Thursday, May 25, 2023

Time Out for Oxygen!

Difference and sameness -- like the One and the Many -- "constantly interpenetrate one another and give life to one another." To which McGilchrist adds, always.

Pretty, pretty authoritative, and I couldn't agree more. The question is, how and why -- i.e., by virtue of what eternal Principle is this the case? 

Hmm: what is one and three, distinct and yet consubstantial, interpenetrating and intersubjective, e.g.,  I am in My Father, and you are in Meand I am in you?

What could it be?

One problem I'm having with the book is its "mid-level metaphysics," so to speak, which is causing me a bit of sophication, since I am so accustomed to breathing the clearclean mountainair at the summit. Not that I am at the summit. Rather, that the air circulates downward if you know where the vents are.

In other words, I find that McGilchrist is making assertions that I agree are true, but not following them all the way up to the Principle(s) by virtue of which they are true. 

And often he's even taking an upside-down approach, and seemingly anchoring things in, say, physics, instead of the Reality above, even though he claims to be opposed to reductionism.

But just because physics and biology are much weirder than we had imagined -- and they are -- reductionism is still reductionism. One of the foundational texts of this unemployed hippy bum approach was The Tao of Physics, when we should be talking about the physics of the Tao:
The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician's rule book.
In other words, the material world is a reflection of the immaterial world, not vice versa. The former gives us hints of the latter -- as it must -- but that's different from trying to, for example, ground free will in the uncertainty principle, which is to not know what freedom is, precisely.  

Unlike the Science is Real crowd, I truly love science, but let's be honest,
Science cannot do more than draw up the inventory of our prison.

The inventory is larger and more full of surprises than we had imagined, but it cannot transcend its own assumptions and limits, for, self-evidently, 

That which is not a person is not finally anything.
Deal with it. You just have to accept the truth, regardless of how pleasant.

But I'm only up to p. 957. Perhaps we'll penetrate the toppermyst in chapter 27, Purpose, Life and the Nature of the Cosmos. Must be patient, I suppose. I don't want to be too critical, because he's certainly on the right (hemispheric) track. One just has to be mindful of various cautionary aphorisms, such as 
All truths converge upon one truth, but the routes have been barricaded.
And
The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.
For ultimately, 
The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.
Therefore, it is and always will be the case that
The man does not escape from his prison of paradoxes except by means of a vertical act of faith.
In other words, if pantheism is the case -- which McGilchrist appears to be saying -- then so what. It's just nihilsim by another name. It doesn't matter how weird or how big your cosmos,
The distances of the physical universe are those of a prison.

Again, the vents are in the ceiling:  

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

On p. 855 McGilchrist cites one of Blake's aphorisms: The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.  

Agreed. Now, what do we mean by "eagle"?

The language of the great contemplatives is hand-to-hand combat with things that cannot be spoken.... Colliding in its flight with ineffable secrets, with unrevealed mysteries, it has the appearance of an eagle who arrives in regions where, even for it, there is no longer suitable air for breathing. Thoughts are lacking for it. Their intellect descends again, struggling against words, which fail, each in their own turn....
In this ascent..., all lights are shadows in comparison with the last light. The treasuries into which the great contemplative's gaze searches are forever inexhaustible; and eternity promises to their ever-renewed joy fresh springs that will never be exhausted (Ernest Hello).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get this place more traction. Full disclosure: I watched as my minister father’s church shrunk down until it was sometimes just him preaching to my mom on Sundays. Sure, I can blame the usual scapegoats: Marxism, antifa, Sharia Law and the death of Charlton Heston and Cecil B DeMille. But I had other ideas and feared that dad just wouldn’t listen.

Obviously, catering to a buncha woke liberal Christians by cutting out the insultainment won’t work, since they seem to need their daily sex change supplements and Bob just doesn’t go that way. But at the very least, why are old boomers laying around all day bitching about how Fox News isn’t anti-woke enough, when they could be getting a spiritual workout in this place? Could it be that the workouts are tasting a bit more like spinach, when we could be serving up Big Macs with supersize fries? Or is that just yet another stupid anonymous idea? Anybody else got something?

julie said...

And often he's even taking an upside-down approach, and seemingly anchoring things in, say, physics, instead of the Reality above, even though he claims to be opposed to reductionism.

Along those lines, while I respect Instapundit as a news aggregator... this is just painful.

Gagdad Bob said...

Up that mountainside where the water runs crystal clear... look down on the city, look down below... breathe.

Van Harvey said...

"In other words, if pantheism is the case -- which McGilchrist appears to be saying -- then so what. It's just nihilsim by another name. It doesn't matter how weird or how big your cosmos,..."

That's a big 10-4 there good buddy.

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