From, To, and Away from Truth

I mentioned that I'd recently reread a book called Thomistic Psychology, by Robert Brennan, which I first read almost two years ago, just after the curtains opened on Lockdown Theatre. It seems like last week, and I mean that literally. 

The book made a big impression on me at the time, and has again this time. It makes me wish I could have run into it during grad school, but what are the chances? 

None whatsoever. I would have been much more inclined to investigate, say, "archetypal astrology," or the Harmonic Convergence, than the superstitious musings of some medieval monk. 

Like any good progressive, I thought I could discern truth by the calendar. And like any ambitious young wannabe published, I knew that this year's model was the best, or at least conferred the most status. 

So, there is no way in the world I would have had the slightest interest in "Catholic psychology." Only now can I see that it's just psychology, full stop, and that there are gaping holes -- not to mention no floor and an arbitrary ceiling -- in what I had taken to be psychology. 

Yes, you could say that in the larger scheme of things I am indeed a "doctor" of "psychology." Or used to be, anyway.  

It could have turned out otherwise -- unless contingency and free will are illusions, and the current Bob was a cosmic inevitability. 

But these two -- contingency & free will -- are literally as self-evident as any other primordial categories of experience, such as objects, consciousness, and desire. Some people get their kicks pretending to deny these, but no one can actually live his life as if accidents and choices are but illusions, objects are ideas, and consciousness is just biological noise.

Note that it's ideological scientism that denies free will, while it is religious predestinarians who are apt to deny contingency. I won't argue with the latter, since there is such a thing as a useful piety -- a "saving illusion," or what in Buddhism is called upaya, i.e., skillful means. 

The average man is... average. Or, in our time, perhaps a little below average. 

Okay, way below.

It wasn't always this way, but there are real human costs to television, journalism, atheism, and mass higher education, the latter being neither elevated nor education, just ideological indoctrination for the sake of the ruling class. Ignoring the indoctrination disqualifies one for membership in the ruling class, but at least it renders us unfit to be ruled by them, so there's that.

Time out for aphorisms while this post decides where it wishes to go, if anywhere:

On the discipline of psychology: In the social sciences, not knowing how to express oneself skillfully is sometimes enough to found a school of thought. Illustrious names from the past pop into my mind, such as Lacan, Foucault, R.D. Laing... 

On contingency: Chance is sometimes an artist; deliberate will never is.

On free will: Necessity and freedom are not symmetrical concepts; in fact, if I affirm necessity, I deny any freedom, but if I affirm freedom, I do not deny any necessity.

On the Woke: The perfect conformist of our time is the ideologue of the left.

On scientism: One of the worst intellectual disasters is the appropriation by mediocre intelligences of the concepts and vocabulary of science. (Like FJB, they listen to the the science!) 

On our bureaucratic masters: In the end a bureaucracy always turns out to cost the people more than an upper class. (So let's hand them $5 trillion more to Build a Better Bureaucracy!)  

Now, one is always arguing either to or from first principles. 

Except when one is actively running away from principle. Therefore, it would seem that we can argue toward truth, from truth, or away from truth. I suppose we can also deny truth altogether and thereby pretend to convert a truly vicious habit into a virtue -- to rebrand adolescent destruction deconstruction.  

We could visualize it thus:

From principle: O --> (k)

To principle: (k) --> O

Away from principle: O --> (-k)

No principle: Ø --> (-k)

The third is always present in some form or fashion in what we call "mental illness" (e.g., denial, repression, projection), while the fourth is more of a spiritual illness; it is frankly diabolical, or at least one of those cosmic interstices where the evil one is free to exert influence on the unprincipled. Such persons aren't even intellectually dishonest, since honesty presupposes the existence of truth.

From, To, and Away from Truth

I mentioned that I'd recently reread a book called Thomistic Psychology, by Robert Brennan, which I first read almost two years ago, just after the curtains opened on Lockdown Theatre. It seems like last week, and I mean that literally. 

The book made a big impression on me at the time, and has again this time. It makes me wish I could have run into it during grad school, but what are the chances? 

None whatsoever. I would have been much more inclined to investigate, say, "archetypal astrology," or the Harmonic Convergence, than the superstitious musings of some medieval monk. 

Like any good progressive, I thought I could discern truth by the calendar. And like any ambitious young wannabe published, I knew that this year's model was the best, or at least conferred the most status. 

So, there is no way in the world I would have had the slightest interest in "Catholic psychology." Only now can I see that it's just psychology, full stop, and that there are gaping holes -- not to mention no floor and an arbitrary ceiling -- in what I had taken to be psychology. 

Yes, you could say that in the larger scheme of things I am indeed a "doctor" of "psychology." Or used to be, anyway.  

It could have turned out otherwise -- unless contingency and free will are illusions, and the current Bob was a cosmic inevitability. 

But these two -- contingency & free will -- are literally as self-evident as any other primordial categories of experience, such as objects, consciousness, and desire. Some people get their kicks pretending to deny these, but no one can actually live his life as if accidents and choices are but illusions, objects are ideas, and consciousness is just biological noise.

Note that it's ideological scientism that denies free will, while it is religious predestinarians who are apt to deny contingency. I won't argue with the latter, since there is such a thing as a useful piety -- a "saving illusion," or what in Buddhism is called upaya, i.e., skillful means. 

The average man is... average. Or, in our time, perhaps a little below average. 

Okay, way below.

It wasn't always this way, but there are real human costs to television, journalism, atheism, and mass higher education, the latter being neither elevated nor education, just ideological indoctrination for the sake of the ruling class. Ignoring the indoctrination disqualifies one for membership in the ruling class, but at least it renders us unfit to be ruled by them, so there's that.

Time out for aphorisms while this post decides where it wishes to go, if anywhere:

On the discipline of psychology: In the social sciences, not knowing how to express oneself skillfully is sometimes enough to found a school of thought. Illustrious names from the past pop into my mind, such as Lacan, Foucault, R.D. Laing... 

On contingency: Chance is sometimes an artist; deliberate will never is.

On free will: Necessity and freedom are not symmetrical concepts; in fact, if I affirm necessity, I deny any freedom, but if I affirm freedom, I do not deny any necessity.

On the Woke: The perfect conformist of our time is the ideologue of the left.

On scientism: One of the worst intellectual disasters is the appropriation by mediocre intelligences of the concepts and vocabulary of science. (Like FJB, they listen to the the science!) 

On our bureaucratic masters: In the end a bureaucracy always turns out to cost the people more than an upper class. (So let's hand them $5 trillion more to Build a Better Bureaucracy!)  

Now, one is always arguing either to or from first principles. 

Except when one is actively running away from principle. Therefore, it would seem that we can argue toward truth, from truth, or away from truth. I suppose we can also deny truth altogether and thereby pretend to convert a truly vicious habit into a virtue -- to rebrand adolescent destruction deconstruction.  

We could visualize it thus:

From principle: O --> (k)

To principle: (k) --> O

Away from principle: O --> (-k)

No principle: Ø --> (-k)

The third is always present in some form or fashion in what we call "mental illness" (e.g., denial, repression, projection), while the fourth is more of a spiritual illness; it is frankly diabolical, or at least one of those cosmic interstices where the evil one is free to exert influence on the unprincipled. Such persons aren't even intellectually dishonest, since honesty presupposes the existence of truth.

Symbolic and Diabolic

Of course demons can't stand one another. What's the alternative? That they love each other? No, Demonville must be like the Hitler-Stalin pact, a relationship of pure expedience, and even then marred by paranoia and double-dealing. 

By the way, even if one is skeptical about the existence of demons, spooklating about their nature helps to further our understanding of what man must be like: angelic nature illuminates human nature, just as do material or divine nature.  

In other words, man can do things that neither physical nor living matter could ever do on their own terms. What is the principle of man, his sufficient reason? Obviously it cannot be reduced to biology or physics, unless we expand those two disciplines beyond their intrinsic limitations. 

Thus, we -- or materialists, rather -- may not know what this principle (of humanness) is, but we know it must exist, or we wouldn't be here. Or, we'd be here but wouldn't know it, since matter doesn't know anything.

