Give Us this Day Our Daily Fraud, and Deliver Us from Ego

Yesterday I read Eric Hoffer's classic The True Believer, which I'd previously read a couple of times, but not in many years, and certainly not with the eyes of a true believing privileged dissident insurrectionist white supremacist crimethinking badwhite member of the patriarchy. 

Hoffer's thesis is that while mass movements vary, they all feature the same kind of person. Not just anyone can be a True Believer, nor does it matter much what he believes. Rather, it's the fervent believing that counts. 

Think of Mumbly Joe. The party he entered 60 years ago is very different from the party of today. Back then it at least pretended to be liberal, whereas now it is openly racist, authoritarian, and anti-American, but he fights for it just the same.  

We've said for a long time that man cannot not be religious. Since religion provides a kind of "folk metaphysic" for the average man, the average man who rejects religion will simply replace this with a bad, unexamined, and implausible metaphysic such as Marxism, or atheism, or feminism, or critical race theory. 

Worse, as explained by Polanyi, the True Believer will have the same religious energy as anyone else, only now unhinged from religious constraint. This redounds to violence and destruction, every time -- most recently, the months of BLM and Antifa riots in 2020.  

The absence of religious constraint is analogous to the claim of rights without concomitant responsibilities. In truth, just as duties are antecedent to rights (since you don't give rights to an irresponsible person), humility is prior to grace, so to speak. 

Yes, man is in the image and likeness of the Creator, but he is also fallen, and if he fails to appreciate the latter, then the result is cosmic narcissism. 

Genuine sanctity covaries with humility, and no one is less humble than the true believing leftist who not only presumes to know better how to run your life, but is so ignorant of his own ignorance that he never stops dreaming of "political solutions" that only set off a new round of problems. Just look at the border: Biden's solution is the problem. 

Why is someone attracted to a mass movement, anyway, and why especially would an American be so attracted? The left is composed of losers, misfits, and weirdos at the bottom end, and a privileged class at the top end. In other words, it's a coalition of losers of the meritocracy and winners of the mediocracy, and neither class is able to recognize the truth. 

If the left didn't exist, the losers would have to invent it on order to account for their failure: in short, it's much easier to blame racism or sexism than it is to acknowledge one's own shortcomings. 

At the top end, the belief in "white privilege" and other such nonsense is like "envy insurance," so to speak. On some level, an Obama must recognize his own mediocrity and blind luck, so he deflects envy via an ideology that redirects it to acceptable objects. In reality, the left is an alliance of the top and bottom against the middle. Both are resentful but for different reasons.

Put it this way: a successful person who has succeeded on merit will see the system as generally fair. But an unsuccessful person who has failed due to his lack of merit will be sorely tempted to look for an alternative explanation. And a person who has succeeded despite his abundant lack of merit will know the system was rigged in his favor, and thus harbor bitterness about it. 

Thus, the bitterness of the lucky winners joins forces with the bitterness of the luckless losers. How else to explain the bitterness of an Oprah, the Obamas, the Kamalas, the Markles, the Sharptons of the world? 

Celebrities, journalists, and celebrity journalists must know deep down that they are just interchangeable lottery winners, which is why they are down with the revolution. This is how ridiculously privileged clowns such as Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo can be so vocal about white privilege: don't look at me, look the Orange Man! 

For Hoffer, the impulse to join a mass movement goes beyond mere ideas and even existence, all the way to ontology. In short, the true believer wants to rid himself of his self and be someone else. 

In my view, this is an inverse analogy of religion, in that the mass movement offers transcendence of the ego, only from below instead of above. It appeals

to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile purpose in self-advancement. 

There is an  "innermost craving for a new life" or "rebirth" which brings "a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause." These people hope for change, but the real hope is to change into someone else. 

Since it never works, it requires further change, which is the recipe for fanaticism. Democrats believe the stimulus will work this time if they only make it big enough, as Islamists believe the jihad will work if only they murder enough Jews.

The book has a number of aphorisms:

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

Why can't, for example, Gavin Newsome mind his own business? What is he running from? And what is he hoping for? Hoffer describes the various types who are drawn to mass movements. Perhaps Newsome is among the Bored:

When people are bored, it is primarily with themselves that they are bored. The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom.... By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning.

Which would be great if it were't at our expense. I have a lot of hobbies that give my life meaning, but none of them involve bullying and bossing other people around, let alone wrecking their lives and livelihoods.

Mass movements also appeal to criminal types such as the Clintons, for they allow one to steal on a grand scale while laundering one's conscience in ideology. Come to think of it, this must apply to Andrew Cuomo and to so many other vocal male feminists. Public commitment to feminism is the perfect cover for private predators.  

Give Us this Day Our Daily Fraud, and Deliver Us from Ego

Yesterday I read Eric Hoffer's classic The True Believer, which I'd previously read a couple of times, but not in many years, and certainly not with the eyes of a true believing privileged dissident insurrectionist white supremacist crimethinking badwhite member of the patriarchy. 

Hoffer's thesis is that while mass movements vary, they all feature the same kind of person. Not just anyone can be a True Believer, nor does it matter much what he believes. Rather, it's the fervent believing that counts. 

Think of Mumbly Joe. The party he entered 60 years ago is very different from the party of today. Back then it at least pretended to be liberal, whereas now it is openly racist, authoritarian, and anti-American, but he fights for it just the same.  

We've said for a long time that man cannot not be religious. Since religion provides a kind of "folk metaphysic" for the average man, the average man who rejects religion will simply replace this with a bad, unexamined, and implausible metaphysic such as Marxism, or atheism, or feminism, or critical race theory. 

Worse, as explained by Polanyi, the True Believer will have the same religious energy as anyone else, only now unhinged from religious constraint. This redounds to violence and destruction, every time -- most recently, the months of BLM and Antifa riots in 2020.  

The absence of religious constraint is analogous to the claim of rights without concomitant responsibilities. In truth, just as duties are antecedent to rights (since you don't give rights to an irresponsible person), humility is prior to grace, so to speak. 

Yes, man is in the image and likeness of the Creator, but he is also fallen, and if he fails to appreciate the latter, then the result is cosmic narcissism. 

Genuine sanctity covaries with humility, and no one is less humble than the true believing leftist who not only presumes to know better how to run your life, but is so ignorant of his own ignorance that he never stops dreaming of "political solutions" that only set off a new round of problems. Just look at the border: Biden's solution is the problem. 

Why is someone attracted to a mass movement, anyway, and why especially would an American be so attracted? The left is composed of losers, misfits, and weirdos at the bottom end, and a privileged class at the top end. In other words, it's a coalition of losers of the meritocracy and winners of the mediocracy, and neither class is able to recognize the truth. 

If the left didn't exist, the losers would have to invent it on order to account for their failure: in short, it's much easier to blame racism or sexism than it is to acknowledge one's own shortcomings. 

At the top end, the belief in "white privilege" and other such nonsense is like "envy insurance," so to speak. On some level, an Obama must recognize his own mediocrity and blind luck, so he deflects envy via an ideology that redirects it to acceptable objects. In reality, the left is an alliance of the top and bottom against the middle. Both are resentful but for different reasons.

Put it this way: a successful person who has succeeded on merit will see the system as generally fair. But an unsuccessful person who has failed due to his lack of merit will be sorely tempted to look for an alternative explanation. And a person who has succeeded despite his abundant lack of merit will know the system was rigged in his favor, and thus harbor bitterness about it. 

Thus, the bitterness of the lucky winners joins forces with the bitterness of the luckless losers. How else to explain the bitterness of an Oprah, the Obamas, the Kamalas, the Markles, the Sharptons of the world? 

Celebrities, journalists, and celebrity journalists must know deep down that they are just interchangeable lottery winners, which is why they are down with the revolution. This is how ridiculously privileged clowns such as Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo can be so vocal about white privilege: don't look at me, look the Orange Man! 

For Hoffer, the impulse to join a mass movement goes beyond mere ideas and even existence, all the way to ontology. In short, the true believer wants to rid himself of his self and be someone else. 

In my view, this is an inverse analogy of religion, in that the mass movement offers transcendence of the ego, only from below instead of above. It appeals

to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile purpose in self-advancement. 

There is an  "innermost craving for a new life" or "rebirth" which brings "a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause." These people hope for change, but the real hope is to change into someone else. 

Since it never works, it requires further change, which is the recipe for fanaticism. Democrats believe the stimulus will work this time if they only make it big enough, as Islamists believe the jihad will work if only they murder enough Jews.

The book has a number of aphorisms:

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

Why can't, for example, Gavin Newsome mind his own business? What is he running from? And what is he hoping for? Hoffer describes the various types who are drawn to mass movements. Perhaps Newsome is among the Bored:

When people are bored, it is primarily with themselves that they are bored. The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom.... By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning.

