There is No Reality, and the Left Creates It

Nothing new to report today. Tomorrow may be different, in that I just received Gil Bailie's latest in the mail, The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self, which will presumably require a lengthy review (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621389278/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). 

Meanwhile, let's continue our discussion of those few-in-number but great-in-reach Principles that not only explain what's going on down here, but spiral up to God and back downnegan. Here's one: the intellect is

essentially relative to intelligible being, as sight is to color. In this way, the intellect is not enclosed within itself but, rather, is opened to the entire domain of intelligible reality (Garrigou-Lagrange).

Well, good.

Now, you'd think this would be uncontroversial instead of unthinkable in academia, but as we know, it's the latter. And it must be the latter on pain of undermining the entire agenda of the left, which absolutely depends on there being no absolute -- or of there being no immutable laws of being and no one to know them. For example, 

The transgender ideology is an attack on the idea that the world is intelligible. Instead, [it] is an affirmation of the opposite idea, namely that the world has no objective existence. Instead, things are what we SAY they are. If we say that a girl is a boy, then she’s a boy. And if we say that an unborn baby is not human, then it’s not human; and if we say that same-sex marriage is perfectly natural, then it’s perfectly natural.

In short, "reality" is a projection of the inside out instead of a reception of the outside in, and therefore no reality at all. It places the Principle of Delusion at the foundation of its metaphysic, for if extra-mental reality -- intelligible being -- exists, it is the end of the left. 

Truly truly, this is an existential and even ontological struggle for the left, from which only one side can emerge victorious: progressivism (in all its nasty guises) or reality. 

But who defends reality and its immutable laws? Know them by their enemies:

the ultimate aim of present-day progressivism is the ruination of Christianity, Catholicism in particular.... Underlying Christianity are two fundamental beliefs expressed in the first article of the Nicene Creed: (a) the belief that God exists, and (b) the belief that God created an intelligible world that can be understood, at least in part, by the human mind (https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/06/23/teenaged-girls-in-progressive-america/?mc_cid=6e0a85fcdd&mc_eid=c604663a22).

In the exact degree to which these principles are not respected, "the intellect suffers and dies, as we see in positivism and Kantianism (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Indeed, this denial -- if consistently followed to its inevitable conclusions -- is an absolute fustercluck for intellect, for if it is the case that the intellect is not conformed to reality, then 

we would be left to suppress all language, every essence (or substance), and indeed, every distinction between things.... 

[S]uch a denial would lead us to destroy every form of truth, indeed even every form of opinion, all the degrees of probability, and all those of error. No longer would there be any difference between a great error and a small one. Consequently, we would also in this way be led to suppress every form of desire and action. Thus, we would not only be faced with the death of the intellect but, moreover, with the death of action in all its domains.

Now, there are two kinds of people: those who absolutely understand and agree with this passage, and those who are absolute idiots. 

Notice too how this mirrors a famous crack by St. Thomas to the effect that a small error at the beginning of one's metaphysic results in ginormous errors at the end -- or, in Petey's pithy phraseology, garbage in, tenure out.  

Knowledge comes down to the question of Is or Is Not. But if the very first act of knowledge is to sever its link to what Is -- AKA reality -- then the mind is forever enclosed in its own knowledge of other knowledge, never of reality.  

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there, because while questions of Is and Is Not are off the menu, this leaves the field open for the more critical question of Who and Whom, i.e., power. Progressives may have no idea what is what, but they have no doubt whatsoever as to who's in charge. Their vindictive credo is There's no reality, and we create it. Or else. Very much like God, only divested of truth, beauty, virtue, justice, and mercy.

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. 

Cosmic Bridge Repair

FYI, the following cogitations -- pneumatations? -- were provoked by a chapter called The Analogy of Truth, in the book The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie. 

I'm pneumatating on it because it provoked more thoughts than I could follow up on or digest at the time. I suppose I was struck by certain language that is reminiscent of Schuon, but from an unlikely source, Garrigou-Lagrange, a strict, no-nonsense Thomist.  