Pretending otherwise is like trying to build a house out of feet and inches -- or worse, meters and centimeters -- or trying to fill your bank account with numbers. Numbers count wealth, they don't create it. Likewise, matter specifies man's form in time and space but it can't conjure a soul. Nothing comes from nothing, every time.

Speaking of which, an understanding of the angelic relationship to materiality helps to illuminate ours. That is, while man is a substantial union of matter and form, angels are pure form with no need of matter. And above that is God, who is both immaterial and formless. He cannot have a form, because this would be a limitation. Infinitude is like this blog: informal.

Yesterday we alluded to the fact that demonic friendships -- such as they are -- are "welded together by a common hatred of God and men." Here again, this helps to illuminate the human world. 

You will have no doubt noticed that conservatives hate because they love, while for leftists it is the other way around: their hatred is prior to the love. And while their movement opposes God and man, it all begins with a more general hatred of reality. If they resent human nature, for example, it is because it places sharp limits on their godlike desire to redefine and manipulate reality. 

We've all heard the crack that conservatives love people, it's mankind they can't abide, while progressives luv mankind, it's just people they hate. To be a conservative in America is to know that one is well and truly hated by a third or so of the population -- or two thirds in California, and 95% in academia. An esteemed dean at San Diego State University assures us that,

Just so we’re clear on the Right’s agenda – racism good, abortion bad, money good, women bad, capitalism good, sustainability bad, stupidity good, science bad, power good, equality bad, white people good, nonwhite people bad. Stench, indeed (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/is-there-a-distinction-between-the-academic-left-and-the-twitter-fever-swamp.php).

Conversely, we do not hate leftists in this way. Rather, we only detest their ideas and policies. For example, yesterday a leftist friend from down the street broke his pelvis, and our immediate response is to help him out in any way we can for the next couple of months. He's just deluded, not malign. 

He also happens to be a secular Jew, which raises the evergreen question of why such an intelligent group of people so disproportionately supports Democrats? 

Part of the answer is a historically understandable distrust and resentment of Christians. Today Christians are their greatest friends, whereas the left is filled with crude anti-Semites such as Omar, Obama, and Sharpton. 

Nevertheless, the progressive left abounds with conspiracy theories to explain away that inconvenient reality. Predictably, 80% of Orthodox Jews approved of President Trump, while 80% of secular Jews in the U.S. were victims of TDS.

Culture easily swamps mere intelligence, especially given the perverse pleasures of resentment, projection, and superiority. Asian-Americans will eventually come around -- meanwhile the beatings at the hands of Biden supporters will continue -- and Hispanics are well on their way, each trend alone catastrophic to the electoral prospects of the progressive hate-cult. 

Okay, I get it: you don't come here for the political BS. You come here for the spiritual BS. So let's get back to the remaining highlights of Angels and Demons before wrapping it up.

Demons communicate with each other, but very much in the manner of our news media; that is, they are the ultimate propagators of fake news:

the intention guiding the act of informing is always perverse; its purpose comes from the wicked design of the demon, who seeks to turn others away from God, whereas enlightenment is a communication of truth that aims to direct the beneficiary toward God.

Simple as. Watching the average news broadcast is a seminar not just in stupidity, but a kind of diabolical stupidity devoid of truth, beauty, or virtue. Darkness visible.

Oh, and it's not just me: "the demonic world as a society of intelligent, wicked beings" is "not without interest for political philosophy."

You don't say. Tell us more.

demonic society provides the theoretical model by which to speculate about the possibility of a society that rejects any reference to the objective moral good. 

But why speculate about abstract theoretical models when you can look at real world examples such as China or San Francisco?

Here's another helpful hint: the demons work to make "apparent goods gleam" (emphasis mine). 

Obviously, even progressives don't want bad things for themselves; they may be ignorant and crazy, but they're still self-interested. It's just that they transform evils -- e.g., sexual perversion, abortion, tribalism, racism -- into goods, and goods -- e.g., fossil fuels, limited government, free speech, self-defense -- into evils.

I'll leave off with a footnote on p. 27 that I think is pregnant with words, but blogviating them would veer into a vast new subject. Instead, I'll let you work out the implications on your own:

The term diabolos -- the divider, the one who opposes the "sym-bolos" that unites -- translates [to] Satan.

Symbolic and Diabolic

Of course demons can't stand one another. What's the alternative? That they love each other? No, Demonville must be like the Hitler-Stalin pact, a relationship of pure expedience, and even then marred by paranoia and double-dealing. 

By the way, even if one is skeptical about the existence of demons, spooklating about their nature helps to further our understanding of what man must be like: angelic nature illuminates human nature, just as do material or divine nature.  

In other words, man can do things that neither physical nor living matter could ever do on their own terms. What is the principle of man, his sufficient reason? Obviously it cannot be reduced to biology or physics, unless we expand those two disciplines beyond their intrinsic limitations. 

Thus, we -- or materialists, rather -- may not know what this principle (of humanness) is, but we know it must exist, or we wouldn't be here. Or, we'd be here but wouldn't know it, since matter doesn't know anything.

Pretending otherwise is like trying to build a house out of feet and inches -- or worse, meters and centimeters -- or trying to fill your bank account with numbers. Numbers count wealth, they don't create it. Likewise, matter specifies man's form in time and space but it can't conjure a soul. Nothing comes from nothing, every time.

Speaking of which, an understanding of the angelic relationship to materiality helps to illuminate ours. That is, while man is a substantial union of matter and form, angels are pure form with no need of matter. And above that is God, who is both immaterial and formless. He cannot have a form, because this would be a limitation. Infinitude is like this blog: informal.

Yesterday we alluded to the fact that demonic friendships -- such as they are -- are "welded together by a common hatred of God and men." Here again, this helps to illuminate the human world. 

You will have no doubt noticed that conservatives hate because they love, while for leftists it is the other way around: their hatred is prior to the love. And while their movement opposes God and man, it all begins with a more general hatred of reality. If they resent human nature, for example, it is because it places sharp limits on their godlike desire to redefine and manipulate reality. 

We've all heard the crack that conservatives love people, it's mankind they can't abide, while progressives luv mankind, it's just people they hate. To be a conservative in America is to know that one is well and truly hated by a third or so of the population -- or two thirds in California, and 95% in academia. An esteemed dean at San Diego State University assures us that,

Just so we’re clear on the Right’s agenda – racism good, abortion bad, money good, women bad, capitalism good, sustainability bad, stupidity good, science bad, power good, equality bad, white people good, nonwhite people bad. Stench, indeed (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/is-there-a-distinction-between-the-academic-left-and-the-twitter-fever-swamp.php).

Conversely, we do not hate leftists in this way. Rather, we only detest their ideas and policies. For example, yesterday a leftist friend from down the street broke his pelvis, and our immediate response is to help him out in any way we can for the next couple of months. He's just deluded, not malign. 

He also happens to be a secular Jew, which raises the evergreen question of why such an intelligent group of people so disproportionately supports Democrats? 

Part of the answer is a historically understandable distrust and resentment of Christians. Today Christians are their greatest friends, whereas the left is filled with crude anti-Semites such as Omar, Obama, and Sharpton. 

Nevertheless, the progressive left abounds with conspiracy theories to explain away that inconvenient reality. Predictably, 80% of Orthodox Jews approved of President Trump, while 80% of secular Jews in the U.S. were victims of TDS.

Culture easily swamps mere intelligence, especially given the perverse pleasures of resentment, projection, and superiority. Asian-Americans will eventually come around -- meanwhile the beatings at the hands of Biden supporters will continue -- and Hispanics are well on their way, each trend alone catastrophic to the electoral prospects of the progressive hate-cult. 

Okay, I get it: you don't come here for the political BS. You come here for the spiritual BS. So let's get back to the remaining highlights of Angels and Demons before wrapping it up.

Demons communicate with each other, but very much in the manner of our news media; that is, they are the ultimate propagators of fake news:

the intention guiding the act of informing is always perverse; its purpose comes from the wicked design of the demon, who seeks to turn others away from God, whereas enlightenment is a communication of truth that aims to direct the beneficiary toward God.

Simple as. Watching the average news broadcast is a seminar not just in stupidity, but a kind of diabolical stupidity devoid of truth, beauty, or virtue. Darkness visible.

Oh, and it's not just me: "the demonic world as a society of intelligent, wicked beings" is "not without interest for political philosophy."

