Fleeing Personal Problems through Politics

The previous post left oof with reference to so-called "forces of within" and to how one of the primary purposes of ideology is to manage these forces, especially envy and resentment. Externalizing these is as easy as falling from paradise, especially with the readymade categories provided by progressive politics.  

If envy didn't exist, nor would the left, because these vindictive snowflakes would necessarily tend to their own business instead of concerning themselves with ours. But it seems that envy is baked into the the psychosocial cake, or at least coincides with the emergence of history from our prelapsarian innocence.

Man evolved as a social animal, and envy is the glue -- or part of the glue -- that holds the group together. It must be the dark side -- or a privation -- of something that had a positive function in binding together small human groups.

Let's try to analyze this from the ground up: man is first a familial animal before he is a social animal per se. However, the social and familial can only be artificially separated, which is precisely why so much crazy seeps into the sociopolitical. It helps to explain the perpetual hysteria of the left, and why progressives are rebellious adolescents with daddy issues when they aren't abandoned children with mommy issues.  

Bob, is it really that simple? Probably not, but before we dive in to the subject, let's drop a few aphorisms behind enemy lines in order to soften the ground:

1: Social problems are the delightful refuge of those fleeing from their own problems.

2: Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.

3: “Social justice” is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.

4: The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own. 

5: It is not enough for the democrat that we respect what he wants to do with his life; he also demands that we respect what he wants to do with our life. 

6: Maturity of spirit begins when we stop feeling responsible for the world.

I've ordered these in a certain way so as to illuminate the process: 1) denial and externalization, 2) projection into others, 3) envy, 4)  rationalization, 5) punitive control, and 6) growing the hell up and minding your own business, AKA tolerating the terror of freedom.

Let's get back to Feminism and Freedom. Now, contrary to what feminists teach, women have always exerted control over men -- well, some women, in some ways, over some men. 

Or perhaps you are too stupid or oblivious to have noticed. I began noticing it when I was, oh, 11 or 12 years old. I won't bore you with details, but every man knows what I'm talking about, and every man must somehow come to terms with this form of female power.

Let's stipulate that feminism was invented by females too stupid or oblivious to understand the nature of their power over men. Or too envious. Or perhaps just too unattractive, simple as.  

Note that there is no explicit counter-philosophy to feminism, because no man is stupid or reckless enough to promulgate it. Well, maybe Nietzsche, but not because of any lack of intelligence. I have only vague recollections, but Prof Wiki has the goods:

From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth -- her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty. 

But its complicated:

women are on the whole cleverer and more wicked than men -- which in Nietzsche's view, constitutes a compliment. Yet he goes on to claim that the emancipation of women, and feminists, was merely the resentment of some women against other women, who were physically better constituted and able to bear children.

One fellow claims Nietzsche isn't anti-woman, just anti-feminist. 

In any event, so long as genes have anything to say about reality, feminism will be here to bitterly struggle against that reality:

In the end it is impossible to overcome the biological inevitability of sex roles, but it is possible to try -- and to violate liberal values in the process (Levin). 

Hence the soft but increasingly hard tyranny of illiberal leftism. Is there anything maternal about the left, in a healthy or wholesome sense of the word?  Likewise anything feminine? Kamala Harris, for example, is neither; and yet, she is certainly both in the pathological sense, i.e., simultaneously the mother from hell and the ex-wife from hell.  But one could say the same of Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Whitmer, Nancy Pelosi, Lori Lightfoot, Sandy Cortez, et al. If you love women, you must shudder at them.

Another important point is that more equality will only generate more resentment in the left, precisely because equality of opportunity will starkly reveal inequality of gifts, merit, and ability. Under conditions of freedom, there is no escape from certain truths about oneself, and what crazy person wants that?

This is getting tedious. Let's just agree with Max Scheler that ressentiment is always available to the disordered person, whereas "an individual of strong personality has no need to compare himself with his fellow humans, even if they happen to be superior in specific respects and abilities."

Imagine how impoverished one would have to be in order to be unacquainted with moral and intellectual superiors! Which is a good working definition of a progressive: a person with no moral and intellectual superiors. They are better than you, which is why they are qualified to run your life.

For example, is there anyone wiser and more virtuous than Barack Obama? Just ask him. Even his supporters are the very people we'd been waiting for to bend the arc of history and set it right! 

But in reality

There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters.

Do not commit the injustice of treating your superiors as equals.

The noble one is not the one who thinks he has inferiors, but the one who knows he has superiors.

Respecting our superiors is above all a proof of good taste.

By learning to admire we are cured of the vices of mediocrity.

Hmm. Who are some of my superiors that help me keep my own mediocrity in perspective? Let's see... Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Winston Churchill, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln... If we look down, it should be because we're always looking up, which is structurally the opposite of resentment.

Fleeing Personal Problems through Politics

The previous post left oof with reference to so-called "forces of within" and to how one of the primary purposes of ideology is to manage these forces, especially envy and resentment. Externalizing these is as easy as falling from paradise, especially with the readymade categories provided by progressive politics.  

If envy didn't exist, nor would the left, because these vindictive snowflakes would necessarily tend to their own business instead of concerning themselves with ours. But it seems that envy is baked into the the psychosocial cake, or at least coincides with the emergence of history from our prelapsarian innocence.

Man evolved as a social animal, and envy is the glue -- or part of the glue -- that holds the group together. It must be the dark side -- or a privation -- of something that had a positive function in binding together small human groups.

Let's try to analyze this from the ground up: man is first a familial animal before he is a social animal per se. However, the social and familial can only be artificially separated, which is precisely why so much crazy seeps into the sociopolitical. It helps to explain the perpetual hysteria of the left, and why progressives are rebellious adolescents with daddy issues when they aren't abandoned children with mommy issues.  

Bob, is it really that simple? Probably not, but before we dive in to the subject, let's drop a few aphorisms behind enemy lines in order to soften the ground:

1: Social problems are the delightful refuge of those fleeing from their own problems.

2: Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.

3: “Social justice” is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.

4: The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own. 

5: It is not enough for the democrat that we respect what he wants to do with his life; he also demands that we respect what he wants to do with our life. 

6: Maturity of spirit begins when we stop feeling responsible for the world.

I've ordered these in a certain way so as to illuminate the process: 1) denial and externalization, 2) projection into others, 3) envy, 4)  rationalization, 5) punitive control, and 6) growing the hell up and minding your own business, AKA tolerating the terror of freedom.

Let's get back to Feminism and Freedom. Now, contrary to what feminists teach, women have always exerted control over men -- well, some women, in some ways, over some men. 

Or perhaps you are too stupid or oblivious to have noticed. I began noticing it when I was, oh, 11 or 12 years old. I won't bore you with details, but every man knows what I'm talking about, and every man must somehow come to terms with this form of female power.

Let's stipulate that feminism was invented by females too stupid or oblivious to understand the nature of their power over men. Or too envious. Or perhaps just too unattractive, simple as.  

Note that there is no explicit counter-philosophy to feminism, because no man is stupid or reckless enough to promulgate it. Well, maybe Nietzsche, but not because of any lack of intelligence. I have only vague recollections, but Prof Wiki has the goods:

From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth -- her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty. 

