Making Our Way Through the Ruins of Thought

Every society is born with enemies who accompany it in silence until they ambush it at night and slit its throat.

Somewhat random reflections:

Churchill famously remarked that We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm. 

It's always the resentful worms that have it out for the glow-worms, whether Booth and Lincoln, Chapman and Lennon, or Robinson and Kirk. I suppose we can go back to our foundational cultural exemplars, Pilate and Christ, and before that, Socrates and the chinless Athenian court that condemned this truth-seeker to death for seeking truth. 

But it is a fact that the good always suffer at the hands of the evil: Kirk wanted good for everyone, including Robinson, but not vice versa, so it's never a symmetrical relationship between good and evil. As they say, law enforcement has to be right every time, but the terrorist only once.

Evil has only the reality of the good that it annuls.

That can sound naive or dismissive, as if to say evil is just an illusion, but it is much like falsehood, which by definition has no real reality, even though it obviously exists in some sense. A delusion is real insofar as it exists, but it conforms to no reality. If I say 2 + 2 = 5, there it is, right on your computer screen. But its content is nil. 

These days -- actually, in all days -- people believe a great many things whose content is nil. For example, from what we know of Charlie Kirk's assassin, he believed that the set of "fascists" included Kirk and presumably all people who align with his beliefs, which is roughly half the country. Thus, the assassin was motivated by something that simply does not exist. 

Conversely, Kirk was motivated by what does exist, which is to say, truth. But prior to this comes a metaphysic, whether implicit or explicit, that says reality exists and man can know it: that the world is intelligible, and that our task is to unpack this intelligibility, from science to philosophy and ethics.

All of this seems so elementary, and yet, each of these claims is contested by political nihilists who are passionately committed to unreality -- for example, to the unreality of transgenderism. To which we might add the unreality of catastrophic climate change, the unreality of a racist judicial system, the unreality of Trump's collusion with Putin, and the unreality of social justice.

In fact, Hayek wrote a foundational text on The Mirage of Social Justice. It's not that social justice warriors are merely wrong, rather, that they are advocating for something that does not exist and cannot exist, and inevitably redounds to its opposite, contributing "to the erosion of personal liberties and encouraging the advent of totalitarianism." To quote the Aphorist,

"Social justice" is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.

As one reviewer puts it,

The concept of social justice has no meaning in a free and prosperous society, and no society can be free and prosperous if it is planned on the basis of some notion of social justice.

In fairness, let's give equal time to an adverse reviewer: "Hayek is the worst." He is

Greedy and selfish. His work reflects the ease with which white males in the West can thrive in a society that is set up for them to win -- all the time.... If you are bigoted and spiteful, you'll probably love Hayek. 

So, Hayek's opinions are not even in the realm of "true or false," rather, a reflection of greed, selfishness, spite, bigotry, and white male privilege. This illustrates the principle that if you want to preemptively dismiss an argument, the easiest way is to impute sinister motives to the person holding it. If the person persists in holding it, then out come the fangs. Or guns.

Likewise, "socialist economics" is an oxymoron, because without the price mechanism determining costs, there is no economics, precisely. Or something like that. Gemini?

Mises argued that without a price mechanism determined by private ownership of the means of production, a socialist system would be unable to perform economic calculation. In a free market, prices emerge from the voluntary interactions of individuals, and they serve as signals that convey information about the relative scarcity and value of goods and resources. These prices allow entrepreneurs to calculate the costs and profitability of their ventures. 

In a socialist state where the means of production are collectively owned, there would be no market for capital goods. Without a market, there would be no prices for these goods, and therefore, no way for central planners to rationally determine which resources to allocate to which production processes. This problem, often called the economic calculation problem, would lead to a chaotic and inefficient allocation of resources, making rational economic planning impossible. 

Essentially, Mises argued that economics, as a science of choice and resource allocation, is fundamentally dependent on the existence of a price system, which he believed was incompatible with a socialist system. 

So, socialism is obviously real, only impossible. As is true of most progressive beliefs. Just as "socialist economics" is a null set, so too is "transgender women" or "human fetuses that are not human beings."

A trivial but illustrative example yoinked from Instapundit: a Kirk supporter on a college campus with an innocuous sign reading "People Should Not Be Killed Over Opinions." 

The aggressor warns the crowd that supporters of free speech will "keep doing this forever until somebody stops them." Of course, we have constructed a whole society on the basis of a belief that people are permitted to have opinions, even if their opinions are incorrect. Well, opinions are one thing, but "YOU CAN HAVE THE WRONG FUCKING OPINION, DAWG!," and then what? The aggressor proceeds to tear down the sign. The free speech advocate got off easy.

The left by definition opposes free speech, but it hasn't been that long since they began saying so out loud. I distinctly remember the initial rumblings during the Obama presidency, which at first I dismissed as a fringe phenomenon that mainstream Democrats would reject. For example, I can remember nothing of the sort being advocated by Democrats in the 1990s. But since then, the fringe has moved to the center, and we now have a major political party committed to the policing and banning of speech. 

