Outward Revelation and Inward Revolution

Another long one on Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Hey, it's a big subject -- the biggest -- and someone's gotta cover it.

Stop Contaminating Our Outside with Your Inside!

One thing that comes through in Inventing the Individual is the gradual historical differentiation of various spheres, powers, and concepts that had previously been merged. Most of these are things we take for granted, because they seem so fundamental to our experience, for example, the notion of a private self.

In a way, it is analogous to biological development, which is teleologically drawn toward differentiation and specialization. Think of how we all transition from zygote to blastocyst to fetus, as cells slowly differentiate into specific organ systems. Well, it is the same way with human development, both individually and collectively.

Most of the sciences were once fused with what we now know of as mythological approaches; for example, astronomy emerged from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, and meteorology from primitive superstitions about manmade climate change.

Let me see if I can compile a list of the differentiations that were hastened if not brought about by the gradual assimilation of Christianity: private from public self; inner from outer; individual from family; person from state; woman from man; child from father; law from custom; voluntary from compulsory; science from magic; and more.

One of the most foundational of these is the gradual differentiation of inside from outside, which is most definitely an ongoing affair. For example, mental illness almost always involves some conflation of inner and outer. Take a person with agoraphobia, i.e., fear of leaving the house. The fear is real, but what is she actually afraid of? Of the outside, or of her own inside -- her own mental content -- projected outward? Obviously the latter.

Sometimes entire political movements can be rooted in this atavism, for example, oh, THE WHOLE FREAKING DEMOCRATIC PARTY! The list is endless. For example, feminists tell us that there is a one in five chance of being raped in college, whereas FBI statistics say that it is actually about a .06 chance. So feminist paranoiacs multiply the threat by a factor of $.\; But\; whatever\; the\; factor,\; it\; is\; not\; a\; factor\; of\; external\; reality,\; but\; of\; internal\; reality\; projected\; into\; fearsome\; men.\; Which\; I\; find\; fascinating.$

Or, the left's complaints about the so-called 1%. This generous 1% pays 40% of the income tax. The 3% pays over half, and the 10% pays 71% to subsidize your lifestyle of being a professional complainer, since your half only accounts for 3% of federal revenues.

Likewise, are blacks really unfairly targeted by police? The short answer is of course no. Not only that, but both blacks and whites are in reality unfairly targeted by black criminals. The latter is the objective, verifiable truth, whereas the liberal belief is again a projection of the interior into the exterior. Which we wouldn't mind if they didn't proceed to act on the belief, as did the recent police assassin.

Do women really earn 77 cents on the manly dollar? No, of course not. That's just economics being infected by mind parasites. Do 97% of scientists believe in AGW? No, again, that's just some kind of projection of superego authority into omniscient science.

A critical point is that science only became possible with this withdrawal of psychic projections from the external world (I have posted on this subject a number of times, plus it's covered in the bʘʘk). Siedentop only touches on this, but it's nice to have a little scholarly back-up for the common-sense revelations given to me by Petey.

Abelard reminds us that Christ said I am truth, not I am custom, or opinion, or political correctness. Which is why I believe any truth is a function of the All-True, and why I have no concern that any new truth could possibly undermine the One Truth. Rather, it's all Good. Literally, because the Good and True converge in the Beautiful Three.

One of the problems of ancient thought is that it was often too reliant uoon deduction from a priori principles. Conversely, it distrusted the empirical world as an ever-changing illusion, so it was very weak on induction. Thus, the development of science was hindered by Aristotelean assumptions such as the belief that the celestial sphere must operate on different laws than the terrestrial, or that things "seek" their home instead of being pulled there by gravity.

"The Christian preoccupation with 'innerness' and human agency -- an intensified awareness of the difference between 'inner' and 'outer' experience, between the will and the senses -- contributed to a veritable outburst of logical studies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries" (Siedentop).

Note that this is prior to the scientific revolution that it rendered possible, for "It reflected a growing distrust of the coercive potential" of extra-mental "general terms or concepts." In other words, it was necessary to stop projecting these concepts into the world, and actually examine the world without preconceptions.

One of the preconceptions that had to be eliminated was teleology. But then science become re-conflated with a new conceptual abstraction that literally banished teleology, instead of simply excluding it for the sake of scientific method. As we will see, there are many Christian ideas that became detached from Christianity, only to return in a more primitive way.

One of the biggies is liberty. The very same liberty that was only made possible and intelligible via Christianity has been hijacked by the left and rendered absurd and destructive. With Christianity, individual and collective are irreducible complementarities, I would say due to the trinitarian structure of reality. But the left posits a radically detached individualistic interiority and fuses it with the exterior collective of the coercive state, in a wholly unholy alliance.

