Obama the Miracle Worker

Continuing with yesterday's theme, we were discussing lies that aren't so much superimposed on reality, but rather, are analogous to the transformation function between the implicate and explicate orders.

First of all, what is a transformation function? Easy:

"In mathematics, particularly in semigroup theory, a transformation is any function f mapping a set X to itself, i.e. f:X→X. In other areas of mathematics, a transformation may simply be any function, regardless of domain and codomain."

Okay, but how about in plain Coonglish? I don't know if I'm using the correct term for what I'm describing, but it is like a constant or invariant that translates one domain into another, in this case, implicate to explicate.

Of note, I first encountered the concept in an obscure book on psychoanalysis called Transformations, in which the author uses it to illuminate what must happen in the movement from unconscious to conscious (or from O to [k]). I probably haven't looked at it in over 25 years. Let's see if it can offer us any guidance this morning.

But before we do, let's highlight something Mouravieff says about the types of lies. To plagiaphrase, there is lying to others; lying to oneself; useful lies; and useless lies.

To this list he adds two more, hypocrisy, which is "the pretense of virtue" for purposes of deception; and the... I want to say father of lies, but that's already taken. He calls it the integral lie, which characterizes the person "who, from a habit of lying and cheating on every occasion, ends by believing his own lies and thus loses all sense of truth."

This would be Obama-level lying. It is beyond Clinton-level, since a Clinton usually doesn't believe its own bullshit. They are like bullshitters who lie to preserve the bullshit, while Obama is a liar who bullshits to preserve the integral Lie.

A garden-variety lie isn't necessarily rooted in the personality. Rather, it may simply be an "occasional lie," one that is in the moment and for the moment.

The integral lie runs much deeper, and is more like an epistemological cancer that has taken over the host. Mouravieff claims -- and surely he is correct -- that no spiritual progress can take place for the integral liar. So much for being a progressive, when that is the one movement that is a priori barred the integral Liar.

Yes, liberals lie by definition, but lately I've been noticing the really systematic lying that is more like the transformation functions noted above -- for example, the canard that "97%" (or whatever it is) of scientists believe in catastrophic manmade global warming.

I say, if something is true, why do you need to lie about it? It makes me, you know, not trust anything else you say. This week we've heard similar systematic lies about gun violence and about the Religion of Peace. Again, if Islam is so peaceful, why do you need to lie about it? I actually purchased a Koran on 9-12-2001 to find out for myself, so I'm always shocked when I hear the lies about what's in it. Don't try to tell me the Islamists don't know their Koran.

The Secret tends to protect itself from the integral liar, who, according to Mouravieff, will rarely have much interest in spiritual development anyway. Or, to the extent that he does, it will be for Oprah- or Chopra-esque reasons of narcissistic development, the one conflated with the other.

Remember in 2008, all the talk about how Obama was some kind of Ascended Evolutionary Being of Light? Are they still saying that? And if not, have they engaged in a little introspection to figure out how they could have been so deluded? Doubtful. A lie of that magnitude must itself tend toward the integral.

Yesterday O'Reilly was debating Charles Krauthammer over whether Obama was simply incompetent or ideological. Krauthammer made the host look like an ass -- not a high bar -- because O'Reilly simply has no grasp of the integral ideological Lie. This Lie is so formidable that you can be quite sure that where you and I see abject failure, Obama sees stunning success -- just as communist revolutionaries did. A Lie of that magnitude cannot be contradicted, only confirmed. It is that with which he sees -- like an intense darkness with which he "illuminates" events.

Getting back to transformation functions, I would say that we are all prone to distortions of various degrees between the implicate and explicate orders, or between "heaven and earth," if you like. Presumably, in the case of Jesus, he would be subject to a completely smooth and harmonious translation between the two -- which is what it means to "do the will of the father," or to be at one with him. You could say that where we have vague vertical recollections, for Jesus they are vividly present:

"For our word is not yet a word of Truth. If they had the power of the word of Jesus," then our lies would take on a "miraculous power, [and] would actually have improved the facts.... This sort of lie could be defined as an attempt to perform a miracle with insufficient means" (Mouravieff).

Now, that is some deep stuff, because it seems to me that this is a crock-bottom description of the integral Lie of the left: the attempt to perform a miracle with insufficient means. Works every time, in that it never fails to fail, Obama being just the most recent case.

Now, despite the failure of the Lie, the Lie will never go away. It will always be with us. What is that about?

I think this goes to its primordial nature that makes it much more similar to (perverse) religiosity than to any merely secular thought. Only a kind of insane religious fervor could prevent a person from seeing Obama as he is and his policies as they are. It is why these surrealists see us as the party of satan.

I don't have time to get into Transformations, but it is as if the liberal begins in the O of primordial (implicate) religious experience, but transforms this into (an explicate) secular ideology. In the transformation, something is altered but something is unaltered. In between is the invariant transformation operation of the ideological Lie -- which is, in my experience, grounded either in hatred or in lovelessness (feeling unloved or that one's love is toxic).