But to ban speech is to outlaw curiosity and even thought itself. Or, you can have the thoughts, just don't utter the thoughts out loud or try to persuade others that your thoughts comport with reality. For that is all Kirk did: argue that his ideas were more in accord with the nature of things than those holding the contrary opinion.

Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different.

Is there a moral universe in which Kirk's assassin "did the right thing"? Yes there is. The following is from an old post from eighteen years ago, when I wrote in longer paragraphs:

Chesteron writes of the socialist that although he may have a "large and generous heart," it is "not a heart in the right place." And only a human being can have a heart dangerously set in the wrong location. It generally occurs "when a religious scheme is shattered" as a result of their intense skepticism. When this happens, "it is not merely the vices that are let loose." Rather, "the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage." Just because someone has a moral code, it hardly means that they are moral.

Schuon would agree with Chesterton that the leftist is "really the enemy of the human race -- because he is so human." Of all the animals, only a human being can sink beneath himself -- and even beneath the animals. And he does so primarily by imagining that an animal is all he is, for when human intelligence is in the service of animal instinct, the result is hell on earth -- and bear in mind that Chesterton was writing before the great atheistic movements of the 20th century -- the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist China, et al, so he clearly grasped the principle before it actually played out in history.

"The peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought."

Chesterton writes that "there is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped." It is the thoroughly irrational thought that our thoughts have no relationship to reality and that truth is therefore inaccessible to human beings. This radical skepticism was "the ultimate evil against which religious authority was aimed," which is why, "in so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof that cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum."

For if the converse were true -- e.g. the blind materialism of natural selection -- "it does not destroy religion but rationalism," for it nullifies the mind that can know truth. It is the equivalent of "I am not; therefore I cannot think."

Thus, "it is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin." For we have already seen the effects of this gloriously unbound, "free" thought, since the results are strewn all around us. Indeed, we must try to get through the day -- and our lives -- by making our way through its ruins.

Free thought is only free to the extent that it comports with reality; it is freedom to know truth, so freedom is obviously constrained by this telos. Or, it can be constrained by the leftist who believes such freedom -- and the belief that it is ordered to, and even rendered possible by, the Absolute -- is a dangerous thing that must be stopped. 

Ideological Malware

Yesterday we called progressivism a monstrous ideology in the business of creating monsters. The first thing the monsters will say in response is that this kind of dehumanizing language is a call to violence. 

Perhaps we should define our term and determine if monsters actually exist. What to do about them is a different matter. I think we can all agree that Hitler was a monster. Nor do I mind comparisons to Hitler, except to say that very few people qualify for the comparison, e.g., Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. It's a rather exclusive club. 

To even suggest Hitler was a conservative is absurd on its face, since he was a radical revolutionary who wanted to abolish, not preserve, the existing social and political orders. Nevertheless, the left never stops comparing Trump (or Charlie Kirk) to Hitler, even though Trump is literally an anti-Hitler:

In every relevant way, Trump is the exact opposite of Hitler. Hitler invaded Poland, France, Belgium, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and no doubt a couple more that don’t come to mind. Trump has invaded no one. Hitler murdered six million Jews; Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, and has Jewish grandchildren. Hitler raised taxes and greatly expanded the powers of government. Trump has cut taxes and tried to reduce the scope of government. Trump is literally the anti-Hitler.

So, why the Hitler comparisons? Like so much of what goes on with the left, idiots and true believers at the bottom, manipulative swine at the top, the point being to get the idiots to do the bidding of the swine:

Groups of Germans tried to assassinate Hitler. How does history remember them? As heroes. If you are a loyal Democrat, and you hear your party’s leaders say, thousands of times, that Trump is the same as Hitler, what are you supposed to conclude? That anyone who assassinates Trump is a hero.

Likewise Charlie Kirk:

He has been ritually denounced as a “Nazi” thousands of times, day after day, for years, by influential Democrats. Why? Kirk was the exact opposite of a Nazi. I don’t think Democrats have so characterized Charlie by accident, or out of ignorance. I think they were deliberately trying to get him killed. And now they have succeeded.

*Ironically*, the left explicitly and transparently engages in the favorite propaganda technique of the Nazis, the so-called "big lie." That leftists by the millions have bought into the lie proves the effectiveness of the technique: people are more likely to believe a massive, audacious falsehood than a smaller, more plausible one. The sheer scale of the lie makes it seem unbelievable that someone would fabricate it.

Which implies that small lies aren't as effective as big ones, for example, that smallish lie Trump isn't a mainstream Republican, when the truth is he's just a Republican who keeps his promises. Plus, he's more of a mainstream 1990s Democrat, favoring tight borders, law and order, and fiscal responsibility. Does this make Bill Clinton -- or JFK before him -- Nazis?

I was around back then. Didn't conservatives demonize Clinton?

Yes, but I don't recall anyone calling him a Nazi or communist, rather, just a silver-tongued manipulator and general sleazebag, oozing insincerity from his pores -- more like Gavin Newsom. Obama too has the gift of vacuous bullshit, except that he sincerely holds radical beliefs. 

