A Universal Story About Universals

Picking up where we left off, I consulted a few sources to the confirm the tower of Babel story, and it checks out. 

When I say it "checks out," what I mean is that I rate it a True Myth, which means that it is 1) timeless, 2) universal, and 3) happening now. In short, it can't not happen, so long as man is man. It isn't so much that it is part of man's essence, but rather, a proximate consequence of other factors.

Leon Kass, in his comprehensive analysis of Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom, makes the intriguing point that Babel "is the last episode in the biblical narrative prior to God's call to Abraham." 

Thus, it represents the climax of "the universal human story," before the focus narrows to God's dealings with one man and his descendants -- right down to you and I, right now. As such, it is "something of a completion," while marking a transition from universal to particular (even though, from another angle, the story of the ancient Hebrews becomes a new universal).

Therefore, Babel is an end, or it is a link, but only if you want it to be, since you can of course reject the Call and dismiss Abraham: he's not my daddy! 

Does this imply a kind of choice between Babel and Abraham? If so, what does this even mean -- again, here and now, for you and I and Here Comes Everybody? (I will resist the temptation to consult Finnegans Wake for obscure references to Babel.)

Well, for Kass, "this tale of the universal city completes the account of the universal human story, with human beings living largely on their own and without divine instruction." It "exposes fully the core of civilization," i.e., man's attempt at auto-civilization without divine tutelage. Again, the latter takes place in the immediate sequel, with Abram.

Big cities. It's tempting to jump straight to these Democrat hellholes of violence and perversion as examples of contemporary Babel. That would be insultaining but facile. Or at least premature. There will be plenty of time to bash the left. But the red/blue divide is obviously a rural/urban divide. Is it also a Babel/Abraham divide? 

Babel, the universal city, is the fulfillment of a recurrent human dream, a dream of humankind united, living together in peace and freedom...

How's that working out? And will more social workers help?

For some reason, God objects to the project, probably because he sees where it's headed and would prefer to Make America Great Again:

He apparently does not approve of the prospect of unrestrained human powers, exercised in support of unlimited imaginings and desires. He seems to be worried... about man's boundless capacity to dream up grand projects.... in short, the implied wish to be as gods, with comparable creative power.

A ha! Genesis 3 all over again, only this time collectively.  

Kass also sees in the story a subtle commentary on the nature of logos, being that "Speech and language, reason and the arts, are at the heart of the story."

Oddly enough, I was thinking about this just the other day, before revisiting Kass. It was in the context of Genesis 2, where God confers on man the power -- or ability or faculty -- to name. 

This is really worth pausing over, because it isn't only full of Mythtery, but in many ways marks the miraculous divide between man and animal, a divide which science cannot explain and will never be able to explain, since it must be presupposed in order for science (and scientists) to exist.

We're taking about universals, for the power to name is a function of the ability to apprehend universals or essences. If I see a "tree" it is because I intuit the nonlocal essence of "treeness." This ability to apprehend universals represents a -- or maybe the -- radical discontinuity between animal and man. 

But guess what? This ability is precisely what is denied by modern and postmodern philosophies, which are nominalistic and grounded in the rejection of the transcendent. And once on the nominalist path, it inevitably ends in deconstruction, for which language is fully detached from the things it is supposed to name, and becomes only about itself: words apply only to other words, not to the external -- AKA real -- world.

Time out for a bit of insultainment: it would be interesting to survey how many deconstructionists reside in Red State America. I would estimate that it is about equal to the number of Latinos who insist on being called Latinx.

I need to stop. Errands to run...

A Universal Story About Universals

Picking up where we left off, I consulted a few sources to the confirm the tower of Babel story, and it checks out. 

When I say it "checks out," what I mean is that I rate it a True Myth, which means that it is 1) timeless, 2) universal, and 3) happening now. In short, it can't not happen, so long as man is man. It isn't so much that it is part of man's essence, but rather, a proximate consequence of other factors.

Leon Kass, in his comprehensive analysis of Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom, makes the intriguing point that Babel "is the last episode in the biblical narrative prior to God's call to Abraham." 

Thus, it represents the climax of "the universal human story," before the focus narrows to God's dealings with one man and his descendants -- right down to you and I, right now. As such, it is "something of a completion," while marking a transition from universal to particular (even though, from another angle, the story of the ancient Hebrews becomes a new universal).

Therefore, Babel is an end, or it is a link, but only if you want it to be, since you can of course reject the Call and dismiss Abraham: he's not my daddy! 

Does this imply a kind of choice between Babel and Abraham? If so, what does this even mean -- again, here and now, for you and I and Here Comes Everybody? (I will resist the temptation to consult Finnegans Wake for obscure references to Babel.)

Well, for Kass, "this tale of the universal city completes the account of the universal human story, with human beings living largely on their own and without divine instruction." It "exposes fully the core of civilization," i.e., man's attempt at auto-civilization without divine tutelage. Again, the latter takes place in the immediate sequel, with Abram.

Big cities. It's tempting to jump straight to these Democrat hellholes of violence and perversion as examples of contemporary Babel. That would be insultaining but facile. Or at least premature. There will be plenty of time to bash the left. But the red/blue divide is obviously a rural/urban divide. Is it also a Babel/Abraham divide? 

Babel, the universal city, is the fulfillment of a recurrent human dream, a dream of humankind united, living together in peace and freedom...

How's that working out? And will more social workers help?

For some reason, God objects to the project, probably because he sees where it's headed and would prefer to Make America Great Again:

He apparently does not approve of the prospect of unrestrained human powers, exercised in support of unlimited imaginings and desires. He seems to be worried... about man's boundless capacity to dream up grand projects.... in short, the implied wish to be as gods, with comparable creative power.

