Chemotherapy for History

It's Friday, when we play fast and loose with the associations. But they are free.

Before wandering off track, yesterday's post was touching on the question of why we can't all agree to agree on certain basic philosophical propositions, principles, or axioms "expressive of rational necessity." Why are people so argumentative and contrarian? Why can't they just bow before truth? Or even just bow? 

But not only do people refuse to yield to common sense, in so doing they are conferred a certain status out of defying it. For example, no one pays a fortune just to learn common sense in college. Rather, to unlearn it. Which is why the class of College Educated White Women now poses the greatest threat to the nation. 

For this reason, not a few people believe the 19th amendment should be repealed, but this would be an overreaction. Rather, I would tie it to education, such that the right to vote would only be denied to women of both sexes possessing a degree in the subhumanities, or anything ending in the word "studies." This alone would probably be sufficient to neutralize the baleful effect of widespread indoctrination of the softheaded.

Simon observes that

the social environment may be so saturated with error that common sense is at a disadvantage in holding its own in the face of overwhelming opposition. Experience... fights an unequal battle when it comes into contact with ideology. The proponents of ideology, when challenged by experience, have no reluctance in characterizing experience as nothing but an illusion.

For example, the experience of witnessing a senile president ask a dead woman to reveal herself at a political gathering. This is not because her non-existence slipped Brandon's decroded mind, rather, because it was TOP OF MIND. This was sufficient to tamp down the temporarily piqued curiosity of the media gaslight gang. End of issue. Stop pouncing, fascist!

Now, honesty compels me to acknowledge that among intellectual sinners, I am the chief, for back when I was an adultolescent Man of the Left, I was even more bobnoxiously certain of my correctitude than I am today. I won't say I was as belligerent as, say, Keith Olbermann or Lawrence O'Donnell. Rather, only my friends would say that.

But in my defense, although I didn't have an advanced degree in the humanities, I did have one in a "soft science," and therefore a mind that was even softer on the inside but hard on the outside: a carapace of rigid and self-righteous certitude protecting an inner core of unexamined and indefensible mush. So I know of what I speak, since I myself am a cancer survivor. Cancer of the intellect.

If there is a cancer of the intellect, what is the chemotherapy? Good question. I can think of a number of aspects, but do these reduce to a single trait or principle? Probably just vertical openness, which comes down to humility + Truth, this being the very opposite of the diabolical prideology of the left. A reminder that 

The intelligence that walks proudly is inviting to the one who soaps the floor. 

I now understand that there are problems and there are mysteries, the latter being questions

of such a character that an answer unqualifiedly true and sound and appropriate not only admits of but demands further inquiries into inexhaustible intelligibility.

So, it's not as if the mystery is unintelligible. Rather, the opposite: there's too much intelligibility for our little minds! But there's a paradox here, in that the same people who tend to downplay the miracle of the human subject are the ones who try to fob it off with a simplistic ideology that can never account for the complementary infinitude of human intelligence and cosmic intelligibility.

On the other (our) side is an orthoparadox that simultaneously exalts man over everything else in creation while emphasizing his utter contingency and nothingness. We can express this polarity in quasi-mythopoetic terms as "image of God" at one end, and "fallen" at the other; or a foundation of theomorphism disfigured by original sin, which (in salvation history) takes the form of good news --> bad news --> even better news.

Conversely, ideology takes the form of bad news --> great news, or in other words, "there is no God, and I am Him." You can appreciate how that would lead to... problems. One of which goes by the name of history:

Modern history is a dialogue between two men: one who believes in God and one who believes he is a god.

This is because 

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

I want to say there are nominal definitions and explanatory definitions. The former simply involve the proper use of language, whereas the latter provides additional insights into the nature of the thing defined. 

For example, a nominal definition of original sin is the loss of sanctifying grace as a consequence of defying God. Now, what does this mean? For one can use the term in a proper semantic sense, but in a way that doesn't really deepen our philosophical understanding. 

Here's another way of expressing it: original pride results in separation from the Principle. Now, how to repair and restore wayward human nature to this Principial Father, or Father Principle? Anyone? Nicolas?

If history made sense, the Crucifixion would be superfluous.

 No, this post didn't end, we just ran out of time.