Fake Nous

The world of fake news encompasses an area far more vast and problematic than just the idiots of the MSM. For really, it goes to the essential dilemma facing man, i.e., the discernment between reality and appearances. The sufficient reason of the intellect (nous) is to know truth. If not, then it -- and man -- is a superfluous absurdity.

The Bible rightly traces the issue back to the very (vertical) beginning: the serpent delivers fake news to Eve, who in turn passes it on to Adam. God then asks Adam "what's new?," and Adam proceeds to lie to God. What else is new?

Now, God is the very source and possibility of truth. Lying to him is like... oh, exiling oneself from paradise. Lies not only fail to attract heaven, but actively repel it. The heavenly presence flees before journalism and tenure. Every bit of fakery retraces the fall.

But the problem goes much deeper than mere bad information, because we live in an age in which "truth" has been subjectivized and is therefore no longer true, precisely. In order to understand this, we need to go back about, oh, 500 years, when it was understood that what we call truth involves adequation of the subject to an object. There is really no other alternative, at least if you want to preserve the category of truth (instead of mere "truth").

For if truth isn't adequation to an objective reality, then it really is just opinion -- which immediately devolves to a situation in which the opinion with the most muscle wins, AKA power prevails over truth.

The left, of course, likes to pretend it "speaks truth to power," but in reality it always speaks opinion backed by power. What is the left but a medley of policies so attractive that we are compelled to assent to them under the threat of state violence?

Truth isn't like that. Rather, truth attracts before it compels. To the extent that it compels, it is like math: if we say two plus two must equal four, that's not a coercion, much less a threat, but a liberating realization.

Likewise, on another plane, if we say there are two and only two genders, that's not slavery but liberation. The whole of science -- or technology, rather -- is based on the idea that bowing to nature on one level leads to mastery of nature on another. You can prefer magic to science, but it will get you nowhere.

The bottom line is that, as Schuon says, "truth comes in a sense from the outside, presenting itself to the subject who may or may not accept it." We are "free" to reject truth, at least in the short term. But truth will always have its vengeance.

Indeed, what is "the fall" but truth avenged? Sure, the contingent can usurp the role of the Absolute, the finite the infinite, man God. For awhile. The cosmos is either a spiraling message from God to himself -- from Alpha to Omega -- or it is a closed and meaningless tautology that man fashions from his own delusions.

Ideology -- which is a substitute for truth -- always devolves to ideolatry. This is because man is always homo religiosus, which is why he instinctively reveres truth, even when it is a lie. Yes, many leftists (especially at the top) are cynical manipulators, but the really dangerous ones are those who are sincerely passionate in defense of their delusion, i.e., in their ideolatry.

Again, the "transition from objectivism to subjectivism reflects and renews in its own way the fall of Adam and the loss of Paradise" (Schuon). Where did paradise go? It was swallowed by the Lie. For the Light still shines in the darkness -- the Truth in the false, the reality in the appearances -- but men neither see nor comprehend it.

Therefore, the celestial world, the Kingdom of Heaven, "is shut off from above without our noticing the fact," but this is compensated for by the (or a) world -- as in the old gag about losing one's soul but gaining the world. Or, you could say, gaining the horizontal at the expense of the vertical, but it is only the latter that gives meaning to the former. In the absence of verticality, man and world are nothing, just a brief swarm of insects.

Yes, the world becomes like a giant roach motel: attractive and enticing, but not the least bit liberating. You check in at birth, but in so doing, you check into a prison. With postmodernity, we reach a stage in which "human measures are replaced by infra-human measures until the very idea of truth is abolished" (ibid.).

Mission accompliced, in that Satan could never achieve such a grand finale without his favorite accomplice -- i.e., without man's tireless cooperation.

But not to worry. The truth does not share the defeat of its defenders (Dávila). And I AM -- the ultimate truth, or Truth of truth -- has overcome the world.