But its complicated:

women are on the whole cleverer and more wicked than men -- which in Nietzsche's view, constitutes a compliment. Yet he goes on to claim that the emancipation of women, and feminists, was merely the resentment of some women against other women, who were physically better constituted and able to bear children.

One fellow claims Nietzsche isn't anti-woman, just anti-feminist. 

In any event, so long as genes have anything to say about reality, feminism will be here to bitterly struggle against that reality:

In the end it is impossible to overcome the biological inevitability of sex roles, but it is possible to try -- and to violate liberal values in the process (Levin). 

Hence the soft but increasingly hard tyranny of illiberal leftism. Is there anything maternal about the left, in a healthy or wholesome sense of the word?  Likewise anything feminine? Kamala Harris, for example, is neither; and yet, she is certainly both in the pathological sense, i.e., simultaneously the mother from hell and the ex-wife from hell.  But one could say the same of Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Whitmer, Nancy Pelosi, Lori Lightfoot, Sandy Cortez, et al. If you love women, you must shudder at them.

Another important point is that more equality will only generate more resentment in the left, precisely because equality of opportunity will starkly reveal inequality of gifts, merit, and ability. Under conditions of freedom, there is no escape from certain truths about oneself, and what crazy person wants that?

This is getting tedious. Let's just agree with Max Scheler that ressentiment is always available to the disordered person, whereas "an individual of strong personality has no need to compare himself with his fellow humans, even if they happen to be superior in specific respects and abilities."

Imagine how impoverished one would have to be in order to be unacquainted with moral and intellectual superiors! Which is a good working definition of a progressive: a person with no moral and intellectual superiors. They are better than you, which is why they are qualified to run your life.

For example, is there anyone wiser and more virtuous than Barack Obama? Just ask him. Even his supporters are the very people we'd been waiting for to bend the arc of history and set it right! 

But in reality

There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters.

Do not commit the injustice of treating your superiors as equals.

The noble one is not the one who thinks he has inferiors, but the one who knows he has superiors.

Respecting our superiors is above all a proof of good taste.

By learning to admire we are cured of the vices of mediocrity.

Hmm. Who are some of my superiors that help me keep my own mediocrity in perspective? Let's see... Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Winston Churchill, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln... If we look down, it should be because we're always looking up, which is structurally the opposite of resentment.

A Critique of Pure Criticism

To review where we left off: feminism necessarily tends to statist tyranny, since only something as powerful as the state can block and undo the consequences of biology and freedom, AKA reality.  If facts are stubborn things, reality is downright intransigent.  

It's our one hope, really: that leftism will never succeed because it cannot succeed.  Miracles are nice, but in our postmodern world there is insufficient appreciation for the miracle of reality: thank God for Real Things! (And vice versa.)

Which perhaps sounds like another throwaway line, but it's not. Rather, it goes to the very foundation of our metaphysical dispute, i.e., whether reality exists and the intellect may know it. Everything else is commentary. It's the first step to the first principle. Choose unwisely and it's the last step. 

I'm reading another book by Fulton Sheen, this one called Religion Without God, which picks up where the previous one -- God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy -- left off. Note that God and intelligence is what you call a pleonasm, since there can be no real intelligence in the absence of God as its ground and vector, alpha and omega. 

Which is why our world of postmodern ideology is so thoroughly anti-intellectual: not just in- or non- or pre-intellectual, but in absolute rebellion against the intellect. Why? Again, because the intellect is the mirror of the real, and reality is the perennial constraint on progressive dreams, fantasies, wishes, desires, and delusions.

One needn't even believe in "God" to understand conceptually what we're saying. One must, however, leave a "placeholder" for the Absolute -- an empty seat at one's innertable -- which will, if one is serious, be gradually filled with content. Eventually this will result in a tipping point and whoops, there's God, maybe a little late but always on time.

Which isn't really all that different from any other skill, say, music. One begins playing a musical instrument with the faith that music will eventually be reached and made present, so to speak.  Anyone who plays an instrument will recall the point at which one broke through to the other side -- the side from whence music comes -- and became a channel as opposed to a mere tool beating against its outer wall. 

It's like a fractal iteration of the transition from will to grace, bearing in mind that these two aren't actually opposed, rather, that grace is the perfection of nature.  Man's will isn't a line but a curve, or arc, or spiral -- ultimately a projectile from and to God. Just keep peddling, and soon enough you're riding upright on the tricycle.  

Here's a forbidden thought, especially for a clinical psychologist:

The proper therapeutic for bad living is clear thinking. We must supply the will with the right kind of projectiles, and trace for it the proper trajectory, for the will, by its nature, is inspired by the intellect.

If the will is not inspired by the intellect, then it will be spired by something that runs counter to the intellect -- AKA bad ideas, which, when systematized, become worse ideology -- or by something lower than intellect, AKA the untutored will.  

Which is why so many human beings are engines with no steering wheel. As Sheen says, "our knowledge and our love should be harmonious," not unlike the Trinity itsoph, "in which Knowledge and Love are in harmonious balance -- the Son and the Spirit being equal." 

But not equivalent, or what's the point? Back to Freedom and Feminism: male and female are likewise equal but  obviously not equivalent. And vive la différence. To which the left responds: No, kill it! Preferably before it reproduces!

Harmony, balance, and proportion. Or just a little perspective, please:

In the normal order of things there is a balance between the transcendent and the immanent, for all life is an equilibrium between the forces of within and the forces of without.

We know all about the forces of without, e.g., gravity, electricity, magnetism. But what the heck are the Forces of Within?  Objectively speaking?  

Now that is a large subject. Come to think of it, in the absence of this subject, there is no large or small, significant or insignificant, meaningful or meaningless, etc.  Truly, it is the biggest of bangs, at least on our side of the rug.

Which is why the world is so small to the ideologue.  One of the purposes of ideology is to cut the world down to size and make it -- and us! -- manageable.  This is why it requires a vocabulary of about a dozen words to be a progressive activist, the most important being "you have" and "I want."  

Oof. I need to stop this reverie in midsdream. To be continued....

A Critique of Pure Criticism

To review where we left off: feminism necessarily tends to statist tyranny, since only something as powerful as the state can block and undo the consequences of biology and freedom, AKA reality.  If facts are stubborn things, reality is downright intransigent.  

It's our one hope, really: that leftism will never succeed because it cannot succeed.  Miracles are nice, but in our postmodern world there is insufficient appreciation for the miracle of reality: thank God for Real Things! (And vice versa.)

Which perhaps sounds like another throwaway line, but it's not. Rather, it goes to the very foundation of our metaphysical dispute, i.e., whether reality exists and the intellect may know it. Everything else is commentary. It's the first step to the first principle. Choose unwisely and it's the last step. 

I'm reading another book by Fulton Sheen, this one called Religion Without God, which picks up where the previous one -- God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy -- left off. Note that God and intelligence is what you call a pleonasm, since there can be no real intelligence in the absence of God as its ground and vector, alpha and omega. 

