The Cosmic Structure of Man's Eternal Fuck Up

Last Friday I forgot the new program, which involves a weekly descent below dreck into the living hull of the knowa's arkive and pulling out an old murmurandom or two. But it all works out, because today I have to leave early, so it is more conducive to playgiarizing with myself.

For today's compilation I searched "Obama Antichrist," and what follows is a compendium of fine insultainment around that theme. Note that although the content may superficially appear to be about vulgar politics, it was all written with one eye on eternity (AKA 20/∞ coonvision), so it is supposed to disclose deeper lessons about, you know, the structure and content of ultimate reality:

There will always be a... period of adjustment when infantile omnipotence collides with the reality principle. In fact, Obama addressed this just yesterday, comparing the trainwreck of Obamacare to a bug in an Apple product. He makes an excellent point, because when you think about the federal bureaucracy, isn't the first thing that comes to mind the most successful company in the world?

Given the level of unsustainable fantasy that was projected onto Obama prior to actually doing anything, we knew the country was going to be in for a screwed awakening when this Nobody from Nowhere underwent the formality of actually existing as Someone doing Something.

In short, we are now living in the dark future of which these past blognostications were shadows.

First of all, let's get this out of the way at the outset. Are we really calling Obama the antichrist?

Yes, of course.

Nah, just kidding. Let's just say the embodiment of a hypothetical "antichristic principle." There is no need to unduly slander the man, no warrant to demonize someone just because he's an instrument of satan. Besides, he's just the vehicle, not the driver. The surfer, not the wave. The bong, not the smoke.

Now, precisely what do we mean by "antichrist?" I would say that, as Christ is Word-made-flesh -- or Absolute made relative -- the realm of the antichristic would analogously represent the "lower principle" made flesh -- the instantiation, as it were, of the energies of the Fall (speaking of apples and bugs). Among other things, it would represent the absurdity of the relative made Absolute ("ye shall be as gods").

So first of all, one must believe that man is in some sense a fallen being with a built-in design flaw. You don't have to be a fanatic about it. You have only to know that something goes persistently wrong with the earthlings, however you wish to conceptualize it. Or, to paraphrase Don Colacho, there are two kinds of men: those who believe man is fallen, and idiots.

Being aware of this principle (the fall) is our greatest inoculation against utopian leftist schemes to perfect mankind, which always -- always -- result in unanticipated cosmic belowback. We might think of the left as the Good Intentions Paving Company, and we all know where their shining paths lead. For the left, unanticipated consequences always swamp the anticipated.

In this regard, left wing "climate science" is a quintessential case: not only does it fail to predict the future, it can't even retrodict the past. You call that science? In comparison the doctrine of the Fall is on the strictest scientific grounds, as it both illuminates the past and allows for perfect prediction as to how the left's next fallie will go boom.

Once we posit the Fall, one next must posit the idea that it is possible for its energies to be personified -- or, let us say, both focused and dispersed like a beam of darkness through the concavity or convexations of man's heart. It is like a dark light speeding through the void, looking for an object to animate. Only "animate" is not quite accurate. "Zombify" is more like it, for this kind of "political awakening" is like a counterfeit born again experience.

Thus, as Christ is a blinding light, the antichristic would be darkness visible. Thus, to those who live in spiritual darkness, it might appear as a false light -- as, say, a single match is brighter than the sun in an enclosed room, cut off from the real source of light. If the central sun is analogous to the primordial truth, then when it is extinguished, a lot of lesser things may appear luminous: stars are only seen at night, just as, say, Darwinism may appear to be absolutely true when cut off from Truth as such.

The Serpent -- to paraphrase our Unknown Friend -- sssymbolizes advanced intelligence ("the most cunning of the beasts") turned wholly toward the horizontal. Thus, it is a perversion of man's intellect, as it represents a self-sufficient naturalism and total (lower case r) realism that betray the vertical source of human intelligence. As such, we would expect one aspect of the antichrist to be a facsimile of high intelligence combined with extraordinary vapidity.

Does this remind you of anyone?

Now, this cannot merely be the philosophical vapidity of the doctrinaire atheist or scientistic materialist, or it could never gain traction in the human heart, which always hungers for Spirit, even (or especially) if it is the false kind. Man is always looking for God, even when he thinks he's after some other object or idea. Otherwise we would be like animals and stay out of trouble by just falling asleep after we eat.

