Deformations of History and the Horizons of Stupid

No, I am not referring to "Black History Month," although then again I suppose I could be. We'll see. Rather, that's the title of the next chapter of the book with which we've been dialoguing, Transcendence and History (linked in the sidebar).

It's an IQ test: if a black person isn't insulted -- mortified, even -- by Black History Month, he has failed the test. If the credentialed idiots who came up with the idea actually cared about blacks -- or whites, for that matter -- they'd assign the collected works of Thomas Sowell and be done with it. 

Imagine the mind of the person who thinks the purpose of history is to provide psychotherapy and raise the "self esteem" of this or that race or ethnicity or sexual deviancy. You can't. Eight year olds, dude. No, not even. 

I can't continue without squeezing in a comment I read at American Digest this morning, since it adds an exclamation point to yesterday's post. The commenter -- Casey -- quotes a passage from That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis:

(https://americandigest.org/brave-new-1984/#comments)

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles.... He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

Anything: Russia hoax, the Nazis are Fine People hoax, the Trump provoked an insurrection or coup or something hoax, the "white supremacy" hoax, et al. 

Casey adds that "Elsewhere Lewis said effectively that education without values just makes man a more clever sort of devil."

A bold statement. Is it true? Yes, but only for important subjects. 

Speaking of which, I've been meaning to write a post on the subject of "intellectual sin," which is the worst kind of sin, or at least the first kind, since thought is prior to deed. Maybe I'll psircle back to that later. 

Eh. There's not much in this chapter I really need to discuss. Which is convenient, since yesterday I read the best essay ever, compared to which all other essays are number two or lower. It's called The Intellectual Chiaroscuro, from the book The Sense of Mystery, by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (also in the side bar, and it's a two-think minimum). 

Chiaroscuro. Where have we heard this before? Yes, it characterizes what Joyce was attempting in Finnegans Wake, i.e., clearobscuro writing. We touched on it in a post last November 16.

I'll just extract some highlights from Fr. G-L's essay, and add my comments if necessary.

One of the most striking aspects in the study of the great problems of philosophy and theology is the union of light (indeed, sometimes a dazzling light) and a profound obscurity.

We know about the light. What's with the obscurity? Is it just a privation? Or might it be the very opposite, only good and hard, i.e., TOO MUCH LIGHT?

The sense of mystery could not be lacking in the great Doctors of the Church, for it is the proper characteristic of superior intellects. 

So our "sense of mystery" must be ordered to this Great Obscurity. Conversely, "The mediocre man.... substitutes convention for reality." He "condemns that which escapes the denominations and categories he knows," and "has a dread for that which astonishes [?!], never approaching the terrible mystery of life [bʘʘ!]."

Here's the interesting part, and it goes to what we've been saying about living in that web anchored by immanence at one end and transcendence at the other, both of which are mysteries.  Here again, your typical tenured mediocretin doesn't regard matter as particularly mysterious, when in fact, it is in a way even more mysterious than God, or at least less clearobscuro. 

On the one hand, there is the kind of "obscurity from below...." It comes from blind matter, for matter, in a sense, is repugnant to intelligibility, which is obtained by abstraction from matter.

Of matter itself, our knowledge approaches nothing. Rather, abstraction is the means by which we know it in a secondary sense. I may not have expressed that in a fully kosher manner, but you get the geist of it. Prime matter is unspecified "pure potency," which is just this side of nonbeing.

But there is also an "obscurity from on high" at the other end of the Web. Thus,

As the matter from which we abstract the intelligible is (in a way) below the limits of intelligibility, the intimate life of God is above the limits of intelligibility that is naturally accessible to us.

Perhaps a visual aid will enhance your experience of this flight of funcy. Have you ever been on a mountain, higher than the clouds, which appear like an eyewitless foggus of pure white? That's our well-lit world of intelligibility from matter, while matter itself is ultimately hidden beneath the cloud below.

Now, have you ever sat or skied on a mountain, the top of which was obscured by clouds? Of course you have. Same deal, only opposite, so

Let us not confuse the obscurity that dominates the frontiers of intelligibility from on high with that which is beneath them.

I want to say there are two Horizons of Stupid, but one intelligent way of approaching them. However, I'll have to circle back to that in the next post.