Which is why our world of postmodern ideology is so thoroughly anti-intellectual: not just in- or non- or pre-intellectual, but in absolute rebellion against the intellect. Why? Again, because the intellect is the mirror of the real, and reality is the perennial constraint on progressive dreams, fantasies, wishes, desires, and delusions.

One needn't even believe in "God" to understand conceptually what we're saying. One must, however, leave a "placeholder" for the Absolute -- an empty seat at one's innertable -- which will, if one is serious, be gradually filled with content. Eventually this will result in a tipping point and whoops, there's God, maybe a little late but always on time.

Which isn't really all that different from any other skill, say, music. One begins playing a musical instrument with the faith that music will eventually be reached and made present, so to speak.  Anyone who plays an instrument will recall the point at which one broke through to the other side -- the side from whence music comes -- and became a channel as opposed to a mere tool beating against its outer wall. 

It's like a fractal iteration of the transition from will to grace, bearing in mind that these two aren't actually opposed, rather, that grace is the perfection of nature.  Man's will isn't a line but a curve, or arc, or spiral -- ultimately a projectile from and to God. Just keep peddling, and soon enough you're riding upright on the tricycle.  

Here's a forbidden thought, especially for a clinical psychologist:

The proper therapeutic for bad living is clear thinking. We must supply the will with the right kind of projectiles, and trace for it the proper trajectory, for the will, by its nature, is inspired by the intellect.

If the will is not inspired by the intellect, then it will be spired by something that runs counter to the intellect -- AKA bad ideas, which, when systematized, become worse ideology -- or by something lower than intellect, AKA the untutored will.  

Which is why so many human beings are engines with no steering wheel. As Sheen says, "our knowledge and our love should be harmonious," not unlike the Trinity itsoph, "in which Knowledge and Love are in harmonious balance -- the Son and the Spirit being equal." 

But not equivalent, or what's the point? Back to Freedom and Feminism: male and female are likewise equal but  obviously not equivalent. And vive la différence. To which the left responds: No, kill it! Preferably before it reproduces!

Harmony, balance, and proportion. Or just a little perspective, please:

In the normal order of things there is a balance between the transcendent and the immanent, for all life is an equilibrium between the forces of within and the forces of without.

We know all about the forces of without, e.g., gravity, electricity, magnetism. But what the heck are the Forces of Within?  Objectively speaking?  

Now that is a large subject. Come to think of it, in the absence of this subject, there is no large or small, significant or insignificant, meaningful or meaningless, etc.  Truly, it is the biggest of bangs, at least on our side of the rug.

Which is why the world is so small to the ideologue.  One of the purposes of ideology is to cut the world down to size and make it -- and us! -- manageable.  This is why it requires a vocabulary of about a dozen words to be a progressive activist, the most important being "you have" and "I want."  

Oof. I need to stop this reverie in midsdream. To be continued....

Kakistocracy & Cuckocracy, Toxic Women & Weak Men

I want to complete the previous post on the subject of toxic femininity. 

We left off with the observation that women can never be "equal" to men (in terms of outcomes) without the intervention of something much stronger than men, which is the state.  (We could also say God, but that's not an option for the left.)

But this only kicks the can down the road, since it sets up a new hierarchy in which weak and ineffectual men -- AKA politicians -- will have a chance to compete.  

Now you know how the Party of Feminism end up with a Joe Biden at the top. Biden will boast about a cabinet that supposedly "looks like America," but let's not confuse with power with pander. Nor will the choices have anything to do with merit, because they are designed to patronize (as in pater) various yapping, resentful, and petulant identity groups.   

It's not as if (non-Trump) Republicans don't do the same thing, except to say they do it vis-a-vis philosophy rather than identity. In other words, they pretend to support conservatives. It's how the Party of Actual Men ends up with a Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or Paul Ryan. The sooner these types die off, the better.  

The bottom line is that Democrat rule results in kakistocracy, while Republican rule results in cuckocracy.

Some more observations from the book:

It is not by accident that feminism has had its major impact through the necessarily coercive machinery of the state rather than through the private decisions of individuals (Levin).

In many ways, the soft coercion of the welfare state is a mirror image of the hard coercion of law enforcement and prison. As we know, the great majority of criminals are young men who come from broken homes with absent fathers. 

As such, the institutions of "law enforcement" and "criminal justice" are like the return of the Father, only in a crude and heavy-handed manner: too little and definitely too late. It's a quintessentially masculine response to the problem of toxic -- or uncivilized -- masculinity.  (And in this context, the defund-the-police movement is just a sick mother screaming that her murderous baby is innocent.) 

Analogously, the welfare state is like a smothering and controlling mother who doesn't allow the child space to grow. Nor is there freedom to fail. Of course, failure still occurs, just minus the freedom. Consider the female dominated public school system, which no one but the wealthy are free to avoid, and yet assures so much failure.

For example, 

In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math.

In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math.

In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading.

(https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/walter-williams-last-column.php)

One could cite similar statistics for Washington, D.C. Which, of course, is why Democrats would like to make it a state.  Which is also why they want children to vote. Speaking of identity groups, they need all the morons they can get.

So,

Although feminism speaks the language of liberation, self-fulfillment, options, and the removal of barriers, these phrases invariably mean their opposites and disguise an agenda at variance with the ideals of a free society.

To put it mildly. Putting it bluntly, feminism is the very opposite of what it pretends to be. Which goes to the essence of toxic femininity, which revolves around deception (and seduction).  Conversely, toxic masculinity revolves around violence (and the coercion that is at antipodes to seduction).

Let's take a giant leap into the past -- not the horizontal past but the vertical past. Why is Genesis 3 structured as it is? Why does the whole catastrophe begin with the woman? Why is she more vulnerable to the spirit of deceit, and how is it that she seduces the man into the deception?

Hey, at least Eve didn't murder anyone! No, that doesn't occur until the next generation. But make no mistake: lies lead to violence and murder.  

Back to the text: it doesn't actually get into the why, only the what. The text is but a mythico-clinical description of what happens, and we err if we try to blame one or the other sex. 

Recall the principle discussed two posts upstream -- that masculinity and femininity are two complementary poles of a single reality. Genesis 3, being a "story," necessarily deploys in time. But in reality, the poles play out in a timeless metaphysical reality.  

Moreover, there are other considerations to consider, which we won't consider at the moment because they will take us too far afield. Suffice it to say that if we wish to have an integral understanding we must consider the fall in the context of redemption, and vice versa. It's a Big Story, the biggest ever. The struggle of Man v. Woman is just the undercard, a sideshow.

Let's ponder for a moment the following description of the Adversary:

He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. 

Interesting: a liar and a murderer. Eve and Cain, respectively, are the first we know of, but again, these are characters who illustrate principles; if they don't embody principles, then there is nothing to be learned from them. But let's not get into the blame game, for there's more than enough of that to go round and round. Just call it history.

Let's come back down to earth:

Feminism has been presented and widely received as a liberating force, a new view of the relations between the sexes emphasizing openness and freedom from oppressive stereotypes (Levin).

Oppressive stereotypes like, oh, "Eve" and "Adam."  

This is, of course, a Lie, truly, among the biggest and most breathtaking ever.

