Charlie Don't Surf

Are there immutable laws of being?

It's an interesting question, because we know there are scientific laws, but being as such is not the object of science, rather, being under this or that aspect. Being as such is more general than the restricted being explored by this or that particular science.

One of my hobbies is to sit around and apply pure thought to being, and see what I can come up with. Surf on the waves of being.

So, you're not just lazy?

I didn't say that. I can engage in two forms of nondoodling at the same time, i.e., multislack.

In this case, I like to dive into the now and reflect upon the sheer existence of it all, with no preconceptions, just to see how far I can get. Careful, there's a beverage here!

After all, being is intelligible, or we couldn't know anything about anything -- which is identical to knowing nothing about everything. But since being is intelligible, just how much can we know about being qua being, using only the tool of intelligence as such?

It's the difference between, say, studying the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of water, and diving into the ocean. Knowing that water is H2O, or that it freezes at 32º, or that it seeks its own level, will all be rather beside the point. 

Let's say the ocean is to being as surfing is to knowing. I suppose the first question to sort out is whether the ocean is really real -- whether there is an extra-mental body of water -- or whether it's just a projection of some intracranial transcendental Kantian category.

Hmm. I'm going to go with the former, since I'm literally all wet, whereas Kant is only figuratively so. Yes, I could pretend that I am immersed in phenomena, and that I can't really say anything about the the nature of water itself. 

Likewise, I could could console myself with the certitude that the principle of causality is only in my head, and thus safely ignore the causes of drowning. Tell that to those poor submariners at the bottom of the ocean. 

I say the ocean of being is real -- in other words, not just projection of my own neurology. This is in accordance with the traditional (i.e., pre-Kantian) definition of truth, which is the conformity of our mind or judgment with extra-mental reality. Indeed, to say "reality" is to say "extra-mental," for what is the alternative? That reality is all in my head?

Yes, that is actually the alternative, although you will have noticed that it shatters into a billion pieces, since it means that literally every human being resides in his or her own truth; that perception is reality, and that we can all relax in the comfort and safety of our own delusions.

If that's the case, why do progressives choose such unpleasant delusions? For example, for the last five years Greta Thunberg has been laboring under the terrifying delusion that the world (curiously, not just her world) would end exactly yesterday. 

Now, you'd think she'd at least be relieved, but what are the chances? No, she'll just recalibrate the delusion. 

So, it turns out that Kant is correct, but only about crazy people, who do indeed inhabit a world of projected appearances, utterly oblivious to the underlying reality. 

To put it another way, they live in their own models of the world, and if there is a disparity between model and world, it's the world that's wrong, certainly not the model (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/is-there-a-penalty-for-wrong-predictions.php).

Unfortunately, in the binary choice between Reality and My Reality, Reality already lost. Moreover, there's a name for people who cling -- whether naively or maliciously -- to Reality: fascists, deplorables, and MAGA extremists, et al:

today we live in a time when even human biology is a social construct, such that people can change their gender simply by saying so. I’ve started calling our time “the Age of Proprietary Truth,” in which people believe they can have their private “truth” that should be just as binding on the rest of us as the truth of gravity. 

So a commonplace phrase today is “my truth,” or “living my truth,” which ranks up alongside other progressive cliches such as “the right side of History,” as though History was self-conscious, and... its consciousness happens to coincide with whatever the Democratic Party platform is at the moment (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/the-age-of-proprietary-truth.php). 

Such a view no doubt feels "liberating," and yet, it is precisely the mechanics of the Matrix -- of how one ends up living in an oppressive delusion.

Conversely, our point of departure is 1) that there is an extra-mental reality, and 2) that we can obtain genuine knowledge of it. Or that there is an ocean and that we can learn how to surf. Or just say civilization.

In other words, knowledge, to the extent that it is knowledge and not something less, is knowledge of being; we are not enclosed in our own private Idaho, or sealed in tenure, but always -- this touching on the very nature of the human station and the privileges flowing therefrom -- able to transcend what would otherwise be a vicious circle of progressive sophistry.  

No, we didn't get far this morning, but then again, our principles may be few in number but they are great in reach, so much so that they ultimately reach all the way up to God.