You don't say. Tell us more.

demonic society provides the theoretical model by which to speculate about the possibility of a society that rejects any reference to the objective moral good. 

But why speculate about abstract theoretical models when you can look at real world examples such as China or San Francisco?

Here's another helpful hint: the demons work to make "apparent goods gleam" (emphasis mine). 

Obviously, even progressives don't want bad things for themselves; they may be ignorant and crazy, but they're still self-interested. It's just that they transform evils -- e.g., sexual perversion, abortion, tribalism, racism -- into goods, and goods -- e.g., fossil fuels, limited government, free speech, self-defense -- into evils.

I'll leave off with a footnote on p. 27 that I think is pregnant with words, but blogviating them would veer into a vast new subject. Instead, I'll let you work out the implications on your own:

The term diabolos -- the divider, the one who opposes the "sym-bolos" that unites -- translates [to] Satan.

Scatterbrains and Nonlocal Pests

Now that I'm a full-time gentleman loaffeur and vertical hedonist, the reading tends to run way ahead of the blogging. By the time I get around to writing about this or that matter, the spirit has moved on to the next shiny squirrel. 

This subject of demons is a case in point. Two weeks ago I was babbling over with enthusiasm about naughty angels, while this week it's Maximus the Confessor and Mexican garage rock (https://open.spotify.com/album/2IgygCCKlFvGdG6FGQwDmg).

Who can keep up with such impulsive zigs of zagsy?

As you know, the blog is one man's struggle to somehow keep it together, but it's an ongrowing challenge, and where does Artie Shaw fit in? Oddly enough he does fit in, and not just because he lived a few exurban blocks away in Newbury Park. Rather, he was a true oddball, and not just because he divorced Ava Gardner. He also divorced Lana Turner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw#Personal_life).

Now, what do demons do all day with their idle hands? According to Bonino, they basically oppose man and God, and in particular, the former's journey to the latter.

Or, we can begin the analysis at our end, and ask: just what is it that interferes with the vertical adventure? Clearly, something gets in the way, or this would be heaven. Why can't a man even pretend to get along with Ava Gardner? 

There's a kind of jihad going on, and like the more familiar one, it's an unholy war, or a war on holiness. Again, this is just an empirical fact, the question being, who or what's behind it? Is it organized? And who's in charge?

It reminds me of when you see the seeming coordination of the propagaslight media mob. Last week they were all using the phrase viral blizzard. Who put this cliché in their ears, and why did they all repeat it? 

I mean, at least come up with your own way of expressing it, like viralanch or scarenado. It's the same with insurrection. What happened to mostly peaceful protest?

Anyway, the hostile forces. I first began taking these forces seriously in 1995 or so, because that's when I began opposing them. Little did I know that embarking on the Spiritual Path is a formal declaration of war against them -- whoever or whatever they are.  

Back then I would have regarded Christian ideas about Satan as naive and superstitious. But Vedantic ideas about demonic hostile forces? Sophisticated. 

Here's a passage from an old favorite, The Adventure of Consciousness, nor do I necessarily disagree with the description: The adverse forces

are highly conscious forces whose sole aim, apparently, is to discourage the seeker and divert him from the path he has chosen.... With remarkable skill, they take apart the whole system of our quest to prove that we are deluding ourselves and that our efforts will come to nothing....

These nonlocal pests  

have a thousand and one ways of attacking us -- for it is indeed an attack -- and the more determined we are, the more relentless they become....

But if you stay in the matrix, they mostly leave you alone:

As long as we march with the common herd, life is relatively easy.... however, as soon as we want to get out of the rut, a thousand forces rise up, suddenly very interested that we behave "like everybody else"; we discover how well organized the imprisonment is.

Interesting, the very same reality was described in my thoroughly secular training in psychoanalysis, but in that religion it's called resistance. That is, the moment the patient tries to improve, resistance gets in the way. 

But who or what are the resistors? Here's one definition, from A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought:

Resistance is an attack upon the capacity of the mind to think and know (the epistemophilic instinct) which Bion referred to as "attacks on linking."

Attacks on linking? Is this what demons do?

Of course. It's even in the name, for diabolos is the scatterer, is he not?

Back to Bonino: while the intention is to sow division -- both extra- and intrapsychic -- the demonic world "is not sheer chaos. It exhibits a certain form of unity and social cohesion." For

Just as evil is a parasite of the good, anarchy is a parasite of order. If anarchy were to triumph, it would immediately self-destruct. Among the demons, therefore, a certain order remains that continues, at the very heart of their chaos, to give testimony to the divine wisdom and goodness.

So, demons are a left-handed compliment to God; we don't say complement, because that implies a Manichaean dualism.

Now, here is something I did not know, but the moment you hear it, you say of course: despite their "order," it turns out that "the demons detest one another" as much as, say, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They agree on the ends -- destruction and regression -- but theirs is "a confederation welded together by a common hatred of God and men." 

Same with the demons. 

Scatterbrains and Nonlocal Pests

Now that I'm a full-time gentleman loaffeur and vertical hedonist, the reading tends to run way ahead of the blogging. By the time I get around to writing about this or that matter, the spirit has moved on to the next shiny squirrel. 

This subject of demons is a case in point. Two weeks ago I was babbling over with enthusiasm about naughty angels, while this week it's Maximus the Confessor and Mexican garage rock (https://open.spotify.com/album/2IgygCCKlFvGdG6FGQwDmg).

Who can keep up with such impulsive zigs of zagsy?

As you know, the blog is one man's struggle to somehow keep it together, but it's an ongrowing challenge, and where does Artie Shaw fit in? Oddly enough he does fit in, and not just because he lived a few exurban blocks away in Newbury Park. Rather, he was a true oddball, and not just because he divorced Ava Gardner. He also divorced Lana Turner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw#Personal_life).

Now, what do demons do all day with their idle hands? According to Bonino, they basically oppose man and God, and in particular, the former's journey to the latter.

Or, we can begin the analysis at our end, and ask: just what is it that interferes with the vertical adventure? Clearly, something gets in the way, or this would be heaven. Why can't a man even pretend to get along with Ava Gardner? 

There's a kind of jihad going on, and like the more familiar one, it's an unholy war, or a war on holiness. Again, this is just an empirical fact, the question being, who or what's behind it? Is it organized? And who's in charge?

It reminds me of when you see the seeming coordination of the propagaslight media mob. Last week they were all using the phrase viral blizzard. Who put this cliché in their ears, and why did they all repeat it? 

I mean, at least come up with your own way of expressing it, like viralanch or scarenado. It's the same with insurrection. What happened to mostly peaceful protest?

Anyway, the hostile forces. I first began taking these forces seriously in 1995 or so, because that's when I began opposing them. Little did I know that embarking on the Spiritual Path is a formal declaration of war against them -- whoever or whatever they are.  

Back then I would have regarded Christian ideas about Satan as naive and superstitious. But Vedantic ideas about demonic hostile forces? Sophisticated. 

Here's a passage from an old favorite, The Adventure of Consciousness, nor do I necessarily disagree with the description: The adverse forces

are highly conscious forces whose sole aim, apparently, is to discourage the seeker and divert him from the path he has chosen.... With remarkable skill, they take apart the whole system of our quest to prove that we are deluding ourselves and that our efforts will come to nothing....

These nonlocal pests  

have a thousand and one ways of attacking us -- for it is indeed an attack -- and the more determined we are, the more relentless they become....

But if you stay in the matrix, they mostly leave you alone:

As long as we march with the common herd, life is relatively easy.... however, as soon as we want to get out of the rut, a thousand forces rise up, suddenly very interested that we behave "like everybody else"; we discover how well organized the imprisonment is.

Interesting, the very same reality was described in my thoroughly secular training in psychoanalysis, but in that religion it's called resistance. That is, the moment the patient tries to improve, resistance gets in the way. 

But who or what are the resistors? Here's one definition, from A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought:

Resistance is an attack upon the capacity of the mind to think and know (the epistemophilic instinct) which Bion referred to as "attacks on linking."

Attacks on linking? Is this what demons do?

Of course. It's even in the name, for diabolos is the scatterer, is he not?

