Not that far. For example, regarding man the (?), it says that the human person is by nature open to truth, beauty, and goodness, which provokes "longings for the infinite" and "questions about God's existence." It's not as if such questions and longings are a little bit present in other animals. Rather, they coarise with and define man.
About (!), there are various allusions to an overwhelming communication to man of something that isn't man. Haven't you ever been (!)? I don't know anyone to whom it hasn't happened. It's part of the standard equipment.
For example, the Catchism speaks of faith as our response to "a superabundant light as [man] searches for the ultimate meaning of life." Not just abundant but superabundant, which is beyond extravagant; it is more than we could ever contain, "abounding to a great, abnormal, or excessive degree; being considerably more than is sufficient" (my dictionary).
Lucky for us, this "unapproachable light" deigns to approach man, albeit gradually. Baby steps. Milk before meat. It also does so endlessly: for even when God utters the last Word, "it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of centuries." Moreover, "the sacred Scriptures grow with the one who reads them."
This superabundant L!ght communicates the certitude of its own truth, such that "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives." Seeing is believing and believing is seeing; rinse and repent.
I'll bet I can reduce the whole message to... seven aphorisms, each a rung in the vast Circular Ladder that is existence:
God does not reveal with discourses, but by means of experiences.In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of midday.
Faith is not an irrational assent to a proposition; it is a perception of a special order of realities.
Religion is not a set of solutions to known problems, but a new dimension of the universe. The religious man lives among realities that the secular man ignores...
Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.
Faith is not knowledge of the object. But communication with it.
Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper (Dávila).
That last one is particularly important, as it speaks to our permanent condition. It can only be "cured" by ideology, but ideology is always the very disease it pretends to cure. Leftism, progressivism, feminism, scientism -- all are objectively pneumopathological.
Now, back to Voegelin's essay on The Gospel and Culture, with a particular focus on man the (?) and God the (!). He speaks of "man the questioner," i.e.,
the man moved by God to ask the questions that will lead him toward the cause of being. The search itself is the evidence of existential unrest; in the act of questioning, man's experience of his tension toward the divine ground breaks forth in the word of inquiry...
There is always a kind of ontological circularity at work that very much reminds me of Eckhart, but let's refrain from veering in that direction, because the Meister will inevitably hijack the bus. Voegelin:
Question and answer are intimately related one toward the other.... This luminous search in which the finding of the true answer depends on asking the true question, and the asking of the true question on the spiritual apprehension of the true answer, is the life of reason.
This is a subtle point, because we know all about the contemporary plague of intellectual dishonesty that pervades both academia and the liberal noise media. But there are also dishonest questions. Some people say there's no such thing as a stupid question. But this is only because they haven't seen a White House press briefing, where the superabundant stupidity of the media is on display.
Speaking of sick questioners and fake questions, Voegelin describes how man may
deform his humanity by refusing to ask the questions, or by loading them with premises devised to make the search impossible. The gospel, to be heard, requires ears that can hear; philosophy is not the life of reason if the questioner's reason is depraved. The answer will not help the man who has lost the question; and the predicament of the present age is characterized by the loss of the question rather than of the answer (emphasis m!ne).
Examples are everywhere. I receive a daily propaganda briefing from the NY Times, and this morning's spin is hilarious but typical. It concedes that President Trump is doing well with Blacks and Latinos, and that his support is higher than it was four years ago. "Why?," they pretend to ask.
Most political analysts admit they aren’t sure. “I don’t think there are obvious answers,” Shor said.
Yes, it's a Total Mystery. It makes no sense that blacks would support a racist, for which no evidence is needed or offered, since this is an a priori axiom of the left.
Black and Latino Americans who still vote Republican may simply not be bothered by it.
Riiiight. Or perhaps they don't share the group delusion that the president is a racist. That's not askable or even thinkable, any more than it is permissible for a Nazi or Islamist to wonder if Jews might not be subhuman after all.
Note how the field of honest answers is foreclosed by the dishonest question (and questioner). This pathological process is seen every day by the clinical psychologist, AKA me. But who needs psychotherapy if your sickness is mirrored and supported by millions of people who share the same sickness? If you normalize abnormality, there's no need to help the abnormal to be normal.
You get the point, but this one is just as funny. Why on earth are those Mostly Peaceful protests suddenly turning... volatile? It's Trump's fault!