And yet, it's the same old lie. Same snake, new skin.

Feminism is an antidemocratic, if not totalitarian ideology (ibid.).

Bob, you just have a problem with women. 

Well, you're half right. In fact, I have a problem with human beings. And feminism only aggravates the problem.

Today's bottom line:

Since innate gender differences express themselves as differences in the typical preferences of men and women, so that people will never freely act in ways which produce a world devoid of sexism, the equalization of the sexes in personal behavior and in the work world demand implacable surveillance and interference (ibid.).  

Good news, though: if there's one thing that unites all leftists at all times, it's the need for more surveillance and interference, AKA less freedom and more coercion by the deceitful and the violent, by liars and bullies; or, speaking mythologically, just the endlessly circular riverrun, past Eve and Adam's... 

Kakistocracy & Cuckocracy, Toxic Women & Weak Men

I want to complete the previous post on the subject of toxic femininity. 

We left off with the observation that women can never be "equal" to men (in terms of outcomes) without the intervention of something much stronger than men, which is the state.  (We could also say God, but that's not an option for the left.)

But this only kicks the can down the road, since it sets up a new hierarchy in which weak and ineffectual men -- AKA politicians -- will have a chance to compete.  

Now you know how the Party of Feminism end up with a Joe Biden at the top. Biden will boast about a cabinet that supposedly "looks like America," but let's not confuse with power with pander. Nor will the choices have anything to do with merit, because they are designed to patronize (as in pater) various yapping, resentful, and petulant identity groups.   

It's not as if (non-Trump) Republicans don't do the same thing, except to say they do it vis-a-vis philosophy rather than identity. In other words, they pretend to support conservatives. It's how the Party of Actual Men ends up with a Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or Paul Ryan. The sooner these types die off, the better.  

The bottom line is that Democrat rule results in kakistocracy, while Republican rule results in cuckocracy.

Some more observations from the book:

It is not by accident that feminism has had its major impact through the necessarily coercive machinery of the state rather than through the private decisions of individuals (Levin).

In many ways, the soft coercion of the welfare state is a mirror image of the hard coercion of law enforcement and prison. As we know, the great majority of criminals are young men who come from broken homes with absent fathers. 

As such, the institutions of "law enforcement" and "criminal justice" are like the return of the Father, only in a crude and heavy-handed manner: too little and definitely too late. It's a quintessentially masculine response to the problem of toxic -- or uncivilized -- masculinity.  (And in this context, the defund-the-police movement is just a sick mother screaming that her murderous baby is innocent.) 

Analogously, the welfare state is like a smothering and controlling mother who doesn't allow the child space to grow. Nor is there freedom to fail. Of course, failure still occurs, just minus the freedom. Consider the female dominated public school system, which no one but the wealthy are free to avoid, and yet assures so much failure.

For example, 

In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math.

In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math.

In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading.

(https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/walter-williams-last-column.php)

One could cite similar statistics for Washington, D.C. Which, of course, is why Democrats would like to make it a state.  Which is also why they want children to vote. Speaking of identity groups, they need all the morons they can get.

So,

Although feminism speaks the language of liberation, self-fulfillment, options, and the removal of barriers, these phrases invariably mean their opposites and disguise an agenda at variance with the ideals of a free society.

To put it mildly. Putting it bluntly, feminism is the very opposite of what it pretends to be. Which goes to the essence of toxic femininity, which revolves around deception (and seduction).  Conversely, toxic masculinity revolves around violence (and the coercion that is at antipodes to seduction).

Let's take a giant leap into the past -- not the horizontal past but the vertical past. Why is Genesis 3 structured as it is? Why does the whole catastrophe begin with the woman? Why is she more vulnerable to the spirit of deceit, and how is it that she seduces the man into the deception?

Hey, at least Eve didn't murder anyone! No, that doesn't occur until the next generation. But make no mistake: lies lead to violence and murder.  

Back to the text: it doesn't actually get into the why, only the what. The text is but a mythico-clinical description of what happens, and we err if we try to blame one or the other sex. 

Recall the principle discussed two posts upstream -- that masculinity and femininity are two complementary poles of a single reality. Genesis 3, being a "story," necessarily deploys in time. But in reality, the poles play out in a timeless metaphysical reality.  

Moreover, there are other considerations to consider, which we won't consider at the moment because they will take us too far afield. Suffice it to say that if we wish to have an integral understanding we must consider the fall in the context of redemption, and vice versa. It's a Big Story, the biggest ever. The struggle of Man v. Woman is just the undercard, a sideshow.

Let's ponder for a moment the following description of the Adversary:

He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. 

Interesting: a liar and a murderer. Eve and Cain, respectively, are the first we know of, but again, these are characters who illustrate principles; if they don't embody principles, then there is nothing to be learned from them. But let's not get into the blame game, for there's more than enough of that to go round and round. Just call it history.

Let's come back down to earth:

Feminism has been presented and widely received as a liberating force, a new view of the relations between the sexes emphasizing openness and freedom from oppressive stereotypes (Levin).

Oppressive stereotypes like, oh, "Eve" and "Adam."  

This is, of course, a Lie, truly, among the biggest and most breathtaking ever.

And yet, it's the same old lie. Same snake, new skin.

Feminism is an antidemocratic, if not totalitarian ideology (ibid.).

Bob, you just have a problem with women. 

Well, you're half right. In fact, I have a problem with human beings. And feminism only aggravates the problem.

Today's bottom line:

Since innate gender differences express themselves as differences in the typical preferences of men and women, so that people will never freely act in ways which produce a world devoid of sexism, the equalization of the sexes in personal behavior and in the work world demand implacable surveillance and interference (ibid.).  

Good news, though: if there's one thing that unites all leftists at all times, it's the need for more surveillance and interference, AKA less freedom and more coercion by the deceitful and the violent, by liars and bullies; or, speaking mythologically, just the endlessly circular riverrun, past Eve and Adam's... 

Toxic Feminism and Betacratic Tyranny

Nobody panics when progressive jokers blather on about something they call "toxic masculinity." But one little mention of toxic femininity -- AKA feminism -- and everyone loses their minds.  

Which isn't quite true, because their minds are already lost by virtue of believing in feminism to begin with.

Bob are you suggesting that feminism is intrinsically pathological?  Yes, precisely -- certainly in its contemporary manifestations. There was a time -- perhaps fifty or more years ago -- when a healthy man could be excused for falling for the rhetoric, if only to get these shrews to shut-up for five minutes. 

But today there is no excuse: feminism is a sickness (or a symptom of one; stay tuned to discover witch!).  It isn't healthy, least of all for women and girls.  

Moreover, since femininity can only be artificially detached from masculinity, it is the cause and consequence of sick men as well.  It is why we can never trust a "male feminist." Think it: a male feminist doesn't know.  He can never be a member of the Club, nor is he aware of the Code. And yet he's proud of it, like it's some sort of virtue!

But ignorance and stupidity are never virtues.

Does Bob sound angry this morning? Well, first of all, Bob is never angry, so you're just projecting again. 

Wait -- are you suggesting Bob is some kind of saint or something?  