Back to Bonino: while the intention is to sow division -- both extra- and intrapsychic -- the demonic world "is not sheer chaos. It exhibits a certain form of unity and social cohesion." For

Just as evil is a parasite of the good, anarchy is a parasite of order. If anarchy were to triumph, it would immediately self-destruct. Among the demons, therefore, a certain order remains that continues, at the very heart of their chaos, to give testimony to the divine wisdom and goodness.

So, demons are a left-handed compliment to God; we don't say complement, because that implies a Manichaean dualism.

Now, here is something I did not know, but the moment you hear it, you say of course: despite their "order," it turns out that "the demons detest one another" as much as, say, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They agree on the ends -- destruction and regression -- but theirs is "a confederation welded together by a common hatred of God and men." 

Same with the demons. 

Reality = Reality + The Perception Thereof

I'm under a hard out this morning, time only for some psychic doodling on a virtual napkin, or on back of the envelope we're always pushing around. 

Here's a wild thought:

Our intellects do not create the world they know. Rather, it is the other way about: the world of reality is the cause of our knowledge of it (Brennan).

Or, perhaps you attended college and learned the insight-out kantrary thesis: that reality is all in your head.

But that makes no sense, for how can the greater stupidity come from the lesser stupidity?   

Brennan's characterization is either true or it is false; but if the latter, then we could never know it, since we couldn't exit the world of our creation. Perception would indeed be reality, meaning that all human beings would immediately be granted tenure. But if everyone has a PhD in Reality Studies, then no one does, so this whole line of thought is absurd.   

If we're going to be strictly logical. 

Speaking of which, sometimes logic itself is illogical, recalling Chesterton's gag about the madman who loses everything but his reason.   

Such a man would no longer be a human being -- a person -- in that persons have two additional coequal branches of contact with reality, the realities of Goodness and Beauty; plus we are open systems, both horizontally and vertically, not to mention intersubjective and trinitarian.  

Clearly, there is more to reality than that which is accessible to idiot savants such as Stephen Hawking, who ultimately knew everything about nothing. Granted, he was better at math than I am. But so is everybody. What can a mathematical pinhead really tell us about a mythsemantical punhead? That's a rhetardical question.

At any rate, for a hell roost of heathens, reducing persons to the logic they deploy is like trying to enclose the ocean within the drop. Yes, the latter can be done, but not with your wideawake and cutandry logic!  

I had a dream. In fact, I'm having one now, more on which later. 

I spent the other day immersing myself in the dreamworld of René Guénon, who is logic on steroids. At first his metaphysics of the Infinite makes a great deal of sense, until you realize that that ultimate reality cannot be enclosed in Aristotelian logic, since the ultimate category is Person, not syllogism.

Who said? Tell them I AM said so!

There is indeed a logic within this trinitarian personhood, but it isn't the cold and unforgiving logic of your 9th grade algebra teacher, nor the IRS, rather, the bi-logic of Ignacio Matte Blanco, which is the subject of yet another dream. 

Let's just stipulate that it's a party up there and I hope it never stops, and that considered in this festive atmansphere, Guénon is a bit of a buzzkill, even though he makes some valid points. I don't have time to belaborate. Let's just say that people are logical, not vice versa. 

(Primary source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1855752026?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1855752026; secondary source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1853434388?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1853434388)   

Let's start over. By which I mean, let's go back 400 years or so, to before we were Enlightened by the likes of Descartes and Voltaire. Look, everybody makes mistakes. It's not too late to admit we made a wrong turn. Indeed, acknowledging that we're lost in history is the first step to being found. Or are we too proud to ask for vertical directions?

That's a loaded question for those who deny the vertical at the outset -- or who enter verticality in order to close it for the restavus. 

As it so happens, as it so often does, I'm reading a book that goes to just this question, called The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, by Rémi Brague. What is the difference between the universe and the experience of the universe? 

That's actually a good question, because the universe -- the totality and unicity of things -- must somehow encompass both the objective universe and its subjective experience, no? And can subjectivity be enclosed in logic or math or physics? 

We'll wait.

I'm only up to p. 36, so don't hold me to it, but I suspect Brague's point is that Enlightenment thought has painted us into a coroner, and that in order for the cosmos to reopen for isness we'll need to tyrone back the hands of time to a more holistic and soulful understanding.

According to Professor Bæchphlap, 

Brague shows how modernity stripped the universe of its sacred and philosophical wisdom, transforming it into an ethically indifferent entity that non longer serves as a model for human morality.

This blog is allabout resurrecting our first experience of the cosmos, not by going back -- which nocando anyway -- but by forging ahead and bringing the Enlightenment with us, to a post-postmodern vision of the world. Yes, we are the cutting edge of the cosmos! 

Do you ever get the feeling that this blog has devolved into an annoying metaphysical comedy site? Or has it always been this way? Either way, I expect it to get worse. 

Reality = Reality + The Perception Thereof

I'm under a hard out this morning, time only for some psychic doodling on a virtual napkin, or on back of the envelope we're always pushing around. 

Here's a wild thought:

Our intellects do not create the world they know. Rather, it is the other way about: the world of reality is the cause of our knowledge of it (Brennan).

Or, perhaps you attended college and learned the insight-out kantrary thesis: that reality is all in your head.

But that makes no sense, for how can the greater stupidity come from the lesser stupidity?   

Brennan's characterization is either true or it is false; but if the latter, then we could never know it, since we couldn't exit the world of our creation. Perception would indeed be reality, meaning that all human beings would immediately be granted tenure. But if everyone has a PhD in Reality Studies, then no one does, so this whole line of thought is absurd.   

If we're going to be strictly logical. 

Speaking of which, sometimes logic itself is illogical, recalling Chesterton's gag about the madman who loses everything but his reason.   

Such a man would no longer be a human being -- a person -- in that persons have two additional coequal branches of contact with reality, the realities of Goodness and Beauty; plus we are open systems, both horizontally and vertically, not to mention intersubjective and trinitarian.  

Clearly, there is more to reality than that which is accessible to idiot savants such as Stephen Hawking, who ultimately knew everything about nothing. Granted, he was better at math than I am. But so is everybody. What can a mathematical pinhead really tell us about a mythsemantical punhead? That's a rhetardical question.

At any rate, for a hell roost of heathens, reducing persons to the logic they deploy is like trying to enclose the ocean within the drop. Yes, the latter can be done, but not with your wideawake and cutandry logic!  

I had a dream. In fact, I'm having one now, more on which later. 

I spent the other day immersing myself in the dreamworld of René Guénon, who is logic on steroids. At first his metaphysics of the Infinite makes a great deal of sense, until you realize that that ultimate reality cannot be enclosed in Aristotelian logic, since the ultimate category is Person, not syllogism.

Who said? Tell them I AM said so!

There is indeed a logic within this trinitarian personhood, but it isn't the cold and unforgiving logic of your 9th grade algebra teacher, nor the IRS, rather, the bi-logic of Ignacio Matte Blanco, which is the subject of yet another dream. 

Let's just stipulate that it's a party up there and I hope it never stops, and that considered in this festive atmansphere, Guénon is a bit of a buzzkill, even though he makes some valid points. I don't have time to belaborate. Let's just say that people are logical, not vice versa. 

(Primary source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1855752026?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1855752026; secondary source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1853434388?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1853434388)   

Let's start over. By which I mean, let's go back 400 years or so, to before we were Enlightened by the likes of Descartes and Voltaire. Look, everybody makes mistakes. It's not too late to admit we made a wrong turn. Indeed, acknowledging that we're lost in history is the first step to being found. Or are we too proud to ask for vertical directions?

That's a loaded question for those who deny the vertical at the outset -- or who enter verticality in order to close it for the restavus. 

As it so happens, as it so often does, I'm reading a book that goes to just this question, called The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, by Rémi Brague. What is the difference between the universe and the experience of the universe? 

That's actually a good question, because the universe -- the totality and unicity of things -- must somehow encompass both the objective universe and its subjective experience, no? And can subjectivity be enclosed in logic or math or physics? 

We'll wait.

I'm only up to p. 36, so don't hold me to it, but I suspect Brague's point is that Enlightenment thought has painted us into a coroner, and that in order for the cosmos to reopen for isness we'll need to tyrone back the hands of time to a more holistic and soulful understanding.

