Oh, and the reasons we're doing this are purely narcissistic, in that his whole approach is so similar to mine, even though mine has been going on for, I don't know, three and a half decades, but I didn't run into Clarke until -- let's make it official -- until May 30,2012. Which means that he plundered my ideas for over half a century before I even had the opportunity to think them. If this isn't a temporal injustice, I don't know what is.
The first theme, discussed in the previous post, is The Unrestricted Dynamism of the Mind Toward Being. Let's say a few more things about this before moving on the the second.
One thing that sets the human mind apart from the animal is our natural drive "to lay hold of intellectually and understand as far as possible the entire order of being, all there is to know about all there is" (Clarke).
More more more: this drive applies to "the entire life of inquiry of the human mind in any field," even though it is only properly realized in metaphysics (to which I would add the theology without which it can never be complete).
For example, consider my racket, psychology. As I've discussed before, I never intended to become a "psychologist." Rather, my curiosity simply got the better of me. But being crowned with a PhD hardly extinguished my curiosity! If that were the case, I'd be a poor excuse for a human being, let alone psychologist.
For a psychologist who is only a psychologist isn't even that. Which I mean 100% literally. If you fail to situate psychology in a hierarchical nest of diverse disciplines, you're just an ideologue, and your ideology is simply the disease that has killed your curiosity -- which is properly unlimited by anything short of God.
And even then, God can never be a human limit, since he is the Limitless, precisely. He is the sufficient reason of our own unlimited curiosity, which is the whole point of this first theme: "Mind is for being, and reciprocally being is for mind":
This absolutely fundamental mutual correlation of mind and being, mind for being and being for mind [is] a "nuptial relation," a natural marriage made in heaven, so to speak, where each partner completes the other (ibid.).
Yes, exactly. Not to get all political right away, but notice that ideology always results from an unnatural (or perhaps merely natural) redefinition of cosmic marriage, such that knowing can only be betrothed to knowing rather than being.
Is this clear? Kant presided over the official divorce of knowledge from being, and this was no amicable parting of the whys, since knowledge constantly stalks being while pretending to abide by its own self-imposed restraining order limiting it to visiting rights with childish phenomena. The noumena is supposed to be off limits.
Moreover, the marriage of knowing and knowing -- like the deconstructionist's marriage of language to language -- is literally a homotextual union. For
notice the appropriate roles in this marriage [of knowing to being]: the human mind is analogously like the female, or mother; reality is like the father. To know truly a reality that it has not itself made [i.e., the infertile union of knowledge with knowledge], the mind must make itself open to receive this reality, to be actively informed by it.The mind, informed by realty, then actively responds, pours its own spiritual life into what it receives, gestates, then gives birth to the mental "word" or concept, which in turn flows over into the verbal word expressed to others.
Like right now. This is a family blog, so I don't want the be too graphic, but we symbolize the openness (o), and the reality to which it is open (↓). There is the even deeper mystery of (↓) proceeding from the womb of O, but we'll return to that later. Suffice it to say that Ultimate Reality is an eternal complementarity -- a relation -- of Father <---> Mother, of giving, receiving and giving back.
Not to be-labor the pain, but a con-cept is a con-ception. And guess what. Now that I'm plummeting down this rabbit hole, this notion was first born in me way back in 1985, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Clarke or even religion. Rather, the following -- written by a psychoanalyst -- rang a deep bell:
"Conception is that which results when a pre-conception mates with the appropriate sense impressions" (Bion). There is an inherent expectation of a union of two objects to make a third which is more than a sum of its two parts (Hinshelwood).
The interior union -- of preconception or archetype with reality -- gives birth to the baby concept. Of course it never ends there, because the concept then becomes preconception for a new generation of concepts. This is how science -- or any discipline -- proceeds.
But if it's just knowledge giving birth to more knowledge -- but with no intimate contact with father reality -- then it is again completely sterile. Indeed, this is what it means to be an Infertile Egghead, a subject about which I am reading at this very moment.
Well, I guess the second theme will have to wait until Tuesday. We'll leave off with this:
to know is for the mind to conceive and give birth to an inner mental word expressing the real that has informed it, and bearing the features of both parents -- reality and the mind. Thus theoretical intelligence (knowing the world as it already is) is more like a she; practical intelligence, on the other hand... is more like a he... (Clarke).
