High on Ideology

I'm not quite retired, so this post ends abruptly in mid-flow. 

A few quick hits from Incompleteness; ponder them in terms of the permanent truths of metaphysics as opposed to mere math:

--Once proved, a theorem is immune from empirical revision. 

--Mathematicians carry all their gear in their craniums, which is another way of saying that mathematics is a priori.

--Gödel's conclusions are mathematical theorems that manage to escape mathematics. They speak from both inside and outside mathematics.... Our minds, in knowing mathematics, are escaping the limitations of man-made systems, grasping the independent truths of abstract reality.

--They [the theorems] are at once mathematical and metamathematical.... It is as if someone painted... a landscape or portrait that represents the general nature of beauty and perhaps even explains why it moves us the way it does. 

--It is extraordinary that a mathematical result should have anything at all to say about the nature of mathematical truth in general.... mathematical reality must exceed all formal attempts to contain it (emphasis mine).

As to the latter, it is indeed extraordinary that mere quantity should reveal so much about qualities that seemingly transcend it. For it is as if money actually can buy you love after all. 

But how does math escape its own logic and break its own rules? How can 1 + 1 = 3, let alone beauty or laughter? Put in abigger way, how does the cosmos transition from 13 billion years of tedious and repetitive Isness to a regime of living Ought? How does existence turn itself inside out and become experience? What is experience? I'm having one now, as are you. But what is it and how does it get here?

The answers may surprise you. For they are -- like mathematical truth -- a priori. However, unlike the mathematical, the requisite gear for answering them is located not only in the cranium but in the thorax region. Attaining a total view requires the integration of these -- or, in the words of Schuon, "the Unicity of the Object demands the totality of the subject," "totality" being cranium + thorax, or head + heart. 

Limited to the head, 1 + 1 would always add up to 2; limited to the heart, 1 + 1 seems always to result in THAT'S RACISS!

With these thoughtlets in mind, let's get back to our central question, which is whether or not -- as with any other formal system -- the theorems may tell us something exoteric doctrines. The reason why this is important is because it may explain why the absurdities of exoterism are inevitable, as is true of any formal system, whether secular or religious. It doesn't imply that they are wholly false, just incomplete.

Empiricism and rationalism, for example, generate absurdities, but this doesn't mean they don't provide pieces of the puzzle or that they are devoid of truth. Rather, if pushed too far, they reveal will reveal inconsistencies. 

Same with religious dogma. It too is quite useful, especially in a practical sense, just as, say, Newtonian physics is quite helpful in our day-to-day lives, even if we now understand that it becomes inconsistent at the margins (where quantum and relativity theories take over and provide a more accurate picture of the macro- and microcosmos).

In an essay called Esoterism and Tradition (contained in the book Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings), Laude writes that religious tradition may provide "the best possible approximation on the terrestrial level of a conformity to Reality," even if it begins to fray at the "human margin." 

This is because tradition as such involves the attempt to clothe the formless in form. God is -- by definition -- supraformal, but is,  in the absence of a form, literally unthinkable. Thus,

the form is and is not the essence. The form prolongs the essence but it may also veil it. The essence transcends the form but it also manifests itself through it.

Hmm. Is and Is Not. We're not in Athens anymore! -- i.e., no longer dealing with Aristotelian logic, where things can't both be and not be at the same time. But this is precisely the dilemma Gödel resolves vis-a-vis the theorems. For just as no formal system exhausts reality, "the Divine Essence... transcends all determinations" (Laude):

We could say, simplifying a little, that exoterism puts the form -- the credo -- above the essence -- Universal Truth -- and accepts the latter only as a function of the former; the form, through its divine origin, is here the criterion of the essence.

Esoterism, on the contrary, puts the essence above the form and only accepts the latter as a function of the former; for esoterism... the essence is the criterion of form; the one and Universal Truth is the criterion of the various religious forms of the Truth (Schuon).

Now, "Inconsistent systems are of course complete, because we can prove anything at all in them. They're overcomplete" (Goldstein). They simultaneously explain too much and not enough -- or rather, it is precisely in explaining too much that they paradoxically fall short of a complete explanation.

I cited several examples of this phenomenon in the previous post -- Marx and Freud, for example, in explaining everything, end up explaining nothing. But this is what any ideology does: it superimposes a limiting framework on reality, thus conflating what is with what the ideology permits us to see. 

Z Man's post this morning touches on our subject, as it seems that hateminds think alike (The Narcotic of Unreality: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=23484):

This is how our public discourse has become increasingly bizarre. As soon as you exclude realty from the debate, you are left with various forms of unreality. Since none of the unrealistic options can possibly lead to a solution, the debate breaks free from the problem itself. The measure of acceptance is no longer about facts and reason, but some other standard.

Thus, our real crisis isn't about Chinese opioids or Chinese flu,

but the unreality pandemic plaguing our rulers. As the range of acceptable debate narrows, they are left with an increasingly bizarre set of choices.... Like an addict searching for the next high, our rulers are riding a dragon of depraved reality avoidance, taking the rest of us into the abyss where all addiction leads.

This is obviously true, but why is it true? I don't want to imitate our leftist fiends and try to explain too much, but if Genesis 3 All Over Again teaches us anything, it is that man is always tempted to reject transcendent truth in favor of seduction, hypnotism, narcissism, and idolatry. 

This being the case, confining oneself to some faux-complete ideology will always feature these characteristics. From the outside they look crazy, but from the inside the craziness is completely normalized, and we are the abnormal ones.