According to Professor Bæchphlap, 

Brague shows how modernity stripped the universe of its sacred and philosophical wisdom, transforming it into an ethically indifferent entity that non longer serves as a model for human morality.

This blog is allabout resurrecting our first experience of the cosmos, not by going back -- which nocando anyway -- but by forging ahead and bringing the Enlightenment with us, to a post-postmodern vision of the world. Yes, we are the cutting edge of the cosmos! 

Do you ever get the feeling that this blog has devolved into an annoying metaphysical comedy site? Or has it always been this way? Either way, I expect it to get worse. 

Satan's Greatest Hits

We know that criminals as a class -- luckily -- are significantly more stupid than the average human being. What about demons? After all, just how bright can a being be who abhors being?  

Or, could it be that we're making the elementary mistake of attributing to demons what is more razomably occamable to plain old low IQ? 

FJB, for example, is an idiot. Ah, but who is pulling his strings? More to the point, who is pulling theirs? Who's behind him, and what's behind them? How to explain Slow Joe's intelligent ventriloquists and slippery puppeteers? 

Hard to say, being that quite intelligent people are easily as susceptible to demonic influence as anyone else, especially given their typical hubris, for pride is always a point of entry for our vertical antagonists.

Almost by definition a liberal is someone smarter than you are. After all, what else qualifies them to run your life?  

True, they're also more virtuous than you are, but what fun is virtue signaling without the intellectual condescension? You rarely see one without the other, being that truth and goodness converge even in the inverted reality of the left. For as the Philosopher writes,

the intention of every man acting according to virtue is to follow the rule of reason, wherefore the intention of all the virtues is directed to the same end, so that all the virtues are connected together in the right reason of things to be done.... [T]he intention of the sinner is not directed to the point of straying from the path of reason (Thomas, emphases mine).

Oh. This is helpful. A few pages later he suggests -- after ruling out all the objections -- that "inordinate love of self is the cause of every sin." Which means that intelligence alone is only a sufficient cause, and requires the necessary cause of excessive self-regard.    

Let's look for some more hints about how the demons roll.

There is in fact a correspondence between a subject's cognitive power and the degree of universality of the species that he utilizes. The greater the intellectual power, the more rarified and universal are the angelic species utilized (Bonino).

"Species" is a term of art referring to the concept which the intellect abstracts from the data of the senses. 

Which suddenly reminds me of a very wisecrack by the Aphorist to the effect that The liberal mentality is an angelic visitor impervious to earthly experiences.

As usual, Dávila has nailed it, for the left is full of sweeping generalizations that perhaps make superficial sense until you realize they are wholly detached from the senses, AKA, from the real world. 

Examples abound from the low-haranguing fruits of the left, but here are some of their greatest hits:

In America, poverty is the main cause of crime.

Blacks (apart from their behavior) are disproportionately victimized by police violence. 

Women (because they are women) are subject to a "pay gap."

Intelligence tests do not reliably measure intelligence.

Printing too much money doesn't cause inflation.

Rent control doesn't cause housing shortages.

Minimum wage laws don't cause unemployment.

Celebrating sexual deviancy doesn't cause more of it.

There is empirical proof of manmade catastrophic climate change.

Defunding police will reduce crime. Just look!

Strict Gun control laws reduce crime.  Just look!

"White privilege" actually exists.

As does the "Patriarchy."

Not forgetting "homophobia," "transphobia," and soon, "pedophobia." 

All these illegal immigrants are obviously making California a better place to live. 

Electric cars prove that Milton Friedman was wrong about free lunches. 

That was a straight-up insurrection on January 6. 

Sure, Nancy Pelosi is normal.  

College makes you smarter. 

Biden won the 2020 election fair & square. 

This is a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.

Trump supporters are racists. 

Every one of these is a naughty angel, being that each is a generalization with no connection to the empirical world. Rather, they're just dead -- or undead -- viral concepts in search of minds to host in order to propagate themselves.

Satan's Greatest Hits

We know that criminals as a class -- luckily -- are significantly more stupid than the average human being. What about demons? After all, just how bright can a being be who abhors being?  

Or, could it be that we're making the elementary mistake of attributing to demons what is more razomably occamable to plain old low IQ? 

FJB, for example, is an idiot. Ah, but who is pulling his strings? More to the point, who is pulling theirs? Who's behind him, and what's behind them? How to explain Slow Joe's intelligent ventriloquists and slippery puppeteers? 

Hard to say, being that quite intelligent people are easily as susceptible to demonic influence as anyone else, especially given their typical hubris, for pride is always a point of entry for our vertical antagonists.

Almost by definition a liberal is someone smarter than you are. After all, what else qualifies them to run your life?  

True, they're also more virtuous than you are, but what fun is virtue signaling without the intellectual condescension? You rarely see one without the other, being that truth and goodness converge even in the inverted reality of the left. For as the Philosopher writes,

the intention of every man acting according to virtue is to follow the rule of reason, wherefore the intention of all the virtues is directed to the same end, so that all the virtues are connected together in the right reason of things to be done.... [T]he intention of the sinner is not directed to the point of straying from the path of reason (Thomas, emphases mine).

Oh. This is helpful. A few pages later he suggests -- after ruling out all the objections -- that "inordinate love of self is the cause of every sin." Which means that intelligence alone is only a sufficient cause, and requires the necessary cause of excessive self-regard.    

Let's look for some more hints about how the demons roll.

There is in fact a correspondence between a subject's cognitive power and the degree of universality of the species that he utilizes. The greater the intellectual power, the more rarified and universal are the angelic species utilized (Bonino).

"Species" is a term of art referring to the concept which the intellect abstracts from the data of the senses. 

Which suddenly reminds me of a very wisecrack by the Aphorist to the effect that The liberal mentality is an angelic visitor impervious to earthly experiences.

As usual, Dávila has nailed it, for the left is full of sweeping generalizations that perhaps make superficial sense until you realize they are wholly detached from the senses, AKA, from the real world. 

Examples abound from the low-haranguing fruits of the left, but here are some of their greatest hits:

In America, poverty is the main cause of crime.

Blacks (apart from their behavior) are disproportionately victimized by police violence. 

Women (because they are women) are subject to a "pay gap."

Intelligence tests do not reliably measure intelligence.

Printing too much money doesn't cause inflation.

Rent control doesn't cause housing shortages.

Minimum wage laws don't cause unemployment.

Celebrating sexual deviancy doesn't cause more of it.

There is empirical proof of manmade catastrophic climate change.

Defunding police will reduce crime. Just look!

Strict Gun control laws reduce crime.  Just look!

"White privilege" actually exists.

As does the "Patriarchy."

Not forgetting "homophobia," "transphobia," and soon, "pedophobia." 

All these illegal immigrants are obviously making California a better place to live. 

Electric cars prove that Milton Friedman was wrong about free lunches. 

That was a straight-up insurrection on January 6. 

Sure, Nancy Pelosi is normal.  

College makes you smarter. 

Biden won the 2020 election fair & square. 

This is a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.

Trump supporters are racists. 

Every one of these is a naughty angel, being that each is a generalization with no connection to the empirical world. Rather, they're just dead -- or undead -- viral concepts in search of minds to host in order to propagate themselves.

A Holly Folly Christmas

Early in the morning and not a creature is stirring except me. O, and the Heart of the World.

1:  Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born in many prisons. 

From the grilled windows of the senses each person looks out to the alien things which he will never be. 

[T]hey touch the invisible bars -- the cold glass  pane against which they hurl themselves like captive birds.

Even if his spirit could fly through the spaces of the world like a bird, he himself will never be this space, and the furrow which traces in the air vanishes immediately and leaves no lasting impression.

No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell.

The mere fact of existing as an individual constitutes renunciation. 

The limpid mirror has been shattered, the infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments.

In the One Ocean the waves rise and sink; body floats past body, figures and generations, century after century are all so much foam falling prostrate on the broad beach of eternity in a most tremendous obeisance. 

2:  Then it was that God created a Heart for himself and placed it at the center of the world. 

And so the Word came into the world. Eternal life selected for itself the abode of a human Heart.

How exposed God had made himself! What folly he committed!

The divine Ocean forced into the tiny wellspring of a human Heart!

