In executing our civilizational graveyard spiral, what is the most important instrument we are ignoring? I’m an analog guy, so my console has a dozen or so cool looking VU meters, much like a McIntosh sound system:
There are meters for Science, History, Genetics, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Logic, Epistemology, Cosmology, Linguistics, and more, but if I can only choose one, it would have to be Human Nature.
However, this is impossible, since there are actually two meters for Human Nature, one horizontal and one vertical. This itself is an important clue about man, since it is strictly impossible to talk about or even conceive man without reference to both. Man as such is as cosmically unique as is such and such a man.
Which, of course, is the first thing modern man forgets: our vertical nature. However, despite living in a thoroughly scientific age, close behind is the forgetfulness -- or denial or repression -- of our horizontal nature.
For example, what is transgender ideology but a disabling of the VU meter for human nature in its horizontal/biological sense? It is very much as if we are no longer permitted to even look at that meter, and ignorance has consequences. The same can be said of feminism, which is the denial of female nature and a celebration of toxic femininity.
Again, because of the cosmic uniqueness of man, disabling the horizontal meter will result in a malfunctioning of the vertical. For human nature is an integrated whole; it is not as if it is the sum of body and mind, but rather, a soul that is the form of both. Nevertheless, although the two cannot be separated, they can certainly be distinguished.
Moreover, although the soul is prior, it needs a body to function; this also goes to our paradoxical union of freedom and determinacy, since freedom is not possible in the absence of order, otherwise it is just entropic wandering.
Get to the point!
Okay, you don’t have to yell. My point is that we cannot properly fly the plane of civilization without paying attention to the Human Nature meters, for if we get our anthropology wrong, then everything else follows, all the way to the graveyard.
For example, everyone knows Marx was wrong about economics, history, and religion, but he wasn't even wrong about human nature. And yet, his distorted vision of human nature pervades the left in its contemporary cultural guise.
And yes, it is possible to say it more succinctly, but even the Aphorist wrote 10,000 aphorisms. This one goes to why knowledge of human nature requires both meters:
If man is the sole end of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors.
Then man becomes "the most contemptible refuge of men."
It’s easy enough for the Ought to hide behind the Is meter:
Today the individual rebels against inalterable human nature in order to refrain from amending his own correctable nature.
Again, if there’s no vertical meter, then man is just man, and it doesn’t get worse than that:
“Human” is the adjective used to excuse any infamy.
If you are a devotee of metaphysical Darwinism, then there is and can be no essential distinction between man and beast, or in other words,
Man is the animal that imagines itself to be Man.
If you can believe that, what can’t you believe?
To have “faith in man” does not reach the level of blasphemy; it is just one more bit of nonsense.
Suppose we have only the horizontal meter. What could go wrong?
The modern aberration consists in believing that the only thing that is real is what the vulgar soul can perceive.
Again, freedom is vertical. A merely horizontal freedom is just an uncaged animal. This kind of man believes himself free when nothing drags himself against the current of his own instincts, desires, and ideological fantasies.
Let’s take one more look at those two meters. What do they tell us? For starters, that
Man is not educated through knowledge of things but through knowledge of man.
Could you make it a little less wordy?
The modern man is the man who forgets what man knows about man.
3 comments:
What I think many horizontal focused individuals mistake, in their denial of the pursuit of the vertical, and their mockery of the vertical focused individual, is, vertical focused individuals fully appreciate the biological impulses, and celebrate them, it's just that the vertically focused individuals understand that the biological/horizontal impulses need to be controlled, and though the vertically focused may lose control, from time to time, they continue to understand that the biological/horizontal impulses need to be controlled and the most effective way to control them is through the pursuit of the vertical, and utilization of His instruments and His VU meters. (That is one long sentence.)
Imagine you're crossing a tightrope with a safety line attached to your belt. Horizontal man's line is anchored, at best, somewhere ahead (say, the other side of the chasm) at his own level. If he falls, he might have a long way to go before the line catches; hopefully it does so before he hits the ground or crashes Wile E Coyote style into the opposing cliff face, but who knows?
Conversely, vertical man's rope is attached at a much higher point overhead, such that if he falls, he will only fall a little way, and being anchored overhead it won't swing him down in a dangerous arc. For that matter, even if the rope he stands on breaks, he is still held aloft.
I like your analogy, Julie.
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