An Offer You Must Refuse

One of Schindler's main points is that freedom cannot be understood in isolation, but is always part of an organic whole that includes both the good and the real. This shouldn't be surprising, since the good and the real are essentially fungible: things are good insofar as they exist. How they exist is another matter, especially as it pertains to humans, since we have a hand in that determination.

Even Hitler was good vis-a-vis his sheer existence. What he did with his existence... you know the rest.

Or, maybe you don't. What went wrong? "He made bad choices," to put it mildly. But this presupposes good choices, which goes back to the idea that freedom and goodness are intrinsically related. Which modernity denies, absolutely.

Again, this cosmic heresy was ably articulated by those five illustrious idiots on the Supreme Court:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

As we have put it before, paradise is walled by complementarities, one of which is freedom <--> good. Thus, to sever this complementarity -- as SCOTUS has done above -- is not the way to paradise. Rather, it is the way to permanently bar entry.

You might say that, prior to our vertical plunge, man is spontaneously good, such that his freedom is not misused. With the fall, this unity is broken, such that outside paradise man must endeavor to consciously put them back together. A saint is someone who has succeeded at this -- i.e., attained heroic virtue through cooperation with infused grace. Then there's the restavus.

Both freedom and goodness are real. But that is not how modernity sees it. That train left the metaphysical station a few hundred years ago, such that today we are living in the End Times of that perspective. What I mean is that reality is one, and our job is to evolve in that direction and conform ourselves to it.

But this is not the approach of the left. Rather, the precise opposite, into diabolical fragmentation, disunity, and "diversity." (As Schindler notes, dia-ballo means "to divide" and "to set apart or at odds"). This will not and cannot end well, as anyone with three eyes open can see.

Speaking of which, I wonder when blacks will figure out that race-virtue signaling leftists have the same attitude toward them as do "feminist men" toward women? A real feminist doesn't divide men and women to begin with, but rather, apprehends their unity-in-complementarity.

Same with race. Once you have divided people by race, there is no return to unity. It's either one nation under God, or no nation -- and eternal hostility -- under multiculturalism and identity politics.

Returning to the deeper meaning of diabolical, Schindler describes six essential features. Although you may not have consciously considered these before, they will be familiar to you, at least if you've ever watched CNN or MSNBC, or read the NY Times:

(1) the diabolical presents a deceptive image that substitutes for reality; (2) it is characterized by an essential negativity; (3) it renders appearance more decisive than reality, and indeed, better than reality according to the measure of convenience and efficiency; (4) it has a supra-individual dimension that is nevertheless impersonal: that is, it tends to take the form of an essentially self-referential system; (5) it is "soulless" in the sense of lacking an animating principle of unity; and (6) it is essentially self-destructive.

Boom. To the sixth power.

But how on earth does one explain this to the liberal who either cannot or will not see it? I don't know. Each of these principles (or their opposite, rather) is implicitly embodied in Christian metaphysics, but that atheistic train has also left the intellectual station. Liberals "getting what they want" is the worst possible catastrophe one can imagine, whether individually or collectively.

Which brings to mind an aphorism or three:

--Hell is the place where man finds all his projects realized.

--Earth will never be a paradise, but it could perhaps be prevented from approaching closer and closer to being a cheap imitation of Hell.

--Hell is any place from which God is absent.

Or, as Schindler puts it, "the immediate possession of all things in appearance coincides with a complete oblivion with respect to their real situation..." Inside Plato's Leftist Cave, "desires are perfectly satisfied, but only in a transformed mode, namely, in appearance." You can have it all, if all you want is Nothing, AKA freedom from reality.

This is to be really, really woke -- i.e., to be completely asleep to the Light: "what is perhaps the most diabolical of all is that we become our own jailers, since the imprisonment is subjectively experienced as the most complete liberation, offered in place of the inevitable burden of the real. It is precisely its being a bargain that reveals its provenance from the devil."

"Progressives." Those who live in the twilight of history imagine that the day is being born when night is approaching.

So, put on your armor of Light, and don't let the disilluminati get to you.