And the (!) Became (?)

We've been discussing how and why Christianity spread and eventually triumphed over all its competitors, such that no one today practices Mithraism or worships Athena or Dionysus. To the extent that Christianity is true, or taken to be true, it must provide an answer -- even the most complete possible answer -- to the question What is man? Or, what is man, what is man, and what is man???

So, what is man? Let's approach this question with no preconceptions, religious or otherwise. I think we can agree that man is a mystery to himself, even to this day. Indeed, any thinker who claims to exhaust the mystery thereby renders himself a sophist and philodoxer: a lover of opinion and pseudo-thought. A counterfeit man. An ideologue. A troll.

Can we say that man is a permanent mystery to himself? If so, how could we know it? It's a little like saying "there is no truth, and that's the truth."

Let's try to go all the way back -- both horizontally and vertically -- to the existential and ontological birth of man (the second is less difficult to approach, since it's happening now, and in every now). We know we are different -- different from the animals and from every other thing in existence. But how?

Well, all other animals are complete on their own plane. Yes, they need to eat, but once they do, that's it: it is as if their little circle re-closes on itself. Nap time. My dog doesn't wonder about the nature of dogs, much less Danes.

Like other animals, man eats. But that doesn't complete the circle. Or, it completes the circle of biology, only to open other circles and render them more vivid or something. Scratch one itch and a new one takes its place.

Here again, this pattern persists down to the present day. Anyone who studies psychology learns about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I haven't thought about in forty years, but then again, have never stopped thinking about.

How's that? Well, in those three or four decades I've generally had adequate food, water, shelter, safety, relationships, and prestige (yes, I have low standards), leaving only the toppermost of the poppermost unfillfulled:

That's right: self-actualization, i.e., achieving one's full potential, including creative activities. Yeah, this: I'm doing it now. What can I say? A modest thing but thine own.

Interestingly, one thing I've noticed over the years is that by indulging in activities at the top of the pyramid, they've gradually come to displace or at least overshadow those at the bottom. Of course I still need to eat, but I scarcely care what I eat, so long as my blood sugar stays low. Whatever a "foodie" is, I'm the opposite.

Likewise "prestige." I'm mostly autotelic, with the caveat that I care very much about the opinions of God and a few other persons. A pure autotelicism would be anti-trinitarian in the extreme. But I'm always focused on that which surpasses me and is just over the subjective horizon. Anything less than this is frankly boring.

The moment arrives in which one is only interested in stalking God. --Dávila

Here's a thought: let's call man (?), the being who never stops asking questions, such that no answer is sufficient to eliminate the questions. I would add that a philosopher is simply someone with an acute case of (?), such that it becomes (?!). But for the true philosopher, (?!) is a truly chronic condition. In one sense there is no cure, but in another sense (?!) is the cure, or at least treatment.

No, I'm not trying to be cute or paradoxical. I try never to be the former, and to the extent that we're indulging in the latter, it is in the nature of the subject under discussion: writing of infinitude within the context of finitude always comes out paradoxical, and the paradoxes must be respected and preserved, otherwise they cease being generative and fruitful. Every heresy -- whether religious, philosophical, or ideological -- always defaults to one side of the paradox.

So, man is (?). The question before us is, what is the relationship between Christianity and (?)? People walking around in first century Palestine were (?), like anyone else. How and why was Christianity such an adequate response to (?)?

Recall Maslow's hierarchy: for early Christian martyrs, Christianity -- or Christ, rather -- literally displaced everything below. Christ was more important than food, social standing, and even life itself.

Again, let's try to dispense with preconceptions. Just looking at the situation historically, for these early Christians, Christ was the perfect and unsurpassable answer to (?). But wait -- didn't we say that man is the being who by definition never stops asking questions?

Yes, that still holds true. But let's suppose that the ultimate Answer -- the Absolute, Infinite, Eternal, Ground, Source Beyond Being -- becomes the (?). Supposing it happened, what would that be like?

It would be somewhat like (!) becoming (?), a kind of endless and inexhaustible explosion on his end and implosion on ours. But we're out of time. To be continued...