I am always trying to paint the reader -- beginning with myself -- into an airtight corner from which there is no escape but inscape. Or there is no way out but up. This we call UPWORLD MOBILITY.
There is a lucid mechanical determinism that inspires futility and an organic entelechial deiterminism that nourishes HOPE.
Or in other words, one must know what IS in order to know what CAN BE. It is how ultimate reality can be always THE SAME and yet EVER NEW, instead of an ABSURCULAR repetitititititititition populated by a bunch of UNCLE AUTOMOTONS.
Revelation is both CLOSED and OPEN, or an open and shut case, because it is composed of TRUTH and FREEDOM, so it is dyna-static or olden pneumagain. This is the cosmic edge where all the RAZORACTION occurs.
I am always aiming for TOTAL CLARITY except for when TOTAL CLARITY only obscures the issue, for example, in defining God. To achieve TOTAL CLARITY in that arena would result in a total lack of clarity, i.e., absurdity. Any discussion of God requires the judicious use of orthoparadox, which cannot attain TOTAL CLARITY, but rather, transclarity, or PERFECT NONSENSE.
This is how and why O can be "incomprehensible and yet the meaning of everything," and why knowledge of it "does no more than render the mystery immediate and inescapable" (Ware).
This does not mean we should get an apophathead or veer off into irrationalism. Rather, there is an irreducible and endless play of apophatic and cataphatic, or knowledge and mystery, (n) and O.
This yeoman's work -- or play rather -- is NEVER DONE. The best we can do is to never stop aiming at that which transcends and defines us, the goal we can perceive but never see. Or we see through things toward that to which they point or converge upon.
And how do we perceive it? Two ways. We can look back and see its unmistakable fruit tracks, or turn forward and feel its attraction and its nourishment: it simultaneously PULLS on our emptiness and GIVES of its riches.
This dynamic force "attracts creation into the eschatological condition," which means that history is the interval or gap during which progress towards its own fillfullment occurs. For the AWAKE or even ALERT, time itself is the KNOWA's ARK of salvation.
"To the extent that one ascends in the knowledge of God, he ascends at the same time in the understanding of the mystery of God as that which is not to be understood. 'This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness'" (Staniloae). We are always rising above meanings toward MEANING itself via the DARKLIGHT of faith.
God is like any other name. Just because I know your name, or have a name for you, it does not mean that I fully know you, much less contain you.
You could say that being born again from above is the EIGHTH DAY of creation, i.e., VERTICAL LIFTOFF. Since the liftoff never ends, we could symbolize it [8∞] GUFFAW-HA! If it ever ends, it will mean that time has become eternal, or finally caught up with itsoph. History will have healed the wounds it inflicted, and hopefully JUDGMENT will wound the heels history inflicted upon the restavus.
So there will be a final endless COMM-UNION of orthoparadoxes such as flesh and spirit. Or not, because the other direction ends "in isolation within one's own emptiness" (ibid). In between is the exodus in the bewilderness of time, Israel on one side, Egypt on the other, Life or Death. Endless novelty or endless monotony.
Once upon a time we spoke of A influences and B influences, as described by Mouravieff. You could say that these are horizontal and vertical -- or terrestrial and celestial -- influences, respectively. No real happiness can result from A influences only. These bring transient pleasures, to be sure, but no quantity of horizontal pleasure adds up to one qualitative vertical bealtitude.
In order to be happy, man must have a goal "that transcends the domain of 'A' influences," or is "beyond the mental horizon" of mere horizontaloids. In the world of pure A, "nothing lasts, everything breaks, and everything tires." So you end up OLD, BORED, and JADED, or full to the brim with emptiness.
Will you knock it off with the capitalizing already?
Besides, what was it you were unclear about yesterday?
Well, it had to do with that penultimate crack to the effect that "homosexuality is rooted in the concrete pseudo-principle of selfish pleasure, which is then converted into the abstractions of freedom and equality."
Reilly expresses it more clearly, writing of how nature "is teleologically ordered to ends that inhere in their essence and make them what they are." In short, there is a truth and a reality that we do not invent and to which we graciously defer.
Conversely, the first principle of the homosexual activists is that "things are nothing in themselves, but are only what we make them to be according to our wills and desires" (emphasis mine). Here we see how one man's metaphysical trash is another man's libidinous pleasure, the pleasure of dominating reality with the will to POWER.
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For me, the achievement of TOTAL CLARITY means that no honest, intellectually adequate, and sincere person could possibly disagree with me.
:)
The only downside is, the more accurate you are, the less there is to say about it.
Conversely, the first principle of the homosexual activists is that "things are nothing in themselves, but are only what we make them to be according to our wills and desires" (emphasis mine). Here we see how one man's metaphysical trash is another man's libidinous pleasure, the pleasure of dominating reality with the will to power.
