Of Toilets and Tenure

As promised, this post will very likely end at the beginning, since we're short on that precious commodity known as time.  The subject is infinite, the window of uppertunity finite.  We can only lay a foundation. 

Or begin to, anyway.  Problem is, on this blog we never lay the foundation and then build the house, in that order. Rather, we do both at the same time, which is what gives it that edge-of-the-seat tension.  Will this make sense?  Keep reading to find out!

More generally, I'm not the kind of guy who starts with a plan and then executes it.  Come to think of it, I've never been that kind of guy with respect to anything in life, even Life Itself.  There is no plan. In case you haven't gnosissed.

For example, yesterday I went to the hardware store in search of a part for the toilet.  You'd think I'd know the name or number of the part, or would ask for help.  No.  Not that kind of guy.  

In my mind, a truly sincere and egoless quest will be fruitful, whether we are talking about philosophy or about a ballcock. Yes, it turns out the part had a name: ballcock.   Moreover, -- and this must be part of The Plan -- "The modern ballcock was invented by José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, a Mexican priest and scientist."       

Speaking of multispecialistas, in the previous post I made the pompous claim that Gagdad is a theologian, philosopher, and psychologist, in that order.  To be clear, the first two are avocations, while the last is only my vocation, i.e., how I hustle a buck.  Being that I'm not a professional, I have much more latitude in the avocations than I do the vocation.

Being an unprofessional philosopher is what helps me to ask so many critically important stupid questions.  Analogously, it is what makes unprofessional journalists so superior to the professionals. If the news is far too important a subject to be left to journalists, then God is... you know the rest. 

Besides, to amplify what Dávila says, while a diploma in philosophy is merely grotesque, a certified theologian is a liar and probably a thief.  Unless, of course, he is certified by God.  But a theologian who is certified only by man does not and cannot know what theology is.  He is a joke, or worse, a Deepak.

He doesn't know what theology is because one can only have logos of the theos on condition that the latter discloses the former to man, and in a manner which man can comprehend and assimilate.  How does infinitude communicate to finitude?   Well, for one thing, it takes one to know One; or better, it requires oneness to know and be one.  If thine eye be single...

Yes, we have two eyes, which redounds to stereoscopy.  In the absence of the latter we would be unaware of the dimension of depth.  To be sure, it would still be there. We just wouldn't register it.  True, our common sense (which I mean in the technical sense) would still disclose it to us, but it wouldn't have the same spontaneous presence we experience with our own two eyes.

In classical philosophy common sense refers to our immaterial ability to unify data from our diverse senses into a single perception.  It is what allows us to see the feathers and hear the chirping, and understand that a single bird is the source of each.  

The important point is that we do not "sense" the bird;  there is no knowledge at the level of the senses.  There is sight and there are sounds, but our minds bring them together. In short, perception is a level above sensation.  It is our first clue that this here is a vertical cosmos, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it short of denial, up to and including tenure.  

Here's how a professional theologian, philosopher, and psychologist describes it: 

In vision, only colors are sensed; in hearing, only sounds; in smells, only odors; in taste, only flavors; in touch, only body qualities. Common sense enables us to bring several or all of these proper sensibles together, and, by a single perceptual act, to recognize their simultaneous existence in one and the same object (Brennan).

Many of us can do this most of the time; most can do it some of the time;  some can't do it much of the time; and a few can scarcely do it at all.   I will avoid the temptation to make a cheap political insult. Yes, I am that magnanimous.

Here we touch on the large subject of "psychopathology," but this is an example of where psychology shades off into philosophy and theology, because this level of dysfunction is as much pneumapathology.  

"Psychology" would be a fine word, but it has of course been hijacked by tenured barbarians who deny the existence of the soul as such, and all this implies.  In other words, very much unlike your Gagdad, they pretend it is possible to speak coherently of  the mind while maintaining silence about, or even hostility to, its vertical source.

In short, they lack all common sense.  And that is all we have time for.