For example, "Only the Divine Truth is perfect, 'absolutely absolute.'" That sounds very much like Schuon, right down to the capitalized terms. "All other truths are complex and deficient," i.e., number two or lower. These latter 

imitate the simple truth, but in their multiplicity, they cannot equal it. They are, in a word, truths that are analogous to the First Truth (italics in original).

This means that we could add up all the lesser truths -- and there is a virtual infinitude of them -- but their sum would not equal this First Truth, i.e., the Absolutely Absolute. 

Hmm. Perhaps this has something to do with Infinitude, which must be the first entailment of the Absolute. 

just as the multiplicity of creatures imitates the simplicity of the Divine Infinite without any of these fragmentary images on its own... being able to claim that it is the perfect image, so too the multiplicity of truths imitates the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth, which infinitely surpasses each of these truths. 

In other words, none of the "fruits" of infinitude -- nor their sum -- add up to the transcendent Absolute; each is a kind of fractal image that may be situated somewhere along the vertical flowchart, which is to say, the more or less Perfect. But -- obviously -- all earthly perfections don't add up to Perfection as such, for they are at once mirrors and shadows of the Perfect. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more perfect -- idea of how all this perfection exists down here.

So, -- and this is Bob speaking -- every truth is an imitation of the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth that infinitely surpasses it, with this difference: man alone has the (vertical) freedom to consciously participate in -- which is to say, move toward or away from -- this Eternally Perfect Truth. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more veridical -- idea of how all this truth exists down here.

Just as creation is the nexus between time and eternity, man is the bridge. But at some point in mythic timelessness there was some sort of ontological bridge collapse. Nor does man have the know-how or be-who to repair the bridge, meaning that the reclamation project has to be undertaken from God's end.  

In a way, History is the history of man's various attempts to repair the bridge, but -- you will have gnosissed -- these are always bridges to nowhere, since no tower is tall enough to reach the Absolute, nor any amount of babbling equal to Infinitude. The best human system will never be the best possible system, and besides, Gödel.

Speaking of whom, Gödel did not take this to mean that we are thereby condemned to relativism; rather, to the contrary: that man has access to truths that he cannot prove. 

For example -- Bob speaking -- intelligence as such has access to the Absolute, whether explicitly or implicitly. Again, any truth is anchored in the Truth as such that is its principle.

I can explain that, but I'm going to let Bina and Ziarani handle it. They begin with the question, "how do we know if anything is true?" Notice that the question presupposes the existence of the very thing it wants to prove, truth. Is there any way around this "faith" in truth?

We could say, for example, that the truth is "logical," but who says logic is true? Certainly not Gödel, since logic is tautological, nor is our selection of premises dictated by any logical operation. And besides, how does logic get here, and how is it that man has unique access to it? 

Does sense experience give access to truth? No doubt, except to say that empiricism itself is not an empirically verifiable belief system, nor is any belief system.

There's no way around it:

before we can begin to look for the criterion of truth, we have to ascertain that there is such a thing as truth. 

And "unless one accepts that there is indeed such a thing, nothing holds: remove truth, and everything collapses."

Everything? Yes, vertically speaking there is a total collapse. Of that Bridge referenced above. Truly truly, nothing holds, and it holds nothing.

Not only does one have "to assume that there is such a thing as truth before one presents any reasoning," but one must also assume that it can be symbolically formulated and communicated to other minds, and this presumes a cosmos so peculiar that it would take some kind of soph-styled meta-poet to even attempt a description. Petey once took a stab at it, and only his absence of a body saves him from the Eternal blush and Absolute cringe:

Brahmasmi the Truth. The whole Truth. Nothing but the Truth. So ham, me God. We'll meet again. Up ahead, 'round the bend. The circle unbroken, by and by. A Divine child, a godsend, a bloomin' yes.

Hard to say, but I think what this big apophat-head is trying to say is that this divine child was sent here on a mission to repair the bridge, or something.

Clearing the Space Weeds & Time Junk from In & Around Your Headhouse

In the previous post we alluded to the principle that creation is the nexus between time and eternity; or creation is the principle that unifies them. At the same time, we might say that Intellect is the principle that unites intelligence to supraformal realities.