Protests across the U.S. grew more volatile over the weekend, spurred by the presence of federal agents in Portland....“I’m furious that Oakland may have played right into Donald Trump’s twisted campaign strategy,” said Libby Schaaf, the mayor of Oakland, Calif. “Images of a vandalized downtown is exactly what he wants to whip up his base and to potentially justify sending in federal troops that will only incite more unrest.”
Ask a dishonest question, get a dishonest answer.
17 comments:
It reminds me of when the Times asked, "why the hunger in the USSR?
"Duranty, the granddaddy of fake news... wasn’t even a useful idiot. He was, rather, an active and fervent defender of an evil regime and consequently a deeply evil man himself.... After he said reports of a famine were “an exaggeration or malignant propaganda,” FDR granted recognition to the USSR. This was back in the days when Pulitzers were being handed out not for advancing public knowledge but for setting fire to the facts in order to light a torch for far-left propaganda. Thank heavens that never happens anymore."
Meh. Despite being "freed" Russia is still a relatively poor country with a GDP less than Canadas. That's what an oligarchy dominated economy looks like.
Ever increasingly, Americans don’t want small government anymore. They know where their jobs went. They see the successful rise of socialist atheist China with its balance between crafty central planning and crafty inherited-stolen capitalist economy. They can compare all the Chinese new tech infrastructure being currently built with the rotting American infrastructure built by previous far greater generations, and envision where our future lies.
Check your polls. Americans increasingly want the magical strongman who they hope will make their American dreams great again. Useful idiots like Trump and Biden are just the enablers for such a thing, well-funded by mindless corporate “visionaries” who are only focused on making the next quarter bonus.
I had to chase down that NYTimes thing, and of course it says nothing like your misrepresentation "It concedes that President Trump is doing well with Blacks and Latinos".
It says his support among blacks remains consistent, at around 10%. That's not doing well, and is not surprising. Any black person stupid enough to support Trump is not going to change their mind over him being slightly more fascist today than he was a year ago.
I am more mystified my the level of Latino support, but religion is a powerful force for making people act against their own interests.
"religion is a powerful force for making people act against their own interests."
Precisely: the religion of leftism in a nutshell.
Why on earth are those Mostly Peaceful protests suddenly turning... volatile?
I love how the LA times described it as "peaceful protests intensifying." They are so intensely peaceful they smashed all the windows in the courthouse, which I'm pretty sure makes them not just "peaceful," but "peaceful as f*ck!"
Intense.
Thanks to all the "peace" in the land these days, whenever I see a young person walking around and carrying - not riding - a skateboard now, I assume that at some point, should the opportunity arise, he will use it for smashing something.
In other words, Trump isn't gaining support among blacks & Latinos, and besides, the increased support is from morons.
I wish the president would just let these cities destroy themselves, so people can see the real consequences of progressivism. It's what they want. Let them have it, good and hard.
Blacks vote Democrat because it's in their best interests to be unemployed and on food stamps, like when Obama was in charge.
Granted, some polls show 31% of blacks supporting President Trump. But that's probably only because they're irrationally terrified of the progressive mobs peacefully protesting in their cities.
What mobs? That's a myth.
It's also a myth that I played Carol in Where the Wild Things Are.
I can't put myself in their minds, I can't make myself that nescient.
Same. I can't put myself in the mind of an infant either, but I know I was one.
Let's all gather here again in a few years to see who was right in our predictions.
Not that it'll matter in the slightest for most of us.
Trump said the protesters are anarchists who hate America.
An anarchist wants no government, which seems quite different from progressives who want larger government. In fact, it's practically the opposite of anarchy. So are the protesters progressives or anarchists? I’m just trying to get the terminology correct.
Fucking nihilists.
I guess I must be nescient, but can't see what's so absurd about Marin horsemen supporting BLM.
I mean, if you were a vulgar Marxist, you might say that BLM is a movement by a lower class to gain power, and so for wealthy people in the upper classes to support them is stupid. But you aren't a Marxist, so why should that matter? There are plenty of whites of ordinary means who support BLM, why shouldn't the upper crust?
Also the article implies that the group involved tries to bring the joys of equestrianism to the lower classes of Oakland, indicating that their devotion to improving black lives extends beyond painting a slogan on their horse.
""...The answer will not help the man who has lost the question; and the predicament of the present age is characterized by the loss of the question rather than of the answer (emphasis m!ne).
Emphasized emphasis, mine. Boom.
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