Thus does this Heart hover between heaven and earth like the narrow passage in an hourglass, and incessantly the sand of grace trickles from the upper compartment down to the earthly bottom.

Everything that had been one becomes double, and everything double becomes one.

And the two oceans crash into one another in that Heart, like fire and water, and the eternal struggle between heaven and hell is decided within that narrow battlefield.

The circulation of love begins.

3: Reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore.

Insinuate! Now put down the apple and back away slowly, and nobody dies! 

But no body crosses the the phoenix line lest it be repossessed and amortized. 

Don't worry, it's just aphasia go through before the gnosis in your head becomes real.

O, too old, older than Abraham, younger than a babe's I AM.

Ascent you a Son, amen for a child's job! That's the New Man, we're just putting him on.

And Mamamaya! baby makes Trinity, so all the world's an allusion.

A Divine child, a godsend, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' Yes!

Blissfully floating before the fleeting flickering universe, stork naked in brahma daynight, worshiping in oneder in a wee cosmic womb with pew, it is finally...

Christmas! 

(Parts 1 & 2 from Balthasar's Heart of the World https://www.amazon.com/dp/0898700019/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=onecos-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=fd2e0b164c968a7a865f10a1e126c10d&creativeASIN=0898700019; no one foolish enough to take credit for part 3)

A Holly Folly Christmas

Early in the morning and not a creature is stirring except me. O, and the Heart of the World.

1:  Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born in many prisons. 

From the grilled windows of the senses each person looks out to the alien things which he will never be. 

[T]hey touch the invisible bars -- the cold glass  pane against which they hurl themselves like captive birds.

Even if his spirit could fly through the spaces of the world like a bird, he himself will never be this space, and the furrow which traces in the air vanishes immediately and leaves no lasting impression.

No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell.

The mere fact of existing as an individual constitutes renunciation. 

The limpid mirror has been shattered, the infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments.

In the One Ocean the waves rise and sink; body floats past body, figures and generations, century after century are all so much foam falling prostrate on the broad beach of eternity in a most tremendous obeisance. 

2:  Then it was that God created a Heart for himself and placed it at the center of the world. 

And so the Word came into the world. Eternal life selected for itself the abode of a human Heart.

How exposed God had made himself! What folly he committed!

The divine Ocean forced into the tiny wellspring of a human Heart!

Thus does this Heart hover between heaven and earth like the narrow passage in an hourglass, and incessantly the sand of grace trickles from the upper compartment down to the earthly bottom.

Everything that had been one becomes double, and everything double becomes one.

And the two oceans crash into one another in that Heart, like fire and water, and the eternal struggle between heaven and hell is decided within that narrow battlefield.

The circulation of love begins.

3: Reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore.

Insinuate! Now put down the apple and back away slowly, and nobody dies! 

But no body crosses the the phoenix line lest it be repossessed and amortized. 

Don't worry, it's just aphasia go through before the gnosis in your head becomes real.

O, too old, older than Abraham, younger than a babe's I AM.

Ascent you a Son, amen for a child's job! That's the New Man, we're just putting him on.

And Mamamaya! baby makes Trinity, so all the world's an allusion.

A Divine child, a godsend, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' Yes!

Blissfully floating before the fleeting flickering universe, stork naked in brahma daynight, worshiping in oneder in a wee cosmic womb with pew, it is finally...

Christmas! 

(Parts 1 & 2 from Balthasar's Heart of the World https://www.amazon.com/dp/0898700019/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=onecos-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=fd2e0b164c968a7a865f10a1e126c10d&creativeASIN=0898700019; no one foolish enough to take credit for part 3)

Progressivism: Chicken Soup for the Soulless

If nothing else, the principle of Original Sin prepares us to consider man's proposals and solutions (especially to the problem of man!) with great skepticism -- or without the childish naivete of the tenured snob, the woke mob, the media blob, etc. 

For we don't just predict the failure of the left, we guarantee it.    

The doctrine of original sin, which can be established on purely philosophic grounds, has an immediate bearing on the study of human nature.... [T]he fact is that no human being exhibits the excellencies which we theoretically attribute to human nature (Brennan).

On paper, man is a good idea, even very good -- if I understand correctly, a Swiss watch. Considering him from the cosmic angle, he potentially spans the entire creation, from corporeal matter to subatomic physics at one end, to philosophy, ontology, metaphysics, and mystical union at the other. 

And yet, we still screw up, every time -- at least on a collective basis; the existence of saints only rubs it in. Suffice it to say, there is no Group Saint. 

The perennial question is, why is man such a chronic underachiever? If your philosophy doesn't address this head on, you're like a child who wanders into into the middle of a movie and wants to know... 

Look, say what you want about the left, at least it's an ethos: at least they know that we are the problem, and that elimination of conservatives is the solution. I'm old enough to remember when they didn't mean that literally. 

I haven't read this entire essay by Roger Kimball, but I don't have to, because we always agree. Only the style is different, that and the substance (https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/1/the-right-targets):

the “culture war” we have been hearing about for decades has not died down or petered out. On the contrary, it is raging with more virulence than ever. Invocations of 1858 and the advent of civil war may be exaggerated, Podhoretz grants. Nevertheless, “We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they [the Left] actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore.”

Cancellation is political assassination by other means. Indeed, the mass movement from blue states to red is a wave of asylum seekers and political refugees by another name. Except the migrants are trying  to escape from the asylums. 

Me? I'd be the first to join them if I weren't the laziest man in Los Angeles County, which places me high in the runnin' for laziest man worldwide. Nor do I find it to be exactly the County of Angels... Condado de los Diablos is more like it, albeit with strikes mixed in with the gutters until harvest time.

The woke culture of the Left seeks to destroy not only America as we know it but also the political, moral, and economic foundations upon which it rests. The conflagration is partly physical, as we saw and see on city streets throughout the country. It is also partly spiritual, as the most basic human realities and aspirations are deconstructed and politicized (ibid.).

Yup, one of those irritating situations: an all-consuming whirlpool of nihilistic self-engorgement (Kimball). 

If I'd been invited to contribute to this symposium on conservatism, I'd... only beclown the proceedings and embarrass the movement. I am a Useless Man and this is a Useless Blog. Indeed, if it had a purpose, it would be like all the others. I'm sure there must exist some other superfluous bloggers, but I haven't run into them.

Yes, I have a super power: fluousness.

The point is, this blog comes after all that -- after you've gotten your way politically and removed every obstacle to utopia, then we can get down to the real struggle. Josef Pieper asks, 

Once the means of living have been obtained, in what will this now-secure life consist? Furthermore, is it not patently absurd to say that the meaning of life consists in securing the means of livelihood? 

Yes to the second: it is absurd, a performative tautology. As to the first, "all practical activity"

serves something other than itself. And this other thing is not practical activity.... the ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation (ibid.).

Bottom line: "politics must inevitably become empty agitation if it does not aim at something that is not political." 

Which is precisely why the left has the advantage over us, because they know of no higher life, such that politics is their religion. Sure, it's a religion of empty agitation, but at least it keeps them on the streets. 

Imagine not knowing the pleasures of higher worlds! I suppose that's one of the things that keeps me here, being that these worlds are as close to California as they are to Florida, Texas, or Tennessee.   Wherever you go, there you are, and so is God.

It is requisite for the good of the human community that there should be persons who devote themselves to the life of contemplation (Thomas).

You're welcome.

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems. 

But 

It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the other animals (NGD).

Progressivism: Chicken Soup for the Soulless

If nothing else, the principle of Original Sin prepares us to consider man's proposals and solutions (especially to the problem of man!) with great skepticism -- or without the childish naivete of the tenured snob, the woke mob, the media blob, etc. 

For we don't just predict the failure of the left, we guarantee it.    

The doctrine of original sin, which can be established on purely philosophic grounds, has an immediate bearing on the study of human nature.... [T]he fact is that no human being exhibits the excellencies which we theoretically attribute to human nature (Brennan).

On paper, man is a good idea, even very good -- if I understand correctly, a Swiss watch. Considering him from the cosmic angle, he potentially spans the entire creation, from corporeal matter to subatomic physics at one end, to philosophy, ontology, metaphysics, and mystical union at the other. 

And yet, we still screw up, every time -- at least on a collective basis; the existence of saints only rubs it in. Suffice it to say, there is no Group Saint. 