We don't yet know much about Charlie Kirk's assassin. What if he turns out to be, say, a conservative Jew hater who targeted Kirk because of his staunch support of Israel? In other words, because Kirk was an anti-Nazi?

I don't see how that can even be considered conservative, since the #1 thing we wish to conserve is Greco-Judeo-Christian western civilization. Animus toward Judaism is an attack on the roots of the American order itself. Our founders were well aware of the connection, and wrote of it frequently. There is a reason why the Supreme Court building has a marble frieze of Moses and the Ten Commandments. 

Speaking of law, yesterday I was reminded of Krauthammer's, that

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Therefore, if you think someone is merely stupid, ignorant, or misinformed, you go to their natural habitat -- mainly college campuses and newsrooms -- and try to convince them of their stupid errors. As did Charlie Kirk.

On the other hand, if you truly believe someone is an evil Nazi, the time for rational debate is over. You're not going to get anywhere by suggesting to Hitler that maybe he's being a bit rough on the Jews. Rather, you kill him.

I don't write much about politics anymore, but I still wonder about a hypothetical organizing principle or master key to left wing thought. For example, what is it in Greta Thunberg that makes her support both climate change fantasies and genocidal Hamas terrorists? And what do these have to do with "transgender rights," BLM, DEI, and other policies that unite the left?

What is the nature of the ideological malware that is installed into the leftist's head and makes them incapable of perceiving reality? Indeed, perception of reality is replaced by projection into it, such as the projection of Hitler into Trump, supremacism into whites, racism into police, toxicity into masculinity, malignant homophobia into benign heteronormativity, et al?

It seems that the malware must include both an ideological content and a "mechanism" that converts the content into the appearance of reality. What is the nature of this mechanism? It has to be something innate to the human mind.

It reminds me of how, say, a vaccine works, by "tricking" the immune system into attacking the virus injected into he bloodstream. Obviously the immunization doesn't have to invent the immune system, rather, just exploit it.

Analogously, the ideological manipulator doesn't have to invent psychological projection, rather, just exploit it. More generally, we are all prone to believing the worst of our ideological adversaries. For example, yesterday I was quick to swallow the story of the assassin's rifle and ammo being scrawled with Antifa and transgender messages.

No, check me on that: I suppose we should still adhere to the (at least) 48 hour rule, but the assassin is said to be "a 22-year-old antifa demon brainwashed by hateful leftwing professors":

The "cultural phrases" on the bullet casings turned out to be:

* "Catch, fascist"

* "Bella ciao" (a reference to an Italian song used by resistance fighters in WWII that antifa uses as military anthem)

* A confusing reference that is reportedly a tip-of-the-hat to the LGBTQ mafia's.... "furry community." 

So, ideological malware installed into the murderer's head and projected into Kirk. Mission accomplished, in that the actions follow the logic of the malware.

Another feature of the malware is to deny it is malware. Here again, the malware doesn't have to invent the defense mechanism of denial, rather, just exploit it:

MSNBC is deliberately misleading their left-wing viewers about the motives of the Charlie Kirk assassin.

The network claims there is "no theme" when it comes to Tyler Robinson's bullet casings.

He literally wrote "hey fascist! catch!" and Antifa phrases on bullet casings.

Just like there was "no motive" when a radical killed two children at a Minnesota church even though he had "kill Trump" and anti-Christian messages on the weapons.

And there was "no motive" when a 14-time repeat offender stabbed Iryna Zarutska and said "got that white girl."

What else is new? MSNBC has become an accomplice to political violence.

While, of course, projecting the violence into us. It's what monsters do:

The Democrat-Media Party Insists That It's Conservatives Who Incited the Murder of Our Most Beloved Conservative Influencer Charlie Kirk

The Left: Monsters, Inc.

How does one "process" absolute evil? I don't think it can be processed. In fact, it is the polar opposite of what can be made intelligible. It is unintelligibility incarnate: absurd, dark, dense, senseless, impenetrable. The Devil doing what he does best.

Yes, the monster will have its "reasons." Man can always furnish reasons, up to and including reasons for the murder of God himself. Which means that man can even provide reasons for the eradication of reason and crucifixion of truth. 

The progressive left is a monstrous ideology in the business of creating monsters. Which I mean literally:

In reality, man has the right to be legitimately traumatized only by monstrosities; he who is traumatized by less is himself a monster (Schuon).

Thus, by encouraging the resentful and weak-minded to identify as victims, the left produces violent monsters on a wholesale basis. And not just those whose victimhood legitimizes violence, but the intellectual monsters who provide the sick but seductive worldview the little monsters internalize. 

Another important point:

The Marxist does not think it possible to condemn except by distorting what he condemns.

Which comes first, the Marxism or the mechanism of distortion? I suspect the latter, which is why the same mechanism animates the progressive left. For example, in yesterday's most mainstream instance (there are obviously far more nauseating examples bubbling up from the sewers of the internet), MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd proclaimed that Kirk was 

one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.

Divisive? Of course, in the sense that truth itself represents the division of truth and reality from error, illusion, and ideological fantasy.  