A ha! Genesis 3 all over again, only this time collectively.  

Kass also sees in the story a subtle commentary on the nature of logos, being that "Speech and language, reason and the arts, are at the heart of the story."

Oddly enough, I was thinking about this just the other day, before revisiting Kass. It was in the context of Genesis 2, where God confers on man the power -- or ability or faculty -- to name. 

This is really worth pausing over, because it isn't only full of Mythtery, but in many ways marks the miraculous divide between man and animal, a divide which science cannot explain and will never be able to explain, since it must be presupposed in order for science (and scientists) to exist.

We're taking about universals, for the power to name is a function of the ability to apprehend universals or essences. If I see a "tree" it is because I intuit the nonlocal essence of "treeness." This ability to apprehend universals represents a -- or maybe the -- radical discontinuity between animal and man. 

But guess what? This ability is precisely what is denied by modern and postmodern philosophies, which are nominalistic and grounded in the rejection of the transcendent. And once on the nominalist path, it inevitably ends in deconstruction, for which language is fully detached from the things it is supposed to name, and becomes only about itself: words apply only to other words, not to the external -- AKA real -- world.

Time out for a bit of insultainment: it would be interesting to survey how many deconstructionists reside in Red State America. I would estimate that it is about equal to the number of Latinos who insist on being called Latinx.

I need to stop. Errands to run...

Once Upon Every Time

The previous post wondered into the question of whether man, upon becoming man, was somehow given the operating instructions or just left to his own devices to make sense of himself, his faculties, and his purpose in being here. 

In one sense the question is idiotic but typical of the low and lurid standards of this blog. But in another sense it invites us to imaginatively drill down to the bottom of the psyche and see what we can see there. Is it really a blank slate shaped by the ups and downs, strikes and gutters, of environmental contingency? 

Ah, no. We know that much. We're not historicists. Man isn't born a nobody to be shaped any which way by external influences, but is a definite somebody -- a particular person -- right out of the gate. 

Well then, is it full of Jungian archetypes and other woowoo-ery that determine identity, behavior, and culture?

Ah, no. We're not Platonists, idealists, or rationalists.

Well, what then? An operating manual presupposes some kind of nonlocal constraint on human potential. 

Be patient. We'll get there.   

More generally, just because our answers may be idiotic, it doesn't mean the questions are, and there are three questions to which every man at every time would like the answers, please: 1) where did we come from, 2) what are we doing here, and 3) where are we going; in other words, origin, being, and destiny. 

You can pretend you don't wonder about these things, but they're nevertheless implicitly present in everything we think and do. They're in the very structure of time itself. Unless you are psychotic, a cause and consequence of which is a kind of violent dismemberment of time. 

Come to think of it, even garden variety neuroses do damage to time's flow; for example, a compulsion creates a kind of temporal eddy, while impulsivity short circuits the path to the future, and trauma freezes one in the past. 

There is actually a "wrong side of history," e.g., presentism, anachronism, progressivism, etc. 

In fact, I was just reading about these historical fallacies in a book of essays by Gordon Wood called The Purpose of the Past. I wasn't planning on blogging about it, but perhaps it has a point or two we can misuse for our own lurid purposes. He's especially hard on our postmodern deconstructionists, and although he's far too polite to call them frankly psychotic, the diagnostic shoe fits:

If historians began doubting that there was an objective past reality that they were trying to recover and began thinking that what they did was simply make up the past and write something that was akin to fiction, then... they were actually undermining the ground for any sort of historical reconstruction at all.

The result is that history "has become fragmented -- all pieces, all flashes of experience, no wholes." They "cannot see the forest for the trees" because "there are no forests." 

Yes, crazy. But this is the underlying philosophy of Critical Race Theory and all those other epistemological diseases. And as mentioned above, they surely do violence to time, for they are "tantamount to using a nuclear weapon that could be subsequently used against" themselves.  

I was thinking about this yesterday, when I heard a story about the editors of the UCSB student newspaper, who have vowed to censor any story that might hurt, trigger, or alienate a single snowflake. Well, hold on a second: since I am an enthusiastic proponent of the first amendment, what if I am triggered by their assault on free speech? 

Anyway, the purpose of the past isn't to ransack it in order to find something useful to one's present political wishes. Rather, 

To understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. A tragic sense does not mean a sad or pessimistic sense of life; it means a sense of the limitations of life.... 

[H]istory tends to inculcate skepticism about our ability to manipulate purposefully our destinies.

Well, no wonder the left hates it! But guess what, he whispered creepily: doesn't Genesis 3 convey this same pessimessage, only implicitly, via myth? To understand history -- and the Fall of man -- is to know that "few things work out the way we intend."

But in order for a progressive to get things done, he needs to forget the past entirely, which is why Brandon is their ideal leader.

So, let's go back, way back, to "Eden" and suppose our man in nirvana was handed the One True Philosophy upon crossing the threshold from biology to prehistory some 100,000 years ago. Indeed, this seems only sporting, considering what we were up against: the elements, other animals, and especially other people, for it seems there were assouls from the start, or within moments of it, anyway. 

With regard to the missing operating manual, Maritain asks whether it was "possible that this knowledge, together with the primitive religion in which it was incorporated, could be transmitted in its integrity by the human race?"

Recall that the edge of history is myth, and that myth didn't just happen once upon a time, but happens every time. Here's one: 

Once upon a timeless the world had one language, one philosophy, and one religion. But people will be people, and it can't get worse than that, so they decided to build an ivory tower that reached up to the heavens in order to make tenure for themselves. 

In his commentary on Genesis 11, Dennis Prager notes a couple of ironies, but I gotta transport my son to a class, so to be continued...

