Sunday, July 05, 2020

How Not to be an Idiot

As mentioned in the previous post, this volume of essays by Voegelin is brimming with allusions and references to my Unwritten but unKnown text.

True, my text doesn't explicitly exist, but this doesn't mean it isn't floating around somewhere in the implicate order -- you know, in the vertical Cloud. It seems to me that E & I are peeking at the same ur-text from different spacetime locations, such that when he makes a point that resonates in me, it is because we must be viewing the same transcendent object through the pneumatic haze.

I'll cite various examples in no particular order. Then we'll circle back and try to assemble the puzzle pieces into a pattern and see if we can make out what they insinuate about the implicate text.

Oh, c'mon -- it'll be fun! Just remember to keep an open mind and "listen with the third ear," which is what we psychologists do when listening to a patient babble on about their problems. I may react to some of them as we proceed, but we still need to maintain an open stance toward the totality, i.e., to the hyperspatial pattern that emerges when seen together.

It is forgotten that Christ came not to Christians but to man.

Right. Of course. Elsewhere Voegelin makes the provocative point -- seemingly out of the blue, and with no elaboration -- that "Christ takes form in current events." That sounds suspiciously correct, but we'll have to figure out why later. (Come to think of it, we are seeing an awful lot of Crucifixion of the Logos going on, AKA logocide...)

By spirit we understand the openness of man to the divine ground of his existence: by estrangement from the spirit, the closure and revolt against the ground. Through spirit man actualizes his potential to partake of the divine. He rises thereby to the imago Dei which it is his destiny to be.

In the openness of the common spirit there develops the public life of society. He, however, who closes himself against what is common, or revolts against it, removes himself from the public life of human community. He becomes thereby a private man, or in the language of Heraclitus, an idiotes.

In the language of Cousin Dupree, an idiot. We can choose to be one, or we can choose to actualize our divine clueprint. Of all the choices we make in this life, this is no doubt the most consequential.

Language and fact have somehow separated from one another, and thought has correspondingly become estranged from reality.

Hoo boy. One of our pet peeves. But it's much more than a peeve, it's truly a primordial cosmic catastrophe, one that opens us to all the others and transforms us into idiots and eventually leftists. We'll just leave it at that, otherwise the post will autofill with the usual harangue. Besides, passages such as the following make my point:

We enter here upon a realm of spirit-like non-spirit or anti-spirit, which finds its representation on the plane of politics in the ideological mass movements.

For example, in, oh, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, or just about any other idiot-run Demopolis:

When the refusal to apperceive becomes radical, it leads to the phenomenon of total self- and world-annihilation...

Of course, reality doesn't actually disappear just because we fail to recognize it. Indeed, reality is that which persists despite our dreams, wishes, and political delusions.

And although expressed via politics, this is nevertheless a form of mental illness simply displaced to another plane. Think of how crazy one must be to not perceive the craziness of Antifa, or BLM, or AOC, or the DNC. Yes, there are people who don't see that Joe Biden is demented. There's a clinical term for that: negative hallucination.

"With the destruction of reality the public language is destroyed," ending in "the syndrome of illiteracy which is the result of the destruction of the language." Please note that he isn't talking about mere illiteracy, which poses a problem to the illiterate person but not the society at large.

Rather, he's referring to the hordes of college-educated illiterates that compose our Elite political, academic, and media classes who, unfortunately, don't know nothing, but rather, are post-literate in a parallel looniverse of anti-truth, anti-sprit, and anti-philosophy: unadulterated Ø.

Our great Silent but Deadly Majority can plainly detect it. Progressives, of course, can't smell it -- even though they dealt it -- for it is the polluted water in which they swim. Others have a chance to sniff it out, but

The nature of problem will perhaps not be immediately apparent, for life in the insane asylum of our time has become such a habit for many that they no longer react in a sensitive manner to the grotesque events on the public scene.

In fact, one of the functions of political correctness is to prevent the average person from not only seeing and proclaiming the emperor has no clothes, but that he is hideous, monstrous, grotesque. A beast from the abyss.

How to even begin to debate such a person? We're not talking about different opinions, rather, different realities:

we all have discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence....

Rational argument could not prevail because the partner to the discussion did not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence... the Second Reality.

Therefore, beneath what may superficially resemble rational "debate" lurks "the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses... when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared."

I was amused by a trivial but typical example over the weekend. Media in 2012: Obama is so great he could join Washington and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore! Media in 2020: Trump is so evil he could join Washington and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore!

I really must get some work done today that I've been putting off, so we won't be able to discern the contours of the implicate text. In the meantime, just keep an open mind, and we'll continue our investigation in the next post.

Oh, and if you see something, don't hesitate to say something. The implicate order is so rich that no single person could ever begin to exhaust it, so all Coons on deck.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....first to comment. Maybe I should wait until later and see what others have to say. I should do that.

I broadly disagree with the post. I am not buying the basic premises.

I could list these basic premises but I want to see if anyone else has some input on them.

The torpedo is in the water and running normal. You have 20 minutes to take evasive action or brace for impact.

Regards, Capitol Naval Troll

julie said...

