A Critique of Pure Criticism

To review where we left off: feminism necessarily tends to statist tyranny, since only something as powerful as the state can block and undo the consequences of biology and freedom, AKA reality.  If facts are stubborn things, reality is downright intransigent.  

It's our one hope, really: that leftism will never succeed because it cannot succeed.  Miracles are nice, but in our postmodern world there is insufficient appreciation for the miracle of reality: thank God for Real Things! (And vice versa.)

Which perhaps sounds like another throwaway line, but it's not. Rather, it goes to the very foundation of our metaphysical dispute, i.e., whether reality exists and the intellect may know it. Everything else is commentary. It's the first step to the first principle. Choose unwisely and it's the last step. 

I'm reading another book by Fulton Sheen, this one called Religion Without God, which picks up where the previous one -- God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy -- left off. Note that God and intelligence is what you call a pleonasm, since there can be no real intelligence in the absence of God as its ground and vector, alpha and omega. 

Which is why our world of postmodern ideology is so thoroughly anti-intellectual: not just in- or non- or pre-intellectual, but in absolute rebellion against the intellect. Why? Again, because the intellect is the mirror of the real, and reality is the perennial constraint on progressive dreams, fantasies, wishes, desires, and delusions.

One needn't even believe in "God" to understand conceptually what we're saying. One must, however, leave a "placeholder" for the Absolute -- an empty seat at one's innertable -- which will, if one is serious, be gradually filled with content. Eventually this will result in a tipping point and whoops, there's God, maybe a little late but always on time.

Which isn't really all that different from any other skill, say, music. One begins playing a musical instrument with the faith that music will eventually be reached and made present, so to speak.  Anyone who plays an instrument will recall the point at which one broke through to the other side -- the side from whence music comes -- and became a channel as opposed to a mere tool beating against its outer wall. 

It's like a fractal iteration of the transition from will to grace, bearing in mind that these two aren't actually opposed, rather, that grace is the perfection of nature.  Man's will isn't a line but a curve, or arc, or spiral -- ultimately a projectile from and to God. Just keep peddling, and soon enough you're riding upright on the tricycle.  

Here's a forbidden thought, especially for a clinical psychologist:

The proper therapeutic for bad living is clear thinking. We must supply the will with the right kind of projectiles, and trace for it the proper trajectory, for the will, by its nature, is inspired by the intellect.

If the will is not inspired by the intellect, then it will be spired by something that runs counter to the intellect -- AKA bad ideas, which, when systematized, become worse ideology -- or by something lower than intellect, AKA the untutored will.  

Which is why so many human beings are engines with no steering wheel. As Sheen says, "our knowledge and our love should be harmonious," not unlike the Trinity itsoph, "in which Knowledge and Love are in harmonious balance -- the Son and the Spirit being equal." 

But not equivalent, or what's the point? Back to Freedom and Feminism: male and female are likewise equal but  obviously not equivalent. And vive la différence. To which the left responds: No, kill it! Preferably before it reproduces!

Harmony, balance, and proportion. Or just a little perspective, please:

In the normal order of things there is a balance between the transcendent and the immanent, for all life is an equilibrium between the forces of within and the forces of without.

We know all about the forces of without, e.g., gravity, electricity, magnetism. But what the heck are the Forces of Within?  Objectively speaking?  

Now that is a large subject. Come to think of it, in the absence of this subject, there is no large or small, significant or insignificant, meaningful or meaningless, etc.  Truly, it is the biggest of bangs, at least on our side of the rug.

Which is why the world is so small to the ideologue.  One of the purposes of ideology is to cut the world down to size and make it -- and us! -- manageable.  This is why it requires a vocabulary of about a dozen words to be a progressive activist, the most important being "you have" and "I want."  

Oof. I need to stop this reverie in midsdream. To be continued....