Backing up a bit (or coming down a couple of rungs), everyday garden-variety human intelligence accomplishes what exactly? It is the conformity of mind to reality, which results in knowledge of being, AKA a true judgment that something is. If knowledge can't even know that, then to hell with it.

But there are levels of being, whether you want to call them depths or heights. Let's say that science deals with the depths, penetrating from one level to another in search of the principles that account for appearances. 

As for the heights, these are the supraformal realities situated above the formal and material. Again, you could say there are only two degrees -- Creator and creation -- and that's technically true, but in positing such an impoverished model of reality, you're going to miss a lot of stuff in between. 

What? Where are we? Oh, we're still dabbling with the vertical flowchart. At the moment I'm just flipping through The Philosophy of Science in the Light of the Perennial Wisdom by Bina and Ziarani -- that and an essay by Schuon called The Five Divine Presences, seeing if we can nail down some of the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of our flowchart. We'll just see where it leads and hope for the best.

From our perspective,

the Divine Principle is hidden behind a number of envelopes, the first of which is matter. Matter presents itself as the outermost sheath, the shell or crust, of that invisible Universe whose main features are made known to us by both the Intellect and Revelation (Schuon).

The most remarkable thing about matter is undoubtedly its interiority and intelligibility. Over and above its sheer isness is the fact that it speaks to us. 

Of what? Of a lot of things, but in this case I'm thinking of form. Always and everywhere matter transmits invisible forms to our intelligence, and that is flat strange. And yet, it is so commonplace that even babies do it.  

Now, while it looks like we are surrounded by matter, this is not, and cannot be, the whole story. What I mean is that you can't really be enclosed in something that is totally transparent, or rather... how to put it... To the extent that we are enclosed, it's more like a house made entirely of glass. Yes, our head is a glass house.

But even then, that's an inadequate image, since there's a constant two-way flow between what's inside and outside your headhouse. Look out at the world and what do you see? Whatever it is, it is never formless matter, rather, forms everywhere -- trees, rocks, water, birds, chairs, a basketball hoop... weeds... 

Weeds are an interesting case, because they have a kind or moral and aesthetic connotation; they're there, but they're not supposed to be there. Sez who? Not the weeds, that's for sure. They're like the "homeless." Of course they have a home. It's just not where we want it to be.

I also see a big container of Round-Up. I suppose it's like the sherriff, or maybe the art critic. It promises to eliminate the unwanted forms from the scene. It stands there like a threat to the weeds, but the weeds aren't frightened, so it's a stand-off

Speaking of unwanted forms, now that I'm looking, I also see dirt on the window. Yes, I'm lazy, but it's more that I normally just don't notice it. The window is a form, but I don't typically look at this form, rather, through it. 

The point is, we are at once surrounded, but by a totally transparent material world, which is actively trans-lucent in two direction, toward us and vice versa. 

In a way, there are no strict nouns anywhere, since the nouns speak their way into our heads, and then they take on a new mode of existence inside us -- which is what knowledge is. 

In reality, however, it is the Principle that envelops everything; the material world is only an infinitesimal and eminently contingent content of this invisible Universe (Schuon). 

Above it was suggested that the earth circles the sun. But if I am not mistaken, they actually circle each other, or rather, the entire solar system is circling around its own axis, but that's not all, because our galaxy circles around another axis, on up to various superclusters and whatever comes after that. If there's a still point of the turning world, it is reflected in us. But we can't be it's ground, source, and principle.

Yesterday I was thinking about the two hands in Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel, of Adam and God. It was an Important Thought, but now I can't remember what it was.... something to do with that space in between and how it is everything, or rather, the relation between is everything...

Oh well. It will come to me. Just not in this post.

Starting from the material world that is in principle knowable to our senses, we perceive the first state of being, that is, the material state that surrounds us, encompassing the entire system of galaxies, however inaccessible to us they may be in fact. To some, this state represents all that is (Bina & Ziarani).

