes from the government?

Yes, exactly. You got a problem with that? It's all about voting blocs, not intellectual consistency, moron. To look for intellectual consistency in a leftist is like milking a bull. At best, you're in for a nasty surprise.

The two natures alluded to above are central to all religions, either explicitly or implicitly. Raccoons tend to take things a little too far, and posit two types of humans: children of Light and children of the earth.

This frankly sounds a little too gnostic for most folks. However, we don't say it because it is necessarily true literally, but because it works. We'll drop it as soon as we come up with a better idea.

Children of the earth -- at least in my experience -- tend to stay earthbound. If someone only superficially looks like an earther, as soon as he hears the dOctrine -- presented to him in the right way at the right time -- he will will recognize his Light-nature and soon enough go about shedding the earth-dross.

Can I get a witness?

Conversely, genuine children of the earth respond to the dOctrine either with bovine vacancy -- in other words, they just go on chewing while briefly looking up from the trough -- or a snake-like hissing fit.

In Judaism (or at least Kabbala) the higher and lower natures are called neshamah and nefesh, respectively. Importantly -- critically, even -- the lower soul is not intrinsically corrupt. To the contrary, it is intrinsically innocent -- or as innocent as any other animal.

Rather, it is corrupted by the soul -- which recalls Jesus' wise crack to the effect that Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man; but that which comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.

You could say that our lower nature is like a fish in the sea -- it is plunged into the body and engulfed by the senses. It is that part of us which is of the earth and made of clay.

But there is another part -- obviously -- that always floats on the ocean or sits on the bank of the river, so to speak. Which is why we aren't all wet, and why the Light isn't completely extinguished.

Can I get a wetness? Without being totally drenched?

Completely out of time. I'm tempted to not even post this fragment, but why not? I'll pick up the strand Monday, no pun intended for once.

Veils and Brutes, Whores and Bullies

Amazing what putting one little naughty word into the title does for one's traffic, as indicated by the spike on the right side of the chart:

No wonder our language has become so debased. It works! If only putting a shocking vulgarity in the White House worked so well...

Perry notes that it is possible for Love and Truth to become polarized, but only as a result of a kind of declension, or devolution, from their higher unity. In such a case, Truth devolves to mere reason, while "Love becomes sentiment."

Have you noticed, for example, how sentimental people become when they have rejected religion? Actually, they can become either hard or sentimental, but I've noticed that some of the hardest ones can have a sequestered area of pure mushy sentimentality as a kind of replacement for a more rigorous and demanding religioisity.

Why, for example, does Richard Dawkins get married -- not just once, but repeatedly? Why this spiritual flabbiness amidst the hard and selfish genes?

But really folks, Truth and Love. What would life be without 'em? No, not false and hateful, since those represent deprivations, not negations.

We can't even say it would be like mammal life, because we all know that dogs, for example, have some sort of rich emotional life, with something analogous to "love." I suppose it would be more reptilian in nature -- just existing for the pure, unreflective sensation of it, like Charlie Rangel.

In fact, existence without Truth and Love isn't even existence, really. In a way, it's indistinguishable from non-being, and in any event, not worth the bother.

This is what often strikes me about radical environmentalists, who talk as if human beings are a destructive parasite on an otherwise beautiful and harmonious planet. What nonsense. If there were no humans to enjoy it, the earth might as well be obliterated by an asteroid, for all we care.

This also explains the widespread touchiness of political correctness. It turns out that these brave nihilists have more sacred cows than an ultra-Orthodox Jew with obsessive-compulsive disorder (like my wife's late Uncle Davy).

You can hardly say anything without offending the tender sensibilities of the politically correct. The other day Ann Coulter stepped into a sacred cowpie for calling President Obama a "retard."

But he is a retard, if by retard we mean someone who is intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or morally arrested. The Benghazi scandal alone qualifies him for moral retardation. I mean, if no one is retarded, then no one is advanced.

Which is precisely what the left wants us to believe, but only when it is convenient. Otherwise they regard themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the 99% rabble o' retards.

Leftists also treat women as "sacred objects," but they go about it in a completely wrongheaded way. In fact, there is something deeply sacred about femininity, something worthy of veneration and protection, and which properly evokes chivalry in the male.

But this is quite different from the vulgar leftist belief that there is something special about a woman just because she is a woman -- or, more to the point, a leftist woman who feels that life has treated her unfairly. The left venerates victims, irrespective of whether or not they have any praiseworthy qualities.