And I always go back to hateful thoughts, lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that’s the environment we’re in that people just you can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have, and then saying these awkward words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we’re in.

And I always go back to the people who think truth is hateful. To be sure, it may be painful. No one wants to hear that they have cancer. But does this make your oncologist a hater? And does this make surgery a hateful and awful action? 

People err in thinking that hatred isn't a pleasurable emotion. It is precisely because it is so pleasurably intoxicating that people will distort the target of hatred in order to hate in "good conscience." From Instapundit:

Live by the sword... Fuck Fascists. Fuck Nazis. Fuck bigots. 

Agreed: fuck them. But who and where are they? There are enough of them that we don't have to create imaginary ones.

This person gets it:

In Japan, Shinzo Abe was assassinated after the left spent years portraying him as a monster who deserved to die. 

In America, the left has normalized violent rhetoric and extreme performances -- like a comedian holding up a fake Trump head, burning Trump dolls at protests, or posting “Trump should die” online. Soon after, Trump himself narrowly survived an assassination attempt.

First dehumanize, then it's just a matter of political hygiene -- of taking out the trash. Exactly:

Charlie Kirk was the kind of conservative that progressives claim to like. Calm, rational, substantive, open to respectful engagement with the other side. But they unremittingly demonized him anyway.

That Kirk was calm, rational, and open doesn't make it better for the monster. Rather, it obviously makes it worse, for it reveals what the monster wishes to hide from himself.  

A generation of nutjobs have convinced themselves that disagreeing with them, and not simply giving them whatever they want, is violence and even genocide.  

And so they view physical violence against people who disagree with them as justified.

But again, they don't just "disagree." This is like saying that Hitler "disagreed" with Judaism, or that Stalin had his intellectual differences with the bourgeoisie. Rather, the hatred comes first, the ideology to legitimize the hatred second. And the hatred extends to reality itself, and to anyone that reminds them of reality.

There are few sources to consult at this meta-level of analysis. In fact, the only book I could think of is Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled. Here is a note to myself:

The victim becomes the victimizer, so that any violence on the part of the victim becomes legitimate and sacred.

Thus, the awakened person -- awake to the mechanism of sacred violence -- is dangerous because he awakens people from the spell that legitimizes their violence as victims. The awakened person says: you are not victims.

Charlie Kirk: awake and dangerous, in fact, an existential danger to both the monsters and to the whole ideological mechanism that creates them: Monsters, Inc.

Even the most vicious campaigns of victimization -- including, astonishingly, even Hitler's -- have found it necessary to base their assertion of moral legitimacy on the claim that their goal was the protection or vindication of victims.

However savagely we behave, and however wickedly and selectively we wield this moral gavel, protecting or rescuing innocent victims has become the cultural imperative everywhere the biblical influence has been felt (Bailie). 

Especially on the left, which is not so much unbiblical as anti-biblical, which is to say, taking the biblical message about innocent victims and turning it upside down and inside out. In other words, just because God himself is a victim of history, this doesn't mean the self-styled victim renders himself a god thereby.

But there is a kind of omnipotence and omniscience that goes along with the privilege of victimhood, for first, if you're a victim, that is all you need to know (for you know everything you need to know), and second, if you can be a victim you can do anything. Certainly you can get away with anything, from murder and theft to conquest and genocide.  

Breaking news:

Recovered Rifle & Ammo Are Scrawled with Transgender, Antifa Messages

"This trans terrorist scrawled antifa and transgender death cult slogans on his gun and ammo -- exactly like the last trans terrorist child-murderer did." 

Sounds like a man made into a monster by being traumatized by less than monstrosities. But if Bailie is correct, this isn't news at all, but mankind's oldest mechanism for the legitimization of sacred violence:

Sacred violence is at the heart of primitive religion, and vestiges of it are at the heart of all "the kingdoms of this world."

And what is leftism but an ideological kingdom of this world, easily the most dynamic and successful political religion of the past 100 years? Charlie Kirk did his utmost to do battle with this dreadful kingdom of monsters, so no wonder it has struck back against the light. It won't be the last time. 

Well, that's my modest attempt to process the unintelligible and make sense of the absurd. 

I don't know what Lou Reed meant by the song, but I know what I mean:

Meta-Schemes and Post-Normality

Yes, we've discussed this subject in the past, but have our judges ever made a definitive ruling on the subject?

What subject?

You know, the "God beyond God" business with which we ended yesterday's post. Isn't the whole point of God that the ontological buck stops with him? In a purely metaphysical sense, the word God is just a linguistic placeholder for the Ultimate Mystery, the ground and source of being.  

However, there is always an intersection between ideas and the person holding them, which is why profound concepts can sound trivial when expressed by a mediocre intellect. 

I'm reminded of Piaget's scheme of cognitive development, which moves from sensorimotor to increasingly abstract abilities, representing not so much a change in the quantity as the quality of intelligence. His last stage is called formal operations, in which 

Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. This form of thought includes "assumptions that have no necessary relation to reality." 