Once Upon Every Time

The previous post wondered into the question of whether man, upon becoming man, was somehow given the operating instructions or just left to his own devices to make sense of himself, his faculties, and his purpose in being here. 

In one sense the question is idiotic but typical of the low and lurid standards of this blog. But in another sense it invites us to imaginatively drill down to the bottom of the psyche and see what we can see there. Is it really a blank slate shaped by the ups and downs, strikes and gutters, of environmental contingency? 

Ah, no. We know that much. We're not historicists. Man isn't born a nobody to be shaped any which way by external influences, but is a definite somebody -- a particular person -- right out of the gate. 

Well then, is it full of Jungian archetypes and other woowoo-ery that determine identity, behavior, and culture?

Ah, no. We're not Platonists, idealists, or rationalists.

Well, what then? An operating manual presupposes some kind of nonlocal constraint on human potential. 

Be patient. We'll get there.   

More generally, just because our answers may be idiotic, it doesn't mean the questions are, and there are three questions to which every man at every time would like the answers, please: 1) where did we come from, 2) what are we doing here, and 3) where are we going; in other words, origin, being, and destiny. 

You can pretend you don't wonder about these things, but they're nevertheless implicitly present in everything we think and do. They're in the very structure of time itself. Unless you are psychotic, a cause and consequence of which is a kind of violent dismemberment of time. 

Come to think of it, even garden variety neuroses do damage to time's flow; for example, a compulsion creates a kind of temporal eddy, while impulsivity short circuits the path to the future, and trauma freezes one in the past. 

There is actually a "wrong side of history," e.g., presentism, anachronism, progressivism, etc. 

In fact, I was just reading about these historical fallacies in a book of essays by Gordon Wood called The Purpose of the Past. I wasn't planning on blogging about it, but perhaps it has a point or two we can misuse for our own lurid purposes. He's especially hard on our postmodern deconstructionists, and although he's far too polite to call them frankly psychotic, the diagnostic shoe fits:

If historians began doubting that there was an objective past reality that they were trying to recover and began thinking that what they did was simply make up the past and write something that was akin to fiction, then... they were actually undermining the ground for any sort of historical reconstruction at all.

The result is that history "has become fragmented -- all pieces, all flashes of experience, no wholes." They "cannot see the forest for the trees" because "there are no forests." 

Yes, crazy. But this is the underlying philosophy of Critical Race Theory and all those other epistemological diseases. And as mentioned above, they surely do violence to time, for they are "tantamount to using a nuclear weapon that could be subsequently used against" themselves.  

I was thinking about this yesterday, when I heard a story about the editors of the UCSB student newspaper, who have vowed to censor any story that might hurt, trigger, or alienate a single snowflake. Well, hold on a second: since I am an enthusiastic proponent of the first amendment, what if I am triggered by their assault on free speech? 

Anyway, the purpose of the past isn't to ransack it in order to find something useful to one's present political wishes. Rather, 

To understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. A tragic sense does not mean a sad or pessimistic sense of life; it means a sense of the limitations of life.... 

[H]istory tends to inculcate skepticism about our ability to manipulate purposefully our destinies.

Well, no wonder the left hates it! But guess what, he whispered creepily: doesn't Genesis 3 convey this same pessimessage, only implicitly, via myth? To understand history -- and the Fall of man -- is to know that "few things work out the way we intend."

But in order for a progressive to get things done, he needs to forget the past entirely, which is why Brandon is their ideal leader.

So, let's go back, way back, to "Eden" and suppose our man in nirvana was handed the One True Philosophy upon crossing the threshold from biology to prehistory some 100,000 years ago. Indeed, this seems only sporting, considering what we were up against: the elements, other animals, and especially other people, for it seems there were assouls from the start, or within moments of it, anyway. 

With regard to the missing operating manual, Maritain asks whether it was "possible that this knowledge, together with the primitive religion in which it was incorporated, could be transmitted in its integrity by the human race?"

Recall that the edge of history is myth, and that myth didn't just happen once upon a time, but happens every time. Here's one: 

Once upon a timeless the world had one language, one philosophy, and one religion. But people will be people, and it can't get worse than that, so they decided to build an ivory tower that reached up to the heavens in order to make tenure for themselves. 

In his commentary on Genesis 11, Dennis Prager notes a couple of ironies, but I gotta transport my son to a class, so to be continued...

Woo Who?!

Lately I've been especially preoccupied with the subject with which I am always preoccupied, which is to say, oneness: is it, what is it, how is it, and especially who is it. 

The previous post went into the who of it all, at least from our end of things. 

But one of our principles is that the unity of the cosmos manifests in the mirror of Who-who; this Who-who structure cannot be accidental, rather, goes to the very essence of things. It's a big hint in itSelf, not just the means of tracking down additional hints and clues about the the how, the why, and the whether. 

Put it this way: if there is no ultimate Who, then there is certainly no ultimate How or Why -- no reason, excuse, or alibi, for none is needed or even possible, really. Rather, there is no meaning at all. For as the Aphorist puts it,  

The gods punish by depriving things of their meaning.

Therefore, 

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance. 

It doesn't mean the theocentric vision is correct, but it does mean that

If God does not exist we should not conclude that everything is permissible, but that nothing matters. Permits become laughable when their significance is canceled.

I like to turn it around and challenge the infidel to have the courage of his casuistry and truly live as if nothing matters. Sophist, cancel thyself! 

If one does not believe in God, the only honest alternative is vulgar utilitarianism. The rest is rhetoric.

Moreover,

If it is not of God that we are speaking, it is not sensible to speak of anything seriously.

Beginning with atheism. 

Back to the Who-who structure of it all.

The existence of God is indemonstrable, because with a person the only thing we can do is bump into him.

Ain't that the truth. 

