The Monkey in the Middle and Freak at the Frontier of the Cosmos

I guess it's fair to say that I am a single issue voter: against insanity.

Ah, but in a groundless world of radical subjectivity and pure relativism, what is insanity?

Supposing the latter exists, it must have something to do with persons, since only a person can be insane. Everything else in nature is what it is and does what it does, but we don't say that gravity or entropy ought not happen.  

What even is a person? This would seem to be a good place to start. 

Here's a thought: the person is a "frontier being"

living on the edge, on the frontier, between matter and spirit, time and eternity (Clarke).

But looked at another way, this edge is the center. Certainly it's where all the action is. This is the idea of the human person as microcosm "or small cosmos, the cosmos in miniature":

A human person unites in itself all the levels of the universe from the depths of matter to the transcendence of spirit and is capable of union with God himself and thereby mirroring the unity of the cosmos itself (ibid.).

And why not?

the early Christian thinkers transformed the concept [of the microcosm] to celebrate the great dignity and glory of the human person as the central piece, or "lynchpin," of the universe (ibid.).

Plato too 

describes the human soul as a "middle being" situated between the pure upper world of soul and ideas and the lower world of matter and body, linking the two but also pulled in opposite directions by both (ibid.). 

Verticality, with attractors at both ends: one is 

upward toward the world of Ideas, guided by reason; the other, guided by irrational appetites, looks toward the earth...

Thus "the center of gravity of this composite being, the 'location' of the frontier point, is not fixed but movable" within this vertical phase space. Obviously I'm trotting out a very old idea, but am I wrong?!  

the human soul is the "traveler" of the universe. All other kinds of being are fixed by nature in their paths; only the human soul can choose to be, to live, on whatever level it wishes, from total absorption in matter to the highest spiritual union with the One (ibid).

This situates the question of "pathology" in a much wider context, in that the upper movement symbolizes our proper telos:

The human soul is truly a being that "lives on the edge," on the frontier, between matter and spirit, time and eternity (ibid.). 

We are in a sense the center at the periphery of being, or the periphery at the center, depending on how we look at it. Either way, we cannot do without these two terms or poles, since we always dwell within them. Which is Voegelin's whole point: since it is the reality of our cosmic situation, denial of which being a kind of ontological pathology he calls DEFORMATION,

the destruction of the order of the soul, which should be "formed" by the love of the transcendental perfection inherent in the fundamental tension of existence.

Formed -- in my opinion -- in the manner of an open system or dissipative structure. The intrinsically pathological alternative is CLOSED EXISTENCE or CLOSURE, 

the mode of existence in which there are internal impediments to a free flow of truth into consciousness and to the pull of the transcendental.

Conversely, properly OPEN EXISTENCE is  

the mode of existence in which consciousness is consistently and unreservedly oriented toward truth and toward the transcendental pole of the tension of existence.

Again, it is important to start with what we don't know, and yet is infinitely knowable, AKA O, or what Voegelin calls the Apeiron, which is 

Unlimited, indefinite, unbounded...., the "unlimited" source of all particular things. Because it transcends all limits, it is in principle undefinable.

Nevertheless, here it is, since it is both everywhere and everywhen; for it is truly APODICTIC, 

Certain or necessary. Used to refer to knowledge of what must be, as compared with what can be (and may even be).

We should be able to stipulate this much: that you and I may or may not be -- we are contingent -- but that the Ultimate Reality of O cannot not be. Man is situated between the Necessary and the contingent, but here again, we have the great privilege of participating in the former -- which is another way of saying that the Center is at the periphery, and that we peripheral persons participate with, or have access to, the Center.

Especially since the Incarnation, but let's hold off on that and talk about our mysterious PARTICIPATION in Celestial Central, which 

Refers to sharing the qualities of the supreme exemplar, in which they are present in their perfection.

Again, supposing the Incarnation of this Supreme Exemplar -- of its participation in us -- that's a rather big deal. For it 

merges with the old idea of "man as microcosm," already present in pre-Christian Greek and Roman thought, so that the latter takes on a whole new richness (Clarke).

It actually represents quite a metaphysical advance, in that it overcomes older dualistic Manichaean and Gnostic views that devalue the immanent pole of bodily being; rather, there is "a more positive valuation given to the human body and to the whole material world along with it."

Now the body is no longer something to be looked down upon, to be escaped from and left behind as soon as possible....

the human person now becomes a microcosm in a new and richer sense than in the Platonic tradition: it incorporates into itself all the levels of the material universe and all its values, stretching from the lowest level of the material universe all the way up to the highest spiritual level.

Bottom line for today: the human person

now becomes the center or middle point, the "middle being," of the universe in a new, enhanced sense.... [as] the whole human person, body and soul together, embodied spirit (Clarke).