Why, you may ask, do I keep harping on this? We get it, Bob. Reality exists, and can only exist, in the great In Between -- in the quasi-infinite space between immanence and transcendence. Life is a bewilderedness adventure, an exodeus, an expansion into the endless frontier, a careful documentation of our ignorance, multi-undisciplinary circumnavelgazing, ad gnoseam. Move on.
Well, I can't. There's an old gag about how even the most exalted egghead generally has One Big Idea that he spends his life rediscovering in various ways. Is it possible this applies to me? That I too am exalted?
Hmm. I'm almost afraid to look, but let's glance back at the very first article I ever published in a -- back off, man, I'm a psychologist! -- scholarly journal in 1991, the same year I got my license to cure souls and save mankind.
Indeed, it looked at the time as if Bob were off to a promising career. Which leads to a host of ancillary questions: what on earth went right? How and why did Bob abandon a life of distinguished mediocrity for an anonymous plunge into eccentric psycho-cosmography?
Wait -- a licensed psychologist? Don't make us laugh!
The greater the importance of an intellectual activity, the more ridiculous is the claim of certifying the competence of those who exercise it. A diploma of dentistry is respectable, but one of philosophy is grotesque (Dávila).
I suppose you could say that I abandoned licensure, certification, and societal validation for a vertical career that has no point. Lo and behold, it's working! I may be grossly misgodded, but at least I'm not grotesque.
Back to the article. Interestingly, it doesn't just confirm the hypothesis that I keep rediscovering the same thing; rather it seems that in the intervening 29 years I have become that which I discovered, or at least increasingly so. Whether this is a good or bad thing, it's too soon to say. Ask again in 29 years. Perhaps distinguished mediocrity would have been the more prudent path.
About "becoming what I discovered." A few selected passages:
Because it is difficult to visualize a domain such as the mind with dimensions of more than three, we tend to rely upon mental models derived from the sensual (primarily visual), explicate world. This in turn leads to the erroneous conclusion that explicate knowledge can disclose the truth of our being.
However,
One of the perils of this form of psychic cartography is that contained within the map is a tacit structure of ideas and concepts which tends to become self-confirming: thought is thus excised from its deeper source and becomes a self-generating and closed loop. With this approach the unknown is foreclosed, and what may appear to be "discoveries" will in fact be merely verifications of one's hidden assumptions about reality.
At the time, I had never heard the name "Voegelin," but what I have just described -- i.e., cognitively and spiritually closed loops -- is another way of talking about ideological pseudo-realities and gnostic dreamworlds built upon ontological lies, i.e., not lying "about" reality but living in a lie about reality. It is analogous to an MSM news silo, only with lifetime tenure.
The silo is the matrix or reality tunnel from which only our second birth from above can begin to save us. It's the beginning of a new order of difficulties, but at least the difficulties are real and no longer imaginary: an engagement with, instead of a flight from, reality. The majority of what is given to us as knowledge, news, and information is clearly a dispersing, crystalizing, or twittering flight from.
More timeless (or fixated) autoBobography from 29 years past:
Thought begins first of all with a creative perception, which is always part of a more encompassing flow from which it has been abstracted.
Doesn't that way lie madness, postmodernness, and other dodgy subjectivisms? No, because
an enormous amount of thinking must take place before the suspension of thought can lead to a generative insight and discovery. Without this preparation, suspension of thought will merely generate undisciplined observations and chaotic and inconsistent interpretations.
But here again we must meet in the middle and not default to the other pole: "with training and preparation, our minds can become circular, saturated, and unable to perceive the truly novel." In short, we must maintain what Voegelin calls the "balance of consciousness," defaulting neither to the transcendent nor immanent poles.
In the article, I also spoke of vertical defense mechanisms, so to speak, which are ultimately defenses against God (or at least the transcendent pole or ground that inevitably leads back to him). Supposing we have an objective map of the world, it may lead to a situation whereby "the unknown is defended against through the possession of knowledge."
Which is none other than what Voegelin calls a second reality, "a fictitious world imagined as true by a person using it to mask and thereby 'eclipse' genuine reality" (Webb).
12 comments:
What, do I have to be the first one to comment?
I like this post because it deals with the professional dilemma experienced by the blog author when he discovered being a psychologist violated his religious sensibilities. The odious left had coopted psychology and now occupied it entirely, leaving Godwin stranded behind enemy lines. What now?
We most all encounter some moral discrepancy between our occupations and professions and our sense of right and wrong.
A soldier goes to war, only to see murderous and bestial behavior in comrades that she cannot go along with. Very uncomfortable.
Many a communist has been swept up in an altruistic adventure that started out in pure solidarity with other, only to become profitable; immediately all of the sordid emotions around ill-gotten gain raise their ugly heads, and the competition for the lucre soon sickens the soul of the communist.
If one gets stranded, compelled to labor in "enemy territory," then one must become covert, one learns spy-craft, one learns to live amongst the enemy and make a life of it.
I suspect this is what Godwin has done, and Godwin probably takes pains not to harm the clients who think they are dealing with a dedicated psychologist and not a rebel officer. It is not the client's fault, after all, that this turn of events has come about.
As the nearest thing to God we have is the sexual impulse and that is taboo because of it's roots in the beast the philosopher will always be chasing his tail and maybe orphaned man is better off not knowing it's parentage.
Thought begins first of all with a creative perception, which is always part of a more encompassing flow from which it has been abstracted.
Reminds again of the process of creation. There's the work, but before that can begin there is the work before the work - the idea, expanded, envisioned and almost breathed into life before it is even anything tangible. Of course, the reality almost always turns out different from what was envisioned; even so, without the process of envisioning the reality would never come to be in the first place.
As a fiscally and morally conservative progressive from the denomination of Itsgottabeinthebibletobetakenseriouslynocherrypickingandlasttagnotagbacks, my view of reality still wants to weigh the pros and cons from any/other/either/dogmatic/conflicting/tribal arguments.
But being a relatively lonely position, I do miss the camaraderie of like minded supplicants though. Strangely, it's fun to chant with the masses. Or riot I suppose.
Stop calling it a "riot." Rather, spontaneous reparations. Or an emergency limit increase on the race card.
At least most of the spontaneous reparations technicians were wearing their masks. Better safe than sorry I always say.
It's a start, but they should also designate special hours for elderly looters.
There was a distressing lack of social distancing happening, though. Liberating property for justice is fine, but I'm going to have to speak to their manager about not requiring everyone to stay six feet apart. It makes me feel unsafe.
This is not 'Nam. This is looting. There are rules
It's just good manners for looters to wear masks -- as cannibals ought to use a knife and fork.
The funny/ sad thing is, they will actually line up nicely outside the store before it's their turn to run in and grab stuff. Apparently, there really are rules...
Gotta say, this has genuinely been my least favorite year so far. Looks like it won't be getting better before November, either.
With good humor and pessimism it is possible to be neither wrong nor bored.
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