Are You Not Innertained?!

So, the philosopher who knows what he's talking about is "a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does" (Gilson). 

But the converse is not true: folks who don't know what they're talking about aren't an insult to the philosopher who knows what he's talking about, especially if his philosophy explains exactly how and why these idiots can and must exist. For it is written:

Men are divided into two camps: those who believe in original sin and those who are idiots.

And

To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

I don't pretend to know all the answers -- rather, only the problems. These problems aren't only existential -- and therefore not susceptible to any political solution -- but are ontological, woven into our very substance. For it is also written that 

No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.

So, idiots aren't an insult, but they are a potential threat if placed in a position of power and authority over us -- for example, if, say an enfeebled dementia patient somehow became president. But that would never happen.

Let's pretend Brandon actually received 81 million legal votes. Now, subtract from that 81 million the number of Brandon voters who were fully aware that he suffers from advanced dementia but voted for him anyway; you'll also need to subtract the number who would have voted for Brandon even had they known he was so with enfeebled dementia.  

Good. Now divide that figure by 81 million, and you have the degree to which the election was rigged. (My calculation comes out to .97, or 97%.)   

That was a joke. Obviously the real figure is 100%.

Now that I'm retired, I've had time to ponder what this blog is all about, and I've come to the conclusion that it's about metaphysical entertainment. Which you may think is easy or trivial, but at least this is the only place on the internet to indulge in such elevated frivolousness.

The other day I was watching an episode of Comedians in Cars, and Jerry compared himself to a woodchuck: a woodchuck chucks wood. It's what they do. Likewise, he tells jokes. It's what he does.

The point is, Are you not entertained?! If not, then I still haven't failed, because I am entertained. When I stop being entertained by myself is when the blog will stop. 

Some loose ends. A few posts back we said something about native Americans that bothered a reader or two. No offense, but if Aquinas isn't an advance over sweat lodges, pantheism, casinos, and Ward Churchill, then I need to get a new hobby. 

I have nothing whatsoever against Indians. Indeed, I would like to help them not be mired in superstition and the half truths of natural religion, just as I would expect them to help me if the roles were reversed. There is a better way. If not, then there's no such thing as verticality and perfection.

Anyway, a reader resuscitated this dead thread with a new comment to the effect that Schuon choose to live in the United States so he could "be close to a native American community to practice their primal religion."

Now, whatever this was, I seriously doubt that it was their "primal religion." In order to practice that, one would have to go back either to when there had been no contact between them and the old world or very shortly thereafter. Is it even possible to return to this level of innocence and naïveté, back to Eden, as it were?

Sure. At least to a degree. Not too long ago I read a book about the French explorer Champlain by David Hackett Fischer. 

Champlain was a genuine friend to the native Americans he encountered, and made favorable comments about their intelligence, appearance, and athleticism, nor did he approve of the way they were treated by Spanish conquerors, but nevertheless harbored no illusions about their barbarism and cruelty, since he personally witnessed it.

For example, in one of his first encounters in 1603, he describes a large gathering of many nations in celebration of a victory over a common enemy:

The Indian drums were beating in celebration. More than a hundred fresh Iroquois scalps were on display. Wounded Iroquois captives were tightly bound to stakes, and their torture had already begun. Blood dripped from what remained of slashed and shattered fingers, as they stoically awaited their fate.

They were stoic because they were well aware of the rules of the game: if the roles had been reversed, then they would be the ones who would be taunting their captives and cutting off appendages. 

Champlain notes that the Indians "worshiped one Great Spirit, believed in the immortality of the soul, and had an idea of the Devil," but "lived by a primitive system of customary law, and an ethic of lex talionis, the rule of retaliation." He added that "They have one evil in them, which is that they are given to revenge."

Yeah, maybe a little. On one occasion he helped one tribe prevail in battle over another: "Everyone knew what was coming. A fire was built and Champlain watched in horror as many warriors came forward and claimed the victor's role of torturer":

Each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time, so as to make him suffer more torment. They stopped from time to time, and threw water on his back. Then they tore out his nails and applied fire to the tips of his fingers and his penis. After that, they scalped him, slowly poured very hot gum on the crown of his head, pierced his arms near their wrists, and with sticks they tried to pull out his sinews by brute force.... This poor brute uttered strange cries, and I felt pity to see him treated this way.

Still, he knew it was not only pointless to intervene, but counter-productive. 

When he was dead they were not satisfied. They opened his body and threw his entrails into the lake. After that they cut off his head, arms and legs, which they scattered about, but they kept the scalp, which they flayed, as they did with the scalps of all the others whom they had killed in their attack.

The finale was "to cut his heart in several pieces and give it to his brother to eat, and to other companions who were prisoners."

Equity: "Some of the captives were kept alive so that they could be tortured by wives and daughters," who "greatly surpass the man in cruelty, for by their cunning they invent more cruel torments, and take delight in them."

Multiculturalism: "Torture and cannibalism of captives was an ancient custom among these nations." Champlain noted that it had an escalating quality (one is reminded Girard's scapegoat theory) "designed to exceed the horror of tortures past."

One wonders if they developed a kind of PTSD that kept the cycle going: "the continuing practice of turture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done":

The Indians were driven by their fear, which appears to have been deepened by the torture... In dark nights along the lake, the torturers dreamed terrible dreams.

Back to the commenter, who adds that "three of the four founding members of the Perennialist School became practicing Muslims -- the first of which, Guénon, abandoned his Roman Catholicism and spent the remainder of his life in Cairo Egypt."

There's an oxymoron in there, because how could the perennial philosophy or religion only be founded in the 20th century? If that's the case, then it's hardly perennial, now is it?

As to Guénon, well, onó ináwa shyó. But conveniently, there's an entire chapter devoted to him in a book I'm currently reading, called The Lord of History: An Essay on the Mystery of History, by Jean Daniélou. But right now I gotta run....