Thursday, March 07, 2013

Why Obama is Less than Worthless

The bad news: Obama can kill Americans on sight if he suspects them of terrorism.

The good news: he knows where Bill Ayers lives.

Next up in our chapter-by-chapter dialogue with MOTT, Letter IX, The Hermit. Tomberg claims that a person who is "truly young, i.e., living for an ideal," is instinctively drawn to this figure. This is neoteny raised to a higher key, in that it makes a man fit to understand and appreciate the highest things. The attraction is a result of archetypal projection, whereby the unsaturated archetype -- or contentless form -- is "within," but we must first locate it without.

In so doing, we assimilate the content into the preconceptual form within. Without the experience, the archetype will remain an empty category -- a dead letter addressed from the Self to oneself; alternatively, it might accumulate a hodgepodge of elements in a random way, but only if you attend a public school or university.

When atheists speak of God, for example, this is usually what's going on. They have the archetype, like anyone else, but without any systematic or rational/experiential content.

Or, think of a Sean Penn, whose archetype of "wise and good ruler" is filled with Hugo Chavez. How did that happen? For that matter, how did Obama happen? How does "the world's greatest deliberative body" end up headed by Harry Reid? Much more productive to ask: what the f*ck is wrong with man? That's the question our Founders started with. Which is why the left starts with the question of what the f*ck is wrong with the Founders.

The Hermit is "a wise and good father... who has passed through the narrow gate and who walks the hard way -- someone whom one could trust without reserve and whom one could venerate and love without limit." To venerate is to revere, not worship. However, you might say that veneration is horizontal worship, while worship is vertical veneration.

The reason why there are so many false teachers is that we have an innate need for actual(ized) ones -- just as counterfeit money (or fake anything) is parasitic upon the existence of the real thing.

But since our culture has largely -- and proudly -- severed itself from its own wisdom tradition, the Deepaks of the world rush in to fill the void. In fact, we can see that Obama is riding the waves of that same archetypal energy field. Human nature does not change, obviously.

The difference is that the sophisticates of the left do not believe in human nature (unless it is convenient to do so), which only makes them more susceptible to deviant versions of it. Which explains, for example, their insistence that the federal government enforce a new definition of marriage in violation of human nature. "Same-sex marriage," what ever else it is, can only be a caricature of the real thing, because a man cannot really be a woman, and vice versa. I have no objection to human beings arranging their personal affairs in whatever way pleases them. But why invert reality in the process? It's totally uncalled for.

With regard to our current two-bit hood of state, only a culture that has lost its spiritual bearings could regard this bumbling cipher as unusually intelligent, let alone wise. For an insight into Obama's unconscious archetypal swamp, one must only recall the sinister minister he idealized as his own Hermit -- Reverend Wright! That, my friends, is what archetypal pathology looks like (although Bill Ayers-as-freedom fighter will do just as well).

Such an odious choice of ideals runs much deeper than the question of "judgment," for what and who one loves simultaneously reveals who one is and what one shall become. Truly, we become what we love; or, to put it inversely, we love what we want to become. To paraphrase an aphorism of Don Colacho, to love a person is to understand the reason why God created them. But what does it say about someone who loves things that could only be repellent to God?

Likewise, the person who would expose his children to the spiritually toxic environment surrounding a Reverend Wright is unfit to be a father, much less president. The point is to protect your child's innocence, not shatter it with hatred and vicious lies.

I am also reminded of an insightful comment by Henry Kissinger that runs counter to conventional wisdom. That is, we often hear about presidents "growing into the office," but according to Kissinger, it is the opposite.

That is, by the time a man runs for president, he has acquired the bulk of his intellectual capital, and if he should succeed in making it all the way to the presidency, he will simply draw upon the existing capital, not add to it. It's not as if a liberal president is going to suddenly decide to look into the Federalist Papers, or read the Constitution, or immerse himself in Hayek, and realize his professors led him astray and that he is trying to govern with a headful of destructive fantasies.