Perry observes how "veiling and unveiling" play "such a central role in the contemplation of female beauty." Why, for example, is there a Victoria's Secret, and what is it hiding? We're not complaining, mind you, but a male equivalent of this would not only be absurd, but pathetic. What's the deal with the veiling of feminine beauty?

Perry says that it has to do with "the sacredness of beholding the essence." All cultures are -- or at least were, prior to the 1960s -- aware of this feminine power, and try to deal with it in various ways. However, the balance can be tipped too far in one direction or the other.

For example, "An excessive emphasis on veiling, and on guarding woman from the predatory passions of men, while necessary in a world populated by brutes, can overshadow the deeper function of veiling which... has to do with protecting man from beholding the Divine Essence unworthily" (Perry).

This is precisely the problem we see in much of the Islamic world. But we have the opposite problem in much of the west, represented by the culture of porn. For what is this culture but an unveiling so thorough that there is no mystery left to behold? There is no there there, at least nothing transcending the purely material plane, just surfaces in friction.

For strict atheists and other secular nihilists, this is all there can be, which again makes one wonder why the left is so eager to protect women that a man can be get sued for looking at one the wrong way.

Ironically, this regime is analogous to a "legalistic hijab," a kind of state-enforced veiling that has totally forgotten why the veil is necessary to begin with. To put it more bluntly, you can't really shame a whore any more than you can be mean to a bully, because the first is truth, the second justice.

***

Difference between zombies and liberals? If you give the zombie what he wants, he'll leave you alone:

Obama: Our First Bitch President

This is pretty much all you need to know about radical feminists: as a result of her devaluation and/or inversion of the male-female polarity, a "woman's inherent sweetness can turn to bitterness, changing her into a fury who, in revenge for man's weakness or arbitrariness, will harass him mercilessly" (Perry).

Yes, we all know the type. No normal man would be attracted to, say, Janeane Garofalo. And yet, she probably has a boyfriend, poor bastard. The question is, why?

Probably for the same reason -- only inverted -- that Richard Ramirez or the Menendez brothers are never without female companionship. Indeed, Erik, Lyle, and Richard all married in prison.

By way of contrast, marrying Janeane Garofalo -- or her type in general -- would amount to entering prison.

Now, just as the child will test boundaries but unconsciously wants and needs them to be there in order to feel safe and secure in the world, a woman will always test her man. Way it is.

And yet, this makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because deep down no woman wants to be stuck with a weak man. The testing is like an inborn Wimp Detector.

Beneath this wimp detecting harassment, according to Perry, is the "attempt to have him become the man she would have him be."

In other words, she is unconsciously "hoping that he may yet rise to the challenge and not fall for the shrill bait of her badgering; that he will stand in impervious strength before her assault, while displaying magnanimous generosity, thus rescuing her from her own restless and potentially chaotic nature."

Imagine, for example, if Larry Summers had reacted in this calm and manly fashion to the shrill attacks of the angry feminists when he made his crack about women and engineering. Indeed, he might have responded with a good-natured you're making my point much more effectively than I ever could.

It's similar to how Muslims react to charges that they are violent by behaving violently (and I suppose this would be the male analogue to female violence, which is more verbal, hysterical, relationship-bound, and passive-aggressive).

Yesterday a thought popped into my head. What does it mean to be "cool"? It seems to me that coolness essentially equates to competence. Someone who is competent at a difficult and challenging endeavor -- especially when under pressure -- qualifies as cool.

Women obviously thought Obama was cool four years ago (70% of unmarried women voted for him, as did an even higher percentage of androgynous Yelvertons). Upon closer inspection it turns out that he was indeed cool, but with nothing to be cool about.

In other words, he has no competence at all, neither generally nor in any particular subject area. At best he has a nice burnished timbre to his voice, but he has never uttered an interesting thought with it. So, why didn't be become a TV journalist?

Is there a name for this kind of vacuous coolness, or breezy pseudo-mastery? Yes, I think so. It's called "celebrity."

A celebrity is, of course, famous for being famous. But celebrities are also cool for being cool. Which is why all the cool celebrities still support Obama. Professional courtesy.

Perry says something similar, that "when a man displays commanding self-domination and lucid reason this normally has an irresistible and deeply liberating effect on woman, for she is now free to be totally feminine and thus to blossom without fear of exposing her vulnerability -- this vulnerability or sensitivity being a necessary dimension of her nature."

But for the same reason, the fake sort of self-domination affected by Obama provokes the sort of fake feminine response we see, for example, in a gushing Chris Matthews, or in the liberal media more generally.

This media, being liberal, is "feminized," but obviously not in a healthy way. Thus Obama is their dream man -- or a man in their dreams.