The perennial question is, why is man such a chronic underachiever? If your philosophy doesn't address this head on, you're like a child who wanders into into the middle of a movie and wants to know... 

Look, say what you want about the left, at least it's an ethos: at least they know that we are the problem, and that elimination of conservatives is the solution. I'm old enough to remember when they didn't mean that literally. 

I haven't read this entire essay by Roger Kimball, but I don't have to, because we always agree. Only the style is different, that and the substance (https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/1/the-right-targets):

the “culture war” we have been hearing about for decades has not died down or petered out. On the contrary, it is raging with more virulence than ever. Invocations of 1858 and the advent of civil war may be exaggerated, Podhoretz grants. Nevertheless, “We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they [the Left] actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore.”

Cancellation is political assassination by other means. Indeed, the mass movement from blue states to red is a wave of asylum seekers and political refugees by another name. Except the migrants are trying  to escape from the asylums. 

Me? I'd be the first to join them if I weren't the laziest man in Los Angeles County, which places me high in the runnin' for laziest man worldwide. Nor do I find it to be exactly the County of Angels... Condado de los Diablos is more like it, albeit with strikes mixed in with the gutters until harvest time.

The woke culture of the Left seeks to destroy not only America as we know it but also the political, moral, and economic foundations upon which it rests. The conflagration is partly physical, as we saw and see on city streets throughout the country. It is also partly spiritual, as the most basic human realities and aspirations are deconstructed and politicized (ibid.).

Yup, one of those irritating situations: an all-consuming whirlpool of nihilistic self-engorgement (Kimball). 

If I'd been invited to contribute to this symposium on conservatism, I'd... only beclown the proceedings and embarrass the movement. I am a Useless Man and this is a Useless Blog. Indeed, if it had a purpose, it would be like all the others. I'm sure there must exist some other superfluous bloggers, but I haven't run into them.

Yes, I have a super power: fluousness.

The point is, this blog comes after all that -- after you've gotten your way politically and removed every obstacle to utopia, then we can get down to the real struggle. Josef Pieper asks, 

Once the means of living have been obtained, in what will this now-secure life consist? Furthermore, is it not patently absurd to say that the meaning of life consists in securing the means of livelihood? 

Yes to the second: it is absurd, a performative tautology. As to the first, "all practical activity"

serves something other than itself. And this other thing is not practical activity.... the ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation (ibid.).

Bottom line: "politics must inevitably become empty agitation if it does not aim at something that is not political." 

Which is precisely why the left has the advantage over us, because they know of no higher life, such that politics is their religion. Sure, it's a religion of empty agitation, but at least it keeps them on the streets. 

Imagine not knowing the pleasures of higher worlds! I suppose that's one of the things that keeps me here, being that these worlds are as close to California as they are to Florida, Texas, or Tennessee.   Wherever you go, there you are, and so is God.

It is requisite for the good of the human community that there should be persons who devote themselves to the life of contemplation (Thomas).

You're welcome.

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems. 

But 

It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the other animals (NGD).

The New World

I was struck by the following passage from Thomistic Psychology:

But now, with the advent of thinking processes, a completely new world is opened up to us: a universe of ideas and volitions, an immaterial expanse of creativeness, a region liberated from the probabilities of sense (Brennan).

So many extravagant bells and whistles go along with the human condition, but surely this is the most consequential, for this "new world" is the human world, precisely. If you're reading this, you're in this world, no matter how much you try to pretend otherwise.

Well, not exactly, for man is apparently free to choose to be in or out of the real world, AKA reality. As you've noticed, alternate universes not only abound, but are but a click away.

Indeed, one small click for man can be a giant leap into a parallel looniverse -- for example, from the prospect of an inconvenient cold to WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!, from a long forgotten spree of trespassing to THE DARKEST DAY IN OUR DEMOCRACY!!!, from minimal safeguards against election fraud to JIM CROW ON STEROIDS!!!

Man's freedom to inhabit fantasy worlds is one of the lessons of Genesis 3, the principle of which is still undefeated after 12,000 years or so. In short, if even your Creator has to ask Where are you? (3:9), you know you're lost in the cosmos.

Where are you? 

A quick skim suggests that it takes until Genesis 22 for man to explicitly respond, Here I am, full stop, with no evasions, excuses, or rationalizations. Finally, man and God begin seeing I to I. 

But it's only a beginning. Nevertheless, as the Poet says, In my beginning is my end, as the Aphorist says, Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End, and as the Novelist says in about a billion ways, gosh!, the end-and-beginning is at hand.

Let's get back to the demons, which make their -- or its -- first appearance rather early in the saga of man-in-the-cosmos, in the first line of Genesis 3. 

Now, they say Genesis 3 was actually written several thousand years before Genesis 1, but it appears later in the Bible, and for good reason. For if it had come first, it would imply some rather serious Manichee business, as opposed to the radical monotheism and even more radical triunity before and after that. 

Well, I got sidetracked, so that's it for now.  

The New World

I was struck by the following passage from Thomistic Psychology:

But now, with the advent of thinking processes, a completely new world is opened up to us: a universe of ideas and volitions, an immaterial expanse of creativeness, a region liberated from the probabilities of sense (Brennan).

So many extravagant bells and whistles go along with the human condition, but surely this is the most consequential, for this "new world" is the human world, precisely. If you're reading this, you're in this world, no matter how much you try to pretend otherwise.

Well, not exactly, for man is apparently free to choose to be in or out of the real world, AKA reality. As you've noticed, alternate universes not only abound, but are but a click away.

Indeed, one small click for man can be a giant leap into a parallel looniverse -- for example, from the prospect of an inconvenient cold to WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!, from a long forgotten spree of trespassing to THE DARKEST DAY IN OUR DEMOCRACY!!!, from minimal safeguards against election fraud to JIM CROW ON STEROIDS!!!

Man's freedom to inhabit fantasy worlds is one of the lessons of Genesis 3, the principle of which is still undefeated after 12,000 years or so. In short, if even your Creator has to ask Where are you? (3:9), you know you're lost in the cosmos.

Where are you? 

A quick skim suggests that it takes until Genesis 22 for man to explicitly respond, Here I am, full stop, with no evasions, excuses, or rationalizations. Finally, man and God begin seeing I to I. 

But it's only a beginning. Nevertheless, as the Poet says, In my beginning is my end, as the Aphorist says, Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End, and as the Novelist says in about a billion ways, gosh!, the end-and-beginning is at hand.

Let's get back to the demons, which make their -- or its -- first appearance rather early in the saga of man-in-the-cosmos, in the first line of Genesis 3. 

Now, they say Genesis 3 was actually written several thousand years before Genesis 1, but it appears later in the Bible, and for good reason. For if it had come first, it would imply some rather serious Manichee business, as opposed to the radical monotheism and even more radical triunity before and after that. 

Well, I got sidetracked, so that's it for now.  

Weird and Revolting

I have a lot of catching up to do, because I must have been absent from class the day they covered the detection and eradication of demons. 

At any rate, the following passage, from the book Thomistic Psychology, is a good place start; I rate it somewhere between Self-Evident and Change My Mind:   

As a part of creation, man stands on the fringe of two universes: one, the world of matter and material dimensions; the other, the world of spirit, which has neither length, nor breadth, nor weight, nor any other tangible property (Brennan).

I suppose you can try to change my mind, but in order to do so you can have no recourse to your own immaterial mind, but rather, will have to rely on something concrete and tangible, like a hammer, skateboard, or SUV. Still, these latter can be quite effective, as proved by BLM. 

If, on the one hand, man

is akin to the animal, plant, and mineral, on the other, he is neighbor to the angels. Truly, he is a denizen of two worlds, a horizon and a meeting place.... He is placed between beast and angel, sharing something of the destiny of both.

I know what you're thinking: brutes and angels, left and right.

WRONG!

That is so simplistic. 

Seriously, if our political enemies consisted only of beasts, they'd be rather easy to control and defeat. Rather, in order to understand what's going on, we must distinguish between good and bad angels, for a demon is simply an angel gone rogue. 

Simply?

Analogously, think of man's physical stature, which is similarly -- and conveniently -- smack dab in between the cosmic and subatomic worlds, such that we can know both, even if science hasn't yet figured out how to reconcile the extremes. 

