Well, I think we've identified the fly in the ointment of being: language.
Me? I love language, nor would I ever take it for granted. It is such a luminous miracle, that with every post I can't wait to inflict it upon my unwary readers.
Wait a second. A voice is coming into my head. It appears to be the far off Voice of Language itself, saying:
Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.
I am being reminded that even words about God aren't God. That's bibliolatry. But looked at from another angle, language is not not God either, or God couldn't have just told us what he did!
This touches on the eternal mystery of immanence-transcendence, in that God is immanent because transcendent. In a flatland cosmos there can be neither Creator above nor creation below, and certainly nothing in-threetween. Unless one is just plain careless, the world itself proves the existence of God. God is necessary. We are contingent.
Nevertheless, even in our contingency we necessarily partake of a bit of necessity. This is what it means to be in the image and likeness of the Creator. Because of this principle, an atheist could not possibly exist in a godless universe; if God exists, only the atheist can not know it.
Before diving more deeply into this vertical instant, are there any other chestnuts we can yoink from the flames of The Infernal Library?
Infernal library. Which brings to mind the left's impulse to throw our civilizational library into the inferno: for example, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and now a book that hatefully suggests it might not be such a good idea to pump up children with hormones to indulge their gender confusion.
Come to think of it, Big Tech is rapidly showing itself to be a virtual inferno of book burning. The light it produces is brightest just before things go totally dark.
What is the problem with language, whether digital or analog? Is it problematic in itself, or only when misused?
Surely the latter: as always, corruption of the best is the worst. Everyone on our side of the aisle knows there is a profound difference between, say, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Dre. But how? By virtue of what principle?
Well, there are a couple of sub-principles between the Principle itself and the principle of language. What are they, and in what order?
The Infernal Library hints at the nature of the problem:
I was struck by the fact that many dictators begin their careers as writers, which probably goes a long way toward explaining their megalomaniac conviction in the awesome significance of their own thoughts.
Man doesn't just have language, be has an imagination, and the imagination is infinite. Which isn't necessarily a problem. Problems arise when language + imagination are superimposed on the world; or, more to the point, when one begins in the head rather than with the world.
The world comes first. Indeed, in many ways this goes to the nature of the first world in which we live, which, not coincidentally, has its roots in Christian metaphysics. Say what you want about the world, but the world's objects will object when your words don't conform to them.
I remember the exact moment I flipped from Kant back to reality: it was while reading chapter one of Stanley Jaki's Means to Message. Must have been 2001 or 2002, but it took awhile for it to sink in. Years, not seconds.
At the time, I had no idea how counter-revolutionary was Jaki's principle; nor even that I had, through my extensive leftist indoctrination, assimilated its dysfunctional revolutionary counterpart in an unconscious manner. No one told me explicitly: reality begins in your head! And yet, I implicitly believed this Kantesian nonsense.
Here is Jaki's antidote, like a cold and bracing slap in the face that awakens one from a metaphysical coma:
philosophy and science depend on a means, an object, some physical reality, which even spoken words are, as the carrier of their message....
The first step should be the registering of objects, or else the philosopher will be guilty of a sleight of hand, however sophisticated. He will have to bring through the back door the very objects the use of which his starting point failed to justify.
His starting point failed to justify. Professor Gödel, call your office!
If objects are not presented as the primary datum, some other factors will expropriate that role.
Factors such as, oh, desire, wish, power, will, ideology, etc. The initial revolutionary move is absolutely crucial, and allows all the other lunacy to enter. Is this what is embodied and conveyed in the metamythical structure of Geneses 3? What do you think?!
Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment (NGD).
9 comments:
I was just watching some of the testimony by Dorsey & Zuckerberg. Sméagol & Gollum.
Dorkness visible.
I can't bear to look at Zuckerberg, his face is creepy. Gollum indeed.
No one told me explicitly: reality begins in your head! And yet, I implicitly believed this Kantesian nonsense.
Thus we have a generation of pretty young coeds who go off to college and come out on the other side as almost unrecognizable, often monstrous caricatures of who they might otherwise have become.
