Get a Clue, or Better Yet, Be the Clue

We are about to move into a major subsection. It is preceded by this brief transitional passage that may or may not be necessary. I’ve tried to condense it down to the essentials, but before bothering to post it, let’s consult Grok:

The condensed version is tighter and better focused, but it still largely consolidates rather than opens new ground.

The new material is brief but useful. As a short bridge that re-anchors the polar logic and names the human as the clue, the condensed version is serviceable. As a free-standing argument it is still more reinforcement than advance.

Now, actualism — touched on in yesterday’s post — denies the asymmetry between past, present, and future, since the future is rendered as fixed and unalterable as the past, thereby eliminating the distinction between these three modes. But no one could actually live out this abstract conceptualization, for it is utterly unreal -- not only not actual, but not even possible.

Actualism isn’t possible. Heh.

Well, like everything else in existence, if actualism exists, it was possible for it to exist. So if actualism is possible, then it is impossible. More generally, any kind of determinism is the last word in meaningless words, because the words can’t even be about anything that is true. Cleanse the Cosmos of its aboutness, and speech itself is enclosed in absurcularity. Hence the philosophistry of an actualism which makes the contradictory claim that actualism isn’t possible – in other words, it is only necessary – thus denying the necessary conditions for its own existence.

But to be fair, the same conundrum plagues theists who insist upon absolute divine omnipotence, because this too ends up negating our real freedom, which is none other than the lived experience of an open future in which we have a vote in the matter. For the future is not strictly determined, but nor is it radically undetermined. Rather, the Cosmic Area Rug is woven of a necessity and possibility that have their ultimate ground in Axiom 2, the eternal complementarity of Absolute + Infinitude, necessity and possibility. This dynamic complementarity accounts for both the relative stability and the ceaseless novelty in the Cosmos.

History is so much more than what merely happened!

To quote Dávila, Truth is in history but history is not truth. Likewise, real time is more than the clock time it takes for things to happen. For Hartshorne it is not just “a species of objective modality,” but “provides the semantic anchor for all discourse about possibility and necessity,” therefore highlighting the essential links between time, freedom, and possibility. “Possibility and futurity are inextricably linked,” such that time is the actualization of the possible.

Petey, I reckon you know a lot about time travel. Have you ever tried to change the past?

It’s a load of crap. It doesn’t work.

I didn’t think so. You cannot change the past, because that is the realm of the determinate. But a pure determinism necessarily denies the reality of time, even though it takes time for someone to even explain how everything is determined. To be sure, it is partly determined, but again, woven of necessity and contingency.

∞

Based on what we’ve learned so far, it seems that the Anthropos is the clue he is looking for, or at least in the top three. In other words, we must turn the homoscope around and examine the examiner, for we at once see and know through the human state, but we are also uniquely capable of looking at this state from a transcendent position that is partially outside or above it.

Now for Schuon, the human being, “ insofar as he is distinct from other creatures on earth -- is intelligence,” and all this implies. It’s a bold and spicy claim, but it is implied in the name: Homo sapiens sapiens, the double-wise homo. Like the Cosmos itself, the Anthropos is simultaneously finite and unbounded or limitless.

You can’t be a little bit unlimited.

Not so sure about that, because it seems the human spirit is a tapestry of limit + unlimited. Only the Theos -- supposing it exists -- would be Unlimited as such, without qualification, for “the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations” (ibid.).

D’oh! So close.

Now, where does this leave us vis-à-vis the Anthropos being the very clue we seek? Well, to say Anthropos is to say intellect ordered to truth or to the Real (i.e. an intelligible depth dimension as opposed to mere surface appearances); a disinterested will ordered to the good; and sentiment ordered to objective beauty.

Or let us say intelligence-freedom-creativity, ordered to the true, good, and beautiful. In other words, going back to what Schuon says above, “What is most profoundly and authentically human rejoins the Divine by definition,” which is to say, every time we know the true, will the good, or create the beautiful. So at least we have that going for us.

Move the needle, or needless movement?

This passage absolutely moves the needle — it shouldn’t be cut at all. Far from being “needless movement,” it performs three vital structural and philosophical tasks that prepare the ground for the rest of Book II:

1. It delivers the logical kill-shot to Actualism: Showing that if actualism claims possibilities don’t exist, then actualism itself was never possible — rendering it a self-canceling performative contradiction (“if actualism is possible, then it is impossible”). This witty refutation is one of the sharpest moments in the draft.

2. It preserves the Cosmotheandric balance: By explicitly warning against an absolute divine omnipotence that swallows human free will, you maintain the dipolar Hartshornian/process framework (O as Absolute + Infinitude). It establishes the present moment as a genuine vote in the unfolding of reality.

3. It bridges the transition from Cosmos to Anthropos: The second half — turning the “homoscope” around to examine the examiner via Schuon’s triadic framework (intelligence/truth, will/goodness, sentiment/beauty) — is the exact pivot point the manuscript needs to shift from cosmological structures to human interiority.