Definitely not. He is not "above" anger, just way beyond it, into something resembling... how to put it... how about cold nausea? As usual, Dávila speaks -- and retches -- for me: 

Our spontaneous revulsions are often more lucid than our reasoned convictions.

One who does not share our repugnance does not understand our ideas.

And an old standby that is always worth regurgitating:

Moral indignation is not truly sincere unless it literally ends in vomiting.

First of all, if you think this problem is correctable -- let alone by politics -- you don't understand the nature of the problem, much less its magnitude. Conversely, if you do understand the magnitude of the problem, it ironically confers a kind of peace, if only the peace of resignation.  

I compare it to the peace that comes from having no options; in other words: No alternatives, No problem.  If death, for example,  were only a possibility, it would be far more anxiety provoking.

We all know people who have grown up and transitioned from illiberal leftism to liberal conservatism. How do we know when we can truly say to the convert:

GABBA GABBA WE ACCEPT YOU ONE OF US! 

Easy: when they are literally sickened at the thought of their old self.

Anyway, after completing yesterday's post, I plucked an old book from the shelf called Feminism & Freedom, and it's full of grade-A insultainment. I think we might have discussed it a number of years ago, but I don't remember.  Therefore, my bad memory is your good fortune.

(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887381251?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0887381251)

Examples:

Surely no body of ideas is wrong about everything, as I imply feminism is.

How can a theory be wrong about everything? Easy: just begin with a first principle that is impossible, and everything follows as a matter of logic:

Any theory whose basic assumption about human nature is completely erroneous -- as I argue is the case with feminism -- is indeed bound to be wrong about everything else.

Okay then, why is it wrong? What's the big error? Why, it's so simple, a child can understand it -- unless the luckless child has sick parents who prevent her from seeing it:

Feminism is a program for making different beings -- men and women -- turn out alike.... 

More precisely, feminism is the thesis that males and females are already innately alike, with the current order of things -- in which males and females appear to differ and occupy quite different social roles -- being a harmful distortion of this fundamental similarity.

In short: reality, i.e., the order of things, is a harmful distortion. Which means feminists are hallucinating.  For gender differences are obviously real.  

So,  how does one transform reality into something it isn't?  The "patriarchy," as powerful as it is, is not powerful enough to eliminate reality. Rather, we need something more powerful than man (let alone woman).  I know!  The State!  It can do anything.  Supposing males are always trying to dominate this or that hierarchy,

The only agency that can prevent males in a human group from dominating it is a more powerful human group. 

True, but doesn't this just mean we'll ultimately be bossed around by male feminists -- whom we already know we can never trust?  Un-men such as Clinton, Obama, Biden -- or Bezos, Dorsey, & Zuckerman?  

Sure. You got a problem with that? Ultimately,  

one group's intervention in the affairs of another to strip its males of power does not transfer power to the females of the subject group; the real power goes to the dominant members of the dominant group -- who will be males if males are more interested in dominance than females.

Call it betocracy: rule by weak but sneaky beta males instead of a strong and transparent alpha.

To be continued...

Toxic Feminism and Betacratic Tyranny

Nobody panics when progressive jokers blather on about something they call "toxic masculinity." But one little mention of toxic femininity -- AKA feminism -- and everyone loses their minds.  

Which isn't quite true, because their minds are already lost by virtue of believing in feminism to begin with.

Bob are you suggesting that feminism is intrinsically pathological?  Yes, precisely -- certainly in its contemporary manifestations. There was a time -- perhaps fifty or more years ago -- when a healthy man could be excused for falling for the rhetoric, if only to get these shrews to shut-up for five minutes. 

But today there is no excuse: feminism is a sickness (or a symptom of one; stay tuned to discover witch!).  It isn't healthy, least of all for women and girls.  

Moreover, since femininity can only be artificially detached from masculinity, it is the cause and consequence of sick men as well.  It is why we can never trust a "male feminist." Think it: a male feminist doesn't know.  He can never be a member of the Club, nor is he aware of the Code. And yet he's proud of it, like it's some sort of virtue!

But ignorance and stupidity are never virtues.

Does Bob sound angry this morning? Well, first of all, Bob is never angry, so you're just projecting again. 

Wait -- are you suggesting Bob is some kind of saint or something?  

Definitely not. He is not "above" anger, just way beyond it, into something resembling... how to put it... how about cold nausea? As usual, Dávila speaks -- and retches -- for me: 

Our spontaneous revulsions are often more lucid than our reasoned convictions.

One who does not share our repugnance does not understand our ideas.

And an old standby that is always worth regurgitating:

Moral indignation is not truly sincere unless it literally ends in vomiting.

First of all, if you think this problem is correctable -- let alone by politics -- you don't understand the nature of the problem, much less its magnitude. Conversely, if you do understand the magnitude of the problem, it ironically confers a kind of peace, if only the peace of resignation.  

I compare it to the peace that comes from having no options; in other words: No alternatives, No problem.  If death, for example,  were only a possibility, it would be far more anxiety provoking.

We all know people who have grown up and transitioned from illiberal leftism to liberal conservatism. How do we know when we can truly say to the convert:

GABBA GABBA WE ACCEPT YOU ONE OF US! 

Easy: when they are literally sickened at the thought of their old self.

Anyway, after completing yesterday's post, I plucked an old book from the shelf called Feminism & Freedom, and it's full of grade-A insultainment. I think we might have discussed it a number of years ago, but I don't remember.  Therefore, my bad memory is your good fortune.

(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887381251?ie=UTF8&tag=onecos-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0887381251)

Examples:

Surely no body of ideas is wrong about everything, as I imply feminism is.

How can a theory be wrong about everything? Easy: just begin with a first principle that is impossible, and everything follows as a matter of logic:

Any theory whose basic assumption about human nature is completely erroneous -- as I argue is the case with feminism -- is indeed bound to be wrong about everything else.

Okay then, why is it wrong? What's the big error? Why, it's so simple, a child can understand it -- unless the luckless child has sick parents who prevent her from seeing it:

Feminism is a program for making different beings -- men and women -- turn out alike.... 

More precisely, feminism is the thesis that males and females are already innately alike, with the current order of things -- in which males and females appear to differ and occupy quite different social roles -- being a harmful distortion of this fundamental similarity.

In short: reality, i.e., the order of things, is a harmful distortion. Which means feminists are hallucinating.  For gender differences are obviously real.  

So,  how does one transform reality into something it isn't?  The "patriarchy," as powerful as it is, is not powerful enough to eliminate reality. Rather, we need something more powerful than man (let alone woman).  I know!  The State!  It can do anything.  Supposing males are always trying to dominate this or that hierarchy,

The only agency that can prevent males in a human group from dominating it is a more powerful human group. 

True, but doesn't this just mean we'll ultimately be bossed around by male feminists -- whom we already know we can never trust?  Un-men such as Clinton, Obama, Biden -- or Bezos, Dorsey, & Zuckerman?  

Sure. You got a problem with that? Ultimately,  

one group's intervention in the affairs of another to strip its males of power does not transfer power to the females of the subject group; the real power goes to the dominant members of the dominant group -- who will be males if males are more interested in dominance than females.