Which would be great if it were't at our expense. I have a lot of hobbies that give my life meaning, but none of them involve bullying and bossing other people around, let alone wrecking their lives and livelihoods.

Mass movements also appeal to criminal types such as the Clintons, for they allow one to steal on a grand scale while laundering one's conscience in ideology. Come to think of it, this must apply to Andrew Cuomo and to so many other vocal male feminists. Public commitment to feminism is the perfect cover for private predators.  

Careful, Mankind, There's a Beverage Here!

As mentioned a few posts back, I don't like to call myself an "esoterist," even though I find the purely exoteric approach to religion tedious and sometomes frankly off-putting. Not only does it not speak to me, it often pushes me away. 

Now, you may say that this is because I am proud, or willful, or just seeking after frivolous spiritual innertainment. While this could be true, I am inclined to think not, for the simple reason that I used to be all of those things and more --  a proud and willful spiritual adventurer chasing after vertical thrills and spills. 

"It is in the nature of theology," writes Schuon, "to over-accentuate and exclude, and this is why no theology is intellectually perfect, though there are certainly degrees in this." 

For me, Thomas's theology is more perfect than Luther's, but the difference between the two is trivial compared to the gulf between ology and theo, or between our thoughts (which are necessarily finite) and God's being (which is transfinite). Thomas himself vaulted over this latter abyss in 1273, such that his soul left his own corpus behind and below.

There's a saying in Zen that once you've crossed the river, you leave the raft behind. This is in no way to denigrate rafts, since you won't get far without one, and may even drown. 

The image comes to mind of Jesus walking on water -- or of turning water to wine, or of blood and water coming from his side, or slaking one's thirst with living water. 

Maybe you think this post is going nowhere. To which we say: careful, mankind, there's a beverage here!

Come to think of it, images of water are everywhere in revelation history, which is to say, meta-history, beginning even before the beginning with the formless void of the primordial waters: God's very first act is to separate heavens from earth and waters from waters. 

This latter is intriguing, because the text alludes to both horizontal and vertical waters: the former are separated by dry land called earth, while above or beyond the vertical waters is a firmament called heaven, or what we call the Father shore. 

Some (timeless) time later we are visited by a flood, which is nothing less than the return of primordial chaos. Then there is the Exodus, which is once again made possible by another separation of waters. Here there is an intriguing subtext that links slavery to chaos on the one hand, and order to liberation on the other.  

Which Jordan Peterson often talks about, i.e., our perennial struggle against chaos. Come to think of it, his latest book is Beyond Order. Now, Jordan is the river where Jesus was baptized, and Peter is the rock on which the Son founds his church! Now I'm sounding like Pepe Silvia, and Pepe is a pet form of the Spanish name José, the latter being Spanish for Joseph, the father of Jesus!!!

Jesus's first public act revolves around water, death, and rebirth into a new and higher order. This latter order evokes the firmament (kingdom) of heaven alluded to in the Beginning, but also hearkens back to Exodus. Then Jesus ventures into the desert, which implies a place devoid of water. (I have a literal translation that specifies desert and not "wilderness.")

I'm gonna say that the divine substance must be analogous to water; or rather, water is its adequate symbol. As Schuon characterizes it,

If we compare the Divine Substance with water, accidents may be likened to waves, drops, snow, or ice.

Or fog, clouds, rivers, etc. These latter phenomena are accidental limits or forms which don't alter the substance of water, which is unchanging.

In a comment the other day, I made reference to Schuon's complementary or dual-track metaphysical map of the cosmos. One image involves a point surrounded by concentric circles (which goes to the accidental discontinuity of things), the other a point from which lines radiate outward in all directions (going to substantial continuity).

This latter, radial image can be seen as the watery model, while the concentric model provides the dry land. At risk of sounding all wet, there is obviously a kind of "flow" from the source or ground, i.e., a vertico-central spring without which we would die of thirst, not only spiritually but cognitively and aesthetically. This spring pours forth being.

However, at the same time and on another level, the concentric model provides us with firmament, or islands, so to speak, from sea to shining sea. 

For example, there is a mysterious (but substantial) sea between the islands of physics and biology, in the absence of which the cosmos could never have sailed from one to the other. Truly, we would have been up the creek of lifelessness with no paddle.

Now I'm thinking of the image in Revelation of a throne of living waters that will "wipe away every tear from the eyes." Here again, the waters merge, only the substance shall remove the accident, or the accident (tears) shall return to the substance.

As the Fathers like to say, God becomes man so that man might become God. Or, you could say, that water -- the substance -- becomes form so that the form might become substance.

At any rate, our thirst runs out before the water ever does. Or something. It's a little foggy.

Careful, Mankind, There's a Beverage Here!

As mentioned a few posts back, I don't like to call myself an "esoterist," even though I find the purely exoteric approach to religion tedious and sometomes frankly off-putting. Not only does it not speak to me, it often pushes me away. 

Now, you may say that this is because I am proud, or willful, or just seeking after frivolous spiritual innertainment. While this could be true, I am inclined to think not, for the simple reason that I used to be all of those things and more --  a proud and willful spiritual adventurer chasing after vertical thrills and spills. 

"It is in the nature of theology," writes Schuon, "to over-accentuate and exclude, and this is why no theology is intellectually perfect, though there are certainly degrees in this." 

For me, Thomas's theology is more perfect than Luther's, but the difference between the two is trivial compared to the gulf between ology and theo, or between our thoughts (which are necessarily finite) and God's being (which is transfinite). Thomas himself vaulted over this latter abyss in 1273, such that his soul left his own corpus behind and below.

There's a saying in Zen that once you've crossed the river, you leave the raft behind. This is in no way to denigrate rafts, since you won't get far without one, and may even drown. 

The image comes to mind of Jesus walking on water -- or of turning water to wine, or of blood and water coming from his side, or slaking one's thirst with living water. 

Maybe you think this post is going nowhere. To which we say: careful, mankind, there's a beverage here!

Come to think of it, images of water are everywhere in revelation history, which is to say, meta-history, beginning even before the beginning with the formless void of the primordial waters: God's very first act is to separate heavens from earth and waters from waters. 

This latter is intriguing, because the text alludes to both horizontal and vertical waters: the former are separated by dry land called earth, while above or beyond the vertical waters is a firmament called heaven, or what we call the Father shore. 

Some (timeless) time later we are visited by a flood, which is nothing less than the return of primordial chaos. Then there is the Exodus, which is once again made possible by another separation of waters. Here there is an intriguing subtext that links slavery to chaos on the one hand, and order to liberation on the other.  

Which Jordan Peterson often talks about, i.e., our perennial struggle against chaos. Come to think of it, his latest book is Beyond Order. Now, Jordan is the river where Jesus was baptized, and Peter is the rock on which the Son founds his church! Now I'm sounding like Pepe Silvia, and Pepe is a pet form of the Spanish name José, the latter being Spanish for Joseph, the father of Jesus!!!

Jesus's first public act revolves around water, death, and rebirth into a new and higher order. This latter order evokes the firmament (kingdom) of heaven alluded to in the Beginning, but also hearkens back to Exodus. Then Jesus ventures into the desert, which implies a place devoid of water. (I have a literal translation that specifies desert and not "wilderness.")

I'm gonna say that the divine substance must be analogous to water; or rather, water is its adequate symbol. As Schuon characterizes it,

If we compare the Divine Substance with water, accidents may be likened to waves, drops, snow, or ice.

Or fog, clouds, rivers, etc. These latter phenomena are accidental limits or forms which don't alter the substance of water, which is unchanging.

In a comment the other day, I made reference to Schuon's complementary or dual-track metaphysical map of the cosmos. One image involves a point surrounded by concentric circles (which goes to the accidental discontinuity of things), the other a point from which lines radiate outward in all directions (going to substantial continuity).

This latter, radial image can be seen as the watery model, while the concentric model provides the dry land. At risk of sounding all wet, there is obviously a kind of "flow" from the source or ground, i.e., a vertico-central spring without which we would die of thirst, not only spiritually but cognitively and aesthetically. This spring pours forth being.

However, at the same time and on another level, the concentric model provides us with firmament, or islands, so to speak, from sea to shining sea. 

For example, there is a mysterious (but substantial) sea between the islands of physics and biology, in the absence of which the cosmos could never have sailed from one to the other. Truly, we would have been up the creek of lifelessness with no paddle.

Now I'm thinking of the image in Revelation of a throne of living waters that will "wipe away every tear from the eyes." Here again, the waters merge, only the substance shall remove the accident, or the accident (tears) shall return to the substance.

As the Fathers like to say, God becomes man so that man might become God. Or, you could say, that water -- the substance -- becomes form so that the form might become substance.

At any rate, our thirst runs out before the water ever does. Or something. It's a little foggy.