Rather, the object of antichristic grasping would have to come cloaked in some sort of seductive or hypnotic faux verticality. It would indeed have to be charismatic and charming, bearing in mind the root meaning of former, which is "divine gift," and of the latter, which is "incantation" or "magic spell."

A spiritually normal person would be alarmed if he possessed this kind of influence over others, for it is always a great danger to mess with someone else's destiny. At the very least, it would be an occasion for the deepest humility, combined with concern over the precarious state of the souls under one's influence. Conversely, try to imagine the grandiosity of a man who thinks he is qualified to outlaw the plans and decisions of millions of human beings with the stroke of a pen.

Most people, if they were even vaguely aware of the implications, would not want this power, because they would know that they are neither worthy of it nor competent to deal with it, any more than they are competent to perform brain surgery. But the person with issues of cosmic narcissism will be too intoxicated by the power and adulation to care about the souls with whom he is toying. They are just props, part of his psychic furniture.

This power is a heavy responsibility and is not to be taken lightly. The spiritually normal person knows that any charis (gift) is only on loan to him (or courses through him locally from a nonlocal source), and that he is not free to use it as he will.

Rather, there must be spiritual safeguards in the deployment of such a gift. One is only free to use this power if it is aligned with its vertical source and with vertical principles, e.g., Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity (not relativism, idiot compassion, aesthetic barbarism, and diversity). There is something coming through the charismatic, not from him, and as soon as one realizes this, it is an occasion for, yes, gratitude, but also fear and trembling. It is analogous to the power to send men to die for their country, only on the vertical plane.

Our Unknown Friend asks the questions, "Can one produce artificially intellectual, moral or spiritual inspiration? Can the lungs produce the air which they need for respiration?" No, of course not: "the very process of breathing teaches the laws of obedience, poverty, and chastity, i.e. it is a lesson (by analogy) of grace. Conscious breathing in of the reality of grace is Christian Hatha-yoga. Christian Hatha-yoga is the vertical breathing of prayer and benediction -- or, in other words, one opens oneself to grace and receives it."

Unknown Friend goes on to say that the antichrist represents "the ideal of biological and historical evolution without grace." This is a key idea, for what is a progressive? A progressive is someone who believes fervently in progress while working fanatically to undermine its possibility, since progress can only be measured in light of permanent truths and transcendent ideals.

The antichrist "is the ultimate product of this evolution without grace and is not an entity created by God," since divine creation is always a vertical act or descent. Yes, all things ultimately "come from God," in the same sense that all light comes from the sun, but think of all the infernal uses to which man may put the light, darkling!

Now, in this closed and absurcular dialectic, Obama is ultimately a creator of those who created him. Unknown Friend writes that, just as there are spiritual beings who reveal themselves "from above," there are what he calls egregores, which are "engendered artificially [and collectively] from below."

Thus, "as powerful as they may be," they "have only an ephemeral existence," the duration of which "depends entirely on galvanizing nourishment on the part of their creators." As Obama's projected power begins to fade and the illusion is punctured, we'll see more and more people publicly asking, "what was I thinking?" in supporting this intellectual cypher. The answer is, "you weren't. You were fantasizing." Of course, others -- the true believers -- will dig in, for "Lord, to whom would we go?"

As such, the really frightening thing about these kinds of amorphous demagogues is that they are given life and nourished by the rabble they nourish and to whom they give faux life, in a spiritually barren cycle. The result is either spiritual asphyxiation or starvation, or probably both. And starved and suffocating men are capable of anything. Which I think explains all the outrageous lying.

Ultimately, the antichrist is the shadow of the totality of mankind, as Jesus was the immanent shadow, so to speak, of the transcendent Divine Principle. The antichrist represents all that man is, and can be, in the absence of divine grace. It is he who transported Jesus to the highest earthly mountain "and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" and said to him All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. (I think that is from Meditations on the Tarot)

We'll leave you with the old classic from Ezra Klein, just to remind you that we're not exaggerating:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.... The tens of thousands of new voters Obama brought to the polls tonight came because he wrapped them in that experience, because he let them touch politics as it could be, rather than merely as it is.