Back in the Saddle of Reality

Where were we? And does it matter anyway? This blog is supposed to be an exercise in pure verticalisthenics, so any horizontal continuity is more a matter of luck than design.

Well, not pure luck. Vertical flight necessarily converges on the One, so in that sense, each post more or less touches the others. Conversely -- or inversely -- with vertical descent there is a kind of increasing divergence, discontinuity, and atomization, so that everything becomes a unique instance, with no underlying or overarching unity.

For those of you who have read the KoonKlassic IDEAS Have F*cking CONSEQUENCES, this is Weaver's central point: that our present culture war (though the book was published in 1948, it is just as true today) may be traced to the modern abandonment of transcendentals and the blind plunge into bonehead nominalism. To quote that first amazon reviewer, Weaver has in mind the Consequential Idea of

"nominalism or relativism -- the absence of belief in any source of truth outside man, the absence of universals, the reduction of all things to formless particulars. You might think that such an idea is too abstract to have any impact on your life, but Weaver argues persuasively that nominalism makes impossible the 'metaphysical dream' of an organized universe, leading to social chaos, formless art, virtueless individuals suckered by [the media-educational complex] into believing that life consists only of chasing ever more creature comforts and a universal 'spoiled-child psychology.'"

This goes back to what was said above in paragraph one, that -- obviously -- a coherent and unified worldview is only possible via some form of transcendental realism. Otherwise we are stuck down in nominalism, relativism, scientism, and materialism, which are demonically synthesized in the form of political leftism.

Isn't that a contradiction, Bob? You just said that reality cannot be integrated in the lower vertical, but is fundamentally dis-integrated, fragmented, and divergent.

Yes, precisely: for the normal human being, reality can only be synthesized through God; or, on a more purely experiential level, God is the living principle of synthesis, of integration, of unity. This is because the God-principle is both ground and destiny, or alpha and omega.

In other words, if God weren't primordial unity, there would literally be no possibility of human unity, whether religious, scientific, political, spiritual, interpersonal, aesthetic, metaphysical, intellectual, or in any other way.

Note the manner in which God, because he is the very principle of dynamic unity, cuts across and unifies all those diverse domains, from political philosophy to aesthetics to scientific inquiry to mystical experience. Each involves a form of oneness, and oneness is obviously an echo or shadow or fractal or recollection of the One.

More generally, anything that is true will be convergent with other truths and ultimately with Truth itself. On the other hand, falsehoods will stick out like undigestible sore thumbs. They can't be integrated, because they reject integration a priori. Again, once you have taken the dive into nominalism and relativism, there can be no recovery of real unity.

Unless....

Yes, unless you somehow appropriate power over reality in order to impose your will upon others.

But even this is impossible for a mere man, no matter how tenured. Rather, the only way it is possible is through the assistance of a massive state that interferes with every dimension of life, from private property to education to employment to healthcare to intimate relationships. Only then does a mere human being possess the power to impose the fractured metaphysical dream of his father -- the father of lies -- upon the rest of us.

Which is why today's Supreme Court decisions are important, since they modestly chip away at that demonic power to determine and enforce a deeply pneumapathological testavus on the restuvus.

I just remembered where we left off -- or at least it remembered me, now that we're up here. We were discussing The Common Mind, one theme of which is that there is indeed a Common Mind. And if there is a common mind, then it can only be because there is a transcendent mind, or because mind is both transcendent and ordered. Or just say Transcendent Order; or, in a word, God.

To requote a particular passage, Moore writes that "Christian humanism is in radical tension with the spirit of" postmodernism, "which in deconstructing texts finds an abyss at the heart of them. In the sense in which postmodernism does the work of the devil, it is at the farthest remove from the creative function of literature."

To cite a timely example, the Constitution was written in such a way that anyone with adequate intelligence can understand it. But it takes a constitutional scholar to find an intellectual abyss at the heart of it, a nothingness so deep and wide that socialism can pass right through it without even brushing up against the natural law that is its source and purpose.

In order for the assault on transcendent reality to succeed, words must be eviscerated of their meaning; and not just words, but language itself. To quote something found at Happy Acres, Liberal Newspeak

"deliberately embraces the feminine side of language. It strives to be comforting, nurturing and soothing. It never tells you anything directly. Instead it makes you read everything between the lines. It rarely answers questions. Instead its answers indirectly explain to you why you shouldn’t even be asking the questions.

"The empty words are signals like the noises that birds and animals in the forest make. They establish identity, rather than ideas. A Liberal Newspeak discussion is more likely to be about identities, racial, gender, sexual, than about anything tangible. Like two moose meeting in the north or two sparrows chirping on a power line, the only communication that really happens is an assertion of identity."

Which is again why it is impossible to have an intelligent discussion with a leftist, because they aren't operating in the realm of intelligibility, but power. For the Machiavellians of the left, good language is effective language, not "truthful" language.

Actually, leftist language has three related functions, 1) to sever the link between words and reality, 2) to open up a space for the state to improperly co-opt the power of truth, and 3) to make liberals feel good about themselves. Thus, we end up being ruled by logophobic cretins with inappropriately high self-esteem, who get their jollies by bossing other people around.

Another accurate zinger from Happy Acres: "Today as never before there is an industry dedicated, not to educating people, but to making them feel smart. From paradigm shifting TED talks to books by thought leaders and documentaries by change agents that transform your view of the world, manufactured intelligence has become its own culture.

"Manufactured intelligence is the smarmy quality that oozes out of a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni and the rest of the gang who tell you nothing meaningful while dazzling you with references to international locations, political events and pop culture, tying together absurdities into one synergistic web of nonsense that feels meaningful."

Which brings us back to the common mind. The left has sustained a frontal assault on our common mind and culture, replacing them with an entirely fanciful second reality that is assimilated by those most susceptible to indoctrination, i.e., overeducated mediocrities such as Obama, whose only defense against an ever-intrusive reality is the same old smelly orthodoxies he inhaled in college.

Which proves that you can drive out language out with a pitchforked tongue, but she eventually comes back shouting.