Let's face the ontological facts: the cosmos is either a closed circle or an open one, and everything hinges upon which one it is.
Everything, because this is truly the ultimate red pill / blue pill situation. Deep down, no one really wants the blue-pill cosmos, and we all suspect -- but can't necessarily prove -- there's more. And Morpheus:
What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
It sure seems like there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt up in your philosophy class -- beginning with an earth and a heaven -- which is to say, horizontal and vertical, closed and open, terrestrial and celestial, blue pill and red pill, etc.
Now, not only must any functional -- or even dysfunctional -- philosophy account for Morpheus' splinter, but what if I told you that philosophy is the splinter -- and the attempt to remove it?
In Christian metaphysics, for example, the splinter is called "original sin"; in Marxism, private property; in existentialism, "other people"; in progressivism, freedom and individualism; in psychoanalysis, civilizational repression; in leftism, reality; etc.
Now, what if I further told you that the very existence of freedom is sufficient proof that this is an open cosmos?
To put it conversely, freedom would be impossible and even inconceivable in a closed world, in which effects are fully reducible to their causes. In such a universe, freedom is but an illusion and we aren't having this conversation.
A closed cosmos means a fully self-sufficent one in which there are no outside or vertical -- AKA transcendent -- causes. If this is the case, then the fact that my fingers are at the moment hunting and pecking away at the keyboard is just a neurological tic caused by electrochemical impulses, which are ultimately grounded in the laws of physics.
Yes, but where do the laws of physics come from, and why are they so ideally suited to the emergence of rational -- i.e., free -- creatures?
Silence! Pay no attention to that mind behind your computer screen! Besides,
What is real? How do you define "real"? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then "real" is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain (Morpheus).
I have to leave in a moment, so let me end this post with a little fable:
Once upin a timeless there lived a man and a woman. Theirs was an open cosmos, both horizontally (to each other, i.e., intersubjectively) and vertically (i.e., in open relation to their transcendent source).
This latter advised the man that he was free to enjoy any fruits from their botanical garden, but to avoid the blueberries, for they would make him very sick and were possibly even fatal.
Now, it is admittedly a little fuzzy as to how he got there, but let's just say that there soon appeared a pompous creature of tenure who was more crafty than the humans, and he disingenuously asks the woman, “Did God really say, You mustn't eat the blueberries? Really? Because that seems arbitrary and probably patriarchal as well -- as if the creator of the universe cares about what you put into your mouth! If I were you, I'd frankly be more than a little triggered and resentful, and switch majors to Gender Studies.
The woman responded to the silver- and forktongued professor that “We may consume any fruits we like, but God did say pretty clearly that we mustn't touch the blueberries, nor manufacture them in concentrated pill form. It's for our own good."
"Oh bullshit," said the professor. “They won't kill you, and besides, they're quite tasty -- so tasty in fact that this so-called God of yours just wants to keep them to himself.
Bottom line, she bluepilled and was suddenly in a very different world. And since in this world two wrongs make a right, she then bluepilled her husband under threat of cutting off sexual access, and boom!
For what it's Wordsworth, a few lines of unacknowledged legislation come to mind. At first,
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem / Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.
Then the blue pill, and all of a sudden
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
In any event, next they hear what sounds like the Lord God walking in the garden. But they know it's him when they hear that familiar voice asking -- and pretending not to know --Where are you? Tell me you didn't bluepill, because if you did...
And the rest is history.
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