Sunday, November 14, 2021

Man Down and Woman Up!

This post may end abruptly, so do not be alarmed. The grinding sound you hear is just me tearing myself away from the fabric of extra-cosmic being and returning to sub-atmaspheric flight.  

Let's continue our exploration of the Mammals & the Pappals. Yes, the latter is a stupid sounding word, but it's too late to change it now. Besides, it's good enough to get the job done. Do not suppose the Principle can be tarnished by my verbal indiscretions.

To repeat: there are thousands of mammal species but only one pappal: that would be us, AKA Homo sapiens.

This is not to say there is no spiritual component to motherhood -- obviously -- only that the latter arises (chronologically, not ontologically) from the "bottom up," so to speak, and is a vertical prolongation of an antecedent biological reality, AKA nurturing and all this entails and implies on the human plane. Without this lengthy extrauterine nurturing the species would literally die, so thanks for the mammaries.

In contrast to motherhood, fatherhood begins as a spiritual reality and is prolonged "downward" into biology. It must be received from above and accomplished herebelow. In turn, this is a distant reflection of the Incarnation itself, through which the Son assumes the form of human nature. 

The main point is that a man, in order to be one, must achieve something; or know something, be something (someone), conquer something, etc. 

And please put down the rolling pin: nothing about what we're saying, or about to say, is a denigration or devaluation of the Feminine. If it is necessary to defend ourselves from the feminist rolling pin, we will do so with two words: Margaret. Thatcher.  

Wait -- put down the knife!

Ultimately a human being, qua humanness, is always both: maleandfemale he created them. But darn it, it isn't good that maleandfemale should be allone, so He splits them up. A central purpose of marriage is to consecrate their reunion. Unless you have a better idea.  

Note that the Logos begins as pure spirit, which drills down, so to speak, into biology. People who wonder why the Father can't be a mother, or Jesus her daughter, or priests women, just don't have a clue. It's like wondering why the Mother of God couldn't have been a man. Such fantasies are violations of the whole divine-human economy -- like "Admiral" " Rachel" Levine.

Also, in relation to God, the soul itself is feminine, since God is the agent and we the receptacle. Such schemes are full of nuances and qualifications, being that ours must be an "active passivity," but let's not veer into another topic. The point is, this dynamic obviously mirrors what goes in inside the Godhead in that our own little Yes to God is an echo of the big Yes that the Son says to the Father -- or Mary to the Holy Spirit, Abram to the Lord, Moses to I AM, etc. 

I suppose if man were a reptile, then the Savior would have to be a good egg. But we are not reptiles, or at least we don't have to be. Even Adam Schiff wasn't born that way. He looks and behaves like he was hatched, but the choice of devolving and living under a rock was his to make.

Which brings to mind an important point about our fallenness: not only can it not be understood outside the context of our deiformity, but in my opinion, it is a commentary on it. Although the Fall is always present, it cannot be a complement of our deiformity, since it is a privation. Nor is it literally a necessity, since to say necessity is to say eternity, and the good news is that we aren't necessarily eternal under-achievers. 

With these flourescent prelumenaries out of the way, let's go back to Rob Henderson's pneumagraphical essay. In it he notes that at the age of ten, 

my adoptive parents got divorced. My adoptive father, angry at my mother for leaving him, decided to stop talking to me as a way to get back at her. 

What kind of man would do this to a child? No kind of man. Except a bad and inadequate one.

But sometimes there is a hero. I won't say man, because the hee-ro could be Margaret Thatcher. But  

if I am honest, the teachers who had the most positive effect on me were usually men. Perhaps, after being shunned by both my biological father and my adoptive father, some part of me was seeking a male role model -- though, at the time, I never would have understood or admitted this.

Lucky for us,  

during my senior year, a male history teacher, an Air Force veteran, encouraged me to enlist. He knew my grades were awful -- I graduated in the bottom third of my high school class, with a 2.2 GPA -- but saw something in me, potential that I hadn’t yet discovered or maybe didn’t even want to.

20 comments:

julie said...

my adoptive parents got divorced. My adoptive father, angry at my mother for leaving him, decided to stop talking to me as a way to get back at her.

In the culture of divorce, this sort of thing happens all too often. Or more generally, the kids are used as weapons for one parent to hurt the other with, since at some point that becomes literally the worst pain you can inflict on another.

Petey said...

Necks & millstones.

Anonymous said...

Hello "Gagdad Bob," aks Dr. Robert Godwin.

This post was an exceptionally fine essay on the male/female dichotomy. Your top down (male) and bottom up (female) concept seems fresh and new; I don't believe I've read anything like it elsewhere. In which case you can lay claim to some original thinking. Very few persons can say the same. I hope you enlarge and expand on your concept .