At any rate, you will have noticed that, although we can posit these two worlds, literally no one actually understands them; or, to paraphrase Feynman, thinking you understand quantum physics is proof you don't. The same can be said of cosmology, e.g., "what was before the Big Bang?," or "what is it banging into?," or "where did those beautiful equations come from?" 

Science cannot answer such questions. Rather, such questions only highlight the necessary and proper limits of science. Nothing wrong with that. 

But this is an example of something I alluded to yesterpost -- that no exoterism, whether religious or scientistic, is capable of an integral account of our cosmic situation. Only the philosophia and religio perennis can provide this.

Speaking for myself. Also bearing in mind that "esoteric" might not mean what you think it means, for orthodox Christianity is more than a little esoteric once you naught every I and cross every me.

What do I mean by that crack? Well, try this on for size, from a mainstream book I read yesterday called The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation:

if we think of the emanation of creation as a great chain of being, that chain closes back on its point of origin. Thus, the symbol of the circle unites the mystery of origin and end. 

Here we see an understanding reflected in the great Summa writings of the Scholastics which begin with the discussion of God as the source of being and end with the treatment of eschatology where creation closes back on its point of origin (Hayes).

Pretty, pretty weird. But is it weird enough? 

NO!

What if... what if the circle is a river, maybe even a riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay... Like some kind of commodius vicus of recirculation, or samething.

imagine the circle to be a river. For, as we read in Eccl 1:7, the river returns to its point of origin.... (Hayes).

Okay, fact check. Here's the Biblical passage in context: 

The wind whirls in a circular motion / And returns full circle. / All rivers flow to the sea, / Yet the sea shall not be filled. / To the place where the rivers flow, / There they return again..., 

Hmm. What kind of sea can never be filled? Easy: the sea of being. Being + being does not add up to more Being. Nor, for that matter, does Creator + creation = more Creator. 

Now, is it time to admit this post is slowly going nowhere?

NO! 

Here's an intriguing point about demons:

The demons are allergic to reality, like a man who happened to be allergic to oxygen (Bonino).

Now we're getting somewhere. Does this imply that people who are allergic to reality are evidence of demonic influence? Or do you have a better explanation for progressives? 

At the very least it highlights the question of whether the things we might be tempted to attribute to demonic activity might have a more banal explanation. 

Again, animals are not demonic because they have no free will to exploit. They just do what they're hardwired to do. But man lives in an epistemological and moral phase space, and this is, I believe, where the Hostile Forces may exert influence. 

It's one reason why they say idle hands are the work of the devil. Don't even get me started on the idle minds of the tenured! 

Another important point is that demons aren't "below" us; rather, since they are angels, they are ontologically above no matter how lowdown they are. They chose their path, and they would like for us to make the same choice. But in their case, the choice is said to have been instantaneous and final, whereas for us, time takes time. Except for Jesus and Mary, it is never a straight line between here and our proper end. 

We'll conclude with this:

For God grants his creatures not only their existence but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan.

And

the closer a creature is to God -- in other words, the higher and more perfect it is in the hierarchy of beings -- the more important is its participation in the execution of the benevolent designs of providence (Bonino). 

This applies to angels and men, except that "the supernatural adventure of men" not only "unfolds in time," but was preceded by -- or possibly even sparked by -- something "instigated by the revolt of the demon, so that it is like the deleterious prolongation thereof."

Ah, another hint: demons are always revolting, in more ways than one.

Weird and Revolting

I have a lot of catching up to do, because I must have been absent from class the day they covered the detection and eradication of demons. 

At any rate, the following passage, from the book Thomistic Psychology, is a good place start; I rate it somewhere between Self-Evident and Change My Mind:   

As a part of creation, man stands on the fringe of two universes: one, the world of matter and material dimensions; the other, the world of spirit, which has neither length, nor breadth, nor weight, nor any other tangible property (Brennan).

I suppose you can try to change my mind, but in order to do so you can have no recourse to your own immaterial mind, but rather, will have to rely on something concrete and tangible, like a hammer, skateboard, or SUV. Still, these latter can be quite effective, as proved by BLM. 

If, on the one hand, man

is akin to the animal, plant, and mineral, on the other, he is neighbor to the angels. Truly, he is a denizen of two worlds, a horizon and a meeting place.... He is placed between beast and angel, sharing something of the destiny of both.

I know what you're thinking: brutes and angels, left and right.

WRONG!

That is so simplistic. 

Seriously, if our political enemies consisted only of beasts, they'd be rather easy to control and defeat. Rather, in order to understand what's going on, we must distinguish between good and bad angels, for a demon is simply an angel gone rogue. 

Simply?

Analogously, think of man's physical stature, which is similarly -- and conveniently -- smack dab in between the cosmic and subatomic worlds, such that we can know both, even if science hasn't yet figured out how to reconcile the extremes. 

At any rate, you will have noticed that, although we can posit these two worlds, literally no one actually understands them; or, to paraphrase Feynman, thinking you understand quantum physics is proof you don't. The same can be said of cosmology, e.g., "what was before the Big Bang?," or "what is it banging into?," or "where did those beautiful equations come from?" 

Science cannot answer such questions. Rather, such questions only highlight the necessary and proper limits of science. Nothing wrong with that. 

But this is an example of something I alluded to yesterpost -- that no exoterism, whether religious or scientistic, is capable of an integral account of our cosmic situation. Only the philosophia and religio perennis can provide this.

Speaking for myself. Also bearing in mind that "esoteric" might not mean what you think it means, for orthodox Christianity is more than a little esoteric once you naught every I and cross every me.

What do I mean by that crack? Well, try this on for size, from a mainstream book I read yesterday called The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation:

if we think of the emanation of creation as a great chain of being, that chain closes back on its point of origin. Thus, the symbol of the circle unites the mystery of origin and end. 

Here we see an understanding reflected in the great Summa writings of the Scholastics which begin with the discussion of God as the source of being and end with the treatment of eschatology where creation closes back on its point of origin (Hayes).

Pretty, pretty weird. But is it weird enough? 

NO!

What if... what if the circle is a river, maybe even a riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay... Like some kind of commodius vicus of recirculation, or samething.

imagine the circle to be a river. For, as we read in Eccl 1:7, the river returns to its point of origin.... (Hayes).

Okay, fact check. Here's the Biblical passage in context: 

The wind whirls in a circular motion / And returns full circle. / All rivers flow to the sea, / Yet the sea shall not be filled. / To the place where the rivers flow, / There they return again..., 

Hmm. What kind of sea can never be filled? Easy: the sea of being. Being + being does not add up to more Being. Nor, for that matter, does Creator + creation = more Creator. 

Now, is it time to admit this post is slowly going nowhere?

NO! 

Here's an intriguing point about demons:

The demons are allergic to reality, like a man who happened to be allergic to oxygen (Bonino).

Now we're getting somewhere. Does this imply that people who are allergic to reality are evidence of demonic influence? Or do you have a better explanation for progressives? 

At the very least it highlights the question of whether the things we might be tempted to attribute to demonic activity might have a more banal explanation. 

Again, animals are not demonic because they have no free will to exploit. They just do what they're hardwired to do. But man lives in an epistemological and moral phase space, and this is, I believe, where the Hostile Forces may exert influence. 

It's one reason why they say idle hands are the work of the devil. Don't even get me started on the idle minds of the tenured! 

Another important point is that demons aren't "below" us; rather, since they are angels, they are ontologically above no matter how lowdown they are. They chose their path, and they would like for us to make the same choice. But in their case, the choice is said to have been instantaneous and final, whereas for us, time takes time. Except for Jesus and Mary, it is never a straight line between here and our proper end. 

We'll conclude with this:

For God grants his creatures not only their existence but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan.

And

the closer a creature is to God -- in other words, the higher and more perfect it is in the hierarchy of beings -- the more important is its participation in the execution of the benevolent designs of providence (Bonino). 

This applies to angels and men, except that "the supernatural adventure of men" not only "unfolds in time," but was preceded by -- or possibly even sparked by -- something "instigated by the revolt of the demon, so that it is like the deleterious prolongation thereof."

Ah, another hint: demons are always revolting, in more ways than one.