By the way, in addition to taking any It-I structure off the table, we also rule out a Who-whom structure of reality, which I suppose is the principle reason leftism is so monstrous and ultimately diabolical, for it grounds itself in a total inversion of the Way Things Are: yes, there's a Who at the top, but he is neither a dictator nor a retard. 

Not to get sidetracked, but I recently read a book by Maritain that reinforced my predilection of seeing one cosmos and one philosophy. Seriously, what's the alternative? Many ultimate realities, lots of gods, and a philosophy for every man? That can't be right. 

One point that intrigues me -- impossible to prove or disprove? -- is that philosophy does indeed start out as one but breaks up in the course of prehistory and history, only to be recovered in Christ. Could this be what Genesis 3 adverts to? -- not just a fall into sin, but worse, into blunder. 

Let me track down the passage so I don't misrepresent frère Jacques.

First of all, let's say man -- Homo sapiens sapiens -- is 100,000 years old. For 99% that time there is no philosophy for you! Rather, it

only began to exist at a very late period about the eighth and especially sixth century B.C., and then found the right path to truth by a success which must be regarded as extraordinary when we consider the multitude of wrong roads taken by so many philosophers and philosophic schools (Maritain).

The old axial age promulgated by Karl Jaspers. But even then there are plenty of bad philosophies floating around, and indeed, the seeds and roots of the same sophistries that persist to this day, e.g., relativism, idealism, rationalism, empiricism, etc.  

Nevertheless, 

The most reliable inductions of history combine with the conclusions of theology to prove the existence of a primitive tradition, common to the different branches of the human race and going back to the origins of mankind (emphasis in original).

I find this idea immensely appealing, but where's the evidence? 

even in default of any positive sources of information, it is a very reasonable conjecture that the first man received from God knowledge together with existence... 

No spinning, Jack. How is this primitive tradition reasonable? 

Well, we've said before that it makes no sense to create a being with moral responsibility but no means -- i.e., truth -- to effectuate it. Responsibility is prior to rights, but we must have the latter if we have the former, for God cannot be fundamentally unjust.  

Let's enter the Wayback Machine. I recall the exact passage when I learned of this possibility of a Primordial Revelation. It was in a book by William Irwin Thompson called The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality & The Origins of Culture, which I suppose I read around 35 years ago. Perhaps there's a reason why I remember the passage:

The [merely] professional way to begin a study of the origins of human culture is to begin at the beginning with a discussion of hominization.

Anthropogenesis, so to speak: the objective emergence of man. But what about psychogenesis, the subjective analogue?

At "the edge of history is myth," such that "a line of events has a beginning and an end, but the matrix out of which events arise (sic) does not appear to be an event at all." 

Analogously, the tree begins with the seed, but is it accurate to call a seed an "event?" Well, what if the humiverse, so to speak,

is an egg that shatters as it expands to begin its career of unfoldment in time. As an archetypal image of primordial unity, the cosmic egg suggests that there is unity and fragmentation, eternity and time. The Fall into time is not so much an event itself as the conditioning of time-space out of which all events arise.

Yes, this difficult but ridiculous yolk, this big Who-ha!, is what Finnegans Wake attempts to describe, again and again, ad gnosiam. 

But this is all a bit vague, simultaneously too much and too little. We're not looking for a literary approach, rather, a logical and theological one. Man is one. Therefore, there must be one philosophy and one religion, and even one history between the fall of the former and recovery of the latter. 

We've said enough for one post. I don't want to overtax your indulgence. Taxing it is enough.

Woo Who?!

Lately I've been especially preoccupied with the subject with which I am always preoccupied, which is to say, oneness: is it, what is it, how is it, and especially who is it. 

The previous post went into the who of it all, at least from our end of things. 

But one of our principles is that the unity of the cosmos manifests in the mirror of Who-who; this Who-who structure cannot be accidental, rather, goes to the very essence of things. It's a big hint in itSelf, not just the means of tracking down additional hints and clues about the the how, the why, and the whether. 

Put it this way: if there is no ultimate Who, then there is certainly no ultimate How or Why -- no reason, excuse, or alibi, for none is needed or even possible, really. Rather, there is no meaning at all. For as the Aphorist puts it,  

The gods punish by depriving things of their meaning.

Therefore, 

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance. 

It doesn't mean the theocentric vision is correct, but it does mean that

If God does not exist we should not conclude that everything is permissible, but that nothing matters. Permits become laughable when their significance is canceled.

I like to turn it around and challenge the infidel to have the courage of his casuistry and truly live as if nothing matters. Sophist, cancel thyself! 

If one does not believe in God, the only honest alternative is vulgar utilitarianism. The rest is rhetoric.

Moreover,

If it is not of God that we are speaking, it is not sensible to speak of anything seriously.

Beginning with atheism. 

Back to the Who-who structure of it all.

The existence of God is indemonstrable, because with a person the only thing we can do is bump into him.

Ain't that the truth. 

By the way, in addition to taking any It-I structure off the table, we also rule out a Who-whom structure of reality, which I suppose is the principle reason leftism is so monstrous and ultimately diabolical, for it grounds itself in a total inversion of the Way Things Are: yes, there's a Who at the top, but he is neither a dictator nor a retard. 

Not to get sidetracked, but I recently read a book by Maritain that reinforced my predilection of seeing one cosmos and one philosophy. Seriously, what's the alternative? Many ultimate realities, lots of gods, and a philosophy for every man? That can't be right. 

One point that intrigues me -- impossible to prove or disprove? -- is that philosophy does indeed start out as one but breaks up in the course of prehistory and history, only to be recovered in Christ. Could this be what Genesis 3 adverts to? -- not just a fall into sin, but worse, into blunder. 