I'm reminded again of the news about the Episcopalian bishop who dumped his wife and daughters to marry a man, then eventually dumped the man, too. So long, and thanks for all the dick!
It's bad enough when a lay person acts this way. How much worse when a so-called religious leader does it, and expects to be celebrated for his "brave" choices. No wonder people are leaving the Episcopal church in droves.
Example: Obama is disappointed that the world is not up to his standards. Reality is beneath him.
How small does a mind have to be to find the whole world a disappointment? Makes me wonder if he even enjoys all those rounds of golf, or if he just plays to distract himself from his epic jadedness.
History will have healed the wounds it inflicted, and hopefully JUDGMENT will wound the heels history inflicted upon the restavus.
But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
(1 Corinthians 11:31-32)
We can look back and see its unmistakable fruit tracks, or turn forward and feel its attraction and its nourishment: it simultaneously PULLS on our emptiness and GIVES of its riches.
How beautifully true and seamless.
I saw all the CAPS and got worried I was on a Franklin Jones site. :)
Reality isn't up to Obama's standards. That's hilarious.
If I've had even a tiny part in disappointing him and his misbegotten ilk, I have not lived in vain.
This book on homosexuality -- or as one reviewer put it, fundamentalist Christofascist anti-gay propaganda -- is fantastic so far. Amazingly, Rousseau is even more of a monster than I'd thought.
Look how the angry crazies come out of the woodwork to denounce it. These people are scary. Unhinged rage and absolute self-righteousness do not mix.
And of course, the acceptance of homosexuality is only one facet of the general, growing culture-wide acceptance of things that are wrong. Divorce, abortion, prostitution, suicide - all these things members of polite society are pressed to tolerate, as matters of personal choice. And eventually, merely "tolerating" aberrant behavior becomes unacceptable. The polite citizen must refrain from expressing negative opinions. Or better yet, express admiration for the making of "brave" choices. And so so it goes, and there are more divorces, more abortions, more prostitutes, more suicides. And, one suspects, more gays, very few of whom seem to be genuinely happy in their alternative lifestyle.
I just got to say it took courage to put that book out. It's one thing to awaken people to some deeper Truth, and another thing to do it with an arrow coming out of your back.
Exactly. Same with A Troublesome Inheritance -- check out Charles Murray's review. I would not want to be Nicholas Wade this week.
Gagdad said " Amazingly, Rousseau is even more of a monster than I'd thought."
I've heard that somewhere before...
Ayn Rand set the Objectivist & Libertarian world on the trail of Kant... which is not quite a waste of time, but close. I don't think Rand ever did all that much research into much of anything beyond what she was sure of.
Rousseau didn't target the eggheads, he went for the poets and educators - the true legislators some would say - and he knew the eggheads would follow.
Read the two, Kant was inspired by Rousseau, his entire intellectual Rube Goldberg edifice is a support structure for Rousseau's inspirations, but bring it down, or step around it, as post-moderns believe they've done, and the inspiration lives on in them.
Marx found his inspiration in Rousseau, and there is little in his glop that isn't repackaged and marketed Rousseau.
Another less heard from today, Francois Babeuf, did as well.
Rousseau didn't just make errors, as perhaps Kant, Hegel & others did, he deliberately set out to destroy Western Civilization and all it's standards that tormented him. From his lurking as a peeping tom & flasher, to his desire to eliminate harmony from music, to twisting education into a tool that would eliminate all standards, and raze all hierarchy to the ground - which is was the 'Nature' he sought - through his writings he inspired, directly or indirectly, all those who have followed, to pursue destruction with an erotic zeal.
And you'll find him in most of your kids textbooks as a great defender of 'Rights' and 'Liberty'.
In short, he capitalized on the erroneous opening Descartes made legitimate, and made it 'possible', respectable, and desirable, to remake God as man's image, and soon after seek to throw that pale reflection over for the real deal in the mirror.
Cooncidentally, I came upon an article this morning by your author, Robert Reilly,
"...The prevalent influence on Cage seems instead to have been Jean Jacques Rousseau, though he goes unmentioned in Cage’s many obiter dicta. Cage’s similarities with Rousseau are too uncanny to have been accidental.
With his noise, Cage worked out musically the full implications of Rousseau’s non-teleological view of nature in his Second Discourse. Cage did for music what Rousseau did for political philosophy. Perhaps the most profoundly anti-Aristotelian philosopher of the eighteenth century, Rousseau turned Aristotle’s notion of nature on its head. ..."
, and this sums it up well:
"According to Rousseau, man was originally isolated in the state of nature, where the pure “sentiment of his own existence” was such that “one suffices to oneself, like God.” Yet this self-satisfied god was asocial and pre-rational. Only by accident did man come into association with others. Somehow, this accident ignited his reason. Through his association with others, man lost his self-sufficient “sentiment of his own existence.” He became alienated. He began to live in the esteem of others instead of in his own self-esteem."
As that became popular, how could we not end up where we are today?
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