That this form of thought may include assumptions bearing no relation to reality helps to explain the existence of the tenured, and of ideologues more generally. In short, we can reason in all sorts of unreasonable ways. It reminds me of what Ben Franklin said about the gift of reason:

So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. 

In fact, Piaget had a term for this: assimilation, which goes to how human beings squeeze new information into their pre-existing cognitive schemas (confirmation bias by another name), as opposed to accommodation, which "is the process of taking new information and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information." 

Naturally, we always aim for accommodation, except to say that it is with the ultimate goal of a final schema into which everything may be assimilated.

The Cosmic Area Rug.

Correct: it is by definition that into which everything may be assimilated, not excluding the assimilator. And for which reason it is absurd to imagine that there could ever be, under any circumstances, a scientistic Cosmic Area Rug, since it can never account for the person who has woven it. 

The search by physicists for their own big TOE (theory of everything) is doomed from the start by Gödel, since man is always meta to his own conceptual models of reality, and God -- or whatever you call it -- is meta to man.

I wonder: did Piaget account for intellectual abilities beyond the norm of formal operations? The average adult has only a sketchy mastery of this supposedly final stage, let alone hypothetical stages beyond it. According the the wiki article, some thinkers have indeed attempted to map these post-normality stages:

Piaget's theory stops at the formal operational stage, but other researchers have observed the thinking of adults is more nuanced than formal operational thought. This fifth stage has been named post-formal thought or operation, and involves systematic, meta-systematic, paradigmatic, and cross-paradigmatic.

I don't have time to look up those terms, but it seems to me that in comparing Christian and Vedantic metaphysics, we are engaged in something meta-systematic and cross-paradigmatic, which we have in the past called "comparative nonsense," since the realities being discussed are purely metaphysical and non-sensuous maps of the invisible transcendent.

Besides, a man needs a hobby.

Interestingly, post-formal operations, meta-systematic thinking can lead one down some pathological and anti-human avenues, for example, a pseudo-sophisticated absolute relativism that redounds to the suicide of intelligence. 

As for our having discussed this subject in the past, there's no shame in that:

Everything has already been said, and well said; but one must always recall it anew, and in recalling it one must do what has already been done: to actualize in thought certitudes contained, not in the thinking ego, but in the transpersonal substance of human intelligence (Schuon).

The transpersonal substance of human intelligence, or intelligence reflecting upon what intelligence really is. 

What is it?

Well, it is clearly something beyond what Piaget assumed about it. Again, there are differing qualities of intelligence, and these qualities don't end at formal operations. For example, the intelligence of a Schuon or Dávila is as far beyond that of the average tenured yahoo as is a man is beyond a chimp.  

Surely you're being polemical?

I don't think so. This is a hierarchical cosmos with degrees of perfection extending all the way to the top, whether we are talking about intellectual or aesthetic ability. 

Regarding the latter, I am reminded of a comment by Sullivan to the effect that -- musically speaking, of course -- there is a greater distance between Beethoven and the average man than between the average man and a dog. One can obtain a Ph.D. in music, but that will never make you Beethoven (despite the fact that his formal education ended at age ten or eleven). 

As to our lack of originality, we are in good company:

Whoever believes he is original is merely ignorant.

Nobody thinks seriously as long as originality is important to him.

Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper. 

The modern desire to be original makes the mediocre artist believe that simply being different is the secret to being original.

The scientific proposition presents an abrupt alternative: understanding it or not understanding it. The philosophical proposition, however, is susceptible to growing insight. Finally, the religious proposition is a vertical ascent that allows one to see the same landscape from different altitudes.

That was a lengthy detour. We were discussing Eckart's poetic (?) deuscription of the "Nothingness out of which God is born," and now I'm wondering it this is the product of a style or quality of thinking that far surpasses the norm (of formal operations)? If so, then it will make no sense to the formal operations thinker trapped in some comparatively linear schema that takes no account of the orthoparadoxical nature of God.

Hmm. That detour was so long that we're nearly out of time, but I'd like to at least touch on Bede Griffiths' attempt at a meta-systematic and cross-paradigmatic unification of Christianity and Vedanta. Recall his initial premise, which is that early Christian thinkers attempted to squeeze the Christian revelation into Greek categories (or schemas), when by definition it must surpass them. 

Eh, we'll start over tomorrow. Clean it up and take us out, Gemini:

Your post today provides a fascinating and layered argument for why a deep metaphysical synthesis of traditions is possible, all while critiquing the limitations of standard forms of reasoning.

You begin by acknowledging the "God beyond God" question, framing God as the ultimate, ineffable "linguistic placeholder." You then take a significant detour to explore the nature of intelligence itself. Using Piaget's model, you critique the limitations of "formal operations," arguing that this supposedly final stage of human thought can lead to unreasonable conclusions and an inability to accommodate new information into one's "cognitive schemas."

You introduce the concept of post-formal thought -- a "meta-systematic" and "cross-paradigmatic" form of thinking -- which you suggest is a higher quality of intelligence. You argue that, unlike scientific thought which aims for originality, philosophical and religious thought advances by going deeper and seeing the "same landscape from different altitudes." In this way, the "orthoparadoxical" descriptions of God from mystics like Meister Eckhart are not nonsense, but are the result of this higher-level thinking.