Let me track down the passage so I don't misrepresent frère Jacques.

First of all, let's say man -- Homo sapiens sapiens -- is 100,000 years old. For 99% that time there is no philosophy for you! Rather, it

only began to exist at a very late period about the eighth and especially sixth century B.C., and then found the right path to truth by a success which must be regarded as extraordinary when we consider the multitude of wrong roads taken by so many philosophers and philosophic schools (Maritain).

The old axial age promulgated by Karl Jaspers. But even then there are plenty of bad philosophies floating around, and indeed, the seeds and roots of the same sophistries that persist to this day, e.g., relativism, idealism, rationalism, empiricism, etc.  

Nevertheless, 

The most reliable inductions of history combine with the conclusions of theology to prove the existence of a primitive tradition, common to the different branches of the human race and going back to the origins of mankind (emphasis in original).

I find this idea immensely appealing, but where's the evidence? 

even in default of any positive sources of information, it is a very reasonable conjecture that the first man received from God knowledge together with existence... 

No spinning, Jack. How is this primitive tradition reasonable? 

Well, we've said before that it makes no sense to create a being with moral responsibility but no means -- i.e., truth -- to effectuate it. Responsibility is prior to rights, but we must have the latter if we have the former, for God cannot be fundamentally unjust.  

Let's enter the Wayback Machine. I recall the exact passage when I learned of this possibility of a Primordial Revelation. It was in a book by William Irwin Thompson called The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality & The Origins of Culture, which I suppose I read around 35 years ago. Perhaps there's a reason why I remember the passage:

The [merely] professional way to begin a study of the origins of human culture is to begin at the beginning with a discussion of hominization.

Anthropogenesis, so to speak: the objective emergence of man. But what about psychogenesis, the subjective analogue?

At "the edge of history is myth," such that "a line of events has a beginning and an end, but the matrix out of which events arise (sic) does not appear to be an event at all." 

Analogously, the tree begins with the seed, but is it accurate to call a seed an "event?" Well, what if the humiverse, so to speak,

is an egg that shatters as it expands to begin its career of unfoldment in time. As an archetypal image of primordial unity, the cosmic egg suggests that there is unity and fragmentation, eternity and time. The Fall into time is not so much an event itself as the conditioning of time-space out of which all events arise.

Yes, this difficult but ridiculous yolk, this big Who-ha!, is what Finnegans Wake attempts to describe, again and again, ad gnosiam. 

But this is all a bit vague, simultaneously too much and too little. We're not looking for a literary approach, rather, a logical and theological one. Man is one. Therefore, there must be one philosophy and one religion, and even one history between the fall of the former and recovery of the latter. 

We've said enough for one post. I don't want to overtax your indulgence. Taxing it is enough.

Persons: Problem or Solution?

Time only for a brief foundation... 

I'm reading a book called Brahman and Person -- actually a posthumous compilation of essays -- by a Catholic priest named Richard De Smet, who lived in India and became a scholar of Vedanta. It's pretty dense and specialized, seemingly written more for a Hindu than western audience. In short, a bit of a slog, but not without its moments.

I have an interest in the subject, because I suppose I would have called myself a Vedantin until I found a better way, one that included me. For as De Smet writes, although Vedanta speaks of a "self," it is

never a soul in the Aristotelian sense of the word.... it is never to be taken in that comprehensive sense in which the classical Christian thinkers understood the human person as a bearer of spiritual and corporal potentialities and activities, but rather, in the Cartesian sense of a thinking ego, without any natural connection with the body it appears to ensoul.

This is a slightly different subject, but for our money, the transition from the classical/Scholastic to the modern Cartesian view of man was a huge step backward from which we not only haven't recovered, but which continues to yield its partial, contradictory, absurd, and at times frankly perverse fruits. 

This dualistic approach has, by definition, no possibility of making any integral sense, but it seems we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future -- mind and body alienated from one another and locked in mortal combat. Like the feminist war on men, if these bitter hags win, they lose. Likewise, if the mind prevails over the body (or vice versa), we (meaning persons) all lose.

For example, the notion that one sex can actually be the other can only be affirmed in a dualistic, Cartesian metaphysic in which body and mind are detached from one another. But in reality, sex is fractally encoded in everything, from the skin, muscle, bone, cell, and on down.

Anyway, the Vedantic dualism of spirit and matter renders the human person "a temporary appearance," such that its "understanding of man ultimately does away with man himself!"

D'oh!

Now, although I take ideas seriously, I'm not one of those eggheads who take fellow eggheads particularly seriously -- as if, for example, the typical American circa 1776 went around quoting John Locke, any more than the typical LGBTQ activist brings up Descartes in order to ground their sociopolitical demands in an adequate philosophical principle. 

When humans behave irrationally -- and no one ever went broke betting on the irrationality of human beings -- it's generally not because they're in thrall to some intellectual, rather, because they're in thrall to fallen human nature. 

Thus, when humans are greedy, or larcenous, or envious,-- or gluttonous, power-mad, violent, deceitful, blasphemous, idolatrous, etc. -- we needn't reach for some deep explanation, as if these aberrations need to be pinned on some wacky pinhead.

Rather, the ideas of this or that intellectual are only appealing because they legitimize what people want to do anyway. For example, Marxism appeals to people because it legitimizes their envy and their will to power. If those trends didn't already exist in humans, there would be no "hook." No one needs to teach people to be "progressives," for they are born that way. Rather, it is necessary to transcend progressivism in order to mature beyond it.

For example, a good start is to teach these spiritually untutored human beastlings the Ten Commandments. And then, once they've internalized these -- supposing they've managed to stop lying, stealing, murdering, and envying -- then move on to an even higher teaching -- the Sermon on the Mount -- calling for an interior transformation that goes beyond the merely negative and exterior proscriptions of the Commandments. First outward behavior, then the heart.

