Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Metaposting

We're still between books, so it's up to Dávila to inspire us again.

The only claim that I have is not having written a linear book, but a concentric book.

Okay then, how about a nonlinear but concentric post about posting? A metapost?

If laws of history existed, their discovery would abrogate them.

Lookin' at you, Karl.

The tacit presuppositions of any science are more important than its teachings. 

Our friend Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living. Our friend Nicolás does him one better, observing that

Observing life is too interesting for one to waste time in living it.

That's a meta-aphorism that reminds me of Gödel's meta-logic. 

Come to think of it, I am interested in meta-anything, from -physics to -economics to -politics to -history and -religion. 

Even back in grad school I was drawn to metapsychology, or to the principles that must underlie the very possibility of psychology.

Metaquestions about any field, say about science or mathematics or the law, are not normally questions that are contained in the field itself; they are not, respectively, scientific or mathematical or legal (Rebecca Goldstein)

But Gödel's theorems "are spectacular exceptions to this general rule," for

They are at once mathematical and metamathematical. They have all the rigor of something that is a priori proved, and yet they establish a metaconclusion. It is as if someone has painted a picture that manages to answer the basic questions of aesthetics....

It is extraordinary that a mathematical result should have anything at all to say about the nature of mathematical truth in general (ibid.).

Nevertheless, here we are, in the metaworld illuminated by Gödel's metalight which shines on us all. 

If the universe is a system, there cannot be evidence to the contrary. 

Unless of course we know it is a system, in which case our knowledge transcends the system. 

Every system is a centaur: half man, half beast.

Famously, Christianity is not a system, much less an ideology, but a Person. Which should prevent it from devolving into a system. Nevertheless, there is the ubiquitous human temptation to enclose it in one. You know the type.

Visitors to a palace who admire only the latrines.

And 

The most noble things are debased when certain beings admire them
Which is why

Every Christian has been directly responsible for the hardening of some unbeliever's heart. 
It reminds me of the sudden emergence of the hectoring Christ is King crowd, for it is possible to say something true without saying it because it is true, rather, for stupid, spiteful, or uncharitable reasons. And if I have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. Suffice it to say, Nick Fuentes is not our kind of Christian.

A person is a metaperson. It is what defines personhood, precisely. To deny this is to asphyxiate the soul, which only breathes in the metaspace of transcendence.

What is unintelligible is the region where finally the soul breathes.

Bearing in mind that 

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.
 One can't help noticing that 

The most customary form of suicide in our time consists in firing a bullet into the soul.

True, but why do they want to murder the restavus? 

Just as the person is a metaperson, reason is transrational. Nevertheless, 

Today man limits himself to being a rational animal, that is to say, an inventor of practical rules at the service of his animal nature.

Thus,

When I hear the word “reason” being solemnly pronounced, I always get ready to listen to a sentence without meaning.

You Will Have Noticed that 

The modern tragedy is not the tragedy of reason vanquished, but of reason triumphant.
Everyone, it seems, has a piece of the puzzle, but my hobby is working on the metabook about the metacosmos.

In the specialist the most refined ideas about pieces of the universe cohabit with the most abject clichés about the universe itself.

A book about books? We used to have one that functioned as such. Allan Bloom observed that "In the United States,"

the Bible was the only common culture, one that united the simple and the sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and -- as the very model for a vision of the whole of things...

But with its decreasing influence, "the very idea of such a total book is disappearing," and "without the book even the idea of the whole is lost." We've tossed out our metabook about metareality, and are now stuck in the infra-reality of the left. More books than ever, but about nothing.

I, like any foolish Man of Today, once had no interest in the Bible, except to scorn it.

No one scorns the foolishness of yesterday as much as the fool of today does.

But 

When what an intelligent man likes seems uninteresting to us, we pay attention.

I kept bumping into such intelligent men whom it was impossible for me to scorn.

Ideas tyrannize the man who has few.
Those terrible simplifiers with one idea tyrannize the restavus.

3 comments:

julie said...

But with its decreasing influence, "the very idea of such a total book is disappearing," and "without the book even the idea of the whole is lost."

These days, the closest thing people have to a cultural touchstone is Harry Potter - and of course, with JK Rowling being guilty of wrongthink, that won't last, either.

Randy said...

Enjoying your posts on Dr Trueman's book btw. My son attends Grove City College but hasn't been able to take one of his classes yet.

Van Harvey said...

"Ideas tyrannize the man who has few."

Especially if, of course, they define a system.

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