The Open Cosmos

What is in the Devil's Toolbox? I would say his favorite tools must be those that are self-sustaining and allow him to take the rest of the day -- or century -- off. 

I'm thinking in particular of envy and ingratitude, because they cannot by definition be satisfied, and even feed on themselves: the envious and ungrateful only become more envious and ungrateful.

Conversely, greed, for example, can at least be temporarily satisfied, as can gluttony. But envy never rests -- which is why the left chose shrewdly in building a political philosophy around it. It is the engine that makes the left go, and why it is the most dynamic religion of our times.

People like to say that greed is the engine that makes capitalism go. This may or may not be true, but all the greed in the world won't result in wealth unless you first provide a product or service that someone wants. Thus, greed must be mediated by the desires of an Other. I'm as greedy as the next guy, but thus far I have nothing to show for it. 

Or, maybe I'm not as greedy as the next guy. If I were, I'd write things other people want to read. How hard could that be? Instead, I write what I want to read, because no one else has written it. So, I'm not greedy, just totally self-centered.

But I prefer to call it autotelic.

Come to think of it, if it weren't for the Almighty, this self-centeredness autotelism of mine wouldn't be healthy, would it? I say this because a closed system is inherently pathological. I won't bore you with details, but my doctoral dissertation (later published in an actual scholarly journal) was on just this subject. 

Suffice it to say, enclosed in my own Bobness, what would I be? Like Bob, only worse. Instead, we try always to come up with something the Almighty & Me Works Out Betwixt Us. Which is just another way of characterizing a vertically open system.

Which in turn goes to the subject of yesterpost, and to the difference between natural law and positive law. While we call it "natural," this is only because its roots must be "supernatural" or transcendent. Rather, it is only positive law that is located solely within immanence and therefore has only the force man gives it. 

I suppose an even deeper point is that there is no natural without the supernatural; in fact, I would say that this is one of those primordial complementarities without which we could neither be nor think. In short, nature is always already supernatural, or it would be utterly unknowable (knowledge being transcendent).

Let it be noted that, just as there is a “relatively absolute” -- the logical absurdity of this formulation does not preclude its ontologically plausible meaning -- so too is there a “naturally supernatural,” and this is precisely the permanent divine intervention, in virtue of immanence, in cosmic causality (Schuon). 

Noted. This again goes to our unique cosmic situation of being vertically open systems, open to transcendent truths that cannot not be, including on the moral and aesthetic planes. 

The reason why progressive thinkers deny nature -- AKA essences -- is not just in order to deny God, but in order to render the impossible possible, e.g., transgenderism, homosexual marriage, abortion rights, etc. One can favor any of these, but what can never be said is that they are in the nature of things. 

It is the very immutability of human nature that undergirds the possibility of change, progress, and evolution:

for only man by his very nature tends toward truth and justice (and, consequently, to God), thus meaning that this nature is certainly something loftier than the variable complex of given, changing phenomena (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Moreover, 

were we to do away with human nature, properly so-called, nothing would remain of natural ethics.... similarly nothing would remain of the natural law or of its immutability, and we would find that we could not avoid falling into a legalistic positivism which wishes to [legitimize] grave injustices and the worst forms of violence through the omnipotence of the State against right reason (italics in original).

So, One Cosmos, from God above to politics below.