So: Homo quaestio and Homo interrogantis, man the questioner and question. We question everything, including ourselves.
This ability to inquire into ourselves is, by the way, proof of our immateriality, since no material substance can double back on itself and have a look. In order to look at ourselves physically we need a mirror. But in order to look at ourselves psychically we have only to…
Just what are we doing when we do that, and how is it done, anyway? It’s not something we think about, rather, just assume its existence, but it is without a doubt one of the weirdest and most unexpected things we could possibly imagine, let alone with no explanation of what it’s doing here and why we have it.
Is it even functional? If so, why are the people conspicuously lacking in insight so successful at the polls? Joe Biden has no insight into anything, least of all himself.
I don’t recall any deep discussion of the origins of insight in grad school. It is at once assumed, although one learns in Psychopathology 101 that it is one of the measures of health. That is, healthy people have good insight, while neurotic people have less and crazy people have none.
I suppose insight is also central to Philosophy 101. Indeed, it’s hard to miss, since it’s inscribed right there above the entrance to the sanctuary at Delphi: Know Thyself.
Interestingly, two other maxims were inscribed there, “nothing to excess” and “certainty brings insanity.” Therefore, know thyself, but let’s not get carried away; and what amounts to an early version of Gödel’s theorems, in that completeness is purchased at the price of consistency and vice versa. Or, just know you're not God.
Having known this, why then did Gödel go insane? Or did it take an insane person to see outside the matrix (and indeed, ideological matrices as such)? There’s something to the latter. But just because crazy people can see the world in novel ways, it doesn’t mean that people who see the world in novel ways are crazy.
Of course, back in the 1960s there was a whole movement in psychology that pretended the insane are actually persecuted mystics with a higher vision of reality. Look up R.D. Laing, whose books I still own, having read them with approval back before I even imagined becoming a psychologist. Rather, I must have been attracted to the idea that I could be considered normal, the crazier the better.
Who would have guessed? "Politically, Laing was regarded as a thinker of the New Left.” In other words, poorly developed insight:
If the human race survives, future men will, I suspect, look back on our enlightened epoch as a veritable age of Darkness. They will presumably be able to savour the irony of the situation with more amusement than we can extract from it.
The laugh’s on us. They will see that what we call "schizophrenia" was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break through the cracks in our all-too-closed minds.
First of all, did he just assume the gender of future beings? That’s crazy!
We are at a crossroads. Actually, it’s more of a Y-shaped intersection: get back to the point; continue fumfering around; or end the post and start over tomorrow. Or maybe get a head start on tomorrow’s post:
In-Sight. What is its principle? I wonder if the Son is the Father’s insight into himSelf, so speak? Certainly it is His perfect “reflection." I recall one of the early fathers saying something to the effect that Jesus is simultaneously God’s icon of man and man's icon of God, and that's enough insight for one day. Nothing to excess, and no, I'm not totally certain.
9 comments:
I very much enjoy your thinking out loud in this blog -- I am a newcomer of just a few months' acquaintance.
In short, merry holidays, thank you, and please continue documenting your mental meanderings and cerebral peregrinations. You have at least one kindred spirit fanboy out here.
Thank you for outing yourself -- a little incitement goes a long way!
I wonder if the Son is the Father’s insight into himSelf, so speak?
Interesting thought, though it seems to suggest that Father lacked, experientially, what only can be gleaned from His incarnation as the Son, which has been suggested by Neil Donald Walsch in his "Conversations with God" series of books in the 1990s, and in which Walsch also stipulated that an individual's soul cannot be fulfilled by thought alone, it must experience the thought in action. I have no answer.
Your wondering about why we, as humans, can or do have insight into ourselves, psychically, is a wonder and of great interest, and with almost 63 years of insights behind me, and hopefully more to follow, I'm certain I'll be looking further within as time goes on.
That is, healthy people have good insight, while neurotic people have less and crazy people have none.
Speaking of the left, I'm reminded of the typical Tumblrina or Lib of Tiktok who identifies itself by a list of pronouns and mental illnesses. On the one hand, such people are painfully aware of all the ways they are broken. On the other, they suffer an incredible lack of insight into who and what they are - what a human being is - and ought to be.
In elevating abnormality to normality, the left likewise must elevate absence of insight to a positive good, hence the need to censor sources of insight. Every groomer and pervert knows something's not right in them, but they think they can make the internal voice go away by making the rest of us shut up.
I suppose when they discover the calls are coming from inside the house is when they become suicidal.
I have insight into the Supreme Court’s relationship with immigrants.
Plus I just looked up this “New Left” of which Bob speaks. It’s all just a buncha jibberish about helping the meek. The New Right seems much more white, much more manly, much more “I know you are but what am I?” thrown in. The perfect place for the New Christian?
So anyways, back to our New Supreme Court. My insight is that they’re just waiting for the corporate bids to come in. So it’ll be a matter of time before we’re all swimming in M&Ms. And then the New Left and the New Right is gonna have a regular fiesta.
To participate in the social conflicts of this century the honest citizen asks for a rifle to shoot simultaneously in opposite directions
Indeed Nicolás. I’m the guy who’s into a proper balance of power. The rich and powerful hunters would still get their first dibbs on the mastodons eyeballs, but they wouldn’t be in charge of everything in the cave all in the name of “freedom and liberty”, or “Allah”, or the “proletariat” or whatever political animal they rode in on.
As it is in our megalomaniacally narcissist dominated society, if America turned far-left, Tulsi Gabbard would go all Marxist again. Candace Owens would suddenly sound mad niggerish. Dave Rubin would proclaim that he’d never left the left, with whatever public gayness being fully dependent on The State’s prevailing mandates. (but at least hopefully Joe Biden’s sons laptop wouldn’t have the same personhood status as a global corporation, so there’d be that)
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