Athens, Jerusalem, and DC; or Hemlock, Cross, and Cancellation

It is often said that western civilization is a fusion of Athens and Jerusalem (and sometimes Rome), in reference to the genealogy of our religion and politics. Interesting that the two most important names associated with these cities -- Socrates and Jesus -- were both subject to cancellation, big time.

Dennis Prager has often remarked that the most dynamic and successful religion over the past century has been leftism, irrespective of whether one counts converts or victims. 

Leftism is dynamic, in that it readily changes form in order to adapt to contemporary needs, while keeping the substance in tact. "Cancel culture" is its latest form, but it's the same old human sacrifice -- the same sadism expressed toward atheists who refuse to honor the gods of the state.

If theology is the queen of the sciences, then philosophy must be king or something. If so, then -- extending the metaphor -- the royal line of the latter begins with Socrates. Whitehead quipped that western philosophy is but a footnote on Plato, but Plato is a footnote on Socrates (if not in form, then in substance, more on which as we proceed; suffice it to say that the essence of philosophy is a way of life, of endless seeking after and loving wisdom).

So, you can say that western philosophy is founded on a cancellation -- as is Christianity. For that matter, Judaism is founded on Abraham's near-cancellation of Issac. In this context, I suppose we could say that ritual circumcision is a kind of symbolic auto-cancellation, but that's another story, mohels away from this one.

It seems that where religiosity is, sacrifice isn't far behind. At the moment, we're in the middle of Lent, and what is Lent but a voluntary sacrifice to God, for the sake of increased purity? This is on the perfectly trans-logical grounds that God and impurity don't really mix: the more of one, the less of the other.

Again, the trial of Socrates is one of the most famous cancellations in history. Why was he cancelled by the progressive mob of the day? The usual reasons: atheism, corrupting the minds of the youth, refusing to honor the popular gods of of the state. 

At his trial, Socrates describes a familiar sounding breakdown in the educational establishment, such that many of his accusers had been indoctrinated to believe Orange Robed Man Bad! (http://cotechnoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Socrates.jpg)

they approached you at the most impressionable age, when some of you were children or adolescents, and they literally won their case by default, because there is no one to defend me.

Socrates goes on to read the indictment of his thoughtcrimes: first, he "is guilty of criminal meddling," insofar as 

he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example.

This is reminiscent of how, in our day, one will be cancelled if one presumes to, say, defeat the stronger arguments of Antiracism with the science of IQ, or mock the arguments of feminism with the fake science of sexual differences, or ridicule Transgendersim with recourse to mere biological reality.  

More generally, mocking the stupidity of the ruling class is reason enough to be cancelled. Socrates:

And by dog, gentlemen, for I must be frank with you, my honest impression was this. It seems to me, as I pursued my investigation at the god's command, that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.

This, of course, is why both sides of our ruling class agreed that Trump had to go. You can't just go around saying that smelly Walmart shoppers and inbred deplorables have more practical intelligence than a Puerto Rican barmaid or a demented tool on China's payroll.  

Socrates also got in trouble for mocking the artists and celebrities of his day, as if "the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant."

Fasting forward to today, you can't just go around making fun of some Poet Laureate of the Left Side of the Bell Curve, whose soothing words speak of that sacred place

Where a skinny Black girl / not that there's anything wrong with being a fat Black girl / descended from slaves, like everyone else on earth / and buoyed by affirmative action / can dream of advancing the cause of the racist left / and vilifying whiteness.

Athens, Jerusalem, and DC; or Hemlock, Cross, and Cancellation

It is often said that western civilization is a fusion of Athens and Jerusalem (and sometimes Rome), in reference to the genealogy of our religion and politics. Interesting that the two most important names associated with these cities -- Socrates and Jesus -- were both subject to cancellation, big time.

Dennis Prager has often remarked that the most dynamic and successful religion over the past century has been leftism, irrespective of whether one counts converts or victims. 

Leftism is dynamic, in that it readily changes form in order to adapt to contemporary needs, while keeping the substance in tact. "Cancel culture" is its latest form, but it's the same old human sacrifice -- the same sadism expressed toward atheists who refuse to honor the gods of the state.

If theology is the queen of the sciences, then philosophy must be king or something. If so, then -- extending the metaphor -- the royal line of the latter begins with Socrates. Whitehead quipped that western philosophy is but a footnote on Plato, but Plato is a footnote on Socrates (if not in form, then in substance, more on which as we proceed; suffice it to say that the essence of philosophy is a way of life, of endless seeking after and loving wisdom).

So, you can say that western philosophy is founded on a cancellation -- as is Christianity. For that matter, Judaism is founded on Abraham's near-cancellation of Issac. In this context, I suppose we could say that ritual circumcision is a kind of symbolic auto-cancellation, but that's another story, mohels away from this one.

It seems that where religiosity is, sacrifice isn't far behind. At the moment, we're in the middle of Lent, and what is Lent but a voluntary sacrifice to God, for the sake of increased purity? This is on the perfectly trans-logical grounds that God and impurity don't really mix: the more of one, the less of the other.

Again, the trial of Socrates is one of the most famous cancellations in history. Why was he cancelled by the progressive mob of the day? The usual reasons: atheism, corrupting the minds of the youth, refusing to honor the popular gods of of the state. 

At his trial, Socrates describes a familiar sounding breakdown in the educational establishment, such that many of his accusers had been indoctrinated to believe Orange Robed Man Bad! (http://cotechnoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Socrates.jpg)

they approached you at the most impressionable age, when some of you were children or adolescents, and they literally won their case by default, because there is no one to defend me.

Socrates goes on to read the indictment of his thoughtcrimes: first, he "is guilty of criminal meddling," insofar as 

he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example.

This is reminiscent of how, in our day, one will be cancelled if one presumes to, say, defeat the stronger arguments of Antiracism with the science of IQ, or mock the arguments of feminism with the fake science of sexual differences, or ridicule Transgendersim with recourse to mere biological reality.  

More generally, mocking the stupidity of the ruling class is reason enough to be cancelled. Socrates:

And by dog, gentlemen, for I must be frank with you, my honest impression was this. It seems to me, as I pursued my investigation at the god's command, that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.

This, of course, is why both sides of our ruling class agreed that Trump had to go. You can't just go around saying that smelly Walmart shoppers and inbred deplorables have more practical intelligence than a Puerto Rican barmaid or a demented tool on China's payroll.  

Socrates also got in trouble for mocking the artists and celebrities of his day, as if "the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant."

Fasting forward to today, you can't just go around making fun of some Poet Laureate of the Left Side of the Bell Curve, whose soothing words speak of that sacred place

Where a skinny Black girl / not that there's anything wrong with being a fat Black girl / descended from slaves, like everyone else on earth / and buoyed by affirmative action / can dream of advancing the cause of the racist left / and vilifying whiteness.

Is Full Blown Leftism Acquired or Innate?

Let us continue our excursion into the purification of the intellect. 

Again, although the term -- purification -- will sound anachronistic to the postmodern, post-literate, and post-reality ears of the left, it is quite obviously one of their enduring preoccupations, extending back to the French Revolution, when the penalty for impure thoughts was separation of them from the body. 

We see this same obsession with Impure Thoughts in all subsequent revolutions, from communists to Islamists to our contemporary cancelists. 

Here again, this obsession with the thoughts of other people represents but the transformation of an archetypal religious concern that essentially coarises with man. 

This is just another way of saying that the serpent has always been with us. He likes to accuse other persons (starting with God) of crimethink, which is why Jesus makes the point of advising us to remove the plank from or own heads before complaining to the authorities about the other guy's splinter.  

Man has been dealing with this question of impure thoughts since the beginning of his terrestrial career some 50 to 100,000 years ago. And the earliest and most persistent solution to this problem has revolved around human sacrifice. Unless you have a better idea. 

Today this ritual scapegoating is called "cancellation." It's the same mechanism, only sublimated: instead of killing the body, they only kill the career and/or reputation, and banish the victim to the wilderness, exiling him beyond the borders of the cult.

This is all exhaustively outlined in the works of Gil Bailie, Rene Girard, and others, so I don't want to repeat it here. It's also discussed in various anthropological studies of millenarian / apocalyptic movements. 

Now, to a certain extent, you could even say that the modern west is just an accident of one man's pathological obsession with impure thoughts, and a desperate attempt to deal with them. 

This man was Martin Luther, who is Patient Zero of cancel culture. His was the first successful revolution in the west since the revolution of Christianity some 1000+ years before. That first revolution truly overturned the order of the world; so too did Luther's, to such an extent that we are still dealing with the aftershocks.

Luther suffered from a truly morbid scrupulosity, even to the point of what we would now recognize as Panic Disorder: he just couldn't eliminate the Bad Thoughts from his head. I read somewhere that his confessions would last for hours, but that he always came back for more. No amount of forgiveness could expiate his guilt over his own disgusting impurity. 