However, please bear in mind that these categories aren't naive and primitive psychological projections of human gender; rather, the reverse: we are gendered because reality is.
13 comments:
If you fail to situate psychology in a hierarchical nest of diverse disciplines, you're just an ideologue, and your ideology is simply the disease that has killed your curiosity -- which is properly unlimited by anything short of God.
Vanderleun has a link today for a lecture on "having whiteness", which essentially reduces a lack of melatonin to a parasitic pathology which can't be cured, but (with the right psychoanalysis, of course) might be controlled. To the point of the post, it seems this guy does have a sort of hierarchical nest of diverse disciplines, but that the hierarchy is completely inverted and (judging by the topics of some of his books) violently opposed to reality.
However, please bear in mind that these categories aren't naive and primitive psychological projections of human gender; rather, the reverse: we are gendered because reality is.
Which of course touches back upon how Christ is the bridegroom, the Church - that is, the body of people who are His - is his bride. Or any of the other gazillion ways the relation between God and man is ero-ticized throughout the Bible.
I saw that link at American Digest this morning, but couldn't bear to click. It's appalling what's happened to psychology. As always, the left ruins everything.
I couldn't help it, I was curious as to the extent of the train wreck and just how much reach this guy has. Also, whether he's one of the pigmentally deficient or one of the anointed. Not sure if I found the right guy just searching around, but there are at least a couple caucasian-looking David Moss, PHDs out there. So a self-loathing white guy. His most recent book on Amazon looks to be some kind of abomination decrying heterosexuality, tradition, and history for the crime of being too obvious.
Hello Panel:
Here's the thing about white people. Originally not white, people came out of Africa, got into Europe, it was cold, it was cloudy, over time they lost skin melatonin so sunlight could make Vitamin D more efficiently. They mated with Neanderthals, giving whites their distinctive craggy features and prominent chins. So much for how white people look.
The harsh environment also favored the bold, the intrepid, the intelligent, and the determined. Europe was a hard teacher. Whites adapted and survived at great cost, and then eventually thrived beyond any other peoples.
Bursting out of Europe, whites went out into a world inhabited by people who had adapted to less harsh exigencies of life. The result was whites tended to overween, conquer, and best other cultures and had no compunction about doing so. History shows this clearly. "Guns, germs, and steel" this whirlwind has been called. It was like a fox getting into a hen-house.
There was an exception. Japan was a hard teacher as well, and Nippon's pale sons and daughters were every bit as ornery as the whites. An epic clash ensued. This is history.
Fast forward to 2020. Whites and others peoples are mixing. Cooperation is now seen as better than conquest. But then there's the matter of the history, which in hindsight now starts to look criminal, based on the new precepts coming on line.
Hence white guilt and accusations made against whites by those that were on the losing end of things. But it is not white peoples fault. It just happened as it did, due to circumstances far beyond anyone's control.
The best thing to do is just move on. We just have to move on.
So how so you explain the Mongol horde? Or the Turks or Arabs or Shaka Zulu?
Actually, I had a sociology teacher who described the plausible description of an expletive description which theorized that war comes from geography, and the covetous nature of power players.
If a theoretical tribal scouting party walked very long distances only to find that every other tribe they could discover was just like their own, the players would likely give up to go home and improve their hunting and dancing techniques. Nothing to be covetous of and conquer out there. Think Plains Indians or Australian Aboriginees.
But if a scouting party could transport themselves by whatever means available, to discover new wealth they'd more often just try to conquer it as they would just make their own. Think Romans taking fertile Egypt (which had been taken by the Greeks).
Europe was just an easy place to get around in and there's much diversity of agricultural and mineral wealth. Think Mesoamericans vs those Plains Indians.
But I don't care about any of that. What I care about is that the covetous players of today have gotten crafty, like the Mongols with their speedy ponies, recurved bows, and sacks of fermented cabbage. Ever seen a Mongol just march up to a city like the well dressed and honorably disciplined British Redcoats used to? I didn't think so. They'd get picked off by snipers hiding behind trees and using psychological terror techniques like the Mongols did.
Most of warfare is psychological.
Vanderleun is absolutely correct to have given up on the Democratic Party. But he's sadly mistaken to think that covetousness will just vanish if one just minds their own business.