For one thing, there is no longer any time or space to think, to read serious books, or to reflect. This is why Obama appears to shrink with each passing month, since he didn't have much working capital to begin with -- or, more problematically, it was just the intellectually worthless coin of the left. And even that was given to him to assuage white liberal guilt, meaning that he's really using inherited funny money. He's not just worthless, but worthlessness².

Now, the real Hermit "possesses the gift of letting the light shine in the darkness -- this is his lamp." And here is a critical point: "he has the faculty of separating himself from the collective moods, prejudices and desires of race, nation, class and family -- the faculty of reducing to silence the cacophony of collectivism vociferating around him in order to listen to and understand the hierarchical harmony of the spheres."

This reminds me of the task of the psychoanalyst, which is to listen to the patient with "even hovering attention" -- or with the "third ear" -- in order to hear into the deeper layers of the unconscious (or nonlinear and translinguistic right brain). One must "unlisten" to the explicit in order to hear the implicit; or one must delve beneath (or above) the plot in order to apprehend the theme or soul-mission.

Bion said that one must suspend memory, desire, and understanding, in order to enter a state of faith, or what we symbolize in the book as the receptive and anticipatory mode of (o). (o) is evidence of things unKnown, a memoir of the future, an apprehension of as yet undiscovered -- or of prediscovered -- realities.

But that is not all, because if it were, we would live in a kind of bloodless idealism which Christianity specifically reconciles with flesh-and-blood reality -- or, materiality, to be precise. In other words, the Hermit unites reality and matter within his own being. Or, you could say that he embodies the ideal, or principle, in imitation of the Master himself (and in whose absence the whole innerprize would be impossible). As Tomberg writes, the Hermit

"possesses a sense of realism which is so developed that he stands in the domain of reality... on three [feet], i.e., he advances only after having touched the ground through immediate experience and at first-hand contact without intermediaries." This is none other than 〇-->(n), or the transformation of prior reality into experience, which is the foundation of all real knowledge, i.e. Truth.

So the Hermit is an archetypal reflection of the good father, behind or above whom is the Father in heaven. The Hermit is a little word from our nonlocal sponsor, so to speak.

As Tomberg says, he also represents the method of obtaining valid spiritual knowledge, in that he is able to synthesize within himself the three great antinomies with which any thinking man is confronted, and which any efficacious philosophy must reconcile. These are the complementary pairs of 1) idealism <---> realism; 2) realism <---> nominalism; and 3) faith <---> empirical science.

Which we will leave for tomorrow's post.

11 comments:

mushroom said...

"Same-sex marriage," what ever else it is, can only be a caricature of the real thing, because a man cannot really be a woman ...

Somewhere in my SMY I remember running across a science fiction short story possibly called "Ersatz" (could be this Henry Slesar story from Dangerous Visions, as I'm sure I had that collection at one time).

Anyway, it's kind of an anti-war story where an extended conflict and widespread destruction leads to everything being artificial. A soldier stumbles into safe haven area where he is treated to ersatz food and drink and offered companionship by a hostess -- who, of course, turns out to be a male in drag.

I'm sure the guy would be labeled a homophobe these days, but we could still get the point back then.

mushroom said...

The psychoanalytical approach reminds me of the Spirit of God hovering over the chaos out of which will come order in Genesis 1:1.

There's also kind of a tangent to that in Romans 4:17 where God calls "things which are not as though they were". I think even for God's creative calling forth, there is a template. He sees it in Himself and manifests it in the cosmos. It's the reality in God that makes it real in the universe.

Gagdad Bob said...

That would be the Jewish view -- that the Torah is analogous to the pre-existing template God uses to create. Which later reappears in the form of "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Interesting how Marxism imitates this by asserting that its ideological claims are scientific -- by which is meant that they will be proven in empirical reality by coming into being BY their declaration.

