Building the Cosmic Cake or Something

Back to the structure of the conditions of existence -- which is to say, the rules of the game. What game? The Game of the Cosmos, or Cosmic Game. So play the game existence to the end... of the beginning (Lennon).

These structural conditions are universal. Why is that? Because this is a universe. You might even say they are the universe, because everything else changes, while these remain the same. For that matter, they also account for, or undergird, the change.

"Existence is perceived by a subject, and what it perceives is contents in containers, namely matter-energy, forms, and numbers, all situated in space and time" (Schuon). Can't get more concise than that: mattergy, spacetime, form & number, all perceived by a subject.

Everything we perceive is a form of matter-energy; the form is, so to speak, the nonlocal container, or that which makes a thing what it is. But some forms require time in order to disclose and reveal themselves. Or in other words, they are "nothing" in an instant.

Come to think of it, nothing is anything in an instant, since a degree of time is present in all manifestation. As Schuon explains it, the spatial container "is static and conserving," while the temporal container "is dynamic and transforming." Nothing is actually completely static, nor can anything consist of pure change.

Which, by the way, goes to one of the metaphysical criticisms of Darwinism: if everything is evolving, then we couldn't know it, knowledge -- or truth -- being of the changeless, precisely. Truth cannot surpass, or "evolve" beyond, itself, which is one reason why there can be no species that will evolve beyond man. Man can already know the absolute, so evolution beyond this is strictly inconceivable -- which is not to say we can't deepen our understanding of it, or see it from a higher perspective.

Time out for Aphorisms, once again arranged (by me) hierarchically:

Because opinions change, the relativist believes that truths change.

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth.

Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper.

The scientific proposition presents an abrupt alternative: understanding it or not understanding it. The philosophical proposition, however, is susceptible to growing insight. Finally, the religious proposition is a vertical ascent that allows one to see the same landscape from different altitudes.

Regarding that last one, in recent days I've been thinking a lot about the idea of depth. What exactly is it, and is it real? We use the term all the time to navigate the subjective world, and no intellectual wishes to be thought shallow. And yet, there they are: millions of them!

Clearly, to say "depth" is to say "verticality." So, straight away, a person who denies verticality is not only as shallow as can be (e.g. Steven Pinker), but ridiculously self-refuting, because verticality can only be denied from a vertical perspective. Only someone who transcends materiality can deny transcendence.

But for us, subjectivity -- the transcendent center(s) -- is built into the cosmic cake; it is not the residue or by-product or effluvia of something more fundamental, but fundamentality itself. Recall what Schuon says in paragraph three about the structure of existence: at one end subjects, at the other end contents-in-containers. In between is the Cosmos.

Interestingly, "deep" doesn't necessarily correlate with "true." For example, I well remember when I was an ordinary, unreflective, ambient liberal back in my 20s. Then I began to be exposed to thinkers such as Chomsky, Zinn, and all the rest, and said to myself, "Wow, this is deep!" It's deep in the sense that it either drills down to the foundations of leftism, or draws out its ultimate implications. Yes, both are absurd, if not crazy, but I didn't know that. I was too shallow!

Indeed, Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep (NGD). Which reminds me of the recent insufferable Children's Crusade: To praise youth is to forget our former idiocy.

Come to think to it, at the other end of the spectrum, I'm sure this explains the appeal of Jordan Peterson: for me he doesn't go deep enough -- he's on the way there -- but for many of his fans it's as if he is their introduction to vertical psycho-pneumatic depth.

I'm not going to have time to say everything I want to say about this depth business. But here are some aphorisms that flutter around different aspects the subject:

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

The lesser truths tend to eclipse the highest truths.

And this one especially: Profundity is not in what is said, but in the level from which it is said. How do we assess this level? How do we know right away that this person is deep, and this one shallow? This applies not only to thought, but to music, painting, religion, politics, everything. And for some reason, most people get off the depth train before arriving at the final stop.

Definitely to be continued...