Some people claim there's no such thing as reality; or, that if there is, we could never know it. They think this is a sophisticated attitude, which it is, in the original sense of the word, i.e., sophistry. It's reminiscent of the differences between ideas and ideology, intellect and intellectual, human and humanism, science and scientism, etc.
Sophisticate (the verb) means "to alter deceptively," to falsify, to make artificial and deprive of simplicity, or to debase, spoil, and corrupt. Thus, it is a cause and consequence of what we know of as tenure. If your child attends college and somehow avoids becoming a sophisticate, then the educational system has failed on its own terms. Your child has escaped the progressive Matrix. He is a fugitive slave.
Speaking of which, although our son is homeschooled, some of his classes are taught by other parents. For some reason he's supposed to read the turgid and sentimental Uncle Tom's Cabin, which isn't going to happen. He already deplores racism of any kind, and can't even comprehend how someone could embrace it.
So, I advised him to do what I'd do if I were in his shoes: read the Cliff Notes. We previewed them on amazon, but you still can't get away from the sophistry!
There are probably very few white Americans, if the truth were known, who do not harbor some prejudiced (or, to put it less kindly, racist) ideas about black people, and especially about African Americans....We all tend to be so conscious today of this prejudiced condition (if not always of the nature of the prejudices) that most white writers would think it foolhardy to attempt a novel whose central characters are African Americans...
Understood. Does this mean black Americans who write and opine about white Americans are fools? Jes' axin'.
The Cliff Notes highlight another problem with Stowe: her Christianity. Of course, "she lived in a less enlightened time," when our unsophisticated citizenry "assumed that the United States was a 'Christian country.'"
Granted, it was founded by Christians upon Christian principles, traditions, and assumptions, but it was really... the notes don't specify. At any rate, Stowe "doesn't apologize for her Protestant chauvinism." The nerve of this woman, to pretend that God abhors slavery! Such a bully.
Here's a non-sequitur: "In our secular time, we tend to avoid the discussion of religion in ordinary 'non-religious' circumstances." But "the separation of Church and State meant something quite different to Stowe." Wait, what? The Constitution forbids a principled Christian opposition to slavery?
End of tangent. What was original point? Right: reality and its alternatives. Note that the latter is necessarily plural, since reality is by definition one. The principle of oneness is why we can both have a reality and know it (more on this point as we proceed). It reminds me of a tweet I read this morning:
I’m a conservative in chess for the same reason I am in politics: because however many good moves there are, there are infinitely more bad moves.
I'm a conservative traditionalist because however many realities there are, there are infinitely more unrealities.
In this context it is permissible to posit more than one reality, so long as we acknowledge verticality, i.e., hierarchy, continuity, and integration, for there are physical, biological, and spiritual (and more) realities. It's just that it's impossible in principle to conceive of these from the "bottom up." If man is intelligent -- which he is -- intelligence can only descend from the top down. If intelligence ascends from below, it's no longer intelligent.
Which is a central point of this other book I'm reading, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy by Fulton J. Sheen. Don't let his popularity fool you. This guy was a major brainiac before he became a TV star in the 1950s.
I've already lost the handle on this post. Might as well go with the flow. "The intelligence is the key to the communion of the human and the angelic and the divine. From God, who is the source of intellectual light, knowledge descends progressively" through the vertical hierarchy.
But "modern philosophy" -- as articulated by the sophisticates described above -- "in rejecting the intelligence, has rejected the cornerstone of the whole edifice of continuity and progress in the universe."
Progress. That's another key idea we've discussed in the past, in that the metaphysical underpinning of "progressivism" renders progress impossible in principle. For if truth, morality, and culture are relative, there is no standard but power, i.e., opinion and the will to enforce it. Don't believe me. Just look at what's happening in our Democrat run cities and universities: obey! Or else.
Evolution? Not only are we all for it, but our metaphysic is the only one that renders it both possible and necessary. In other words, God is the sufficient reason of evolution (natural selection is only a means, not the principle). We Coonfolk
did not have to wait for modern biology to reveal continuity and progress in the universe. For it [scholasticism], biological discoveries were confirmations, not revelations. They merely proved in a lower order what reason has already verified in the higher orders.
In short, the universe isn't a static block but a living hierarchy full of intelligence and intelligibility everywhere we turn.
We're out of time, so I'm going to have to pull all of these lucent threads together in the subsequent post. Don't worry: I got this. Everything's under control. Just not mine
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