This will be a short post, or rather, one that lasts as long as this here cup of coffee, then it's off to the land of errands. Lucky -- or unlucky, depending -- for you, it's a pretty big cup.
One of the problems of living in Christendom -- AKA western civilization -- is that its underlying concepts and principles are so pervasive that they either become saturated with meaning (thereby losing their capacity to shock) or are unconsciously assimilated and taken for granted.
This results in even the enemies of civilization arguing from ideas appropriated from Christianity (e.g., freedom, transcendent and pre-poltical human rights, anti-racism, etc.) and which their own metaphysic can in no way support or defend. Hence the intrinsic absurdity of the left.
But absurdity isn't just absurdity, rather, it's diabolical. This is because absurdity is a sundering and scattering of the links of intelligibility; it is an attack on meaning that pretends to be meaningful.
The other day we mentioned one such example, the use of the word "progress" for its systematic undermining. You tell me: how can progress exist in a universe drained of its transcendent absolute? Absent the latter, there can be only random agitation, fluctuation, and repulsion, in a kind of ontological Brownian motion.
A Thought of the Day from Chesterton, by way of PowerLine:
When a religious scheme is shattered... it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.
Note the themes of dismemberment and scattering: again, diabolical. Dávila makes the same point with the usual brevity and flair:
The devil can achieve nothing great without the careless collaboration of the virtues.
Oopsie! Sorry about all the broken eggs.
About their intrinsic absurdity, you will have noticed that the left is incredibly adept at slamming on the brakes just sort of the reductio ad absurdum:
The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.
Now in reality, everything is connected: after all, it's why we call our home a universe. And the universe is not merely an "object," nor the sum of all objects.
Rather -- and this should be self-evident -- a kind of symphony with both interior unity and exterior order. Analogously, there is the melody which can only reveal itself in time, and a chordal structure that is hierarchical and present in every moment.
Truth Itself is indeed symphonic, and in addition to the more complex chordal structure, there's a kind of immediately present timbral structure that is accessible to even the musically unschooled: bass, drums, and cello down there, flutes and violins up there, piano holding things together in the middle of it all, etc. Principles above, facts below, and a mind in between linking the two.
Speaking of which, what or who is it that holds everything together? Where or what is the Unity? It is present, there's no doubt about that (barring psychosis). But what is it, and by virtue of what principle? This has been a long strange argument: water? Fire? Air? Many? One? Geometry? Math? Clock? Machine? Matter? Idea? Organism? Reason? The dialectic of class?
How about all of the above. Except for the last, which is too stupid for anyone short of tenure:
Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.
Among race realists there's a saying that evolution doesn't stop above the neck. Nor does ontology. For there are plenty of real things in this universe, and not all of them are material, that's for sure.
About the left stealing their ideas from superior minds. One of them is the notion of "original sin." For
Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.
In other words, everyone is born into sin -- sins of whiteness, private property, masculinity, heteronormativity, etc. -- except for the leftist. Therefore, the goal is always to reform everyone else. The leftist is not in need of reform, which is why whole categories of humanness are off limits to critique: women, blacks, homosexuals and perverts of various kinds, but only so long as they are creatures of the left. Absurd but effective.
Also, regarding metaphysics more generally, if you think there are no absolutes on the left, you've never spoken to a leftist. Not only are they everywhere, but if you find yourself on the wrong side of one, you are committing idolatry and taking the name of the Lord in vain. For
The progressive believes that everything soon turns obsolete except his ideas.
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