And the Naughty Word Becomes Flesh: Terror, Microaggressions, & Hallucinations

Yesterday we were discussing the historically gradual separation of interior from exterior, or subject from object, or psyche from environment. Of course, this first required the discovery of the interior, which is another way of saying the invention of the individual.

Importantly, this is both discovery and invention; like any new land, we cannot discover it without simultaneously changing it, at least if we are going to actually live there. And once there, it is hard to revert to the state of pre-discovery and put the truthpaste back in the tube. In other words, it is very difficult for us to know what it was like to be a pre-individual hive-person. Unless you've been to graduate school, in which case you might have a feel for it.

And yet, we do see reversion to pre-individual ways of being, for example, in the liberal mob. A liberal by definition rejects or falls short of his concrete individuality and instead identifies with an abstract group of some type, usually a persecuted one. But the persecution, at least in America, is usually a projection of the interior into the exterior.

If this were not the case, then, say, Thomas Sowell (and other black thinkers such as Jason Riley) would be as freaked out about our omnipresent racism as Obama, Sharpton, Holder, and the rest of the left wing rabble. But he's not at all freaked out about it. Rather, like any sane individual -- or, let's just say individual -- he is concerned about the bill coming due on the left's flagrantly irresponsible use of the race card to purchase power.

Let's put it this way: if you believe, as does Obama's spiritual mentor, that America should be damned, then these murdered police officers are just more chickens come home to roost. It's the price of progress.

As Sowell writes, "No politician in the country has done more [than deBlasio] to play the race card against the police and spread the notion that cops are the big problem in minority communities." This is what happens -- and perhaps should happen -- if the black community is really a "'colonial' society being 'occupied' by white policemen who target young blacks." If you were in that situation, wouldn't you lash out violently?

So, as I said yesterday, this separation of inside from outside is very much an ongoing struggle, for some populations much more so than others.

Example?

Consider the Eleven Most Politically Correct Moments on College Campuses in 2014. Let's look at the first: "microaggressions." What is a microaggression? As they candidly acknowledge, it has no objective definition, since there is no such thing as truth anyway ("there are no objective definitions to words and phrases").

Therefore, a microaggression is anything that offends a liberal for any reason at any time. Follow this insane logic to its ultimate end, and feelings become the only arbiter of reality. From here it is but a step to totalitarianism, which differs from mere tyranny, in that the latter doesn't care what you think, only what you do. But the leftist totalitarian cannot tolerate deviant thoughts, and tries to exert control over interiors.

So, if you find yourself being accused of microaggression, you really need to ramp it up and be more aggressive. And if you're not accused of microaggression, you need to grow a pair and start offending these victim-bullies.

Look at #2: feminists are somehow upset that someone invented a nail polish that changes colors when it comes into contact with the so-called date-rape drug. That's a good thing, isn't it? NO! "I don’t want to fucking test my drink when I’m at the bar... That’s not the world I want to live in.” The latter part is the operative principle of the left: That’s not the world I want to live in! And You'd better conform yourself to mine, or else!

Yes, but... this is the only world there is.

Not true. As we have discussed in the past, just as, in terms of economic development, there is the first world, second world, third world, etc., there are various psychic worlds inhabited by different populations. Al Sharpton's world is not our world, because, among other reasons, his is a demon-haunted world peopled by projections of his own sociopathy. Does it surprise you that a sociopath should see sociopathy everywhere, or that envious people see greed everywhere, or that racists see race everywhere? Then you are not Raccoon material.

#3: promoting anti-rape culture is just another form of rape-culture, since men shouldn't have to be told to respect women. Feminism is sort of like the Ex-Wife From Hell, only in collective form, isn't it?

First of all, these women don't even want to be respected as women, because they have rejected their own femininity (which is no doubt a big reason why the men around them behave the way the do; if you think men are hateful, don't be surprised if your world is peopled by hateful men, as per the above).

Such ovary tower feminists are desperately in need of a strong and virtuous man to put them (meaning the sick part that is screaming for help) in their place. Short of that, there is no cure for their female psychosis. Healthy females know exactly what I'm talking about, and won't perceive any aggression whatsoever in this observation (except perhaps in the way that spiritual combat must be "aggressive," or at least firm, in the face of hysteria).

It also occurs to me that "angry feminist" is a pleonasm, like a Palestinian "day of rage." What is the difference between a day of rage and any other day?

Speaking of our Muslim friends, my attention was also arrested by this interview with a member of the Islamic State. They too project their interior into the exterior, which is the sole source of their motivation. In other words, if they were to withdraw their psychic projections, they would have absolutely nothing to do but sit in the sand all day and contemplate the pathetic state of the Islamic world. But by projecting this into the west and attacking it, it converts weakness into strength, and every day can be a bracing new day of rage.

