Cosmos and Freedom

A little more distracted than usual this morning. Wife is home, and making all sorts of novel sounds, what with the clattering of the walker. Everything okay? Yes. You sure? Yes. Need anything? No. You sure? Yes. What was that noise? Just breathing. 

The cosmos is a creature and so are we. However, they say we are in the image and likeness of the one who creates both, so that gives us a leg up on the cosmos: among other things, we can know it, but not vice versa. 

That we can know the cosmos is at once self-evident and yet not remotely self-sufficient. In other words, such a miraculous ability hardly explains itself, and yet, here it is and here we are.  

I spend a fair amount of far too much time on the internet, and it is somewhat disconcerting that so few people share my concerns, because it suggests that one of us -- me or the world -- is concerned with nothing and unconcerned about everything else. One of us is grabbing reality at the wrong end. The other way around, stupid!

This has been a long and tedious debate -- i.e., which is the business end of reality? Matter or mind? Being or becoming? Reason or revelation? Object or subject? Science or faith? Plato or Aristotle? Boxers or briefs?

Apropos of nothing — or possibly everything — I saw a headline this morning that celebrity atheist Sam Harris has deleted his twitter account in protest of free speech. Not in support of free speech, mind you, but against free speech. 

Now, what is an atheist but someone who knows nothing about freedom and even less about how it gets here and why we have it?

The why is easy: in order to discover truth and conform ourselves to reality. The how is a little tricksier, but it has to do with the Image and Likeness referenced above.

So, while we’re giving thanks, let’s give some for freedom, especially the vertical kind, since there really is no other. Because a merely horizontal freedom wouldn’t actually be freedom, rather, something like “indeterminacy” or unpredictability at best. Who gives thanks for randomness?

Well, I would, but only in the context of something higher. If randomness means “ontological wiggle room,” or “metacosmic loophole,” or divine Slack, then I’m glad it’s here. 

For example… well, first of all, I would never kick my dog, but if I did, I don’t know what she’d do. But that doesn’t mean she’s free to react in any way she wants. 

However, if someone kicks me, I can think about how to react. On the other hand, if I’m kicked off twitter, then there’s nothing I can do about it, at least before Musk. There was no higher authority than the Committee to Enforce the Latest Thing.

I don’t know if I even like the term “free speech,” for the same reason I don’t like the term “hate speech.” How about just freedom, which encompasses thought, speech, religion, self-defense, private property, and assembly — in other words, inside and out, vertical and horizontal. For the left, it always comes down to “freedom doesn’t really exist, and besides, only certain people get to exercise it.”

Bah. Moving on. All scripture is important, but some things are more important than others. In other words, there are degrees. Of verticality. What are the most important points? Good question, but right now we’re focusing on cosmos and freedom. The cosmos as such doesn’t have it but we do. 

Now, the cosmos has been here for 13.8 billion years, and we’ve been here for far less than 1% of that time. Even our sun has only been here for about 4.5 billion years, and our existence proves there can indeed be something new under the sun -- and not just freedom but life itself, which has been here for 3.7 billion years, give or take.

Like anyone could even know such things. But we do know them. 

Here is a passage from Schuon to which I often return, because it describes the essence of our situation so concisely:

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence.

True. At least the latter: as indicated at the outset, we have one up on the cosmos, in that we understand it but not vice versa. Or at least we are free to understand it, even if some people reject both truth and the freedom to explore it.

But is this really a key to anything? Or just another lock?

Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing (ibid).

Now, that is at once a Bold Statement, but surely true, for the same reason the Aphorist tells us Either God or chance. All other terms are disguises for one or the other.  

As I suggested in the book, this is a true Binary, in that one of them cannot be a little or even a lot more likely. Rather, it is simply one or the other. 

Some people make their choice at the outset, based on common sense, tradition, culture, conformity, or even full-blown tenure, whatever. 

Others start at the empirical end and reason their way up to the Absolute, but it’s the same Absolute, AKA, necessary being, or that which cannot not be. Absent this, then there can be no basis whatsoever for truth, freedom, or any other transcendent reality. We are all Sam Harris. Or, there is “truly” nothing and Sam Harris is its prophet.

We judge that claim impossible, or rather, infinitely stupid.