Out of time. To be continued...

Persons: Problem or Solution?

Time only for a brief foundation... 

I'm reading a book called Brahman and Person -- actually a posthumous compilation of essays -- by a Catholic priest named Richard De Smet, who lived in India and became a scholar of Vedanta. It's pretty dense and specialized, seemingly written more for a Hindu than western audience. In short, a bit of a slog, but not without its moments.

I have an interest in the subject, because I suppose I would have called myself a Vedantin until I found a better way, one that included me. For as De Smet writes, although Vedanta speaks of a "self," it is

never a soul in the Aristotelian sense of the word.... it is never to be taken in that comprehensive sense in which the classical Christian thinkers understood the human person as a bearer of spiritual and corporal potentialities and activities, but rather, in the Cartesian sense of a thinking ego, without any natural connection with the body it appears to ensoul.

This is a slightly different subject, but for our money, the transition from the classical/Scholastic to the modern Cartesian view of man was a huge step backward from which we not only haven't recovered, but which continues to yield its partial, contradictory, absurd, and at times frankly perverse fruits. 

This dualistic approach has, by definition, no possibility of making any integral sense, but it seems we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future -- mind and body alienated from one another and locked in mortal combat. Like the feminist war on men, if these bitter hags win, they lose. Likewise, if the mind prevails over the body (or vice versa), we (meaning persons) all lose.

For example, the notion that one sex can actually be the other can only be affirmed in a dualistic, Cartesian metaphysic in which body and mind are detached from one another. But in reality, sex is fractally encoded in everything, from the skin, muscle, bone, cell, and on down.

Anyway, the Vedantic dualism of spirit and matter renders the human person "a temporary appearance," such that its "understanding of man ultimately does away with man himself!"

D'oh!

Now, although I take ideas seriously, I'm not one of those eggheads who take fellow eggheads particularly seriously -- as if, for example, the typical American circa 1776 went around quoting John Locke, any more than the typical LGBTQ activist brings up Descartes in order to ground their sociopolitical demands in an adequate philosophical principle. 

When humans behave irrationally -- and no one ever went broke betting on the irrationality of human beings -- it's generally not because they're in thrall to some intellectual, rather, because they're in thrall to fallen human nature. 

Thus, when humans are greedy, or larcenous, or envious,-- or gluttonous, power-mad, violent, deceitful, blasphemous, idolatrous, etc. -- we needn't reach for some deep explanation, as if these aberrations need to be pinned on some wacky pinhead.

Rather, the ideas of this or that intellectual are only appealing because they legitimize what people want to do anyway. For example, Marxism appeals to people because it legitimizes their envy and their will to power. If those trends didn't already exist in humans, there would be no "hook." No one needs to teach people to be "progressives," for they are born that way. Rather, it is necessary to transcend progressivism in order to mature beyond it.

For example, a good start is to teach these spiritually untutored human beastlings the Ten Commandments. And then, once they've internalized these -- supposing they've managed to stop lying, stealing, murdering, and envying -- then move on to an even higher teaching -- the Sermon on the Mount -- calling for an interior transformation that goes beyond the merely negative and exterior proscriptions of the Commandments. First outward behavior, then the heart.

Out of time. To be continued...

1 = 0, 2 = 3, 3 = ∞

You want synchronicity? Here's a synchronicity: I began writing this post -- including the title -- yesterday, but didn't finish. The title struck me as a bit weird, but as usual, I wondered whether it was weird enough. 

Later in the day the mailman arrived with a book called The Great Dialogue of Nature and Space, by the Catholic philosopher Yves Simon. I didn't know anything about the book, except the title struck me as sufficiently weird to give it a shot and enter this Great Dialogue.

I'm only up to p. 50, but so far it's all about the differences between an Aristotelian and Cartesian vision of the cosmos, which represent the "nature" and "space," respectively, in the title.

The book is also about the mystery of change, which isn't only one of those primordial categories for which any decent philosophy must account, but in many ways the very source and occasion of philosophizing itself. If nothing changed, we wouldn't have to wonder why. 

Obviously, animals don't worry or wonder about change. But it's pretty much all we humans do in one way or another. It is the source of anxiety (if things change for the worse), hope (that they change for the better), trust (that they will stay the same), etc.

But in reality, things are always getting better, getting worse, and staying the same. It brings to mind Hello There Universe, by One Cosmos poet deploreate Mose Allison: even though / The good gets better and the bad gets worse / Hello there universe:

You let me sample your treasure chest
Showed me how to choose the best
Then you gave me lessons in humility
Do you know what you do to me?

You let me feel your mystic light
Showed me splendors of the night
Now you got me wondering if I missed my cue
Am I doin' what you meant me to?

So, ups and downs, strikes and gutters. Change, dammit!

The very first philosophers pondered this mystery and came up with two alternatives: either All is Change (Heraclitus), or Change is But an Illusion (Parmenides). For the P-man,

all reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and necessary.... Parmenides explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful...

Parmenides' philosophy has been explained with the slogan "whatever is is, and what is not cannot be." He is also credited with the phrase out of nothing nothing comes. He argues that, despite appearances, everything exists as one, giant, unchanging thing (Prof. Wiki). 

In contrast, the H-man insisted that no man can step into the same cosmos twice:

He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change -- known in philosophy as "flux" or "becoming"-- as the characteristic feature of the world.... This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of the universe. 

In the end, neither perspective was remotely weird enough to account for change or changelessness. 

This all goes to the cryptic title of yesterday's (and today's) post, and Simon explains why on p. 29. For if Parmenides is correct, then reality "is one and motionless," which ultimately means "not that all things are one, but that they are nothing" (¡emphasis mine!).

