It’s Christmas week, and we should be blogging about happier subjects. Yes, we’re still in a civilizational nosedive, but we can always return to that catastrophe in a week or two, assuming we don’t hit the ground first. And despite the left's best efforts, destroying civilization isn’t as easy as it looks.
Moreover, even the leftist doesn’t really want to live in the violent, repressive, and, worst of all, humorless world his theories and policies bring about, right? Right? RIGHT?!
I heard somewhere that old John Cleese is finally waking up to wokeness, after 83 years of making a nuisance of himself (he actually offered to be a speechwriter for Obama, and not because he saw that Obama himself is capable only of cliches, smears, and straw man arguments). A reminder that
The leaden prose of the Marxist offers an irresistible attraction to leaden minds (Davila).
Unfair, or too fair? Cleese recently described the Republican Party as the "most disgracefully immoral people I've ever come across in a Western civilization.”
On second thought, the perfect speechwriter for Obama! I mean, I can’t stand Republican leaders either, but Cleese will be surprised to discover that Western civilization has actually seen worse.
"The progressive," writes Sr. D., "travels among literary works as the Puritan did among cathedrals: with hammer in hand.” Until the hammer is turned on him. Then it's not so fun being the Nail of the Day.
Nevertheless, it’s not a virtue to defend yourself from being clubbed to death. Then again, discovery of the survival instinct is a very good place to begin one’s meditation on politics and human nature.
In any event, I predict Cleese will not live long enough to undergo a full-monty Alec Guinness:
But again, tomorrow it will be the eve of Christmas Eve Eve Eve, so let’s keep it light despite the darkness.
And for once, no pun intended: let's cerebrate this idea of the Light shining in the darkness, because if it’s true, it’s not just good news for sinners and even the IRS, but equally for thinkers, given all the bad and destructive ideas to which man is inclined (see above).
Oh, by the way, if we don’t get more than the occasional comment, I’m going to be forced to turn off comments. Too humiliating! I recall a deal we made several years ago, when far-flung members of the vertical diaspora promised to check in once a year. Perhaps they no longer exist, or have passed on to Bismarck. If you're dead, then never mind.
Our subject today is metaphysics. But really, we’re just going back to the previous discussion of Lonergan’s Understanding and Being, which took us through Lecture 7. How convenient that Lecture 8 is called A Definition of Metaphysics. It probably won’t be my definition, but that’s okay. Iron sharpens irony.
Maybe the posts are too long? I’m not aware of any other blogger who burdens the reader with such endless circumnavelgazing on a near daily basis.
As always, my excuse is that I do it for no one’s benefit but my own, because how can you help anyone else if you can’t help yourself? Supposing we are in a nosedive, it’s the only sensible thing to do: secure your flask first, and then assist the other person with a taste.
Let me back up a moment, and ask the question of whether Christianity has anything to do with metaphysics? I, of course, believe it does, but this places me in an apparently small and shrinking minority.
But if Christianity is true, and the truth sets you free, surely this can’t be just a helpful tip, another piece of the puzzle, a "department" like any other, only revolving around the Great Unprovable? Rather, it must be the epistemological key to the whole existentialada, no?
Is it all the made up words?
Or, do reverence and irreverence just not go together? Besides, you’re not as funny as you think you are, Gagdad. Keep your day job. Or rather, beg them to give it back.
We have so many departments of learning, is it really possible that a single idea or principle or being could unify them all? For this is the promise of any metaphysic, and not just the Christian kind.
I know -- maybe I should leave readers in suspense, so they have to tune in tomorrow for the next installment.
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