As a woman I was not offended. You did not assert either sex was superior to the other, and I did not sense that you find women inferior.

Your discussion about Adam Schiff brings up the point that, being oviparous, progressives are prone to be viewed as reptilian. And I do think their approach to parenthood differs from viviparous creatures. Long ago, when progressives diverged from the main human genetic line, they retained breeding strategies from a more ancient branch of the tree of life. That is why the male progressive tends to flash bright colors and do his little bird-dance around the female. That is just how they instinctually go about things.

As a result, you can see why progressive fathers don't stick around. Progressive children get some guarding of the nest and so forth, but are expected to forage and fend for themselves almost from birth, and many can do this quite capably, but they do become predatory.

I don't know if that explains it what we see today among black families. If more blacks chose to be conservative, then their body morphology would revert back to what we call "normal." The whole father thing is very fraught for progressives. They see how the conservatives parent but can never quite pull it off the same way.

Cousin Dupree said...

Ever thus to deadbeats.

Cousin Daichi said...

Morricone's super beauty melo to samba! It's not bad!
I think there is no person who always produces a melody as beautiful as Morricone,
but even if I become a samba,
I don't feel blurred at all.
Why can people make such a beautiful melody
to unpredictable beautiful melody development,
rust that can be tightened with guigui and chest?
God? I think every time I touch his work.

EbonyRaptor said...

Sometimes life deals you a terrible blow and you're brought to the lowest point you can bear. Being alone while connecting with a friend helps, even if the friend is an unknown author on the internet - like you Bob. Thanks for being here. You matter to me.

julie said...

Whatever you're going through, EbonyRaptor, you'll be in my prayers. I hope and pray you may feel God's presence and see His guiding hand when you need it most; in Jesus' name, Amen.

Gagdad Bob said...

My hope is that in a hundred years or so, some lonely fugitive of the Matrix will bump into the blog and find it helpful, or even just the thing they were looking for without knowing what they were looking for. If it also helps present-day fugitives, so much the better!

EbonyRaptor said...

Julie, Bob, Tolle - thank you for the kind words and prayers. My purpose wasn't to make this about me, my faith is strong and I'm blessed to have family close by. Rather, my purpose was to counter the negative criticism that has been tossed at him recently by letting him know that the time and effort he puts in is appreciated. Sometimes it even serves as balm for the soul.

Gagdad Bob said...

Finally got Mollie Hemingway's Rigged in the mail, and it is fantastic, as expected. Infuriating too, as expected. Unfortunately, the people who most need to read it won't, unless it is to more effectively defraud the electorate next time.

julie said...

Seems like they take great pleasure in rubbing our faces in the fact that they cheated so blatantly and there seems to be nothing we can do about it. Same way they love the legal double standards.

Sure, vote harder next time, maybe that will work.

Gagdad Bob said...

Give the left credit: they know how to conduct spiritual warfare, in contrast to conservatives, who don't have a clue -- at least pre- and anti-Trump conservatives.

In fact, you could say spiritual warfare is all the left has, since they obviously can't win on fact, logic, evidence, morality, principle, or common decency. Maybe I'll read the book with the theme of Spiritual Warfare in mind, and eventually review it on that basis.

Gagdad Bob said...

Julie -- yes. I think this is because Satan knows a great deal -- he is, after all, an angel -- but always pushes things too far, being that he has no wisdom (having rejected it at the source). This is why the left is so ridiculously overplaying its hand (as in the Rittenhouse case).

Cousin Dupree said...

Rittenhouse? Shooting a child rapist in the chest is the least progressive thing I can think of.

Donny said...

I don't get it. Wouldn't the least progressive thing be cutting off his johnson?

Walter said...

Well that depends, Donny. Maybe the rapist was considering transitioning at some point, in which case that would be the most progressive thing.

julie said...

Of course, how blind we are - a young man trying to put out fires and offer medical assistance to those in danger is just as wicked as the three career criminals who were trying to kill him. /sarc

Ironically, Kyle was exemplifying exactly that Bible passage you quoted. He wasn't running down the street calling for violence or picking out only some particular group of people to assist, he was literally shouting, "Medic - anybody need help?"

Had the shooter been someone else and he arrived only to see the aftermath, he would have been helping bind the wounded arm, no questions asked.

Sure, they're exactly the same.

Anonymous said...

There's a back story to Kyle as well, including sucker punching a girl. But then you did tell us that Jesus "wasn't nice".

Think this confusion will sell?

The Dude said...

He treats objects like women, man.

Leslie Godwin said...

I'll be praying for you, EbonyRaptor. Very sorry to hear this.

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