The projection obviously feels quite real, scarcely different from a hallucination: "there were 50 new fighters who came every day.... And I just could not believe the glow in their eyes. They felt like they were coming to a promised land, like they were fighting for the right thing."

Thus, there are real physiological changes that take place with the new reality, surges of adrenaline, testosterone, dopamine, serotonin, and other vivifying and self-rewarding hormones and neurotransmitters. The fantasy becomes even more real in this way, as the insane word takes on flesh.

As with the left, regress equals progress, since they live in an inverted world: "Slavery absolutely signals progress.... I would say that slavery is a great help to us and we will continue to have slavery and beheadings, it is part of our religion."

Multiculturalism. Isn't it beautiful?

Memo to feminists: this is what rape culture actually looks like:

"[C]apturing women is permissible if they are nonbelievers." If the slave is "a virgin, he [the owner] can have intercourse with her immediately after the ownership is fulfilled." However, "If she was not a virgin, her uterus must be purified." (Don't ask.)

What about underage girls? Please. These are not barbarians. There are strict and even convenient rules of engagement: "It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn't reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse.... However, if she is not fit for intercourse, he [the owner] can only enjoy her without intercourse."

Proof of God Discovered in the Last Place Man Searched

I've read in a number of places that Augustine's Confessions is the first true autobiography, the first example of an unstinting exploration of the human interior -- not in a generic, mythic, or self-serving sense, but in an intimate, critical, and confessional sense.

Note also that the dialogue is between Augustine and God; it takes place in the vertical space illuminated by the divine presence. It is not about exterior reality except insofar as it reveals the interior.

Siedentop quotes the historian Peter Brown, who observes that "The Confessions are a manifesto of the inner world: 'Men go to gape at mountain peaks, at the boundless tides of the sea, the broad sweep of rivers, the encircling ocean and the motions of stars: and yet they leave themselves unnoticed; they do not marvel at themselves.'"

Yeah, well, what about Obama? Does he ever stop marveling at himself? That is the problem: he has the marveling down, but he is both marveler and marvelee. In other words, he excludes the Creator from the loop, which reduces to simple narcissism.

Brown continues: "A man cannot hope to find God unless he first finds himself: for this God is 'deeper than my inmost being,' [so] experience of Him becomes 'better' the more 'inward.' Above all, it is man's tragedy that he should be driven to flee 'outwards,' to lose touch with himself, to 'wander far' from his 'own heart': 'You were right before me: but I had moved away from myself. I could not find myself: how much less, then could I find You'" (he's obviously quoting Augustine in there).

Ironically, Obama made his name by [allegedly] writing his own Confessions. But although both go by the name "autobiography," it would be difficult to find two more antithetical texts. After all, Mein Kampf is an autobiography. Taking that as an extreme case, does it really tell us about Hitler, or about his pathological projections into the world?

In other words, any actual insight into Hitler himself is accidental. Being that he lacked all insight, the only way to understand him is via his external actions. What he says about himself is of no consequence, since he would be the last to understand his own real motives, which were as concrete and unexamined as rock.

Here is the orthoparadoxical deal: is it possible for man to discover and know God? Yes and no. Even prior to this, is it possible for man to discover and know anything? Yes, so long as he has the sensory equipment for the job, and his mind is able to conform to the object or reality in question.

In other words, we must make ourselves adequate to the object of knowledge. So in one sense "the world" is prior, and we must adapt to it. But in another sense, world and mind co-arise; as our knowledge increases, it is as if the mind extends more deeply into reality, as, say, quantum physics goes further than classical physics.

I would say that it is no different with regard to God. Analogously, the quantum world was always "there" even before man ever discovered it. Likewise, God was always there prior to the appearance of man, of life, or even of existence itself. But in order to know this God, there must be a subject capable of knowing him. Therefore, one could say that God and man "co-arise" and "co-evolve," so to speak -- even though, like the world, God is obviously prior to our discovery and elaboration of him.

When did man discover God? In one sense this is impossible to say, since it occurred long prior to any form of written documentation. But in another sense it can only have occurred in one way, since man and God not only co-arise, but are two sides of the same coin. To say that man is the image and likeness of God is to posit this axiom. As man learns more about himself, he learns more of God; and as he learns more about God, he learns more about himself, in an ever-deepening spiral of interiority.

Siedentop: "The Confessions provide us with a story, not primarily about the development of Augustine's mind, but rather about the development of his 'heart' or 'feelings.' The search for God proves to be a search for the only 'delight' that is not precarious or illusory."