Eventually he landed on the idea that there was nothing he could do about his impurity and sinfulness, but that Jesus had done it for him. In a new twist on the meaning of Christ's redemption, he likened it to a blanket of white snow over a stinking pile of dung (regarding impure thoughts, he also had an obsession with feces, and scatological references abound in his works.)

But with that little maneuver, the intellect was severed from the body, somewhat analogous to Dr. Guillotin's invention, only leaving the organism alive. But the intellect was ruined, a victim of original sin. And if you want to see how ruined, just listen to one of those famous TV snake handlers like Joel Osteen or whoever it is this week. Look ma, no brains!

Once the intellect was severed from Christianity, the path was cleared for the new & improved ideologies that continue pestering us to this day. For the descendent of Luther there is no defense against them but "faith," which is no defense at all. 

To be perfectly accurate, it can still be a defense for the faithful, but it can have no impact on the faithless materialist who -- ironically -- has a total but misplaced faith in the powers of his own omniscient and omnicompetent intellect. 

Let's talk abut these people, since they occupy all the positions of power in our culture. There is no one in the ruling class who isn't a demented child of Luther, practicing the one true faith of progressivism in one of its many two-faces.

That may sound polemical until you think it through, all the way down to the ground. Then you'll see that it is obvious. 

In The Active Purification of the Intellect, Garrigou describes a certain modality of morbid tenure. Such self-styled intellectuals

are afflicted with almost a mania for collecting. Theirs is an accumulation of knowledge mechanically arranged and unorganized, somewhat as if it were in a dictionary. This type of work, instead of training the mind, smothers it, as too much wood smothers a fire. 

Under this jumble of accumulated knowledge, they can no longer see the light of first principles, which alone could bring order out of all this material and lift up their souls even to God, the Beginning and End of all things.

Here again, Luther and his progeny can offer no defense against such intellectuals, for he regarded our reason as an enemy and even "plague": we must accept things on faith, and pretending otherwise is a grotesque fall into pride and hubris. 

This approach is similar to that of the Islamist, who would agree that anything not in the Book is unnecessary and probably the work of the Devil: "man, made from a bad tree, can do nothing but want and do evil" (Luther).  Good works count for nothing and good thoughts even less, for man is "innately and inevitably evil and corrupt" and reason but his filthy whore.

Let's fast forward 500 years and see how this comports with the cult of antiracism: to the extent that you are white, you are innately and inevitably racist. And if you deny your racism, this only proves how racist you are. This kind of anti-logic is called a Kafka trap, but it could also be called a Luther trap: if you don't agree that your intellect is utterly wrecked by original sin, this only proves how wrecked you are by sin.

Now, this is not to say that the intellect escaped the consequences of the fall. If only! But a casualty is not necessarily a fatality, although it certainly can be, or maybe you didn't attend college. 

Moreover, the wound becomes fatal as a direct consequence of turning away from God and sealing the mind from the flow of grace. To put it conversely, an "ungraced intellect" isn't just wrong but... 

I don't want to exaggerate, but let's just say a liar and a murderer. It results in a literal spiritual blindness, such that, instead of 20/∞ vision, one is reduced to 20/Ø vision, which is no vision at all. In the words of Fr. G, the refusal of grace "takes all penetration away from us and leaves us in a state of spiritual dullness, which is like the loss of all higher intelligence."

So, Luther is not correct that we born into total and inescapable cosmic stupidity. Rather, full blown leftism is an acquired condition. 

Once again the post has run overlong. To be continued...  

Is Full Blown Leftism Acquired or Innate?

Let us continue our excursion into the purification of the intellect. 

Again, although the term -- purification -- will sound anachronistic to the postmodern, post-literate, and post-reality ears of the left, it is quite obviously one of their enduring preoccupations, extending back to the French Revolution, when the penalty for impure thoughts was separation of them from the body. 

We see this same obsession with Impure Thoughts in all subsequent revolutions, from communists to Islamists to our contemporary cancelists. 

Here again, this obsession with the thoughts of other people represents but the transformation of an archetypal religious concern that essentially coarises with man. 

This is just another way of saying that the serpent has always been with us. He likes to accuse other persons (starting with God) of crimethink, which is why Jesus makes the point of advising us to remove the plank from or own heads before complaining to the authorities about the other guy's splinter.  

Man has been dealing with this question of impure thoughts since the beginning of his terrestrial career some 50 to 100,000 years ago. And the earliest and most persistent solution to this problem has revolved around human sacrifice. Unless you have a better idea. 

Today this ritual scapegoating is called "cancellation." It's the same mechanism, only sublimated: instead of killing the body, they only kill the career and/or reputation, and banish the victim to the wilderness, exiling him beyond the borders of the cult.

This is all exhaustively outlined in the works of Gil Bailie, Rene Girard, and others, so I don't want to repeat it here. It's also discussed in various anthropological studies of millenarian / apocalyptic movements. 

Now, to a certain extent, you could even say that the modern west is just an accident of one man's pathological obsession with impure thoughts, and a desperate attempt to deal with them. 

This man was Martin Luther, who is Patient Zero of cancel culture. His was the first successful revolution in the west since the revolution of Christianity some 1000+ years before. That first revolution truly overturned the order of the world; so too did Luther's, to such an extent that we are still dealing with the aftershocks.

Luther suffered from a truly morbid scrupulosity, even to the point of what we would now recognize as Panic Disorder: he just couldn't eliminate the Bad Thoughts from his head. I read somewhere that his confessions would last for hours, but that he always came back for more. No amount of forgiveness could expiate his guilt over his own disgusting impurity. 

Eventually he landed on the idea that there was nothing he could do about his impurity and sinfulness, but that Jesus had done it for him. In a new twist on the meaning of Christ's redemption, he likened it to a blanket of white snow over a stinking pile of dung (regarding impure thoughts, he also had an obsession with feces, and scatological references abound in his works.)

But with that little maneuver, the intellect was severed from the body, somewhat analogous to Dr. Guillotin's invention, only leaving the organism alive. But the intellect was ruined, a victim of original sin. And if you want to see how ruined, just listen to one of those famous TV snake handlers like Joel Osteen or whoever it is this week. Look ma, no brains!

Once the intellect was severed from Christianity, the path was cleared for the new & improved ideologies that continue pestering us to this day. For the descendent of Luther there is no defense against them but "faith," which is no defense at all. 

To be perfectly accurate, it can still be a defense for the faithful, but it can have no impact on the faithless materialist who -- ironically -- has a total but misplaced faith in the powers of his own omniscient and omnicompetent intellect. 

Let's talk abut these people, since they occupy all the positions of power in our culture. There is no one in the ruling class who isn't a demented child of Luther, practicing the one true faith of progressivism in one of its many two-faces.

That may sound polemical until you think it through, all the way down to the ground. Then you'll see that it is obvious. 

In The Active Purification of the Intellect, Garrigou describes a certain modality of morbid tenure. Such self-styled intellectuals

are afflicted with almost a mania for collecting. Theirs is an accumulation of knowledge mechanically arranged and unorganized, somewhat as if it were in a dictionary. This type of work, instead of training the mind, smothers it, as too much wood smothers a fire. 

Under this jumble of accumulated knowledge, they can no longer see the light of first principles, which alone could bring order out of all this material and lift up their souls even to God, the Beginning and End of all things.

Here again, Luther and his progeny can offer no defense against such intellectuals, for he regarded our reason as an enemy and even "plague": we must accept things on faith, and pretending otherwise is a grotesque fall into pride and hubris. 

This approach is similar to that of the Islamist, who would agree that anything not in the Book is unnecessary and probably the work of the Devil: "man, made from a bad tree, can do nothing but want and do evil" (Luther).  Good works count for nothing and good thoughts even less, for man is "innately and inevitably evil and corrupt" and reason but his filthy whore.

Let's fast forward 500 years and see how this comports with the cult of antiracism: to the extent that you are white, you are innately and inevitably racist. And if you deny your racism, this only proves how racist you are. This kind of anti-logic is called a Kafka trap, but it could also be called a Luther trap: if you don't agree that your intellect is utterly wrecked by original sin, this only proves how wrecked you are by sin.

Now, this is not to say that the intellect escaped the consequences of the fall. If only! But a casualty is not necessarily a fatality, although it certainly can be, or maybe you didn't attend college. 

Moreover, the wound becomes fatal as a direct consequence of turning away from God and sealing the mind from the flow of grace. To put it conversely, an "ungraced intellect" isn't just wrong but... 

I don't want to exaggerate, but let's just say a liar and a murderer. It results in a literal spiritual blindness, such that, instead of 20/∞ vision, one is reduced to 20/Ø vision, which is no vision at all. In the words of Fr. G, the refusal of grace "takes all penetration away from us and leaves us in a state of spiritual dullness, which is like the loss of all higher intelligence."