"With the destruction of reality the public language is destroyed," ending in "the syndrome of illiteracy which is the result of the destruction of the language." Please note that he isn't talking about mere illiteracy, which poses a problem to the illiterate person but not the society at large.

Attacks on linking, the mind parasites spread through our culture via schools and entertainment, a far more insidious infection than anything cooked up in a Chinese lab.

Van Harvey said...

"Therefore, beneath what may superficially resemble rational "debate" lurks "the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses... when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared."

AKA Two peoples separated by common vocal sounds.

Gagdad Bob said...

That's exactly it. Deconstruction constitutes the ultimate severance -- from both things and from common reality. It's even a kind of psycho-speciation into a new and absurd species: the anti-human.

Gagdad Bob said...

For example, There is no basis for "unity" with people who think it's OK to compare the U.S. to a Nazi occupation regime. They must be defeated.

Anonymous said...

So what you are saying is that consensus-building and negotiation between the conservatives and progressives is impossible due to a lack of shared premises about the nature of reality.

I think that would be an over-statement.

Consensus-building and negotiation do occur and are commonplace in the bipartisan halls of power. But these negotiations are conducted in an atmosphere of rancor and are accomplished with difficulty. No one wants the other side to have any power.

What would be a good first step to move things in a better direction? So that both sides can co-exist peacefully?

Please opine.

Cousin Dupree said...

What is the compromise position between reality and delusion? Correct: the moderately deluded, AKA RINO. Surely they'll save us!

Dougman said...

I heard a call out to be on deck.
Who wants some reality through testimony?
I postulate that i (lowercase on purpose) am the word made flesh.
Just one word, I don't think that I'm anything more than a simple, honest man in a unique position.

Bring on the slings and arrows.

Gagdad Bob said...

I think that's the point of the Incarnation: an invitation for us to participate in the divine nature.

Gagdad Bob said...

Via adoption.

Anonymous said...

I think I'm going to talk to some moderate, middle of the road type folks.

Extremists become tedious after awhile.

GDB emphasizes there is no solution to the dilemma; it is intractable and hopeless. GDB actually seems to relish that. The fact that Leftists are idiots and can be derided constantly without end is like a delicious movable feast he wakes up to daily. It his way of life, and I daresay he wouldn't want it any other way.

Sure, GDB writes amusing prose. Butthe regular reader may find it dreary and oppressive after a time. Some readers seem to want to inhabit this land with him, and remain enraptured.

You could go back in time to 20012 and look at a post, or zoom ahead to a post in 2022, and these posts would be interchangeable. They will not vary to any great degree.

So why not just stop reading GDB? It is a good to take a tolerance break once in a while. The deal is, he has his moments, when he forgets his primary purpose of deriding Leftists, and actually says something fresh and interesting about philosophy.

The reader can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Anonymous said...

The right has been the party of racism for a very long time. The unbearable intellectual pretentiousness on display here hearkens back to Buckley, but Trump is really a more appropriate face for it.

The country's only hope is that the Republican party implodes completely before it can do any more damage. Fortunately looks like that is happening.

Anonymous said...

As much as people love to express their version of reality, we always seem to wind up being stuck with the fellows we have instead of the fellows they wish we had.

Speaking of Jeffrey Epstein, obvious pedophile buddy to luminaries with names like Clinton, Gates, Trump and Prince Andrew, will victims finally get to speak truth to power?

Anonymous said...

The hard part is training the people you screwed over that it was all their own damned fault.

Anonymous said...

So what do little irrelevant podunk nations like New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Ireland have on the Almighty US of A?

Reducing their coronavirus spread to less than that of just one US state - all of those nations combined. Maybe we all need to put on our freedumb hats and figure this thing out, before the loony left does.

Gagdad Bob said...

I'll admit to racial animus. I frankly don't like any of them, only individuals. Although a lot of Asian women are attractive.

Elaine said...

That is so racist.

River Cocytus said...

The loss of public life because of the loss of a common language. The return of Babel!

Good Tucker interview here:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/05/tucker-carlson-on-the-federalist-radio-hour-you-shouldnt-wait-to-say-what-you-think-is-true/

Begins asking some important questions, which have shall we say, *reactionary* answers:

"Now, the most powerful people in America, literally the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, is funding the riots. Bezos owns the Washington Post, which is cheering on the rioters, helping the rioters think of new things to destroy.

He is not simply an accomplice. He’s a driver of this chaos and violence, and you have to ask yourself, why is that? Wy would people who seem to be so deeply vested in a society work to destroy that society? And it’s actually a quite a question and I don’t fully understand the answer, but it’s something worth ruminating."

Gagdad Bob said...

The left has the ultimate White Privilege: all the money, power, and ideology needed to keep blacks on their plantation forever.

Anonymous said...

identity politics for white people

julie said...

Right, because it's *not* OK to be white.

Speaking or real white privilege though, Antifa protestor blames nonexistent "Black Man" for giving her a molotov cocktail to throw. I don't usually watch political videos, would rather just read the transcript, but this one is worth watching.

River Cocytus said...

Black Lives Matter Because It's Okay To Be White

This is what I believe

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