This search involves "a mysterious merger of intellect and feeling," and is very much counter to the then-prevailing idea that reason alone is sufficient to understand the world. Reason is ultimately a circular exercise, since it cannot furnish its own premises, nor does it have the power to motivate man.

Rather, motivation -- the will -- must involve the heart. Thus, "Opening oneself to the action of grace" is "the only way out of such a vicious circle." This opening is not only intersubjective, but the very foundation and possibility of intersubjectivity itself. It is an icon of the primordial Relationship that is God.

"Reconstructing the self -- by opening the self to the work of grace -- led Augustine to focus on the human will and on the conditions of its exercise." There is "almost incredible self-consciousness in his writing," which is precisely why so many have attributed "the birth of the individual to Augustine."

For just as history, in the absence of God, can be nothing more than the meaningless sound and fury of tenured tautologues, the absurcular babble of the godless rabble is just the mental masturbation of so many infertile eggheads -- heads which must be fertilized from above in order to bear good fruit...

Boldly Growing Where No Man Has Grown Before

Yesterday we were discussing Augustine's Confessions, which are a "manifesto of the inner world," the latter being the real final frontier. His was the first true autobiography, boldly going where no man had gone before and chronicling the interior voyages of the soul-ship Innerprize. In so doing, Augustine not only explored strange new worlds, but spoke of a new life (in God) and a new civilization (the City of God).

This, I think, is a key point: that the Confessions are a dialogue with God. Thus, the invention of the individual is not, and could not be, "an exercise leading to isolation."

Rather, to the extent that it does lead to isolation, then something has gone awry: your psycho-pneumatic system is not open, either vertically or horizontally (or both). Isolation, among other things, is a failure of love, and if God is love, then there you go.

To put it another way, in order to invent the individual, it is first necessary to invent the group. In terms of the overall arc of salvation, the Jews constituted the group into which God could insert himself as quintessential individual. Jesus would have made no sense in any other context (and he sometimes barely made sense in this one, even to his closest disciples).

Imagine if God were a mere "one," an absolute monad, unrelated to anything but himself. If this God were to incarnate, it would be in the form of power, or a kind of isolated exaltation. No one could compare to him, in contrast to Jesus, to whom all may compare themselves (e.g., "the imitation of Christ"), and indeed is the eternal standard of comparison.

Now, in many ways, to say individual is to say will. In other words, our individuality manifests in the form of consciousness of choice, and by extension, of necessity. To be aware of necessity is to implicitly know freedom, and vice versa. According to Siedentop, what we value as freedom is the end result of hundreds of years of meditation on, and articulation of, (Judeo-) Christian moral intuitions.

For example, to be given the Ten Commandments implies the freedom to obey them or not. On the one hand they represent constraints on freedom, but this is for the purpose of conforming ourselves to a higher will in a higher world.

Analogously, you don't place a fish on dry land and say to him: "there you go, free at last from the water!" The Law is like the water that simultaneously constrains and frees us.

For Augustine, it's all about "transformation of the will." Think, for example, of what happens when the will infects the truth (because it is detached from it). What happens is the left, or knowledge piggybacking on desire, belief on make-belief, Is on Ought. The leftist ultimately sees what he wishes to see, which is like a bad parody of the Higher Eccentricity of the Raccoon. Leftists are weird, but not in the Good way.

Not to imply any manichee business, but it seems to me that, as the intellect may conform itself to truth or falsehood, the will may move toward the light or the dark. As one apostle put it, the light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not comprehend it.

This is the same Light "which gives light to every man who comes into the world." Every one. Not just kings, or aristocrats, or priests, or men, but every person qua person. This itself implies individuality and equality. We may all seek redemption because we have all equally fallen short as a result of our misguided will.

You could say that light and dark are like two attractors at antipodes to one another. As Augustine is pulled into the former, "You fill me with a feeling quite unlike my normal state, an inward sense of delight." But when in the orbit of the latter, the "heavy burden of distress drags me back: I am sucked back to my habits, and find myself held fast."

In order to pull out of the downworld attractor, the will is necessary but not sufficient. Rather, our will must be aligned with a greater will. This is very much in contrast to the Greek idea that the exercise of mere reason is sufficient to do the job.

Socrates-Plato said something to the effect that a good man, guided by reason, could do no wrong. This is definitely not what Paul or Augustine taught, because man can rationalize just about any mess produced by his wayward will. Or maybe you've never heard Obama speak.

The Neoplatonists of the time imagined they could deploy the will to escape or ascend from this "inferior material world."