So, Luther is not correct that we born into total and inescapable cosmic stupidity. Rather, full blown leftism is an acquired condition. 

Once again the post has run overlong. To be continued...  

Pure Land Dudeism

I've been slowly making my way through Garrigou's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, -- and this is not the sort of book one rushes through -- but decided to jump ahead to chapter XXVI, on The Active Purification of the Intellect, because it touches on so much of what's going on with the left's free fall into mass psychosis. 

Purification of the intellect. On the one hand, this title makes no sense in a post-reality world. Then again, what is going on in our world but an obsession with impure thoughts? -- whether these filthy thoughts are of Speedy Gonzalez, Pepe Le Pew, Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, or even worse? 

To say man is to say God, such that man as such cannot not be religious. It's just a matter of how bad the religion, and it is difficult to get worse than leftism, at least on a widescale basis. 

I just heard the shout of a hundred million amens! echoing up from the 20th century. Yes, I hear dead people; and if everyone could hear them, no one would be a leftist. 

In another context, Chesterton spoke of a "democracy of the dead," meaning that, if we wish to be scrupulously fair, we should regard being alive at the moment a mere accident. Real social justice extends to our illustrious forebears, without whom we'd be like any other shithole country.

Why, for example, should we not respect the wishes of the founders, or of those who died in the civil war? I challenge the left to locate a single one of them who thought he was defending the country from cartoon characters that might hurt the feelings of college educated white women of both sexes and all races. 

I'm pretty sure the guys who fought World War 2 didn't think the goal was to make the US safe for fascism and totalitarianism. What an insult to their heroism, their intelligence, and their basic sanity. 

Our point is that the most dreadfully impure thoughts ooze from people who would reject on principle the idea that purification of the intellect is mandatory if you wish to think properly, let alone if you presume to force others to think in the SJW Approved Way.

We begin -- as anyone with a vestige of self-awareness must begin -- with the principle of Original Sin. To be perfectly accurate, we shouldn't call it a principle; rather, in our view, Original Sin is a quasi-mythic formulation of a principial reality. Nevertheless, if appreciated and situated in its proper context, it will more than do the job. Just don't be a hubristic jackass, okay? 

In short, "man's intellect is wounded." Having said that, our Protestant friends go too far in the other direction, claiming that the wound is mortal and that to believe otherwise is to fall into the sin of pride. In short, they lower the bar of hubris to the ground.  

In this latter scheme, God provides us with revelation because we have no natural ability to understand what's what. Moreover, we must accept the revelation on faith, again, because our minds are too decimated by sin to reach the truth. To extend the baseball analogy, revelation shows us how to get home despite the fact that, left to our own devices, we can never get to first.

The reality is somewhere in between, i.e., between wounded and dead. Yes, the wound can become mortal, but that's on us. Only we can kill our own intellect, although doing a thorough job of it will set you back 50k a year, or whatever it costs to attend an elite university these days.

Anyway, here is our cosmic situation, nor do I want to minimize the gravity of the wound:

the intellect, instead of inclining spontaneously toward the true, and especially toward supreme Truth, has difficulty attaining it and tends to become absorbed in the consideration of earthly things without rising to their cause.

Is this not true? 

Of course it is true. Moreover, the intellect -- our most precious gift, mind you -- 

is inclined with curiosity toward ephemeral things and, on the other hand, it is negligent and slothful in the search for our true last end and the means leading to it.

As a consequence, the intellect not only "easily falls into error" but "may finally reach the state that is called spiritual blindness," or worse, spiritual wokeness. For truly, just as there is nothing so dead as a "living constitution," there is no one as somnolent as a wide awoke assoul.

So, revelation is given to man as a kind of aide-mémoire -- which is to say, a vertical aide. However, we are not totally lost without it, nor could the divine message even resonate in us if we were. 

Rather, with time and effort (and aptitude) the intellect "can even acquire, without the help of revelation, the knowledge of a certain number of fundamental truths..." 

Nevertheless -- you will have noticed -- "few men are capable of this labor, and they reach this result only after a considerable length of time," not to mention "without succeeding in freeing themselves from all error." 

My son, for example, knows things at 15 that I didn't know until [too embarrassed to say]. Thus, he has a multi-decade head start, but even then, he'll never be omniscient. Unless I get there first and pass along the secret.

There's a helpful footnote at the bottom of the page reminding us that "thanks to divine revelation," the "truths of religion can be known by all, quickly, with a firm certitude, and without any admixture of errors." 

Here again, revelation reveals a vertical shortcut; on the one hand it tells us about the end, but on the other, this is only the beginning (of our vertical adventure). 

This post is getting too long, so, to be continued.

Pure Land Dudeism

I've been slowly making my way through Garrigou's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, -- and this is not the sort of book one rushes through -- but decided to jump ahead to chapter XXVI, on The Active Purification of the Intellect, because it touches on so much of what's going on with the left's free fall into mass psychosis. 

Purification of the intellect. On the one hand, this title makes no sense in a post-reality world. Then again, what is going on in our world but an obsession with impure thoughts? -- whether these filthy thoughts are of Speedy Gonzalez, Pepe Le Pew, Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, or even worse? 

To say man is to say God, such that man as such cannot not be religious. It's just a matter of how bad the religion, and it is difficult to get worse than leftism, at least on a widescale basis. 

I just heard the shout of a hundred million amens! echoing up from the 20th century. Yes, I hear dead people; and if everyone could hear them, no one would be a leftist. 

In another context, Chesterton spoke of a "democracy of the dead," meaning that, if we wish to be scrupulously fair, we should regard being alive at the moment a mere accident. Real social justice extends to our illustrious forebears, without whom we'd be like any other shithole country.

Why, for example, should we not respect the wishes of the founders, or of those who died in the civil war? I challenge the left to locate a single one of them who thought he was defending the country from cartoon characters that might hurt the feelings of college educated white women of both sexes and all races. 

I'm pretty sure the guys who fought World War 2 didn't think the goal was to make the US safe for fascism and totalitarianism. What an insult to their heroism, their intelligence, and their basic sanity. 

Our point is that the most dreadfully impure thoughts ooze from people who would reject on principle the idea that purification of the intellect is mandatory if you wish to think properly, let alone if you presume to force others to think in the SJW Approved Way.

We begin -- as anyone with a vestige of self-awareness must begin -- with the principle of Original Sin. To be perfectly accurate, we shouldn't call it a principle; rather, in our view, Original Sin is a quasi-mythic formulation of a principial reality. Nevertheless, if appreciated and situated in its proper context, it will more than do the job. Just don't be a hubristic jackass, okay? 

In short, "man's intellect is wounded." Having said that, our Protestant friends go too far in the other direction, claiming that the wound is mortal and that to believe otherwise is to fall into the sin of pride. In short, they lower the bar of hubris to the ground.  

In this latter scheme, God provides us with revelation because we have no natural ability to understand what's what. Moreover, we must accept the revelation on faith, again, because our minds are too decimated by sin to reach the truth. To extend the baseball analogy, revelation shows us how to get home despite the fact that, left to our own devices, we can never get to first.

The reality is somewhere in between, i.e., between wounded and dead. Yes, the wound can become mortal, but that's on us. Only we can kill our own intellect, although doing a thorough job of it will set you back 50k a year, or whatever it costs to attend an elite university these days.

Anyway, here is our cosmic situation, nor do I want to minimize the gravity of the wound:

the intellect, instead of inclining spontaneously toward the true, and especially toward supreme Truth, has difficulty attaining it and tends to become absorbed in the consideration of earthly things without rising to their cause.

Is this not true? 

Of course it is true. Moreover, the intellect -- our most precious gift, mind you -- 

is inclined with curiosity toward ephemeral things and, on the other hand, it is negligent and slothful in the search for our true last end and the means leading to it.

As a consequence, the intellect not only "easily falls into error" but "may finally reach the state that is called spiritual blindness," or worse, spiritual wokeness. For truly, just as there is nothing so dead as a "living constitution," there is no one as somnolent as a wide awoke assoul.

So, revelation is given to man as a kind of aide-mémoire -- which is to say, a vertical aide. However, we are not totally lost without it, nor could the divine message even resonate in us if we were. 

Rather, with time and effort (and aptitude) the intellect "can even acquire, without the help of revelation, the knowledge of a certain number of fundamental truths..." 

Nevertheless -- you will have noticed -- "few men are capable of this labor, and they reach this result only after a considerable length of time," not to mention "without succeeding in freeing themselves from all error." 

My son, for example, knows things at 15 that I didn't know until [too embarrassed to say]. Thus, he has a multi-decade head start, but even then, he'll never be omniscient. Unless I get there first and pass along the secret.

There's a helpful footnote at the bottom of the page reminding us that "thanks to divine revelation," the "truths of religion can be known by all, quickly, with a firm certitude, and without any admixture of errors." 