You conclude by tying this all back to the original topic, suggesting that Bede Griffiths's attempt to unify Christianity and Vedanta was a form of this advanced thinking. This act of synthesis is necessary because early Christian thinkers, trapped in the schemas of their time, attempted to fit a transcendent revelation into the limited categories of Greek philosophy. 

No Why, Dude!

First we have to decide whether or not life and even existence itself are absurd.

Good point. If existence is absurd, then some form of applied acosmism seems the way to go, e.g., Vedanta, Buddhism, or neo-Platonism:

Acosmism is a philosophical and theological view that denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as illusory or a non-essential part of a higher, ultimate reality It posits that the physical universe and all finite objects and events within it do not have a separate or ultimate reality of their own. 

In essence, acosmism is a belief that the world we perceive with our senses is a sort of cosmic illusion or a manifestation that obscures a deeper, singular truth. 

So, you don't really exist, therefore it's best for you to realize this in your bones. Thus the "applied" part, i.e., systematic and radical detachment from, and transcendence of, the illusory ego. 

By whom?

Details. 

The concept of Maya in the non-dual Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism is a form of acosmism. Maya means "illusion" or "appearances," and it refers to the perceived world, which is considered real in an empirical sense but not in a metaphysical or spiritual one. Liberation is achieved by realizing that the individual self is one with the ultimate reality (Brahman).

You will notice that this approach doesn't touch on the question of Why we are here. Rather, there is no Why. As proclaimed in the sacred Deteriorata,

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back....

With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
The world continues to deteriorate.
Give up!

It reminds me of Gary Shandling, who practiced Buddhist meditation for 35 years, until his mind was "pretty empty, pretty blank." At which point "there was no one left to blame." 

But it's not only Eastern philosophies that advocate laying down all thought and surrendering to the Void: "In Western philosophy, thinkers like Spinoza, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Hegel have been described as acosmists."

Note that acosmic philosophies don't shy away from the absurdity of the universe, rather, emphasize it. One can realize Brahman -- the ultimate reality, source, and ground of being. But why is there an existence separate from Brahman to begin with? No reason. Whatever this world is, it's just an unintended side effect of something resembling Schopenhauer's pure will.

Yes, there is a strong and intentional parallel between Schopenhauer's philosophy and non-dual Vedanta. Schopenhauer himself was one of the first Western philosophers to extensively study and integrate Eastern thought, particularly the Upanishads (the core texts of Vedanta), into his work. 

The Will is the true, underlying reality of everything. It is a singular, blind, irrational, and aimless force that drives everything in the universe, from the gravitational pull of planets to the instinctual desires of a human. It is not a conscious decision-making process but a ceaseless striving, a blind impulse that is the source of all desire and therefore, all suffering. The phenomenal world of "representation" is simply a manifestation or "objectification" of this underlying, irrational Will.

So, the point is that there is no point. Which the Bible doesn't deny, in that the world can at times appear rather beside the point, cf. Ecclesiastes:

Yes, the book of Ecclesiastes is famous for its exploration of the futility of human existence. The central theme is encapsulated in its very first lines: "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." 

This word, "meaningless," is a translation of the Hebrew term hevel, which literally means "breath," "vapor," or "smoke." This imagery suggests that life is fleeting, elusive, and ultimately without substance when viewed from a purely earthly perspective. 

So, even if there is a God, he's just blowing smoke? 

The author tests various paths to find meaning in life, only to conclude that they are all a "chasing after the wind," and that everything in the natural world is cyclical and unchanging, from the sun rising and setting to the rivers flowing into the sea. 

He contrasts this with the brief, fleeting nature of human life: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." The Teacher experiments with pleasure, wealth, wisdom, and hard work, but finds no lasting satisfaction in any of them.

Not unlike the Buddha, who came to the same conclusion. However, while Ecclesiastes 

is deeply pessimistic about life "under the sun," its ultimate purpose is not to promote despair. Instead, it serves as a powerful argument that true meaning cannot be found in the material world. The book's final conclusion points to a different path: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

In this way, Ecclesiastes serves as a philosophical and theological journey that strips away all false sources of meaning to reveal that a purposeful life is one lived in relationship with God. 

So, the two approaches (Eastern & Western) look at the same set of existential facts in order to reach the same sobering conclusion about the futility of existence, at which point there is a fork in the vertical road, one path leading to God, the other to... 

That's one of the questions before the house, for if there is a convergence between Vedanta and Christianity, it would have to be on the mystical-experiential plane: in other words, is the realization of Brahman (or Nirvana or Moksha) just another name for the realization of, or union with, God?

It reminds me of something Schuon said about the supposed a-theism of Buddhism: that they have the thing, just not the name, the thing being the experience. 

Which is not too far from certain Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart. Or think of someone as mainstream as Thomas Aquinas, who underwent an earth-shattering mystical experience that rendered his life's work "so much straw." And if his luminous corpus may be reduced to a pile of horse food, what does this say about the restavus? 