Call it betocracy: rule by weak but sneaky beta males instead of a strong and transparent alpha.

To be continued...

Toxic Femininity and Hell on Earth

I had an acute case of Baader-Meinhof a couple days ago. First there was a tweet that said:

Much of what we call leftism is simply femaleism.

As evolutionary biology would predict. 

(https://twitter.com/HappyHectares/status/1334122286190759936) 

Which immediately provoked the idea for this post, or at least proposed a hypothetical equation in my head:

Leftism = Toxic femininity

Later in the day I switched channels to American Digest, where I read the following:

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.

(http://americandigest.org/the-emphasis-added-aristotle-on-tyranny/#comments) 

To top it off,  later that same day I peeked over at Instapundit, where there was a link to an essay asking if our boyfriend is effeminate. The essay isn't worth reading, as it essentially lumps together every negative trait the author can think of under the heading "effeminate." 

(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/417740/) 

She claims this term is "not to be confused with 'femininity,'" but rather, "is the opposite of masculinity." But according to Mr. Webster, it means precisely that, i.e., "having feminine qualities untypical of a man: not manly in appearance or manner." 

The author instead equates effeminacy with "attachment to pleasure," but there's already a word for that: hedonism.  

So, where does this leave us? It leaves us with this post, which I felt more enthusiastic about yesterday, when I started it, than I do today, when I'm dutifully finishing it. Nevertheless, I feel like I owe it to the cosmos to take seriously such a synchronicitous trifecta of internet references. 

In other words, if the cosmic slot machine goes to all the trouble of coming up triple cherries for me, the least I can do is inquire as to why. Perhaps there's a big payoff in store. Or maybe it's just God making a silly pun, as usual.   

So: is there something about leftism that revolves around toxic femininity? Well, I suppose it depends upon what we mean by "toxic." And "femininity. "

Regarding the latter, there is masculinity and there is femininity, each being archetypal and therefore teleological. Precisely because they are teleological and not simply given all at once, they can veer off course, i.e., they can become pathological.  In other words, pathology itself is a failure to achieve what the system or organ or archetype is designed to do. 

Much as I'd like to descend immediately into insultainment, this is a complex subject. Nor do I want to mirror the author above and lump everything I don't like into a bitch's brew of Toxic Leftism. 

Let's cut to the chase, or to my conclusion, and then perhaps try to back it up, even though my cerebrated angelic intelligence informs me this isn't strictly necessary, i.e., that seeing is believing.

There is masculinity and there is femininity, each an essential human quality. However, these do not constitute a dualism, but rather, a complementarity. Neither is reducible to the other, nor is it possible to understand one without reference to the other. 

Moreover, we cannot describe, say, a "healthy masculinity" in the absence of the femininity which partly defines it.  If there were no women -- no feminine -- there could be no healthy or unhealthy masculinity. And vice versa: if there is no healthy masculinity, then there can be no crazy ex-wives from hell -- Nancy Pelosi, Sandy Cortez, Hillary Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Ruth Ginsburg, Maxine Waters, et al, would all be considered perfectly normal. 

Now, Petey informs me that the masculine-feminine pole isn't just horizontal but vertical; it manifests at every level of being -- some say as being itself, being that being must always be placed in the context of beyond-being, however one wishes to conceptualize the latter.  

The point I am making is a subtle or possibly just cranky one, but there is the cataphatic God we can know about and the apophatic God about whom we can know nothing (i.e., know nothing, not know nothing). Speaking only for myself and for Petey, it looks to us like Being is masculine in relation to the ultimate feminine womb-matrix of Beyond-Being.  

This no doubt smells a bit heterodox, but there are precedents, and not just Meister Eckhart, who wrote that "From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth. The essence of God is birthing."

However, there is also the sempiternal birth of existence from being, which has always been understood conversely, i.e., the masculine God and the feminine creation (e..g., "mother nature," or "Maya," or "Prakriti").  

Here again, these views are not contradictory but complementary -- much like the two stories of creation in Genesis. The first is more like Being from Beyond-Being, the second more like Existence from Being.

Bob, could you get any further afield?  

I don't know, but I'll try. Elsewhere Eckhart adverts to what we are calling Beyond-Being:

--The divine one is a negation of negations and a denial of denials.

--God is nothing. No thing. God is nothingness; and yet God is something.

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

--The final goal of being is the darkness and the unknowability of the hidden divinity, which is that light which shines 'but the darkness cannot comprehend it.'

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

I know: just like a woman.  

But there's more. If ultimate reality is a kind of eternal birthing, then I believe it helps us to comprehend what it means for the the Son to be eternally begotten and not made (the latter implying a creation in time). 

It also goes to the very nub of the gist of the whole point of the Incarnation, which, for Eckhart, is to facilitate this same eternal birth in ourselves:

Pay attention now to exactly where this birth takes place: this eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the manner in which it takes place in eternity....

There is only one birth -- and this birth takes place in the being and in the ground and core of the soul.

Now, you may not agree with the Meistero, which is fine. Different storks for different dorks. Still, this is how I see it:  

And the Creator extends the same power to you out of the divine maternity bed located in the Godhead to eternally give birth.   

In other words, this is the ultimate explanation of our own inexhaustible creativity.  Or, let's say a more majestic explanation -- one that honors the extraordinary privilege of being cosmic co-creators:

Let me express myself in even a clearer way. The fruitful person gives birth out of the very same foundation from which the Creator begets the eternal Word... and it is from this core that one becomes fruitfully pregnant.

I guess we're almost done, and it would be bad form at this point to throw in some cheap shots about the toxic femininity of the left. Still, Eckhart wonders,

Why is it that some people do not bear fruit?

He suggests that it is due to a lack of faith in God. Which is not an issue for the left, since they posit no God in whom we owe our faith, only a State to whom we owe our obedience. 

Now, is this State a bad mother -- shut your mouth! -- or a bad father?

Trick question!

For it is both, the discordant marriage of a shrieking, hyperemotional femininity and an obnoxiously bullying masculinity, each equally toxic.  Also known as hell.

Toxic Femininity and Hell on Earth

I had an acute case of Baader-Meinhof a couple days ago. First there was a tweet that said:

Much of what we call leftism is simply femaleism.

As evolutionary biology would predict. 

(https://twitter.com/HappyHectares/status/1334122286190759936) 

Which immediately provoked the idea for this post, or at least proposed a hypothetical equation in my head:

Leftism = Toxic femininity

Later in the day I switched channels to American Digest, where I read the following:

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.

(http://americandigest.org/the-emphasis-added-aristotle-on-tyranny/#comments) 

To top it off,  later that same day I peeked over at Instapundit, where there was a link to an essay asking if our boyfriend is effeminate. The essay isn't worth reading, as it essentially lumps together every negative trait the author can think of under the heading "effeminate." 

(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/417740/) 

She claims this term is "not to be confused with 'femininity,'" but rather, "is the opposite of masculinity." But according to Mr. Webster, it means precisely that, i.e., "having feminine qualities untypical of a man: not manly in appearance or manner." 

The author instead equates effeminacy with "attachment to pleasure," but there's already a word for that: hedonism.  