Sad! But even on its fact this is inadequate model, because a galaxy is an immaterial concept we can think about. 

Say, are there weeds in outer space? Things that are there but shouldn't be? There are now. 

Below, "A computer-generated image representing the locations of space debris as seen from high Earth orbit (HEO). The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit":

What about time junk? Or are we it? It depends, I guess.

Lookin' Under God's Hood

Way up at the toppermyst of the vertical flowchart there is Absolute reality, Infinite possibility, and Perfect quality. If that's the case, then what are we doing here? How did we get here?

Easy: Infinitude "projects the Principle into Relativity, and thus produces the metacosmic 'space,'" or what we've been calling the vertical flowchart. 

Being that there is no relativity "prior" to the projection (since it must be coeternal), I suppose we could say that relativity is this projection (and vice versa). To paraphrase el Grande Aphoristo, this creative projection is the nexus between time and eternity.

But there are two ways of looking at it, from our perspective and from God's perspective -- the latter only being a "perspective" by way of analogy, since it excludes nothing, in the same way a sphere contains every possible circle.  

Beginning with God's POV, Schuon describes it thus:

The Absolute is infinite; therefore it radiates, and in radiating it projects itself; the content of this projection being the Good.... This is the very foundation of what Christian doctrine terms the Hypostases.

Oh? Say more. 

In projecting the Absolute, Infinitude "thus produces the image," this being the Logos; it is like a "refraction of the Light which is in itself undivided." 

The Absolute is necessary being, AKA that which must be and cannot not be. 

However, its first and intrinsic entailment is Infinitude, and this is where we come in: we always partake of both, since we exist (which is to say, participate in Absolute Being), but always "more or less," since there is the potential that is the shadow of our participation in Infinitude; and "progress" is movement toward the Good, or a round trip back to Perfection. At any rate, it's a trip. 

In this way we are analogous to God, in that we too are made of Absoluteness and Infinitude. I suppose we could reason up from this existential fact to the Principle, or from the Principle down to us. Either way, at least it gives us a way to think about our situation. Or something to argue about.

But our predicament is a bit more complex than this bipolarity suggests, since there are degrees of being, like concentric circles around an infinite point. 

Again, there is the material world that answers to our senses, and the formal to which the mind is an adequation. 

The latter is immaterial -- for example, the concept of a circle, a tree, or a dog. Every material tree we will ever encounter is unique, and yet, we spontaneously discern the subtle concept beneath the gross matter perceived by the senses.

Which means that the world is "transparent" or "translucent," or something, for every form is like a window into the essence. 

Imagine what the world would be like in the absence of this interiority. You can't, because you would have to eliminate the interiority at both ends, i.e., intelligibility and intelligence, the two being mirror reflections of one another. Such a cosmos is literally inconceivable. Especially for God, who is the very principle of Intelligence.

Here you can appreciate all the trouble Kant -- and prior to him, nominalism -- landed us in, because he collapses the world of intelligibility and form into the ego, as if the world is just a projection of our own concepts, instead of a discernment of these immaterial forms in extra-mental reality.

And now it occurs to me that Kant's conceptualization only confuses man with God, for it is God -- as outlined above -- who projects and radiates ideas, forms, and archetypes into the world, not us (pathological projection notwithstanding, but that's a different post). 

Rather, the forms were all here before we arrived on the scene, and will still exist after we're gone. 2 + 2 will always = 4, and more generally, truth will always be true irrespective of whether anyone believes it. More generally, Being is intelligible, and that's my final answer.

Are there people who think there were no laws of physics before the emergence of man? Probably, since there is no idea so stupid that it hasn't been promulgated by some tenured primate. 

A more interesting question is whether the cosmos was beautiful before we got here. I say yes, because I'm just not that creative, except maybe in my dreams. I also say it was good, but of course, God said that before I did.

Oh, I guess there will be no post tomorrow, since they tell me there will be no electricity from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Speaking of which, I don't know if you heard it here first, but Brandon won't make it to 2024 for one reason or another (i.e., health or scandal), so get ready for President Newsom. He'll save the world, one blackout at a time.