I became an existentialist back in the early 1980s. Or rather, I realized I was one: existence on its own terms made no sense except for whatever arbitrary sense we could temporarily impose upon it. This is what we call "auto-pullwoolery," which is to say, fooling ourselves.
For example, today I very much hope the Rams defeat the Jets. But if I ask myself why I nurture this hope, and what it signifies, the whole exercise falls apart. Likewise, last summer I hoped the Dodgers would win the World Series. Well, they did. Now what?
Hope for the Rams.
Correct. One hope replaces another, but where does it end? In a wholly horizontal world, hope is an absurcular tautology. The illusion of worldly hope only works "in the dark," so to speak. If we examine it closely in the light, it dissolves into nothing.
Much like the quantum physics we've been discussing: look closely enough at an object and it dissolves into a ghostly field of vibrating energy. There are no good or bad vibrations, just atoms in the void, a "flux of configurations" that is "senseless, valueless, purposeless." "The aboriginal stuff, or material, from which a materialistic philosophy starts is incapable of evolution," the latter being just
another word for the description of the changes of the external relations between portions of matter. There is nothing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations. There can merely be change, purposeless and unprogressive (Whitehead).
So, evolution is as hopeless as any other metaphysic. It's just maya by another name.
Just as the world doesn't owe us a living, nor does it owe us an explanation. Which brings to mind an aphorism or two:
History would be an abominable farce if it were to have a worldly culmination.
So, don't pull the historical wool over your eyes, especially the third one that "sees" transcendence:
The promises of life disappoint no one but the one who believes they are fulfilled here.
Of course, it would be nice if history made sense. But
For history to be of concern to us, there must be something in it that transcends it: there must be something in history that is more than history.
Like what, for example? Any ideas?
If history made sense, the Incarnation would be superfluous.
Put another way, history is the bad news into which the good news is inserted from outside history. This is the central claim, at any rate, and our last hope in an otherwise hopeless world.
Thus, it seems to me that Christianity is predicated on a deep and unblinking appreciation of just how screwed we are existentially. Thus,
There is some collusion between skepticism and faith: both undermine human presumptuousness.
Looked at this way, the materialist, the atheist, the evolutionist, aren't skeptical enough: they haven't yet hit the bottom of their own impoverished worldview. Perhaps they hope for a complete explanation from physics, or a total understanding of natural selection, which is to say, winning the Scientistic World Series. Then what?
If the atheist does not commit suicide he has no right to be thought lucid.
In the Foreword to The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology, Jean Borella describes our lamentable existential situation: the world of modern scientism
refutes the world of religion, silences it, and destroys its power. This is because religion speaks of an invisible world, while contemporary civilization renders the sensory world more and more present, the invisible world more and more absent.
I suppose the point of this blog -- it's in the name -- is that there exists a Perennial Cosmology that is the cure for, and way out of, modern cosmolatry. For "today it is nineteenth century materialism that has become a superstition."
Conversely, the perennial cosmology isn't even a little stitious. Rather, "it is not religion but the customary interpretation of science that needs to be 'demythologized.'"
We have only to demythologize the idolatrous myths of these impudent demythologizers. Like how? We're open to suggestions.
Smith lists four: first, what we are calling the perennial cosmology "has to do primarily with the qualitative aspects of cosmic reality" -- precisely those features that "modern cosmology excludes." And why does it exclude them?
For reasons alluded to in yesterday's post: for example, if your only tool is a high energy particle accelerator, don't be surprised if everything looks like a vast collision of quarks in the dark smashing into one another. A very expensive exercise in hammers and nails.
The second principle of our perennial cosmology has to do with verticality, and no amount of horizontality can account for it. The attempt to reduce the total cosmos to its horizontal aspects entails "a drastic diminution, an ontological shrinkage of incalculable proportions."
The nightmare of ontological shrinkage! Note that the meaning of the calculable is literally incalculable -- another way of saying semantics cannot be reduced to syntax.
Which reminds me of the unintentionally ironic eulogy of the great mathematician, whose contributions to mathematics were incalculable. The meaning of even a mathematician's life is not an equation or series of numbers, if only because abstract numbers are void of content. The map will never be the territory, nor can a man nourish body or soul by eating the menu.
Here we could say something about Gödel, who proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic that the mind is more than a machine: it calculates while always transcending calculation.
The quantifiable cosmos is only its "outer shell," so to speak -- the periphery, not the center. Rather, we -- which is to say, persons -- are the center of the universe, more on which as we proceed.
Coming in at number three is the related idea that man is the microcosm, a "universe in miniature." Sounds daft on superficial consideration, but "In the final count, man is able to know the cosmos precisely because he is in fact a microcosm."
It's why everything that exists is intelligible to our intellect, or why, in a word, being is fungible to knowledge: "The fact is that we can know the cosmos, because in a profound sense... the cosmos pre-exists in us."
Our fourth and last principle has to do with "the spiritual ascent of man":
It affirms that the higher strata of the integral cosmos can be known or entered experientially through the realization of the corresponding states of man himself...
Now let's put these four together and see if we can't reduce them to one: recall that there are quality and verticality, each irreducible to anything less; then microcosm and spiritual ascent.
Hmm... how to unify these into the big picture? Here's one man's attempt:
the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man....
To the question of knowing why man has been placed in the world when his fundamental vocation is to leave [i.e., transcend] it, we would reply: it is precisely in order that there be someone who returns to God (Schuon).
Or, Peter Kreeft writes of how "that-which-was-from-the-beginning," the "unmanifest Source of all manifestations became manifested," and "the distance between Heaven and earth" is bridged.
"Jesus is Jacob's ladder..., and we see this ladder is upside down: it really rests on Heaven, not on earth like the Tower of Babel," much less the babble of tenure. "He makes it possible to escape earth's gravity."
Ultimately, there is the spiral of
exitus-redditus, an exit from and a return to God, Who is both Alpha and Omega. God is the ontological heart that pumps the blood of being through the arteries of creation into the body of the universe... (Kreeft).
So, I think we can ultimately reduce it to something like the following, only spiraling down and out, and then up and in:
O
(↓↑)
(•)
(↓↑)
⬤
