The Beginning of the Beginning

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End. --Dávila

It's been one thing after another during the last week, so not only have I had no time to post, I don't even remember what we were talking about. Among other nuisances, it's that time of year when I have to complete all of my continuing education units.

Looks like we're on the subject of Where Philosophy Begins, which is not a small matter. Indeed, where one begins might well determine where one ends, so be careful! And I do mean this quite literally. For example, in the words of the Aphorist,

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

Note that there is not, nor can there ever be, any scientific explanation for why one chooses a scientific explanation. Or in other words, scientism can never be reduced to science. Rather, it is just another epistemologically dead-on-arrival ideology, no different than any other, from Marxism to feminism to radical environmentalism.

While looking for that aphorism, I found a number of others that bear on our subject, for example, What is capable of being measured is minor.

Of course, he means this in the philosophical, or ultimate, sense, but the main point to remember is that quality can never be reduced to quantity. You can try, but supposing you have understood the meaning of the quantity in question, you can only do so from the perspective of Qualityland, so you're right back where you started. In the Beginning.

Or in other words: Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but being unable to explain the consciousness that creates it, will not have explained anything. Right? How can an intelligent person not know that?

Partly because we don't look at intelligence the right way. For example, it is a truism (or so we are told by the wise tenured) that two intelligent men -- say, Hayek and Obama -- can believe opposite things. Well, if that's the case, then what good is intelligence?

More problematically, how do we arbitrate between the two, if we cannot do so with intelligence? Do we need a being who is more intelligent than Hayek or Obama to resolve the dispute?

Nah brah. That makes no sense at all. Not only can we know some things with certitude, but we are entitled to know them. Just as there are "civil rights," there are cosmic rights without which man is not man.

Here again, I mean this quite literally: to deny these rights is to remove man from the cosmos, when the whole point of man's existence is to know the cosmos. We are the truth-bearing being, the one who knows oneness, or the Principle behind the manifestation, the Truth behind the appearances.

Now, maybe you don't believe man is the truth-bearing being. One question: is that true? You do the rest.

Have you ever wondered why an intelligent person can believe such stupidities? Or are you like me, and never stop wondering? One reason, I think, is conveyed in the following aphorism: The great imbecilic explanations of human behavior adequately explain the one who adopts them.

Now, most "philosophies" are really autobiographies in disguise. They don't really explain the world, but they do explain the person for whom the explanation is adequate. I first realized this back when I was an intern at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. I was about to say that it no longer exists, but it is now the home of a California State University campus, so it is the same place with a different name.

Okay, my mind is being blown at the moment, because I'm thinking about the truth of that little joke. Seriously, things made more sense in that lunatic asylum than they do today -- 30 years later -- on a typical liberal university campus. At least the hospital treated the lunatics. Now the lunatics run the asylum, with the purpose of cranking out more lunatics every year.

And if you really want to freak yourself out, please read Heather MacDonald's new book, The Diversity Delusion -- and she doesn't use the word "delusion" loosely. Delusional ideation is one of the principle symptoms of psychosis, and a mental hospital is where you find psychotic people.

Example. If you are like me, you will find the following statistic most distressing; it will make you feel sick and it will make you feel helpless, the recipe for existential nausea:

From 2013 to 2016, medical schools nationally admitted 57 percent of black applicants with with low MCATs [Medical College Admission Test scores] of 24 to 26 but only 8 percent of whites and 6 percent of Asians with those same low scores.

If true -- and this was reported in the NY Times -- this means that if you have the choice between a black or white doctor, it is irrational to choose the former (assuming you know nothing else about them). This is horrible, and it is not because the person who prefers a white physician is racist! To the contrary, this whole ugly scenario is a direct consequence of the left's ugly policies.

At any rate, the book is filled with similarly nauseating information, and is highly raccoomended. As is her previous The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. She is one of those National Treasures.

Where were we? Oh yes, the Beginning. So, where do we begin? Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order (which we've been discussing) begins with an observation by Montesquieu, that

Intelligent beings may have some laws of their own making; but they also have some which they never made.

Now clearly, if we are to have a proper beginning, we want to begin with those things -- those laws or principles -- that we never made. If these are manmade, then we are trapped in our own recursive absurcularity. Recall that this is precisely where Descartes begins -- "I think therefore I am" -- such that, once inserted, it is impossible for him to pull his head out of his own aseity and touch the objective world that precedes him.

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest. Descarte's is one of them, ha ha.

Okay, smart guy. Quit stalling. Where do you begin?

Well, for starters, I begin with not knowing. Obvious, right? But you'd be amazed at the number of people who not only don't know what whey don't know, but don't want to know it. But the older I get, the less I know; or, the more I unKnow.

For example, I knew much more back when I was in grad school. By the time I graduated, I had a theory to explain everything. But now? Aphorisms:

To mature is to comprehend that we do not comprehend what we had thought we comprehended.

And That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of the intelligence.

It sounds paradoxical, but truly, the more you really know, the less you know.

I have to stop, because I'm behind with my work-work... We'll pick up the thread on Friday.