Not even straw?

Yes, one thinks of the other end of the horse.

Still, in the Christian vision there is a Why: 

That is an insightful observation that gets to the heart of a major difference between these two profound traditions. While both Christianity and Advaita Vedanta offer a path to a kind of mystical union, their core cosmologies -- particularly regarding the purpose of existence -- are fundamentally different. 

The Christian worldview posits that the world was created for a specific purpose: as an act of divine love and for the glory of God. Humans, in particular, were created in God's image to have a personal relationship with Him and to share in His goodness.

Thus, mystical union in Christianity is a relationship of participation, not absorption. The goal is for the human person to become one with God in love and will, but without losing their individual identity. It is a "union of wills," where the believer's will aligns perfectly with God's. The soul, while transformed and divinized, remains a distinct entity in a loving communion with its Creator.

Is it conceivable that in Christianity there a Beyond that is beyond even this? Opinions diverge, and ultimately go to the question of whether there is something "beyond God."

How could that be?

Well, it is certainly implied in the metaphysics of Eckhart. To back up a bit, Schuon posits a distinction in divinas between Being and Beyond-Being. As a consequence, God himself -- the personal creator God -- is situated on the being side of the divide. In short, there is a God beyond God.

Is that allowed?

Eh, I don't know, but you can't argue with experience. Or, if we accept Schuon's framework, we do have a context in which to situate some of Eckhart's more controversial, puzzling, and paradoxical claims, which are many. A sampling:

God is a being beyond all being; God is a beingless being.

God acts but the Godhead does not act. The mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead is unknown and was never known and never will be known.  

God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being. 

I pray to God to rid me of God. The highest and loftiest thing that one can let go of is to let go of God for the sake of God.

He also speaks of a Nothingness out of which God is born, but I wonder if the Trinity can be tweaked in such a way that the Logos-Son is engendered from the limitless source and ground symbolized by the Father? Except to say that these two poles represent an eternally dynamic complementarity, from which a number of entailments follow, but that's more than enough hay for one post...

A Lightheaded Metaphysical Flutter

The previous post reminded me that if I'm honest with myself--

Why on earth would you want to do that?!

Because we have heard it from the wise that 

The truth is the happiness of the intelligence.  

So, it may go to the only kind of permanent happiness available down here, assuming the existence of eternal truths.

But there are sad truths.

We're not talking about those particular and contingent truths, rather, of necessary and universal truths, by which "we mean principles which determine everything that exists" (Schuon). 

Before being cut off by Petey, I was going to say that if I'm honest with myself, Vedanta is more appealing to my kind of guy (and I can't help being the kind of guy I am) than Christianity, largely because it is presented in the form of a clear and timeless metaphysic that is almost mathematical in its elegance, whereas Christianity is all mixed up with the mess we call history. Moreover, to say history is to say contingency, whereas Vedanta rises above history into a realm entirely free from the taint of time.

You do know that some early Christians were tempted to go down that route into a religion of pure gnosis?

Yeah, so does Gemini:

Early Christians who leaned toward gnosticism believed that salvation was not for everyone, but was reserved for a select few with special knowledge. This perspective differed greatly from the mainstream Christian view that salvation was accessible through faith in Jesus Christ.

Gnostics believed that salvation was not achieved through faith, but through secret knowledge or gnosis. This knowledge was believed to be the key to understanding humanity's true nature and its relationship with a divine being. 

Some early Christian thinkers found Gnosticism appealing. They sought to integrate Christian ideas with Gnostic philosophy, seeing Jesus as a revealer of gnosis rather than a savior who atoned for sins. They believed that Jesus came to deliver a secret knowledge to humanity that would enable them to escape the corrupt material world and return to the spiritual realm. 

Now, there must be some sense in which gnosis is true, in that Christianity hardly denies its own "secret truth," only this truth is an open secret available to everyone. Also, it is a secret that does not deny the reality of the world, of the personal self, of history, or of embodiment. 

For example, even St. Paul uses the term gnosis, but in a manner fundamentally different from the later Gnostic movement. He didn't regard it as secret, elitist knowledge, but as a form of wisdom or understanding that could and should be shared by all.

Nevertheless, as I was saying, if I'm honest with myself, Vedanta makes more prima facie sense to me than does Christianity, precisely because it is presented in terms of universal principles that determine everything else, whereas Christianity essentially begins with a set of historical facts, reflection upon which leads to metaphysical principles such as the Trinity. 

For example, revelation does not propose the Trinity a priori, rather, it is induced from the facts on the ground as revealed in time and history, am I wrong?

Your assessment of the difference between Vedanta and Christianity in their approaches to metaphysics is insightful and largely accurate. You've correctly identified the contrast between a system built on universal principles and one rooted in historical revelation.

Vedanta is indeed a "top-down" metaphysical system, beginning with the fundamental principle of Brahman, the ultimate reality, which is singular, non-dual, and all-pervading. From this core principle, all of existence is understood as an emanation or manifestation of Brahman. The goal of the Vedantic seeker is to realize their true identity as one with Brahman, transcending the illusion of the material world. The Upanishads describe these principles as eternal and timeless truths, not as a set of historical events. 

