Yesterday I reread 1984 just to get a peek at what else the left might have in store for us in the coming years.
What is so striking about Orwell's description of the totalitarian mindset is how accurate it is in the small details. It makes me wonder if he was actually seeing into the essence of the left -- like an object before him -- as opposed to verbally articulating an abstract and conceptual ideology.
This is of course how angels know stuff, but there is some overlap between men and angels. In our hierarchical, full-employment cosmos, one man's ceiling is another man's floor, such that the toppermost of one level intersects with the underleast of the next. This is how we end up with dogs that are almost human and a few scattered humans who possess an almost angelic intelligence.
The quintessential case is St. Thomas, who is even called the "angelic doctor." At the other end, I read somewhere that the creators of the Simpsons modeled Homer after canine psychology, always asking "what would a dog do in this situation?"
Sometimes I feel as if I'm thinking like an angel (when I'm not thinking like a dog), so it can't be that uncommon. Probably most everyone does it at times. In his God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy, Sheen asks "what is the highest perfection of the human intelligence?"
It is a kind of intellectual perception and intuition by which it seizes essences.... This intuition is feeble..., but it is nevertheless the link between it and the next highest order of the intelligence, namely, the angelic.
He goes on to say that "All angelic knowledge is by intuition; it does not abstract, as the human mind does; it does not reason, as we do; it sees. Its whole intellectual life is an intuition."
For me, Schuon is another example of angelic intelligence. Moreover, when he points at something he is seeing, I could swear I see it too! Maybe not as clearly as he does, but through the usual fog & haze.
Of course, we are not angels, so the great danger is that our transcendent intuition can get mixed up with other levels and influences, from human to dog to snake. Moreover, a -- perhaps THE -- great temptation is to work inversely and project a pseudo-angelic intuition onto the world.
This is what ideology does, precisely, which is what makes it demonic. Ideological thinking is clearly an inverted and perverted form of angelic intelligence. Not for nothing does Voegelin regard all ideology as gnostic in form, irrespective of the specific substance.
Above I mentioned that I sometimes feel as if I'm thinking like an angel. But I have nothing on a Karl Marx, who imagined he was seeing into the essence of all history and mankind! That was most certainly angelic, bearing in mind that demons are angels too.
Let's describe the angelic dimension in a little more detail. First of all, it is the order between man and God -- just as there exists an order between man and biology, or between biology and matter. "Each angel transmits to the angel immediately inferior the knowledge which it receives from above." However, -- and this is key --
It does not transmit this illumination in its fullness and perfection, but according to the capacity of the lower intelligence, just as a learned scientist does not transmit principles of science to his intellectual inferiors without examples.
So, we can apprehend the angelic, but always through a more or less darkened glass. Which is one of the reasons why a big part of the spiritual life comes down to cleaning windows. Nevertheless, the clearest window is still a window and not a door. The Door is another martyr.
According to the capacity of the lower intelligence. This is why, no matter how angelic my pronouncements, our trolls can't help understanding them in the form of their own limited intelligence. It's not my fault; rather, it's just that what I am conveying clashes with some crystalized and internalized demonic ideology.
Which I myself well remember! I know exactly what it feels like when truth crashes against my recalcitrant arrogance, stupidity, and contemptuousness. I am by no means excluding myself from the game.
No creature, however perfect, by the mere fact of its inherent imperfection, can fill the gap between itself and God.
Now, toss in the acquired imperfection of our fallenness, and you've got an endless funferall and ruseinaction! Or divine comedy. For the cosmos "is not a juxtaposition of indifferently related" strands and what-have-yous, but "a harmonious crescendo of perfections from the lowest minerals up to God -- a hymn to the Creator."
It just sings a little off key sometimes. Nevertheless, "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" until it reaches us, of all people.
It becomes feebler as it grows in distance from its source, just as the rays of the sun become enfeebled as they are removed further from their source.
The same goes triple for the light of truth, beauty, and goodness.
I can't end this post without a little bit of Orwellian insultainment. I was struck at how prescient he was in his description of Newspeak -- which in our day is Newspeak. Our liberal media (singular, and for good reason!) is indeed the Ministry of Truth, AKA Minitrue, the purpose of which is "to make all other modes of thought impossible." It "was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought."
Mission accomplished. Paraphrasing Sr. Dávila: A vocabulary of ten words is enough for the leftist to explain history.
One thing Orwell got wrong was the Two Minutes Hate. With CNN and MSNBC and all the rest, it's a 24 Hour Hate -- which makes one wonder what they'll do without Emannuel Trumpstein to be responsible for everything that is wrong in the world.
I wouldn't worry -- one way or another, the Enemy of the People isn't going anywhere, for he is the Primal Traitor, the Defiler of our Purity, the Perennial Saboteur under the protection of Foreign Paymasters. He doesn't need the left, but the left can't go a day without him.
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