Not saying the Mesoamericans vs those Plains Indians were Europeans, but they might as well have been. The dynamics of covetousness were the same.
That Scruton book is fascinating. Definitely a sad loss with his passing.
Hello Panel, good evening, salutations.
Anon 9:33, your input is appreciated regarding my comment about white people. I thought about the Mongols too. They conquered a wide area, however unlike Europeans they were unable to really make anything of it besides looting it thoroughly. Europeans were usually able to colonize and transfer populations, as in America, South Africa, and Australia for example.
Therefore Europeans reign supreme as historical champion world-beaters. No other cultural bloc even comes close. White pride has become a dirty word, but sh*t damn those pallid sons and daughters of Europa have pulled off some amazing things (and continue to do so).
The take home message from history is that conquest was long regarded as a useful act, and conquerors were well rewarded and widely hailed as paragons of virtue. Somewhere along the line there was a paradigm shift and we don't see conquest as virtuous any more. Now it is frowned upon, to say the least. Is this progress? Why, yes 'tis.
Well, anon, you are obviously well educated, intelligent, and moreover you write very well. I hope to seem more of your commentary on this blog. I believe you made comments on the previous post which I was going to say, were very fine indeed. So kudos.
No, this blog commentary section is more than a self-affirming echo chamber for the blog author. Lucky him, few blog authors get quality attention these days.
-Cheers from Sally Slick, DPM
How is the Summa Cosmologica coming?
Well, I guess it will have to wait until I retire. Hopefully later this year.
My current hobby is looking at old photos from the 1840’s. Such a serious and well dressed people they appeared to be. Folks seemed better back then, smarter and classier.
But upon closer examination I noticed that the older ladies were wearing some kind of baby hat doily thingy on their heads, and the old men had unwashed hair except for the clean part which had stuck out under the hat before it was taken off for the camera.
I learned that these were “daguerreotypes”, which could only be afforded by the very rich who had to sit frozen for over a minute just for the thing to turn out. They wore their Sunday best since the daguerreotype was an honest duplication machine, very unlike the portrait artist they’d been used to who’d just airbrush out all the nose warts and wife beater tee shirts to make their subjects appear smarter and classier.
I came to the sad conclusion that these fine appearing rich folks were every bit as messed up as our rich folks are today. Now I don’t mind all rich folks, mind you. Not the good kind, like those who invented the selfie so we don’t have to sit unblinkingly frozen in new clothes and hat formed hair anymore. I just don’t like the bad ones, the ones who try to play the rest of us for supplicants, suckers and cannon fodder for their own pleasure.
It seems that most people hanging out in self-affirming echo chambers don’t take that distinction seriously. They rationalize things and then project all their faux pas onto ‘outsiders’, instead. They say that this is as good as it gets and just be patient because you’ll be dead soon enough.
“Trade not wars” seemed a good thing back in the day, but it never addressed power and control pathologies. As a consequence we don’t ask the stinky fart guy to leave the room anymore. We just take it, and the echo chamberers amongst us who enjoy the smell, because we’d rather have farty freely trading air for stank instead of worrying that he’ll get his power and control pathologies by kicking our asses.
"But if it's just knowledge giving birth to more knowledge -- but with no intimate contact with father reality -- then it is again completely sterile. Indeed, this is what it means to be an Infertile Egghead, a subject about which I am reading at this very moment."
Sterile is a good term for it. I've been calling it the loss of depth perception with our turn to 'economic thinking', following our closing one eye to 3D vision, in favor of the 2D to save us from having to bother with focusing.
Speaking of Ideology, as I will be in an upcoming post in a series, the fellow that coined the term 'Ideology', was a Frenchie, Destutt de Tracy, in 1796, as a new "science of ideas". He very much came out of the French way thinking (Rousseau, etc) that led to Kant, and he led the way to the infertile eye closing that transformed the Political Economy of Smith, Say & Bastiat, to the Economics of Mill, Marx & Keynes. But how that affected us, is Tracy's "Ideology" was incorporated into his "A Treatise on Political Economy", which was greatly admired by no less a leading light of our Founding Fathers, than Thomas Jefferson, who liked de Tracy's work so much, that he translated it into English himself, wrote an introduction to it, and saw to it that it was published in America, and highly recommended it to all who'd pay attention. Which, I've gotta say, although a curious find, didn't surprise me at all.
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