I predicted several years ago that Obama's fake coolness would crack under the pressure of actual expectations. Again, the facade of coolness could be maintained so long as he was borne upward on nothing more substantial than the winds of white liberal guilt.

But look what he has now become: petty, peevish, vindictive, brittle, petulant, small-minded, mean-spirited, acid-tongued. In short, our soon-to-be ex-wife.

Indeed, in recent weeks Obama has gone full Garofolo on us. Again, some people no doubt find this attractive, just as, at the other end, some people find pathological masculinity attractive.

But we at the One Cosmos Decision Desk have determined that there just aren't enough of them this time around, so it's all over except for the bitching.

Playing the Game Existence to the End of the Beginning

I don't yet know if I have time enough for a post. Maybe just a series of unconnected fragments on the way to a post. I guess we'll find out.

Speaking of sexual differences, Perry writes that "man is identified with the pole of transcendence and woman with that of immanence."

Transposed to the social plane, this complementarity has various iterations. One that comes immediately to mind is man as "hero" and woman as "nurturer." The ultimate hero is "savior," since his heroism applies to our transcendent destiny. But our immanent destiny is in the hands of woman; hence, Jesus as savior is nevertheless "born of woman."

It is also understood -- even by science -- that the female brain tends to be much more geared toward relationships, whereas the male brain leans toward abstraction and law. As Perry says, the former is union or synthesis, the latter discernment and analysis. Who is right?

Certainly not that question. Again, we are dealing with a complementarity that conditions every degree and mode of reality short of God. For example, in quantum physics wave is female, particle male.

Indeed, in a provocative footnote, Perry observes that "Geometrically speaking, if man is the central dot, woman is the whole circle." However, it's not a question of either/or, but rather, both/and. In short, it is ʘ.

Complementarity as such strikes one as "female," does it not? For me it does, anyway. The male psyche wants to find THE ANSWER -- as in reductionistic scientism -- but there is no answer without its alluring female consort, or complement. Or, one might say that for every answer there is going to be a mysterious female context that shades off into the infinite.

Of course, one notices this much more in spirituality than in science. I see that this is a recurring theme of Karl Rahner, who writes, for example, that

"The Christian never simply 'comes across' God... as one specific phenomenon among others within the sphere of human existence, one, therefore, which falls within the limits of his ideas and actions."

Rather, "he is in contact with the living God as the all-encompassing and the unencompassed [i.e., container and never contained], as the ineffable upholder of being such that to call him in question is to call everything in question also, ourselves included..."

Yes, "God is the incomprehensible mystery of our existence which encompasses us and causes us to realize, however painfully, the limitations of that existence, which he himself transcends." And "the distance between him and us is there in order that the unity of love may be achieved." Thus the soul is always female in relation to God.

In a very real sense, you could say that "The person is the question to which there is no answer" (ibid).

Or in other words, the questions to which the person gives rise are infinite, and infinite is another name for God: "Experience gives answers, but no answer which would make what we are questioning -- the human person as a unity and as a whole -- intelligible."

To pretend otherwise gives idolatry a bad name. Unless you realize that our transcendence is by definition unlimited -- and therefore needs an unlimited Object -- you will be very frustrated searching for the limit, i.e., the horizon of subjectivity. Yes, you may find it, but it's just like our geographical horizon -- the limit of vision, not the limit of reality.

Speaking of the existential frustration that ensues when we seek final answers where none are possible, Rahner adds that "Because we reach out beyond each finite object, but directly grasp only finite objects, we will never be content with this life, and so every ending is just a beginning," as indeed in the book of the same game -- i.e., the game existence to the end... of the beginning (John Lennon).

This is why, no matter how much we stuff into our brain, there's always room for more stuff, and why this blog just goes on and on and on: "We are constantly feeding new materials into the warehouse of our consciousness. It constantly disappears into an infinite expanse which, not to put too fine a point on it, is just as empty as before" (Rahner).

D'oh! So that's what happens to it. You can never have a dream that ends the need for dreaming.

What or who then is the proper male complement of complementarity? It seems to me that it must be God, who is again the only thing that transcends complementarity.

But even "within God" we are told that there is the complementarity of Father and Son, the one unthinkable in the absence of the other, even if "Father" must somehow be "prior."

Similar complementarities are God <---> world, or Absolute <---> relative, or One <---> many, even though in each case the former must take priority. Another complementarity is blogging <---> working, and the latter must now rudely shove the former aside.

Androgynes, Neuters, and Castrati, Oh My!

It is a commonplace to point out that we live in an age of feminized men and masculinized women. The question is, is this a good thing?