Here again, revelation reveals a vertical shortcut; on the one hand it tells us about the end, but on the other, this is only the beginning (of our vertical adventure). 

This post is getting too long, so, to be continued.

The Miracle of Certitude

Here is a little question on which Garrigou and Schuon can't both be correct. No doubt it's a question to which most people would respond with another question: so what? But I am not most or even more than a few people. 

Garrigou agrees with all vertical adventurers that the existence of God is certain; or, to put it conversely, it is foolish to maintain that "the existence of God cannot be proved by any apodictic argument"; or to suggest that "by no process of human reasoning can the certainty of [God] be established." 

Now, reason, according to Fr. Garrigou, is "our natural faculty of perceiving the truth." I'm gonna stop the Padre right there, because how can such a mirroraculous faculty be merely "natural"? 

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but our ability to reason must be a "supernaturally natural" one, so long as we are deploying it rather than vice versa.  In other words, to use reason is to have transcended reason. 

If we are merely confined to reason, then to hell with it. In that case there would there is no escape from tautology -- except maybe downward into a Rousseauean romanticism, or Nietzschean will, or neo-Marxist hell. We could expand our little epistemological circle but never escape it. Compared to reality, it would be...

We couldn't say, because we would have no real contact with it. If we cannot transcend reason, then we are in the position of people born, say, inside a yellow submarine, speculating on the nature of the ocean. All they have access to is the dials and meters inside the sub. No one inside has ever actually touched water or even knows their submarine is yellow, since they've never seen it from the outside.  

It would be analogous to living inside the liberal matrix, in which case the media and academia serve as the instrument panel inside the crockpit. To call this an epistemologically closed world is an injustice to the left. Rather, theirs is a world of unrelenting coprophagia.

We insist that if reason is merely natural, then that is where it stays: in a circle of tautology. For rationalism always reduces to a futile effort to anchor certitude "in phenomena rather than in our very being" (Schuon).  

But we cannot reason about something transcending reason unless there is already something transcendent in reason itself. Which is how the people living a life of ease inside their yellow submarine can truly know the sea is green and the sky is blue.

There is reason and there is intelligence, the former being a tool of the latter. Intelligence as such "is the perception of a reality" and the discernment between the real, the less real, and the unreal (thus, the Real is at once binary and hierarchical, or both continuous and discontinuous, more on which as we proceed). 

This being the case, we see that intelligence and reality aren't just mirrors of one another, but ultimately of the same substance: if intelligence can know truth, it is because intelligence is truth (and vice versa).

Back to Garrigou. He writes that 

The knowledge of God which can be acquired by the natural light of reason, is not merely a true knowledge, i.e., conforming to the reality; but it is also a knowledge of truth for which we are able to give a reason; hence it is not simply a belief resting on the testimony of God, or on that of tradition, or on that of the human race. It is the result of rational evidence.

With all due respect, I'm gonna say: no way. For one thing, this violates Gödel's theorems, in that there can be no rational bridge between reason and what transcends reason. You can't just sneak something into reason that hasn't been authorized by reason. To put it baseballically, you can't steal first base.

Logic teaches us that no matter how perfect the logic, there will always be at least one truth it cannot prove but will have to accept on faith. Confined to logic, there is no escape hatch from Gödel. And yet, the escape hatch surely exists, otherwise we couldn't even know of the theorems.  Reason is tautologous, but the human mind isn't; we out-Gödel Gödel all the time, or we'd be like animals or leftists, living inside the matrix of instinct or ideology, respectively. 

That was yesterday news. Let's continue with today's headline, courtesy of Schuon (from the book Gnosis: Divine Wisdom):

CERTITUDE IS ITSELF A MIRACLE

That is, to the extent that certitude exists. Which it does. But how? Again, limiting ourselves to reason, we can only draw conclusions from premises. These conclusion can be very likely or even very very likely, but never absolutely certain. 

Likewise, our senses are pretty damn certain, but what can they tell us about the extrasensory world? Nothing. For which reason empiricism ends right where it begins.

Back to the miracle of certitude: certitude is miraculous because it is, as it were, a fragment of the absolute, or a terrestrial spark thrown off from the boiler room of celestial central.  

Schuon provides a particularly useless way of looking at this -- and for the Raccoon, there can be no higher compliment, since the most precious truths are for their own sake and not for the sake of anything else:

things -- thanks to their Existence -- and the intellective subject -- thanks to Knowledge -- open concrete ways towards the Absolute.... 

the world, insofar as it exists -- or that it is not non-existent -- is an aspect of its divine Cause, hence "something of God"; the Divinity, while being absolutely transcendent in relation to the world, is nonetheless "present" at the centre of all cosmic reality.

Yes, heresies and snares are on all sides, so we must proceed cautiously. Moreover, we can appreciate why this isn't the sort of thing one just blurts out to the Many. Pearls and swine, dogs and the holy, pride and fall, blah blah.

Let's consider all these key words in their totality: absolute, existence, intellect, cause, knowledge, certitude. But let's consider them tomorrow. 

The Miracle of Certitude

Here is a little question on which Garrigou and Schuon can't both be correct. No doubt it's a question to which most people would respond with another question: so what? But I am not most or even more than a few people. 

Garrigou agrees with all vertical adventurers that the existence of God is certain; or, to put it conversely, it is foolish to maintain that "the existence of God cannot be proved by any apodictic argument"; or to suggest that "by no process of human reasoning can the certainty of [God] be established." 

Now, reason, according to Fr. Garrigou, is "our natural faculty of perceiving the truth." I'm gonna stop the Padre right there, because how can such a mirroraculous faculty be merely "natural"? 

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but our ability to reason must be a "supernaturally natural" one, so long as we are deploying it rather than vice versa.  In other words, to use reason is to have transcended reason. 

If we are merely confined to reason, then to hell with it. In that case there would there is no escape from tautology -- except maybe downward into a Rousseauean romanticism, or Nietzschean will, or neo-Marxist hell. We could expand our little epistemological circle but never escape it. Compared to reality, it would be...

We couldn't say, because we would have no real contact with it. If we cannot transcend reason, then we are in the position of people born, say, inside a yellow submarine, speculating on the nature of the ocean. All they have access to is the dials and meters inside the sub. No one inside has ever actually touched water or even knows their submarine is yellow, since they've never seen it from the outside.  

It would be analogous to living inside the liberal matrix, in which case the media and academia serve as the instrument panel inside the crockpit. To call this an epistemologically closed world is an injustice to the left. Rather, theirs is a world of unrelenting coprophagia.

We insist that if reason is merely natural, then that is where it stays: in a circle of tautology. For rationalism always reduces to a futile effort to anchor certitude "in phenomena rather than in our very being" (Schuon).  

But we cannot reason about something transcending reason unless there is already something transcendent in reason itself. Which is how the people living a life of ease inside their yellow submarine can truly know the sea is green and the sky is blue.

There is reason and there is intelligence, the former being a tool of the latter. Intelligence as such "is the perception of a reality" and the discernment between the real, the less real, and the unreal (thus, the Real is at once binary and hierarchical, or both continuous and discontinuous, more on which as we proceed). 

This being the case, we see that intelligence and reality aren't just mirrors of one another, but ultimately of the same substance: if intelligence can know truth, it is because intelligence is truth (and vice versa).

Back to Garrigou. He writes that 

The knowledge of God which can be acquired by the natural light of reason, is not merely a true knowledge, i.e., conforming to the reality; but it is also a knowledge of truth for which we are able to give a reason; hence it is not simply a belief resting on the testimony of God, or on that of tradition, or on that of the human race. It is the result of rational evidence.

With all due respect, I'm gonna say: no way. For one thing, this violates Gödel's theorems, in that there can be no rational bridge between reason and what transcends reason. You can't just sneak something into reason that hasn't been authorized by reason. To put it baseballically, you can't steal first base.

Logic teaches us that no matter how perfect the logic, there will always be at least one truth it cannot prove but will have to accept on faith. Confined to logic, there is no escape hatch from Gödel. And yet, the escape hatch surely exists, otherwise we couldn't even know of the theorems.  Reason is tautologous, but the human mind isn't; we out-Gödel Gödel all the time, or we'd be like animals or leftists, living inside the matrix of instinct or ideology, respectively. 

That was yesterday news. Let's continue with today's headline, courtesy of Schuon (from the book Gnosis: Divine Wisdom):

CERTITUDE IS ITSELF A MIRACLE

That is, to the extent that certitude exists. Which it does. But how? Again, limiting ourselves to reason, we can only draw conclusions from premises. These conclusion can be very likely or even very very likely, but never absolutely certain. 

Likewise, our senses are pretty damn certain, but what can they tell us about the extrasensory world? Nothing. For which reason empiricism ends right where it begins.