This is an ersatz version of genuine prophecy wherein as mushroom quotes, 'God calls things which are not as though they were.' Taken outside of its bounds and context it can become the revenge of idealism against realism.

People ask where the prophets and prophecies are now, thinking that the prophets of the old testament were exercising a gift which has passed away. Interestingly, the NT seems to conflate exhortation and prophecy; but as we discussed above it is obviously the same thing.

Another way to put it is, that from the Christian perspective, all prophecy is of Christ; so the OT prophets predict his coming, and the NT prophets call people backwards in time towards him via exhortation.

In both cases it is calling 'things which are not as though they were.'

A reflection of the creator in the created, methinks!

(I've been told all prophecy is self-fulfilling. If God gave the prophecies to the prophets, it was he who fulfilled them didn't he...)

mushroom said...

all prophecy is of Christ

For the testimony of Christ is the spirit of prophecy - Rev. 19:10

julie said...

"Same-sex marriage," what ever else it is, can only be a caricature of the real thing, because a man cannot really be a woman, and vice versa.

Speaking of which, I'm reminded of the latest case of child abuse whereby a six year old boy is convinced he's a girl, and his parents want him to use the girls' bathroom at school.

The interesting thing to me about the linked article is not so much what the pediatrician said, but the commenter responses which simply didn't question how it is that a 6-year-old comes to believe that he should be a girl, and not a boy. How does one learn to loathe one's own body at such a young age? The fact that he's named "Coy" ought to be a clue.

Even if he should grow up to adulthood and decide that he still really wants to be female, his parents do him no favors by allowing him to believe he can ignore reality in such a fundamental way. Would they humor him if he insisted that he was made of fire, and so should be allowed to sleep on the coals in the fireplace? Or would they allow him to decide he is a race car like Lightning McQueen, and so should be allowed to play in traffic?

julie said...

Off topic, but this is really interesting: a 6,000 year-old temple was constructed in such a way that male voices, speaking from certain points within the temple, actually altered the brain functions of those within earshot:

"Regional brain activity in a number of healthy volunteers was monitored by EEG through exposure to different sound vibration frequencies," reports Malta temple expert Linda Eneix of the Old Temples Study Foundation, "The findings indicated that at 110 Hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shifted, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language center and a temporary shifting from left to right-sided dominance related to emotional processing and creativity. This shifting did not occur at 90 Hz or 130 Hz......In addition to stimulating their more creative sides, it appears that an atmosphere of resonant sound in the frequency of 110 or 111 Hz would have been “switching on” an area of the brain that bio-behavioral scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behavior. Deliberately or not, the people who spent time in such an environment under conditions that may have included a low male voice -- in ritual chanting or even simple communication -- were exposing themselves to vibrations that may have actually impacted their thinking." [1]

I wonder if there are any other holy sites that have such an effect?

julie said...

D'oh! - I should have finished reading the article first. Apparently, there are several other ancient structures around the world with similar - or similarly interesting - effects.

mushroom said...

It makes one wonder. Sound is still pretty mysterious.

Perhaps "primitive" doesn't mean what we think it means.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Outstanding post, Bob!

And here is a critical point: "he has the faculty of separating himself from the collective moods, prejudices and desires of race, nation, class and family -- the faculty of reducing to silence the cacophony of collectivism vociferating around him in order to listen to and understand the hierarchical harmony of the spheres."

Third ear's are essential to a good marriage. I'm still developing mine but it has helped me skirt the shoal waters of my wife's anger (although there are times I still run aground and become shipwrecked, so to speak, when my third ear doesn't quite get what my lovely wife is really saying).

It's a fine line between a pleasant cruise and the Poseiden Adventure.

So yeah...a third ear is a must. Not just to transcend but to communicate more effectively and concisely.

Always good to keep an eye on the Lighthouse too if you get my drift (and I think you do).

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

BTW, sorry for the long absence.
I've had some new health issues and some weird computer problem.
Fortunately the computer problem was easy to fix. :^)

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