To a large extent this was the very goal of feminism -- to erase (or better, to ignore) the differences between the sexes (which are now called "genders" in order to emphasize the supposedly cultural basis of these superficial differences).

One thing you will have noticed about leftism in general and feminism in particular is that you are not permitted to question their assumptions. Doing so makes you a racist or homophobe or something. They get all hysterical on you, like that Harvard professor who almost fainted when Larry Summers wondered out loud if there might be some innate differences in aptitude between men and women with regard to science and engineering.

For the left, that question is closed -- not by the evidence, of course, but by fiat. It is a principle; or, more to the point, an article of faith. As such, questioning this article of faith evokes the same kind of emotional reaction as do insults to Muhammed in the Islamic world.

The result is that we can't really talk about the principle, nor can we evaluate it, without making the left uncomfortable. For example, Obama represents our first truly androgynous, metrosexual, and post-gendered president. He is not identifiably male or female, but an indiscriminate blend of both. How's that working out?

How did we get to such an appallingly misogynistic place?

First, an observation by Mouravieff. It goes without saying that there is no reason why a woman shouldn't pursue a genuine interest in science, "on condition, however, that even if dazzled by science she does not lose her feminine emotionality.... She must be aware of acquiring a masculine mentality and identifying with this."

Now, if you convey this banality to a normal woman, she will respond with a quiet nod of the head, or maybe just a "no shit, Dr. Phil." But if you say it to a feminist, she will respond with a violent rotation of the head while spitting out expletives, like Linda Blair.

Mouravieff continues undaunted, because what's the worse they can do, deny you tenure?:

"A male mind in a woman's body excludes the possibility of esoteric development. This type of woman is unfortunately widespread in our days, as is that of the effeminate man, representing what the Tradition calls the neutral sex," or what Vanderleun calls the new castrati.

For such con-fused individuals, writes Mouravieff, "The Kingdom of God is closed for them."

Wo, wo, wo. Hold on just a minute. That's a pretty radical statement. Are you suggesting that feminists are spiritually condemned or something?

Yes, but only in a spiritual fantasy world that they reject anyway. It's like those atheists who get offended when some fundamentalist tells them they're going to hell. So what? If some nut believes in unicorns, I don't fret over the idea that I'll never get to ride one.

Likewise, feminists shouldn't be troubled by the fact that they are barred from higher states of consciousness that they don't believe in anyway. For feminists, the highest state of being is that of the profane man with lots of worldly power -- a crass Bill Clinton or vulgar Barack Obama.

Since 1789 we have been living in the "age of revolution." Prior to this age there were, of course, changes in power, but not fundamental changes with regard to the order of the world, or Nature of Things.

Even -- or especially -- the American Revolution was not of this nature. It was not for the purpose of overturning the order of the world and remaking man, but rather, simply fostering the conditions that would allow man to be what he is. Thus, it did not reject tradition, but recognized that tradition nurtures man's true interior order.

Not so the French revolution, and virtually every revolution since. Mouravieff writes that "while life on the material plane is moving at an accelerated pace due to the political, social, and industrial Revolution which has occurred since 1789, man has made no marked progress on the moral plane." No kidding. What's your point?

Well, for starters, what is required today -- and every day, really -- is an interior revolution. "Revolution" means to "turn around," which is precisely what repentance means, i.e., "metanoia" (the Greek term used in the Septuagint).

It seems to me -- I was just a kid, of course -- but still, it seems to me that there were many seeds of this kind of liberating interior revolution in the 1960s, but that the whole thing was eventually hijacked by the left in general and by mind parasites in particular.

Nevertheless, it is a historical curiosity that movements of spiritual liberation evolved into an oppressive statism, which is why a wholesale pneumababbling huckster such as Deepak Chopra should be one of Obama's most obnoxiously unredeemed supporters.

Speaking of vulgarity, Mouravieff makes a subtle point that "Periods where the ennobling role of the woman in the life of human society has faded are marked by a triviality of morals and manners, expressed by a taste for realism [I would say "naturalism"] carried to its utmost limits." At first blush this seems paradoxical, for so much of our pornographic society seems to be geared toward developmentally arrested teenage boys.

But again, women are the "leading edge" on this particular plane of phenomena (think of Eve in relation to Adam). Woman have to first reject and even forget about the feminine, which then evokes a certain type of masculinity to go along with it. As mentioned in the last post, it is subhuman, in the sense that it not only doesn't aspire to humanness, but rejects the whole idea that such a station even exists.

And if you have no target, you're sure to hit it.