So, where does this leave us? It leaves us with this post, which I felt more enthusiastic about yesterday, when I started it, than I do today, when I'm dutifully finishing it. Nevertheless, I feel like I owe it to the cosmos to take seriously such a synchronicitous trifecta of internet references. 

In other words, if the cosmic slot machine goes to all the trouble of coming up triple cherries for me, the least I can do is inquire as to why. Perhaps there's a big payoff in store. Or maybe it's just God making a silly pun, as usual.   

So: is there something about leftism that revolves around toxic femininity? Well, I suppose it depends upon what we mean by "toxic." And "femininity. "

Regarding the latter, there is masculinity and there is femininity, each being archetypal and therefore teleological. Precisely because they are teleological and not simply given all at once, they can veer off course, i.e., they can become pathological.  In other words, pathology itself is a failure to achieve what the system or organ or archetype is designed to do. 

Much as I'd like to descend immediately into insultainment, this is a complex subject. Nor do I want to mirror the author above and lump everything I don't like into a bitch's brew of Toxic Leftism. 

Let's cut to the chase, or to my conclusion, and then perhaps try to back it up, even though my cerebrated angelic intelligence informs me this isn't strictly necessary, i.e., that seeing is believing.

There is masculinity and there is femininity, each an essential human quality. However, these do not constitute a dualism, but rather, a complementarity. Neither is reducible to the other, nor is it possible to understand one without reference to the other. 

Moreover, we cannot describe, say, a "healthy masculinity" in the absence of the femininity which partly defines it.  If there were no women -- no feminine -- there could be no healthy or unhealthy masculinity. And vice versa: if there is no healthy masculinity, then there can be no crazy ex-wives from hell -- Nancy Pelosi, Sandy Cortez, Hillary Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Ruth Ginsburg, Maxine Waters, et al, would all be considered perfectly normal. 

Now, Petey informs me that the masculine-feminine pole isn't just horizontal but vertical; it manifests at every level of being -- some say as being itself, being that being must always be placed in the context of beyond-being, however one wishes to conceptualize the latter.  

The point I am making is a subtle or possibly just cranky one, but there is the cataphatic God we can know about and the apophatic God about whom we can know nothing (i.e., know nothing, not know nothing). Speaking only for myself and for Petey, it looks to us like Being is masculine in relation to the ultimate feminine womb-matrix of Beyond-Being.  

This no doubt smells a bit heterodox, but there are precedents, and not just Meister Eckhart, who wrote that "From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth. The essence of God is birthing."

However, there is also the sempiternal birth of existence from being, which has always been understood conversely, i.e., the masculine God and the feminine creation (e..g., "mother nature," or "Maya," or "Prakriti").  

Here again, these views are not contradictory but complementary -- much like the two stories of creation in Genesis. The first is more like Being from Beyond-Being, the second more like Existence from Being.

Bob, could you get any further afield?  

I don't know, but I'll try. Elsewhere Eckhart adverts to what we are calling Beyond-Being:

--The divine one is a negation of negations and a denial of denials.

--God is nothing. No thing. God is nothingness; and yet God is something.

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

--The final goal of being is the darkness and the unknowability of the hidden divinity, which is that light which shines 'but the darkness cannot comprehend it.'

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

I know: just like a woman.  

But there's more. If ultimate reality is a kind of eternal birthing, then I believe it helps us to comprehend what it means for the the Son to be eternally begotten and not made (the latter implying a creation in time). 

It also goes to the very nub of the gist of the whole point of the Incarnation, which, for Eckhart, is to facilitate this same eternal birth in ourselves:

Pay attention now to exactly where this birth takes place: this eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the manner in which it takes place in eternity....

There is only one birth -- and this birth takes place in the being and in the ground and core of the soul.

Now, you may not agree with the Meistero, which is fine. Different storks for different dorks. Still, this is how I see it:  

And the Creator extends the same power to you out of the divine maternity bed located in the Godhead to eternally give birth.   

In other words, this is the ultimate explanation of our own inexhaustible creativity.  Or, let's say a more majestic explanation -- one that honors the extraordinary privilege of being cosmic co-creators:

Let me express myself in even a clearer way. The fruitful person gives birth out of the very same foundation from which the Creator begets the eternal Word... and it is from this core that one becomes fruitfully pregnant.

I guess we're almost done, and it would be bad form at this point to throw in some cheap shots about the toxic femininity of the left. Still, Eckhart wonders,

Why is it that some people do not bear fruit?

He suggests that it is due to a lack of faith in God. Which is not an issue for the left, since they posit no God in whom we owe our faith, only a State to whom we owe our obedience. 

Now, is this State a bad mother -- shut your mouth! -- or a bad father?

Trick question!

For it is both, the discordant marriage of a shrieking, hyperemotional femininity and an obnoxiously bullying masculinity, each equally toxic.  Also known as hell.

Absurd Gaps, Tenured Saps, and Complete Maps of the Cosmos

What else can be said about Angels and Orwell? Or have I written myself into a corner again?  

Well, one further point is that human intelligence, as great a thing as it is, is still pretty weak in the overall cosmic scheme of things. There's a reason why we not only so often get things wrong, but catastrophically so.  

Human -- qua human -- intelligence has some defects that can't really be remedied except in a handful of cases, and it can take your whole life just to track down their names and addresses. Truly, they are freaks -- faculty members of their own elite university.

There's a communion of saints. There is also a communion of geniuses -- of fertile eggheads and lumen beings.  Moreover, -- obviously -- these two converge: In a fiery intelligence the materials are not fused into a new alloy; they are integrated into a new element (Dávila).

Note that what I just said -- about the convergence of sanctity and brilliance -- is an example of a transtemporal truth that would make no sense whatsoever in the contemporary university. If would be rejected out of hand as not even wrong.

Which means that in the very place where intelligent people supposedly congregate, these folkers don't even know the first thing about intelligence, i.e., what it is and whence it comes. Thus, the intellectual community of the modern university unwittingly reflects the following ironyclad aphorism:

Intelligence isolates; stupidity brings together. 

It cannot be sufficiently stressed how anti-intellectual this is: not just unintelligent, but opposed to intelligence:

Modern philosophy, in rejecting the intelligence, has rejected the cornerstone of the whole edifice of continuity and progress in the universe (Sheen). 

Ever wonder why progressives can't help but be so backward in their thinking? Because they violate the principle that renders progress possible. 

Another key point -- this one also a bit ironic -- is that everyone believes in angels, and can't help believing in angels. However, the left does so implicitly, while assuming the function of angelic intelligence -- i.e., they claim to know things that only an angelic intellect could know.

This is a somewhat subtle point, or maybe my intelligence just isn't sufficiently angelic to explain it. But according to Sheen, modern philosophy has, in ideal, 

given man an angelic intelligence, and thus has broken continuity with the lower orders; in fact, it has given man a degenerate sense knowledge, and has broken continuity with the higher orders.

This explains so much about the metaphysical absurdity of the left, that it makes me want to slap yo' mama and my angel at the same time. On the one hand, modern philosophy insists on cosmic continuity (as must any philosophy). But it situates the continuity "below," thereby dragging down the very intelligence that posits and transcends it.  

