The Immutable Truth of Existence, and Now What?

We were talking about human rationality and means-end relations. Because -- and to the extent that -- we are rational, we do things for reasons. One reason turns out to be a means to another reason, but the series cannot go on forever and still be called rational. Rather, with no ultimate reason, everything is reduced to a cosmic whatever:

If we want to know whether we act rationally, we must consider whether we have an ultimate purpose, that is, an end to the chain, which can no longer be converted into a means for a further purpose (Voegelin). 

So,

To have an ultimate purpose in life, as unifier for all single rationalities of action, is a condition of rationality for the whole life. 

This doesn't mean there is such an ultimate purpose, but there are hints. For example, if I tell you I blog in order to discover truth, only a true nihilist would ask, "Why would you want to know truth? Besides, there's no such thing." 

The same goes for other transcendentals such as beauty and virtue, or just happiness. People may be wrong about the nature of happiness, but even a masochist chooses unhappiness because he thinks it will make him happy. 

Voegelin then veers back to his Thang, which is political science. He calls it a "science of rationality of our actions, including the ultimate good from which rationality radiates over the whole chain of action."

Correct: this goes to why what we call "politics" these days is much closer to primitive religion and myth than it is to politics in the classic sense. For Aristotle,

if there is only an indefinite chain there is no ultimate rationality. Therefore if you want to have ultimate rationality there must be an ultimate purpose. 

B-b-but... is there? An Ultimate Purpose? If so, is it knowable? By us? Either way, it is perfectly rational to affirm that

We have no ultimate science of action unless we know something about an ultimate ground.

Put conversely, if there is no ultimate ground, then we can rationally conclude that we're not the Rational Animal after all. Rather, the rationalizing animal. Which calls to mind a zinger by Ben Franklin:

So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

Hiyo!

But hey now, he's not wrong, supposing there is no ultimate ground.

Okay. Now what? 

Well, whether or not we have an ultimate purpose, we always act as if we do -- "as of our life made some sort of sense."

Speaking as a lapsed psychologist, what is a patient but a person whose life no longer makes sense, or makes the wrong kind of sense?

In fact, this is one of the reasons psychology began to bore me, because without a full blown restoration of the Ultimate Purpose, most of the intermediate purposes are more or less trivial or silly. 

My son is going through a bit of an identity crisis, in that he's finished high school, so now what? He's too intelligent for college, which (real subjects notwithstanding) is an institution to indoctrinate malleable idiots into the state religion. 

Back when I was 17 I was an idiot, but at least I knew I was an idiot. Therefore, I proceeded straight to college knowing full well that its main benefit was to prolong my adolescence as long as possible. 

I was one of the lucky ones, because I didn't finish grad school until I was 32. Which didn't mean adolescence was over, but it did mean I was getting closer to the quandary my son is struggling with, which is to say, Now what?

Speaking of idiot college students, of whom I am chief,

I find students frequently are flabbergasted, especially those who are agnostics, when I tell them that they all act, whether agnostics or not, as if they are immortal! Only under the assumption of immortality, of a fulfillment beyond life, is the seriousness of action intelligible that they actually put into their work and that has a fulfillment nowhere in this life however long they may live. 

They all act as if their lives made sense immortally, even if they deny the existence of a psyche, deny the existence of a Divinity -- in brief, if they are just the sort of fairly corrupt average agnostics that you find among college students today (ibid.).

For proof of this, just ask one of them: Why not be racist? Or make fun of trannies? What's the difference?

Not only is my son not stupid, he's also not corrupt, so that's two strikes against him in terms of assimilating himself into the Matrix. I passed along some fatherly advice, but let's stick with Voegelin for the moment. He's our metacollege advisor. 

Everyone acts as if he had an ultimate purpose, whether explicit or implicit, articulate or inarticulate, intelligent or tenured, etc. 

I didn't say this to my son, but for me -- and for the Raccoon more generally -- it is as if we turn the bi-cosmic telos-scope around and begin at the far end -- in other words, of course there is an Ultimate Purpose, hence all of the sub-purposes that only make sense in light of it. 

For example, if there is no O, then I would not -- could not -- have poured out these millions of intelligible words over these past 17 years of aggravated blogorrhea. 

But that's my problem. And the current problem is making sense of Voegelin, so let's get back to it, for he's either way wrong or way right. There can be no in-between here: it's either O or Ø, and if the latter, you're not even free to choose it.

Has this post gone on too long? We're already over 1,000 words, and we're just getting started.

I'll beg your indulgence for one more point, something that first crossed my radar a few decades ago in E.F. Schumacher's Guide for the Perplexed. 

First of all, if you're not perplexed, you're just wrong. Or maybe a college student. At any rate, Voegelin talks about how we -- Homo sapiens, that is -- are obviously composed of inorganic matter, and that we are also animated by a principle of Life, like any other animal.

The question then simply is: By what is man distinguished from animals, from plants, from inorganic matter? The answer is: by his life of reason. 

Schumacher, like us, does not start at the bottom, because you can't get here -- to the immaterial psyche or intellect -- from there. Thus, instead of saying that man is matter + life + x, he begins at the top, and says that an animal or college student is life minus x. Therfore, according to Voegelin,

conformity to the life of reason is what is best for man in order to live out his nature.... All preferences on the merely biological level of instincts and urges, or on the merely psychological level of hedonism or satisfaction or pleasures, or on the merely metabolic level of having good food, are on a lower level, which is not worth being considered as the ultimate purpose.

With an important caveat, which goes back to the fatherly advice alluded to above: that real purpose in life is not located in the middle range of an opinionated ape, but up close and personal, with the above noted instincts, urges, passions, pleasures, and satisfactions; and at the far end of Ultimate Purpose. 

In short, a Raccoon life worthy of the name includes both ends of the spectrum. We don't waste our timelessness on the vast middle range of stupid.

1,320 more words added to the pile. More than enough for this morning.