Why Am I So Utterly Sane?

This is essentially a speed-post, since I slept an extra hour for some reason. Bestwecando is lay some groundwork for what will follow, I'll bet. 

Yesterday's post alluded to the literal dis-orientation that results from vertical closure. For Voegeln,

philosophy is the loving search for wisdom as an ongoing and deepening grasp of both the order of reality and the sources of disorder in human existence.... 

Moreover, this search that reveals the structures of being is from the start a loving openness to the transcendent divine reality that grounds both the quest and all that it illumines. 

We also touched on the idea that religions are too powerful to be displaced by anything short of a worse one (speaking of leftwing progressivism). 

Resistance against a satanical substance that is not only morally but religiously evil can only be derived from an equally strong, religiously good force. One cannot fight a satanical force with morality and humanity alone.

The real Resistance.

Lots here about the progressive matrix. What's remarkable is that he noticed it so long before it became obvious and undeniable: that we are "hemmed in" by "a flood of ideological language" coming from people with whom it is impossible to have a rational dialogue; we "cannot deal with the users of ideological language as partners in discussion," but instead must "make them the object of investigation."

What these utensils believe or say is never interesting, but it is interesting that anyone would believe and say such things. Of course, they can only say them within a matrix that reinforces and rewards saying such nutty things, otherwise they'd keep their delusions to themselves, at least all but the craziest ones.

Voegelin scoured history for similar examples of this kind of pathology, and found that "more than once"

language has been degraded and corrupted to such a degree that it can no longer be used for expressing the truth of existence.

What to do about it? 

In resistance to the dominance of idols -- of language symbols that have lost their contact with reality -- one has to rediscover the experiences of reality as well as the language that will adequately express them.  

One of Voegelin's keys is this recovery of the experience symbolized by the word. Once this link is severed, then we are in the linguistically pathological world of postmodernity.  

And clearly, from our perspective it is objectively pathological, because if the purpose of language isn't to forge a link between intra- and extramental reality, then what good is it? 

Good news: "there are always enclaves in the West" such as One Cosmos "in which science [not scientism!] can continue, and even flourish, in spite of the intellectual terrorism of institutions such as the mass media, university departments, foundations, and commercial publishing houses." 

Voegelin opposes the philosopher to the sophist, who "engages in misconstructions of reality for the purpose of gaining social ascendence and material profits." But there are others who do so simply because they are too stupid to know any better, i.e., just imitating the other high status primates. 

True:

The most important means of regaining contact with reality is the recourse to thinkers of the past who had not yet lost reality, or who were engaged in the effort of regaining it.

People often ask me, "Bob why are you so utterly sane? So in touch with reality?" In all humility, I can only say I read my back way in, thanks to a choir of quasi-angelic intelligences who left their landmarks for the restavus to follow, Voegelin being one of them.

But it can take time, especially of you start off without a guide and just read randomly. My son, for example, knows things I didn't figure out until my 40s and 50s. Conversely, I knew a lot of things at 17 that he doesn't know, but it turns out these things are not worth knowing, and also leave their marks, even if they were construed as innocuous at the time. Everyone is haunted by such idiocies.

Recapturing reality in opposition to its contemporary deformation requires a considerable amount of work. One has to reconstruct the fundamental categories of existence, experience, consciousness, and reality. One has at the same time to explore the technique and structure of the deformations that clutter up the daily routine; and one has to develop the concepts by which existential deformation and its symbolic expression can be categorized.

Whew! Hard work, but also fun. Frankly, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do with my timelessness.