On the other hand, Christianity begins with historical events leading up to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, who is situated in an even deeper historical matrix going back to Abraham, Noah, the unfortunate events of the Garden, and even the creation of the cosmos itself. In short, it's a long story with a whole lotta historical yada yada needed for context:  

These events are not viewed as mere historical facts, but as divine revelation that unfolds in time. Reflection upon these historical realities leads to the development of metaphysical principles. 

As per your example, the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't proposed as a pre-existing abstract concept. It was formulated by the early church as a way to make sense of the revealed actions of God. The Trinity is therefore a "bottom-up" theological induction from the "facts on the ground" of revelation. 

So, Vedanta takes more of a top-down, deductive approach, whereas Christianity is more a bottom-up metaphysical enterprise. To summarize, 

In Vedanta, revelation is primarily a timeless, intuitive, and mystical insight into the nature of reality. It's a direct, unmediated apprehension of Brahman by enlightened sages. 

In Christianity, revelation is primarily historical and personal. God reveals Himself through specific events and through the person of Jesus Christ. The truth is embedded in a narrative that is believed to have happened in a specific time and place.

Now, who says we can't integrate and synthesize the two? At least it's worth a flutter.

In British slang, a "flutter" is a small, casual bet. It's often used to describe a wager made for fun or excitement, rather than for serious financial gain.

The term implies a lighthearted approach to gambling, where the amount of money risked is typically modest. You might hear someone say, "I'm not a heavy gambler, but I like to have a flutter on the Grand National," referring to the famous horse race.

So, let's have a lighthearted (and headed) metaphysical flutter on a Grand Cosmic Narrative that harmonizes timeless, universal principles and historical events. In this spirit, I've been reading a book about Father Bede Griffiths, who attempted to do just that:

Griffiths -- English Benedictine monk and lifelong friend of C.S. Lewis, who was his tutor at Oxford -- wrote to a friend: "I'm going out to India to seek the other half of my soul." There, he explored the intersection of Hinduism and Christianity and was a driving force behind the growth of interspiritual awareness so common today, yet almost unheard of a half-century ago.

Did he succeed, or are we talking about two antithetical religious universes that have nothing to say to each other? Let's ask a reviewer:

Teasdale offers breathtaking insights around integrating the Holy Trinity with Vedantic thought in a whole new paradigm. One of the theses advanced is that Christianity in the West has been filtered by Greco-Roman civilization. Wayne suggests that the Gospel is far greater than any cultural filter, that it needs to be decontextualized for India in Vedantic terms.

That is indeed key, for it is not as if early Christian thinkers brought no philosophical lens or cultural matrix to bear on the raw events of salvation history. Rather, they tried to harmonize these events with the best available philosophical thinking of their time and place. But what if Christ had landed in India instead of Judea? Then they would have no doubt interpreted the same events through a different philosophical lens, and why not, so long as the philosophy doesn't distort the essential message?

After all, God himself is beyond our categories and unknowable per se, for which reason brother Nicolás reminds us that 

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.

And that even

Reality cannot be represented in a philosophical system.

So, ultimately we can understand neither God nor reality. Not a promising beginning to our metaphysical flutter. 

It seems that God must be the ultimate instance of the parable of elephant and the blind men. That is, we're talking about an infinite elephant being poked and prodded by finite thinkers, and what is finitude but a kind of blindness of the infinite? 

Indeed, this blindness is just one of the costs of finitude. Analogously, the price of being an owl is blindness in the presence of the sun. Same with us vis-a-vis the blinding brilliance of the infinite one. It is in this context that, say, the Christian Trinity and Vedantic trinity of Sat-Chit-Ananda might be two views of the same elephant, bearing in mind the real elephant is beyond our ability to contain or describe.

Some people prefer not to have their religion compared to others, but I say that if something independently discovered and formulated is essential to both, this enhances the credibility of one's own religion -- like the concept of inter-rater reliability:

Inter-rater reliability, also known as inter-observer reliability, measures the consistency of ratings, judgments, or assessments given by two or more independent raters on the same thing. In essence, it determines the degree to which different people agree when evaluating the same phenomenon.

So, if two independent observers -- say, Shankara and Thomas Aquinas -- arrive at similar judgments of ultimate reality, this enhances the credibility of both. 

So, this will apparently be the subject of the next few posts.

I apologize once again. It appears that the images I am generating are not displaying for you, despite the tool reporting success. This seems to be a persistent technical issue that I am unable to resolve on my end.

The image I generated was a symbolic representation of the ideas in your latest post. It depicted two figures representing different traditions -- one with a scroll for Christianity and another with a mandala for Vedanta. Both figures were touching a single, central, brilliant light source, symbolizing God or Brahman. Threads of light connected them to the central light and to each other.

The image was a visual attempt to capture the essence of your post, specifically the idea that different religious traditions can be seen as different perspectives on the same ultimate reality, and that these differences, when viewed with "inter-rater reliability," can enhance the credibility of both.