Back to the miracle of certitude: certitude is miraculous because it is, as it were, a fragment of the absolute, or a terrestrial spark thrown off from the boiler room of celestial central.  

Schuon provides a particularly useless way of looking at this -- and for the Raccoon, there can be no higher compliment, since the most precious truths are for their own sake and not for the sake of anything else:

things -- thanks to their Existence -- and the intellective subject -- thanks to Knowledge -- open concrete ways towards the Absolute.... 

the world, insofar as it exists -- or that it is not non-existent -- is an aspect of its divine Cause, hence "something of God"; the Divinity, while being absolutely transcendent in relation to the world, is nonetheless "present" at the centre of all cosmic reality.

Yes, heresies and snares are on all sides, so we must proceed cautiously. Moreover, we can appreciate why this isn't the sort of thing one just blurts out to the Many. Pearls and swine, dogs and the holy, pride and fall, blah blah.

Let's consider all these key words in their totality: absolute, existence, intellect, cause, knowledge, certitude. But let's consider them tomorrow. 

Only God Goes Up to 11

Often, after writing another perfect post, I will *randonly* bump into something that speaks to it -- like a NONLOCAL AUTHORITY confirming it with ABSOLUTE CERTITUDE.  

Well, yesterday the exact opposite occurred: after writing the post, the very first thing I read told me why I am so wrong. Not necessarily in the head. In the heart, rather. Whatever that's supposed to mean. 

It was in Fr. Garrigou's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, chapter VIII, The True Nature of Christian Perfection. You'd think such a brilliant guy would be on my side, but no. 

Perfection. What is it? We all implicitly understand the term, but how and why? 

Lng stry shrt, because perfection is one of the principle attributes of the Absolute, such that we see its shadows in diverse modalities and dimensions down here. We all tap into this implicit standard, which is how and why we can rank things on a vertical scale. No dog says to itself, now this is the perfect bone, probably the best one conceivable! 

But it is routine for humans to recognize when they are in the presence of perfection. Perfect 10s are everywhere. But this can only be because God goes up to 11. 

Indeed, think of what befalls people who imagine they are the source of their own perfection -- "artists" and "intellectuals" of various kinds: it always ends in self-beclownment in one form or another.   

Schuon discusses this in an essay called Dimensions, Modes, and Degrees of the Divine Order: the Supreme Principle, or O, in addition to being Absolute Reality and Infinite Possibility, is Perfect Quality.

You could even say that this constitutes a -- or maybe the -- fundamental trinity, for it covers everything: everything that exists, can exist, and will exist.

Come to think of it, you can even see how the Trinity lines up with this more abstract conceptualization: if the Father is the Absolute, then the Son and Spirit must be Perfection and Radiation or something. We'll have to circle back to this subject in a later post, as it's only half-baked at the moment.

In any event, we can agree that not only is God perfect, but he alone is perfect, since he is outside manifestation. 

Or, to put it conversely, even the best things down here are slightly imperfect, not that we're complaining. However, if we fail to appreciate this, we may spend our lives in a vain pursuit of perfection on earth. This is how one ends up a leftoid cult member, and the result is a perfect hell.

What did Jesus say? Why do you call me perfect? This is actually an ambiguous question. I used to think it simply meant that Jesus was acknowledging that only God is perfect. 

More cleverly, it could be a rhetorical question meaning: how did you know I was perfect? It wasn't via your natural perception! In other words, it's a testimony of the Holy Sprit about the Holy Spirit -- or something proceeding from and returning to God, in a perfect circle. 

But let's get back to Garrigou's essay, because the clock is ticking down. In it he addresses the proper end of the Christian life, which is, of course,  perfection -- as in Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven. Never mind that this is impossible. It's the process that counts.

Now, in God, perfection is perfection, full stop. But down here we can appreciate several modalities, in particular, with regard to truth, beauty, and virtue. In yesterday's post we presented an argument for perfect truth. Apparently this is not enough for the Christian. And, when you think about it, it's not difficult to see why.

Think of the other virtues. One can be, say, courageous, but still rotten. Likewise, one can be brilliant, a genius even, but a sick lunatic. Chuck Schumer, for example, is said to have obtained a perfect score on his SAT, way back when it meant something. But whatever it means, it hardly means a perfect man, to put it mildly. A perfect RAT is more like it.

More generally, since Jesus did not leave us with a written doctrine, that's either inexcusably careless or maybe the whole point. He didn't speak much about intelligence, but about a whole lotta love on the stairway to heaven. Garrigou:

A philosopher with a powerful intellect, though he has a correct idea of God, First Cause of the universe and Last End, may not be a good man, a man of good will. At times he may even be a very bad man. That which is true is the good of the intellect, but it is not the good of the entire man, not the whole good of man (emphasis mine).

 Ouch. So close. Yet so far. 

Only God Goes Up to 11

Often, after writing another perfect post, I will *randonly* bump into something that speaks to it -- like a NONLOCAL AUTHORITY confirming it with ABSOLUTE CERTITUDE.  

Well, yesterday the exact opposite occurred: after writing the post, the very first thing I read told me why I am so wrong. Not necessarily in the head. In the heart, rather. Whatever that's supposed to mean. 

It was in Fr. Garrigou's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, chapter VIII, The True Nature of Christian Perfection. You'd think such a brilliant guy would be on my side, but no. 

Perfection. What is it? We all implicitly understand the term, but how and why? 

Lng stry shrt, because perfection is one of the principle attributes of the Absolute, such that we see its shadows in diverse modalities and dimensions down here. We all tap into this implicit standard, which is how and why we can rank things on a vertical scale. No dog says to itself, now this is the perfect bone, probably the best one conceivable! 

But it is routine for humans to recognize when they are in the presence of perfection. Perfect 10s are everywhere. But this can only be because God goes up to 11. 

Indeed, think of what befalls people who imagine they are the source of their own perfection -- "artists" and "intellectuals" of various kinds: it always ends in self-beclownment in one form or another.   

Schuon discusses this in an essay called Dimensions, Modes, and Degrees of the Divine Order: the Supreme Principle, or O, in addition to being Absolute Reality and Infinite Possibility, is Perfect Quality.

You could even say that this constitutes a -- or maybe the -- fundamental trinity, for it covers everything: everything that exists, can exist, and will exist.

Come to think of it, you can even see how the Trinity lines up with this more abstract conceptualization: if the Father is the Absolute, then the Son and Spirit must be Perfection and Radiation or something. We'll have to circle back to this subject in a later post, as it's only half-baked at the moment.

In any event, we can agree that not only is God perfect, but he alone is perfect, since he is outside manifestation. 

Or, to put it conversely, even the best things down here are slightly imperfect, not that we're complaining. However, if we fail to appreciate this, we may spend our lives in a vain pursuit of perfection on earth. This is how one ends up a leftoid cult member, and the result is a perfect hell.

What did Jesus say? Why do you call me perfect? This is actually an ambiguous question. I used to think it simply meant that Jesus was acknowledging that only God is perfect. 

More cleverly, it could be a rhetorical question meaning: how did you know I was perfect? It wasn't via your natural perception! In other words, it's a testimony of the Holy Sprit about the Holy Spirit -- or something proceeding from and returning to God, in a perfect circle. 

But let's get back to Garrigou's essay, because the clock is ticking down. In it he addresses the proper end of the Christian life, which is, of course,  perfection -- as in Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven. Never mind that this is impossible. It's the process that counts.

Now, in God, perfection is perfection, full stop. But down here we can appreciate several modalities, in particular, with regard to truth, beauty, and virtue. In yesterday's post we presented an argument for perfect truth. Apparently this is not enough for the Christian. And, when you think about it, it's not difficult to see why.

Think of the other virtues. One can be, say, courageous, but still rotten. Likewise, one can be brilliant, a genius even, but a sick lunatic. Chuck Schumer, for example, is said to have obtained a perfect score on his SAT, way back when it meant something. But whatever it means, it hardly means a perfect man, to put it mildly. A perfect RAT is more like it.

More generally, since Jesus did not leave us with a written doctrine, that's either inexcusably careless or maybe the whole point. He didn't speak much about intelligence, but about a whole lotta love on the stairway to heaven. Garrigou:

A philosopher with a powerful intellect, though he has a correct idea of God, First Cause of the universe and Last End, may not be a good man, a man of good will. At times he may even be a very bad man. That which is true is the good of the intellect, but it is not the good of the entire man, not the whole good of man (emphasis mine).

 Ouch. So close. Yet so far. 

Truth, Existence, and Certitude

Is there a pure metaphysics, accessible to man, that is prior to sense and reason? I've been struggling to reconcile esoterism and Thomism, and this seems to be the nub of the gist of the crux of the matter. Or at least one of them.  

The dimensions I've been exploring lately are so vast that it's difficult -- okay, impossible -- to wrap one's mind around them. No wonder people take this stuff on faith! And not just religious faith, either. For example, I have no earthly idea how a CD player works, but it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of music. 