But for Augustine, "Christians neither could nor should turn their backs on the world." True, we are aliens in this strange land, but resident aliens; Augustine teaches us to be "otherworldly in the world," unlike, say, Muslims, who hope to be worldly in the higher world, or leftists, who are worldly in the lower world.

That's Innerattainment!

I believe I mentioned about a week ago that some of the most revolutionary blessings of Christianity are no longer seen or appreciated -- by the tenured rabble anyway -- because they have become second nature to us.

But it's not a case of second nature, rather, trans-nature -- or "first supernature," or something. But since the radical enlightenment, thinkers of the left have been telling each other that these blessings represent a dramatic moving away from Christianity, rather than a prolongation of its original revolution (by far the most consequential revolution in human history).

Let us count some of these blessings. "By taking individual responsibility so seriously, the ideas of moral equality and limited government became closely associated. Outward conformity of behavior was all that had been expected in the ancient family and polis" (Siedentop).

Even prior to this, "Paul's vision on the road to Damascus amounted to the discovery of human freedom -- of moral agency potentially available to each and everyone, that is, to individuals. This 'universal' freedom, with its moral implications, was utterly different from the freedom enjoyed by the privileged class of citizens in the polis" (ibid.).

For this birth of a new freedom liberates us from inherited social hierarchies and from fate more generally, making us brotherly heirs of the one father. Fate is gradually displaced by hope and destiny -- in other words, the future becomes "open," and we have a hand in shaping it and ourselves.

Afterwards, the Christian monastic movement provided a kind of living laboratory, featuring "a vision of social order founded on conscience, on hard-won individual intentions rather than publicly enforced status differences" (ibid.).

Clearly, in order to be capable of self-rule, man had to first become capable of ruling himself, something the left always forgets. For what is the left but a two-tiered system of acquiring political power, with a 1% or 2% of elites, crooks, and cronies at the top, and beneath them an ungovernable constituency of impulsive, irrational, frustration-intolerant, pleasure driven half-animals with short time-horizons and a long list of resentments. The liberal politician sells them dependency in exchange for votes, which puts in place an incentive structure that is bound to produce more of these wretched slaves.

But in order for a genuine liberal order to emerge, there must first be "obedience to rules that an individual's conscience" imposes "on itself." The left puts the cart before the horse, and imposes no prior demand of self-rule. This is why the left crowns Al Sharpton a "black leader" instead of a sociopathic hustler.

For most of history, man has been forced to obey external authority only. What does it mean to obey an "interior" authority, and what is the nature of this authority? Who or what authorizes it? In the pre-Christian world -- the world in which Christ was inserted -- "There was no notion of the rights of individuals against the claims of the city and its gods. There was no formal liberty of thought or action.... Citizens belonged to the city, body and soul" (ibid.).

Here again, this is where the enlightenment thinkers got it all wrong, because they simply made up a connection between modernity and antiquity, and invented the term "dark ages" to signify a few centuries-long discontinuity in their fractured fairy tale.

But "the liberty of the ancient citizen" was nothing like our idea of freedom. As Siedentop says, it was not a God-given space of personal freedom, but the duty of a few privileged citizens to participate in the political process.

Another blessing of Christianity is its universality. For example, if you and I have the same intrinsic rights as any caesar or prince or president, this unleashes "a process of abstraction which could and did threaten inherited inequalities" (ibid.). The idea that "all men are created equal" is both abstract and universal.

Where the left errs is in regarding these as concrete and particular, with the result that they end up with the insistence upon special (not universal) rights in order to bring about equal outcomes. In other words, for them equality is not antecedent but consequent; for similar reasons it is material rather than spiritual, which constitutes a cosmic heresy of the first rank, for a man with no spirit has no proper use for freedom. (Giving freedom to a such a being is like giving hands to dogs. Imagine the mischief!)

The inner attainment of abstraction and universality alluded to above leads directly to the "rule of law," as "the logos which had been embodied in the city and its laws began to make way for a logos embodied in a universal rational order, in what would be called 'natural law'" (ibid.).

It seems to me that man had to first clear the historical space of all those concrete projected gods -- e.g., Zeus, Neptune, Aphrodite, and all the rest -- in order for the abstract logos to concretely incarnate. In order to get God into the world, you first have to get all these manmade gods out of the world, so they won't be confused. (And this is an argument Chesterton makes in The Everlasting Man.)

Here again the centrality of the Jews and of the commandment against idolatry. Why is idolatry an intrinsic cosmic heresy? Because it begins with concretion instead of ending there. The Jewish God could not be so easily "pinned down." For I AM, or I-will-be-who-I-will-be, are prior to the world, and only later in the world.

Yes, to be continued...