In other words, 1 = 0, and now we know why: "The world has disappeared" into a "homogeneous unit.  "Are you baffled by novelty?" No worries! In reality, it's all "one and the same." Everything is "a big unchanging ball." With this magic ball of Parmenides, strikes are gutters and gutters are strikes, so fuck it, let's go bowling.   

The other extreme -- pure change -- is no better. Among other inconveniences, if it were true we could never know it, because no changeless knowledge would be possible. (This is the trouble with a Darwinian metaphysic.)

Now let's skip back to yesterday's post, and find out how we got here:  

I've been reading a couple of books by a Catholic priest (Richard De Smet) who lived in India and wrote extensively about Vedanta. His thinking evolved over the decades (from the '50s to the '90s), but he eventually came around to the view that neither the Upanishads nor Shankara teach a doctrine of strict nondualism or acosmism.

(Acosmism, "denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory, and only the infinite unmanifest Absolute as real." It "has been seen in the work of a number of Western philosophers, including ¡Parmenides!, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel" [Prof. Wiki].) 

This nondual approach is really no fun at all, for it is very much as if God exists and we can know Him with certitude, the only catch being that we can't be there to enjoy the experience. Rather, between you and God is a jive little man called the jivatman, AKA your illusory sense of identity: 

Understood through the paradigm of relative reality, jivas are cloaked by maya-avidya, or ignorance -- a state in which they are not able to realize their oneness with Brahman.

Metaphysically speaking, the whole thing reduces to acosmism, so instead of One Cosmos, it's No Cosmos for You! 

But De Smet suggests that we have Shankara all wrong, and that he actually believed that ultimate reality is personal, or has a Person-to-person structure. Does this imply a static dualism? Or does 2=3? Stay tuned to find out! 

1 = 0, 2 = 3, 3 = ∞

You want synchronicity? Here's a synchronicity: I began writing this post -- including the title -- yesterday, but didn't finish. The title struck me as a bit weird, but as usual, I wondered whether it was weird enough. 

Later in the day the mailman arrived with a book called The Great Dialogue of Nature and Space, by the Catholic philosopher Yves Simon. I didn't know anything about the book, except the title struck me as sufficiently weird to give it a shot and enter this Great Dialogue.

I'm only up to p. 50, but so far it's all about the differences between an Aristotelian and Cartesian vision of the cosmos, which represent the "nature" and "space," respectively, in the title.

The book is also about the mystery of change, which isn't only one of those primordial categories for which any decent philosophy must account, but in many ways the very source and occasion of philosophizing itself. If nothing changed, we wouldn't have to wonder why. 

Obviously, animals don't worry or wonder about change. But it's pretty much all we humans do in one way or another. It is the source of anxiety (if things change for the worse), hope (that they change for the better), trust (that they will stay the same), etc.

But in reality, things are always getting better, getting worse, and staying the same. It brings to mind Hello There Universe, by One Cosmos poet deploreate Mose Allison: even though / The good gets better and the bad gets worse / Hello there universe:

You let me sample your treasure chest
Showed me how to choose the best
Then you gave me lessons in humility
Do you know what you do to me?

You let me feel your mystic light
Showed me splendors of the night
Now you got me wondering if I missed my cue
Am I doin' what you meant me to?

So, ups and downs, strikes and gutters. Change, dammit!

The very first philosophers pondered this mystery and came up with two alternatives: either All is Change (Heraclitus), or Change is But an Illusion (Parmenides). For the P-man,

all reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and necessary.... Parmenides explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful...

Parmenides' philosophy has been explained with the slogan "whatever is is, and what is not cannot be." He is also credited with the phrase out of nothing nothing comes. He argues that, despite appearances, everything exists as one, giant, unchanging thing (Prof. Wiki). 

In contrast, the H-man insisted that no man can step into the same cosmos twice:

He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change -- known in philosophy as "flux" or "becoming"-- as the characteristic feature of the world.... This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of the universe. 

In the end, neither perspective was remotely weird enough to account for change or changelessness. 

This all goes to the cryptic title of yesterday's (and today's) post, and Simon explains why on p. 29. For if Parmenides is correct, then reality "is one and motionless," which ultimately means "not that all things are one, but that they are nothing" (¡emphasis mine!).

In other words, 1 = 0, and now we know why: "The world has disappeared" into a "homogeneous unit.  "Are you baffled by novelty?" No worries! In reality, it's all "one and the same." Everything is "a big unchanging ball." With this magic ball of Parmenides, strikes are gutters and gutters are strikes, so fuck it, let's go bowling.   

The other extreme -- pure change -- is no better. Among other inconveniences, if it were true we could never know it, because no changeless knowledge would be possible. (This is the trouble with a Darwinian metaphysic.)

Now let's skip back to yesterday's post, and find out how we got here:  

I've been reading a couple of books by a Catholic priest (Richard De Smet) who lived in India and wrote extensively about Vedanta. His thinking evolved over the decades (from the '50s to the '90s), but he eventually came around to the view that neither the Upanishads nor Shankara teach a doctrine of strict nondualism or acosmism.

(Acosmism, "denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory, and only the infinite unmanifest Absolute as real." It "has been seen in the work of a number of Western philosophers, including ¡Parmenides!, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel" [Prof. Wiki].) 

This nondual approach is really no fun at all, for it is very much as if God exists and we can know Him with certitude, the only catch being that we can't be there to enjoy the experience. Rather, between you and God is a jive little man called the jivatman, AKA your illusory sense of identity: 

Understood through the paradigm of relative reality, jivas are cloaked by maya-avidya, or ignorance -- a state in which they are not able to realize their oneness with Brahman.