And who knows, maybe the kind of technical intelligence that can dream up such a device displaces the kind of intelligence that appreciates other dimensions, from music to literature to comedy. Certainly our digital overlords don't have a sense of humor, or even common sense. And they want to restrict us to their little cognitive prison, just like any other religious fanatic.

Anyway, the intellect of a Fr. Garrigou is so imposing that one is inclined to simply nod in agreement and say "Father know best." I suppose this is why some folks called him "the sacred monster of Thomism." Imposing. That's the word. When I question something he says, I feel slightly impudent.

Since God, His Existence and His Nature runs to 1,000 pages, it is literally difficult to wrap one's mind around it, figuratively speaking. It's like trying to capture water with a bucket in a rainstorm. But at risk of impudence, I think I've identified a flaw, or at least a fundamental area of disagreement, and it goes to this question of what the intellect is. 

We can further boil the question down to this: is the intellect radically separate from the divine principle? Or is it a prolongation of it? 

I notice that Fr. Garrigou, when he has occasion to mention him at all -- usually in a snarky footnote --  doesn't think much of Eckhart. But this is a central motif of the Meister, i.e., that there is something both uncreated and uncreatable in the soul -- or that we participate in the uncreated. 

Apparently this is a Big Heresy, and I can understand why. Taken out of context and without the appropriate paradox, irony, and playfulness, one can get the wrong idea and start thinking one is God. 

Nevertheless. Let's proceed logically. Let's say truth exists. Being true, it is both necessary and eternal. Assuming man can know this truth, this means that man must somehow participate in necessary and eternal being. Woo hoo!

But Garrigou begins the search for God at the other end, with the senses, which know only the particular and unique. Yes, we can prove the existence of God with certainty, but beginning with created things and ascending on up to their Creator. Thus, God is known a posteriori, not a priori -- or from the effects to the cause instead of the cause to its effects, reverberations, and prolongations herebelow.

At times it almost seems to me that Garrigou is protecting the dignity and majesty of God from our grubby intellects. Here again, I can certainly understand the reason for this. It's the same reason why real Jews don't even utter the word G-d, because it's presumptuous to name the Nameless. 

Moreover, giving something a name can fool us into thinking we understand it. After all, even liberals use the word "reality." 

Rather than arguing with Garrigou, I think I'll cut straight to what bOb thinks, which is more in align with Schuon and Eckhart, albeit with certain modifications. Nor should you care what bOb thinks, since he is just an impudent crank who is in way over his head.

Now, instead of starting with the senses, Schuon goes straight for the jugular of Absolute: boom! Maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems... absolutely self-evident to me. We're all familiar with Descartes' famous crack to the effect that He thought about stuff, therefore he existed. 

This is metaphysically backassward, precisely. Like Descartes, we too "begin" in thought, but not really, since thought -- to say nothing of true thoughts -- must have a sufficient reason. It's not just floating around in our heads with no explanation.

To jump ahead a bit, the correct formulation is: I think, therefore being is. Or better, I am because (not therefore) Being is:     

The certitude that we exist would be impossible without absolute, hence necessary, Being, which inspires both our existence and our certitude; Being and Consciousness: these are the two roots of our reality (Schuon). 

From this little seedling sprout all sorts of implications, entailments, and good tidings. 

Back to the question of beginning at the top rather than with the senses:

No doubt it is worth recalling here that in metaphysics there is no empiricism: principial knowledge cannot stem from any experience, even though experiences -- scientific or other -- can be the occasional causes of the intellect's intuitions.

So it's fine to start with the empirical world, if that floats your boat. But you're forgetting a little something that must be there before the beginning, AKA intelligence:

The sources of our transcendent intuitions are innate data, consubstantial with pure intelligence... 

Again, this goes to the "uncreated" alluded to above. Conversely, if we begin at the other end, with empiricism or with reason, we will discover no immanent principle allowing us to transcend these. Rationalism, for example,

consists in seeking the elements of certitude in phenomena rather than in our very being. 

Or, let's say you want to skip all this philosophical nonsense and go straight to revelation. Let's say it speaks to you, and so deeply that you are just certain it is true. Question: by virtue of what principle is this certitude and this truth in us?

To be continued....

Truth, Existence, and Certitude

Is there a pure metaphysics, accessible to man, that is prior to sense and reason? I've been struggling to reconcile esoterism and Thomism, and this seems to be the nub of the gist of the crux of the matter. Or at least one of them.  

The dimensions I've been exploring lately are so vast that it's difficult -- okay, impossible -- to wrap one's mind around them. No wonder people take this stuff on faith! And not just religious faith, either. For example, I have no earthly idea how a CD player works, but it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of music. 

And who knows, maybe the kind of technical intelligence that can dream up such a device displaces the kind of intelligence that appreciates other dimensions, from music to literature to comedy. Certainly our digital overlords don't have a sense of humor, or even common sense. And they want to restrict us to their little cognitive prison, just like any other religious fanatic.

Anyway, the intellect of a Fr. Garrigou is so imposing that one is inclined to simply nod in agreement and say "Father know best." I suppose this is why some folks called him "the sacred monster of Thomism." Imposing. That's the word. When I question something he says, I feel slightly impudent.

Since God, His Existence and His Nature runs to 1,000 pages, it is literally difficult to wrap one's mind around it, figuratively speaking. It's like trying to capture water with a bucket in a rainstorm. But at risk of impudence, I think I've identified a flaw, or at least a fundamental area of disagreement, and it goes to this question of what the intellect is. 

We can further boil the question down to this: is the intellect radically separate from the divine principle? Or is it a prolongation of it? 

I notice that Fr. Garrigou, when he has occasion to mention him at all -- usually in a snarky footnote --  doesn't think much of Eckhart. But this is a central motif of the Meister, i.e., that there is something both uncreated and uncreatable in the soul -- or that we participate in the uncreated. 

Apparently this is a Big Heresy, and I can understand why. Taken out of context and without the appropriate paradox, irony, and playfulness, one can get the wrong idea and start thinking one is God. 

Nevertheless. Let's proceed logically. Let's say truth exists. Being true, it is both necessary and eternal. Assuming man can know this truth, this means that man must somehow participate in necessary and eternal being. Woo hoo!

But Garrigou begins the search for God at the other end, with the senses, which know only the particular and unique. Yes, we can prove the existence of God with certainty, but beginning with created things and ascending on up to their Creator. Thus, God is known a posteriori, not a priori -- or from the effects to the cause instead of the cause to its effects, reverberations, and prolongations herebelow.

At times it almost seems to me that Garrigou is protecting the dignity and majesty of God from our grubby intellects. Here again, I can certainly understand the reason for this. It's the same reason why real Jews don't even utter the word G-d, because it's presumptuous to name the Nameless. 

Moreover, giving something a name can fool us into thinking we understand it. After all, even liberals use the word "reality." 

Rather than arguing with Garrigou, I think I'll cut straight to what bOb thinks, which is more in align with Schuon and Eckhart, albeit with certain modifications. Nor should you care what bOb thinks, since he is just an impudent crank who is in way over his head.

Now, instead of starting with the senses, Schuon goes straight for the jugular of Absolute: boom! Maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems... absolutely self-evident to me. We're all familiar with Descartes' famous crack to the effect that He thought about stuff, therefore he existed. 

This is metaphysically backassward, precisely. Like Descartes, we too "begin" in thought, but not really, since thought -- to say nothing of true thoughts -- must have a sufficient reason. It's not just floating around in our heads with no explanation.

To jump ahead a bit, the correct formulation is: I think, therefore being is. Or better, I am because (not therefore) Being is:     

The certitude that we exist would be impossible without absolute, hence necessary, Being, which inspires both our existence and our certitude; Being and Consciousness: these are the two roots of our reality (Schuon). 

From this little seedling sprout all sorts of implications, entailments, and good tidings. 

Back to the question of beginning at the top rather than with the senses:

No doubt it is worth recalling here that in metaphysics there is no empiricism: principial knowledge cannot stem from any experience, even though experiences -- scientific or other -- can be the occasional causes of the intellect's intuitions.

So it's fine to start with the empirical world, if that floats your boat. But you're forgetting a little something that must be there before the beginning, AKA intelligence:

The sources of our transcendent intuitions are innate data, consubstantial with pure intelligence... 

Again, this goes to the "uncreated" alluded to above. Conversely, if we begin at the other end, with empiricism or with reason, we will discover no immanent principle allowing us to transcend these. Rationalism, for example,

consists in seeking the elements of certitude in phenomena rather than in our very being. 

Or, let's say you want to skip all this philosophical nonsense and go straight to revelation. Let's say it speaks to you, and so deeply that you are just certain it is true. Question: by virtue of what principle is this certitude and this truth in us?

To be continued....