On the Third Day

We've been discussing the Ten Commandments of the left. Unlike the left, we don't like to reduce opposing ideas and opinions to motivations -- whether conscious or unconscious -- that would be denied by the person who holds them.

But just this morning I was thinking about some of the idiotic things I used to believe when I was a liberal, and wondering why I thought them. It couldn't have been because they were rational or factual. So, why did I believe them? What was the driving -- or organizing -- force?

Note that "driving" and "organizing" imply different vectors, the former a material or efficient cause, the latter a formal or final one. For example, a homosexual activist who is in denial of his own heterosexual trauma and conflict is in the "driven" category. Likewise the feminist who hates her femininity or the black liberal who denies feeling inferior about himself and blames white people.

What would be examples of formal or final organization? Here I think Sowell's "vision of the anointed" applies, because a vision is a top-down, future-to-present phenomenon. But visions can be functional -- say, the Empire of Liberty of the founders -- or dysfunctional -- e.g., Marxists, Islamists, MSNBseers, Obamyopics, and others along the blindness spectrum.

Importantly, either one can involve violence. For example, we violently imposed liberty on Japan and Germany, and that worked out pretty well. We also succeeded in Iraq, at least until Obama's superior vision got in the way.

Note how in the space of a year or so, Iraq turned from one of the "great success stories of the Obama administration" to a great failure of the Bush administration. It's hard to believe that this isn't a conscious and cynical manipulation on the part of Obama, but never doubt the power of visions. I see no evidence that Obama's vision is being altered one iota by all of the feedback telling him that the great global play date isn't going so well with no adults around.

"The first thing a man will do for his ideal is" -- get this -- "lie" (Schumpeter, in Sowell). But you -- by which I mean you, the Raccoon -- are not permitted to lie, not to others, and most especially to yourself. Therefore, you are under much more serious constraints than is the leftist, whose vision does not include the eighth or any other commandment, really, because if you are permitted to lie, then all commandments are negotiable or even meaningless, right?

Put conversely, if your first commandment is that there is no objective truth, then all things are permitted because there are no commandments.

This is not to say that a Raccoon never lies to himself, only that he doesn't boast about it, much less elevate it to a metaphysic. For it is written -- on p. 242 -- that man is a habitual liar who uses the left brain "to superficially 'patch up' discontinuities in being." As a result, "language is quick to explain way" the psychic holes and tears in our cosmic area rug, "creating factitious wholes and spinning a false continuity."

For just as in the quantum world, the psyche has continuous (right brain) and discontinuous (left brain) aspects. Psycho-pneumatic growth is the result of a harmonious relationship between the two. Our narrative is always being destabilized, but our task is to unify it at a higher level via psychic metabolism.

Think of how our Cosmic Mentor accomplished this in a quintessential manner. To all outward appearances his narrative was torn asunder that Friday. If he were honest with himself, any witness that day or the next would have had to say to himself: well, that didn't work out so well.

But on the Third Day, Jesus weaves the broken narrative into a higher unity, to put it mildly. Thus, the same honest witness who said that didn't work out so well now says, wo, didn't see that coming. He didn't see it coming because that was not his vision. His vision was shattered, and he was honest enough to recognize it, so when the new vision came along, he was able to see it.

But what if he were like Obama? First of all, Obama would have shared the vision of the Romans -- AKA the sufficiency of worldly power -- so the Crucifixion would have been the end of it: problem solved. No doubt he would have been awarded a Peace Prize for eliminating the menace. He certainly couldn't have foreseen the dissolution of the Roman Empire four centuries later, while the other little vision prevailed.

In any event, -- returning briefly to the Coonifesto -- "One cannot overestimate the importance of constructing a true autobiography, in which we are unified and balanced, not just in psychic space but in developmental time." For example, to the extent that the unconscious past is not remembered and integrated, "we will be haunted, rebuked, vexed, thwarted, and enticed by its its split off, subterranean promptings."

This is precisely how those Marxist dreams from Obama's worthless father have become the many nightmares for us, Obama's worthless subjects. If Obama could only have insight into his past, it would save us from his acting it out on the world stage -- call it a World Historical defense mechanism. Nor would he be the first megalomaniac to act out his petty conflicts on such a grand stage.

"We all begin the spiritual path with an abundance of alibis, self-flattery, justification, psychic holes and envelopes, temporal discontinuities, and spatial disconnections. In order to become one with reality we must first become one with ourselves," said a prior Bob.

But just to show you how a fellow can grow and adjust his own vision, I would now express it a little differently, and say that the person must become three with himselves.

Then God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear'...

And if that reference is too obscure, here's a little hint: land is discontinuous while water is continuous. And the world is two thirds water...