God provides an anchor, not to mention a direction and compass, and yet, people just throw them overboard and expect to get somewhere. No wonder they're adrift.
It's not just that people expect to get somewhere, it's that they are so often trying as hard as possible to get someplace better than where God would lead them. As if such a place exists.
It's hard, sometimes, to do what's right. Even harder, from the standpoint of eternity, to do otherwise.
This post was a treat. I like the emphasis on starting with objects; this is wise. The material portion of the creation forms a very dense, very emphatic statement of God. I love stones and crystals, they are so holy and magnificent. Large stone formations such as mountain ranges are dimly conscient entities.
Now all of the non-material essential portions of creation, such as love, are quite important too but it is best to form one's basis in material objects, and in this way one is anchored.
I don't think Kant was nonsense, just not the full picture. One should not downplay the reality inside of the head and the non-material areas of cosmos. They are a thing.
Balance. Middle of the road. Gray areas. Mixtures. These should be the mantra for all.
Aphorism tend to put forth absolute assertions just begging to be shattered. Any aphorism is guaranteed to be a false statement because of this. Always and never are words to be looked upon with suspicion.
Julie wrote:
I can't bear to look at Zuckerberg, his face is creepy. Gollum indeed.
No one told me explicitly: reality begins in your head! And yet, I implicitly believed this Kantesian nonsense.
Thus we have a generation of pretty young coeds who go off to college and come out on the other side as almost unrecognizable, often monstrous caricatures of who they might otherwise have become.
-I can't believe you you fully mean this, as you are a known solid Christian. Do you not love all as does God? I think so. I do think you are trying to cheer and encourage your eccentric friend Robert. But don't dirty yourself to that aim, not worth it.
-Electric Orgasm Wand Tucked Under the Bed
No surprise: Surprise: The "Smartest" People Are Actually Painfully Stupid: "the very 'smartest' people — the ones with the fanciest degrees and the fanciest professorships at the fanciest universities — are actually painfully stupid."
Of course they are the stupidest -- or certainly the wrongest -- since it is precisely their intelligence that allows them to be wrong on such a grandiose scale. The village atheist, for example, is merely wrong, but Richard Dawkins is colossally so.
Aphorisms:
--There are men who visit their intelligence, and others who dwell in theirs.
--Intelligence by itself possesses nothing but rebellious slaves.
--A high I.Q. is indicative of distinguished mediocrity.
--Anyone can learn what it is possible to know, but knowing it intelligently is within the reach of few.
Language is power. Control the language, and you control all.
Hello, I am your ruling elitist, brown, intelligent, high-tech, woke, diverse, a few tasteful piercings and tattoos, good hair, Apple watch-
So, our faction now has command of English. We have taken control of the means of production, and the superstructures of government, commerce, education and religion.
Where does that leave you? Ask yourself, if I can't beat 'em should I join 'em?
You can get courses on basic code-writing from your JC, never too late to start.
Scientists were once open to the possibility that their five limited senses were, limited.
Plus that the universe is a very big, very small, and very sideways place. So back in that day, spiritual, higher dimensional, and other unsenseable unknowns could always be a possibility, without fretting about the unensibility.
But then something terrible happened. Secular materialism? Suddenly, if it isn't sensually provable, then who cares because there probably isn't any money in it. And so ever since, unexplainable phenomena gets called stuff like "dark" and "spooky". Like I'm gonna get really scared.
Being scientifically uneducated, but having a modicum of common sense, I know that dark matter will turn out to be all the flotsam and jetsam floating unlit between the stars. I did after all, discover that supermassive black holes are at the core of every structured galaxy. It started in my basement bong room with some most excellent thai weed. My friends weren't scientists either, but our little rumor traveled and spread until the effects of these giants could be 'seen' by astronomers, after they'd gotten some serious grant coin.
Standing on the shoulders of stoned giants, they are.
But we determined that dark energy and quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) are spiritually based. Roger Waters wasn't lying. And neither was Neal Peart. Science has lost much since Beyonce and Taylor Swift became popular, and my mother kicked me out.
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