Vertical Pleasure and Pain

For Thomas, "The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth." 

Of course, this presumes the man in question has satisfied the purely biological needs he shares with the beasts. The question is, what happens afterwards? Do we just go back to sleep like animals and liberals, or is there something more, i.e., a trans-biological appetite?

The latter. It takes several forms which reduce to truth, love, and beauty. It's difficult to further reduce these, being that they converge on one another. For example, in exposing my young 'un to music, I train him to listen for the truth. The great majority of music is phony, counterfeit, hollow, an imitation of the real thing. It's a lie. 

Same with people, although in that case it's more a matter of sensing the light. Should you lose contact with this trans-biological sense, you're entering a world of pain. You'll have no idea whom to avoid, believe, or run from as fast as you can. 

Regarding the latter, it is also possible to "hear" the light, so to speak. Come to think of it, you will notice a kind of musicality in the voice. 

Likewise, its absence is striking. Just listen to, for example, mumbly Joe or mechanical Psaki or bullshit Barry. It's not so much that they lie; rather, the lie is waaay downstream from a prior ontological rupture. The vacuity is palpable. Same with journalists. Is there a more vacuous class of human beings? 

This all goes back to the sense of touch, except the sense is again trans-biological. Here's what Thomas has to say about it:

All the other senses are based on the sense of touch.... Among all beings which have sense perception, man has the most delicate sense of touch.... And among men, those who possess the more refined sense of touch have the best intelligence.

This sense of touch is a truth detector, but it is equally a BS detector, and the two naturally covary. For example, if you can believe Critical Race Theory, what can't you believe? The same can be said of multiculturalism, deconstruction, socialism, catastrophic global warming, transgenderism, et al. Is it any wonder that belief in one of these absurdities is correlated with belief in the others? 

This sort of crude credulity is analogous to neuropathy on the biological level, which results in the inability of the nervous system to properly transmit sensations to the brain. At the same time, the nervous system transmits noise to the brain, in the form of numbness, tingling, burning, etc. I suppose these are analogous to "sensory hallucinations," e.g., burning with no source of heat.

Which is why the mind of the trans-biologicial sense-deprived liberal is never filled with just "nothing." Rather, you will have noticed that it is filled with pain, but instead of neuropathic pain it is psycho- or pneumo-pathic pain. Pneumopathy. 

Like what? Oh, say, "microagression." This is precisely consistent with what Thomas says about man's exquisite sense of touch, only in a totally assbackward way. Obviously, the touchy snowflake has access to a world of psychic and spiritual pain that is inaccessible to us. We're no different from them, in that we can obviously sense "hurtful" words. It's just that we don't respond by rolling around on the ground like a soccer player. It's like we have callouses or something. Or at least skin.

Then there is the totally imaginary pain analogous to neuropathy, for example, the feminist's pain at being a woman, or the BLM person's pain at being a target of genocidal police. The pain is real, only the object is imaginary.

Thomas notes that "In us there is not only the pleasure which we share with the beasts, but also the pleasure we share with the angels."

This checks out. No animal, for example, has access to the truth of music or beauty of truth or love of virtue. 

The corollary, however, is that man must also share the pleasures of the demons, so to speak. Such as? Here again, it's a long list, but at the top must be envy, followed by resentment, insatiability, paranoia, hatred, turbulence (absence of peace), etc.  Just because there are vertical pleasures, it doesn't mean they're all "positive." 

For example, what is progressive victimhood but the perverse pleasure of participation in one's own subjugation? That may sound bad to you, but it presumably beats responsibility, initiative, and self-awareness every time. 

The left is built upon responding to such psychic needs, which comes down to the provision of condescending lies that simultaneously persecute and comfort. And shield the person from even more painful truths.