In short, there is surely a temporal "evolution" in the cosmos, but only because it is ontologically posterior to an atemporal involution -- or to the timeless hierarchical structure of things; absent this structure, then, well, nothing.

Continuity and unity; or time and space, respectively.  Now, no one posits one without the other, since it is not possible to do so. But this doesn't stop them from trying, which is precisely what, say, an "angelic scientism" is: an oxymoronic orthodoxy. 

In other words, scientism (or metaphysical Darwinism, or leftoid neo-Marxism) reduces human intelligence to the animal or material while elevating it to a grand unified synthesis of reality.  This represents a kind of infracosmic stupidity of which there can be no stupider. 

Conversely, the sanctified intelligence of a St. Thomas

is constantly recurring to the principle of unification that runs through the universe.... For him the principle of unification is valid only on condition that there is no subordination of the higher to the lower order.

Unification is and must be from above; if it is from below, that's not unification, that's agglomeration and/or annihilation. I suppose it's a kind of unity, in that it turns your head into a desolate parking lot, but so what? Nothing is that stupid, let alone everything. 

Is life higher than matter? Is mind higher than life? Modern philosophy, left to its own resources and principles, can only say Nah. 

Now, the angelic intelligence can see God, and is therefore not in need of arguments to "prove" his existence. Analogously, no one has to use logic to convince me that the swimming pool I'm looking at is real. Indeed, in this context, any argument for the existence of the pool is weaker than my simply seeing it (let alone swimming in it). Merely reasoning about its existence is a defect, or at least rooted in one.  

The same principle applies to... to everything. In no persons short of God is there perfect correlation of knowledge and essence, or intelligence and intelligibility. 

But for us the perfection is on a continuum, e.g., from facts to conclusions to knowledge to prudence to wisdom. Is it controversial to suggest that hordes of intelligent people are bereft of wisdom, or that a faulty intelligence can misappropriate facts with diabolical facility?

It's getting late. We'll end with a passage by Sheen followed by an aphorism:

Without the intelligence there can be no continuity and no fluidity in the universe.... Discard the intelligence and you create a gap in the universe that no instinct or imaginal can fill.... Recognize the intelligence and you have a harmonious progression of perfections reaching even to God himself. Posit intelligence, and evolution becomes intelligible; deny it, and it becomes absurd. 

The modern aberration consists in believing that the only thing that is real is what the vulgar soul can perceive.

Absurd Gaps, Tenured Saps, and Complete Maps of the Cosmos

What else can be said about Angels and Orwell? Or have I written myself into a corner again?  

Well, one further point is that human intelligence, as great a thing as it is, is still pretty weak in the overall cosmic scheme of things. There's a reason why we not only so often get things wrong, but catastrophically so.  

Human -- qua human -- intelligence has some defects that can't really be remedied except in a handful of cases, and it can take your whole life just to track down their names and addresses. Truly, they are freaks -- faculty members of their own elite university.

There's a communion of saints. There is also a communion of geniuses -- of fertile eggheads and lumen beings.  Moreover, -- obviously -- these two converge: In a fiery intelligence the materials are not fused into a new alloy; they are integrated into a new element (Dávila).

Note that what I just said -- about the convergence of sanctity and brilliance -- is an example of a transtemporal truth that would make no sense whatsoever in the contemporary university. If would be rejected out of hand as not even wrong.

Which means that in the very place where intelligent people supposedly congregate, these folkers don't even know the first thing about intelligence, i.e., what it is and whence it comes. Thus, the intellectual community of the modern university unwittingly reflects the following ironyclad aphorism:

Intelligence isolates; stupidity brings together. 

It cannot be sufficiently stressed how anti-intellectual this is: not just unintelligent, but opposed to intelligence:

Modern philosophy, in rejecting the intelligence, has rejected the cornerstone of the whole edifice of continuity and progress in the universe (Sheen). 

Ever wonder why progressives can't help but be so backward in their thinking? Because they violate the principle that renders progress possible. 

Another key point -- this one also a bit ironic -- is that everyone believes in angels, and can't help believing in angels. However, the left does so implicitly, while assuming the function of angelic intelligence -- i.e., they claim to know things that only an angelic intellect could know.

This is a somewhat subtle point, or maybe my intelligence just isn't sufficiently angelic to explain it. But according to Sheen, modern philosophy has, in ideal, 

given man an angelic intelligence, and thus has broken continuity with the lower orders; in fact, it has given man a degenerate sense knowledge, and has broken continuity with the higher orders.

This explains so much about the metaphysical absurdity of the left, that it makes me want to slap yo' mama and my angel at the same time. On the one hand, modern philosophy insists on cosmic continuity (as must any philosophy). But it situates the continuity "below," thereby dragging down the very intelligence that posits and transcends it.  

In short, there is surely a temporal "evolution" in the cosmos, but only because it is ontologically posterior to an atemporal involution -- or to the timeless hierarchical structure of things; absent this structure, then, well, nothing.

Continuity and unity; or time and space, respectively.  Now, no one posits one without the other, since it is not possible to do so. But this doesn't stop them from trying, which is precisely what, say, an "angelic scientism" is: an oxymoronic orthodoxy. 

In other words, scientism (or metaphysical Darwinism, or leftoid neo-Marxism) reduces human intelligence to the animal or material while elevating it to a grand unified synthesis of reality.  This represents a kind of infracosmic stupidity of which there can be no stupider. 

Conversely, the sanctified intelligence of a St. Thomas

is constantly recurring to the principle of unification that runs through the universe.... For him the principle of unification is valid only on condition that there is no subordination of the higher to the lower order.

Unification is and must be from above; if it is from below, that's not unification, that's agglomeration and/or annihilation. I suppose it's a kind of unity, in that it turns your head into a desolate parking lot, but so what? Nothing is that stupid, let alone everything. 

Is life higher than matter? Is mind higher than life? Modern philosophy, left to its own resources and principles, can only say Nah. 

Now, the angelic intelligence can see God, and is therefore not in need of arguments to "prove" his existence. Analogously, no one has to use logic to convince me that the swimming pool I'm looking at is real. Indeed, in this context, any argument for the existence of the pool is weaker than my simply seeing it (let alone swimming in it). Merely reasoning about its existence is a defect, or at least rooted in one.  

The same principle applies to... to everything. In no persons short of God is there perfect correlation of knowledge and essence, or intelligence and intelligibility. 

But for us the perfection is on a continuum, e.g., from facts to conclusions to knowledge to prudence to wisdom. Is it controversial to suggest that hordes of intelligent people are bereft of wisdom, or that a faulty intelligence can misappropriate facts with diabolical facility?

It's getting late. We'll end with a passage by Sheen followed by an aphorism:

Without the intelligence there can be no continuity and no fluidity in the universe.... Discard the intelligence and you create a gap in the universe that no instinct or imaginal can fill.... Recognize the intelligence and you have a harmonious progression of perfections reaching even to God himself. Posit intelligence, and evolution becomes intelligible; deny it, and it becomes absurd. 

The modern aberration consists in believing that the only thing that is real is what the vulgar soul can perceive.