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.