If Transcendence is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Transcend Themselves

Yesterday I read a short essay by Schuon in this new translation of Esoterism as Principle and as Way, called What Sincerity Is and What It Is Not. In so doing, I found that I highlighted nearly every sentence, which means that the essay is unusually dense with meaning, even for Schuon (whose writing is already as compact as can be). So, now we're going to review the essay and figure out out why I found it so provocative.

As I've mentioned before, most authors take a whole book to transmit a single idea or two, which is, among other things, a discourtesy to the reader. For we don't read merely to pass the time or to distract ourselves from more important things, but to track down and concentrate on the most important things, precisely. And nothing is more important than truth.

We all know people who are sincere, but sincerely wrong. These useful idiots are to be distinguished from the cynical asshat, who may or may not be wrong, but is insincere in any event. AOC, for example, is wrong about nearly everything, but seemingly sincere. It is appropriate that she should throw her support behind a Bernie Sanders, who is invincibly wrong and yet insanely sincere. Same with Marianne Williamson or Tulsi Gabbard.

Conversely, Obama was a calculating cynic. As is Kamala Harris. Biden is a congenial cynic who will pretend to believe anything, whereas Beto is just an irritating fool. The other clowns are a mixture of calculation, foolishness, ignorance, arrogance, vulgarity, hatred, envy, and sincerity. Clinton, of course, is pure cynic.

Clearly, sincerity is of no value in and of itself; rather, its worth is determined by its object. Indeed, a sincere socialist is more dangerous than an insincere one. At the other end, Jesus warns us about the dangers of a lukewarm faith, implying that sincerity has a critically important role to play, so long as it is in service to the proper ends and true interests.

Now, in a postmodern and therefore post-truth world, what becomes of sincerity? I rarely get into internet debates these days, because the people with whom I disagree are nearly always sincere, and therefore unpersuadable by truth, fact, or logic, much less intellection.

Our erstwhile troll William comes to mind. I remember him making the sincere argument that Hitler was a Christian, based upon several statements Hitler had (cynically!) made in order to manipulate the German public. In short, William not only sincerely embraced Hitler's cynical manipulation, but fought for it as you and I would fight for the truth. Remarkable, but quite common. All day long, people sincerely repeat ludicrous talking points.

What's going on here? I mean, besides mere stupidity? Again, human beings are irreducibly epistemophilic, and will therefore fight for truth even when it is a lie. Not to be flip, but you might say that this war between truth and its alternatives is the engine of history -- bearing in mind always that while truth is objective, humans are always an admixture of truth and falsehood, light and dark, good and evil. If only the neo-Marxist progressive could appreciate the following:

No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us (NGD).

It is accurate to say that sincerity minus truth descends into the kind of rocket-fueled subjectivism that defines the left. The impeachment effort, for example, is a howl of pain in search of a cause for it: impeach first, find a reason later. Just make the pain stop!

With "modern subjectivism," writes Schuon, "the most contingent of subjectivity takes precedence over objectivity, even in those cases where the objective is the very reason for being of the subjective, thus determining its worth." The alphabet soup gender madness of the left is a quintessential example of subjectivism entirely displacing the object that determines its worth. In other words: what came first, biological womanhood or the feeling that one is a woman?

To believe the latter is to literally turn the cosmos upside down. No problem! For if your metaphysic abolishes the vertical, then there can be no upside down. Nor any right-side up, which tells you everything you need to know about the left, i.e., the enthusiastic abolition of human norms, archetypes, and standards. (Which is impossible to do, by the way, for they just covertly slip in new absolutes via the back door, and enforce them with an iron fist: you will believe a man is a woman, or else!)

To paraphrase someone, fascism is the violent rejection of transcendence. Now, abolishing the vertical is another name for rejecting transcendence. Individuals are free to do this, which is fine. Indeed, this is one of our reasons for being: ultimately the freedom to choose or reject God.

Problems arise when the rejection is aligned with the state, which has the coercive power to enforce the rejection. So in New York City, for example, one can be fined $250,000 for "misgendering a transexual" or using the term "illegal immigrant."

Note that if one outlaws transcendence, then only outlaws will transcend themselves. That might sound cute, but consider Beto's threat to eliminate the tax exempt status of any church that doesn't pretend that men can be women or that members of the same sex can marry.

Now, any real religion requires us to dominate and transcend ourselves, including our sexual nature. Like all normal men, I am attracted to every attractive woman I see (which is why they are called "attractive"), but this hardly means I act on the attraction. Marriage, among other things, is the transcendence and sanctification of the merely natural. But what is marriage to the progressive? Yes, just a manmade right divorced from any transcendent or objective reality.

Dávila: Modern man inverts the rank of problems. Everyone pontificates about sex education, for example, but who is concerned about the education of the sentiments?

Wow, it's late. Gotta run. We didn't get past the first paragraph of Schuon's essay, which shows how dense it is with meaning.