Workin' on a Building

Modern architecture knows how to erect industrial sheds but cannot manage to construct a palace or a temple.

Well, I don't know if we can construct the latter, but hopefully we can do better than the former. Maybe we can manage something in between, like a primordial mancave with an airy geist room.  

Let's pick up right where we left off, with the truly self-evident principle that 

unless one accepts that there is indeed such a thing as truth, nothing holds: remove truth and everything collapses. Nothing can get around this: "there is no truth" cannot be taken as true since it would ipso facto refute itself.

This is like the keystone in the arch, the one without which the building collapses. Now, the question is whether this keystone is also the cornerstone the contractors rejected. If so, this would explain the shoddiness of their postmodern craftsmanship. 

I'm a little fuzzy in the head this morning -- too many carbs last night -- so I'm going to jump right to my bottom line, and then try to clean it up afterwards. 

I suppose we could begin with something Schuon often says, that there is no privilege higher than truth, and then combine this with what must be the shortest and bluntest of aphorisms, that 

Truth is a person. 

Do the math: if truth is the highest privilege, and it is as person, then... personhood is the highest truth and privilege?

Possibly, but let's toss in one more aphorism, just for fun:

The truth is objective but not impersonal.

Now, how can this be? Aren't "objective" and "personal" kind of antonymous? Yes and no. Actually, only a person can be objective and/or subjective, and on every level. Another one:

That which is not a person is not finally anything. 

This, even though 

The Antichrist is probably man.

How can this be? Easy: a human being divorced from God is no longer strictly human, since God and human coarise in the personal space referenced above. 

Which is not to say man literally creates God -- the Tripersonal Absolute -- but then again, look at the motley crew of sacrificial gods he does create and seemingly can't help creating, from Moloch to Quetzalcoatl to Climate Change. But I repeat myself.

At any rate, if that which is not a person isn't anything, then it isn't even nothing, since nothing is at least parasitic on someone. Think about it, while I think about this:

Modern man treats the universe like a lunatic treats an idiot.

Now, let's be literal: just how does a lunatic treat an idiot? I should know this because I used to be a psychologist. More importantly, I used to be a lunatic and an idiot, so this ought to be easy. 

A lunatic is crazy, while an idiot is just stupid. Put them together and what do we have? I mean, besides tenure? I suppose you have someone who insists on believing impossible things about nothing, from Hume to Kant to Nietzsche to Derrida to the Democratic platform.

If we are correct -- and we cannot not be -- then the category of person not only proceeds all the way up (and down), it is why there is an up and down. 

Put conversely, remove the archetypal person from the arch and we find ourselves in a totally unintelligible flatland. But in reality, there is only a floor in this building because there is a roof. And moreover, 

We cannot escape the triviality of existence through the doors, but rather through the roofs.

Another big one:

The permanent possibility of initiating a causal series is what we call a person.

Thus, the "first cause" is the "first person," and both are Necessary Being. 

Granted, this post never got off the ground. But that's okay. At least it's a solid foundation, something to build on.