Metaphysically speaking, the whole thing reduces to acosmism, so instead of One Cosmos, it's No Cosmos for You! 

But De Smet suggests that we have Shankara all wrong, and that he actually believed that ultimate reality is personal, or has a Person-to-person structure. Does this imply a static dualism? Or does 2=3? Stay tuned to find out! 

Are We AllOne?

In the previous post we alluded to the oneness of things, from creator to cosmos and everything in between. 

Now, this oneness should not be thought of in terms of quantity, rather, qualitatively. If we think only numerically, there are always other numbers. Rather, we're thinking more along the lines of one-ness or of unicity. 

More than that, I suppose we're talking about a kind of dynamic complementarity between the one and the many. I was reading something about this the other day, but I can't recall where... Ah, here it is, from a chapter called The Spiritual Organism in Garrigou-Lagrange's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life.

Now, I kid you not, but I have a bunch of unneeded or obsolete books lined up on the floor that I was going to transfer to the garage, and one of them just now spontaneously fell over: it is called Rhythm of Wholeness (probably something I read in the late ' 80s). I wonder if the Cosmos is trying to tell us something? Let's have a peek inside. 

Okay. From the Prologue:

Reality, as presented in this book, is the unceasing, dynamic interplay of subjectivity and objectivity, of a principle of Unity and a principle of Multiplicity. It is neither Unity nor Multiplicity, neither spirit nor matter -- separately.

Agreed. You've got my attention, but can you be more specific?

Thus the word unity can refer not only to the state of being one but also to the process of becoming united and the quality required for the fulfillment of the process in a union....

[I]n an abstract sense, one can be considered the principle of numeration.... such a process is obviously a kind of self-multiplication. The tendency inherent in number one to generate all numbers, seemingly ad infinitum, clearly shows that unity and multiplicity are both inherent in number one.

I recall Schuon saying something similar, for example, 

The Pythagorean numbers prove that number in itself is not synonymous with quantity pure and simple, for they are essentially qualitative; they are so to the degree that they are close to Unity, their point of departure....

One might wonder if Unity is really a number; strictly speaking, number only begins with Duality, which opens the door to that projection of the Infinite which is the indefinite.

Schuon agrees that

it is in the nature of Unity to tend towards an extrinsic overflowing: there where God is, there will also be the world.

And vice versa. This is not to say, of course, that God was compelled to create this world, only that he wouldn't be God if he didn't create worlds out of nothing. It's what he does-and-is. Nor would we be human persons in the absence of the Divine Person, rather, only pretentious monkeys.

Back to Rudyar. I sense that he has something more important to convey to us, something we didn't already know, but I could be wrong. 

[T]he metaphysician has to infer two levels of oneness -- an absolute level at which one is not even a principle of numeration, and a level at which, as such a principle, it contains all numbers in potentiality.

Ah ha. This might be the place where I came up with the idea that the cosmos is shaped like a Klein bottle or maybe a möbius strip or dynamic donut -- 

an immense globe of undefinable energy-substance. The core of this globe is absolutely homogeneous and unchanging, yet it is endowed with the mysterious capacity to exteriorize itself without these exteriorizations ever leaving the globe....

[T]he core of the globe could be imagined as being either absolutely solid or absolutely void; it would make no difference as long as the state of being at the center, whatever it is, never changes. From this central core, power could be imagined to radiate in all directions as a kind of "superabundance" of being, but the overflow of the One is intrinsically nothing but the One.

Sounds very much like Eckhart.  

Also sounds like the Cosmos is fractally organized:

Wholeness is in every whole, but it is also in what are inadequately called "parts" of the whole. The term part is confusing because parts are also wholes.... Accurately speaking, there are no parts, only wholes -- a hierarchy of wholes...  

Back to the wholeness of the spiritual organism:

All the parts of this spiritual organism grow together, says St. Thomas, like the five fingers of one hand. This proportionate growth demonstrates that a soul cannot have lofty charity without profound humility, just as the highest branch of a tree rises toward heaven in proportion as its roots plunge more deeply into the soil (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Out of time...

Are We AllOne?

In the previous post we alluded to the oneness of things, from creator to cosmos and everything in between. 

Now, this oneness should not be thought of in terms of quantity, rather, qualitatively. If we think only numerically, there are always other numbers. Rather, we're thinking more along the lines of one-ness or of unicity. 

More than that, I suppose we're talking about a kind of dynamic complementarity between the one and the many. I was reading something about this the other day, but I can't recall where... Ah, here it is, from a chapter called The Spiritual Organism in Garrigou-Lagrange's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life.

Now, I kid you not, but I have a bunch of unneeded or obsolete books lined up on the floor that I was going to transfer to the garage, and one of them just now spontaneously fell over: it is called Rhythm of Wholeness (probably something I read in the late ' 80s). I wonder if the Cosmos is trying to tell us something? Let's have a peek inside. 

Okay. From the Prologue:

Reality, as presented in this book, is the unceasing, dynamic interplay of subjectivity and objectivity, of a principle of Unity and a principle of Multiplicity. It is neither Unity nor Multiplicity, neither spirit nor matter -- separately.

Agreed. You've got my attention, but can you be more specific?

Thus the word unity can refer not only to the state of being one but also to the process of becoming united and the quality required for the fulfillment of the process in a union....

[I]n an abstract sense, one can be considered the principle of numeration.... such a process is obviously a kind of self-multiplication. The tendency inherent in number one to generate all numbers, seemingly ad infinitum, clearly shows that unity and multiplicity are both inherent in number one.

I recall Schuon saying something similar, for example, 

The Pythagorean numbers prove that number in itself is not synonymous with quantity pure and simple, for they are essentially qualitative; they are so to the degree that they are close to Unity, their point of departure....

One might wonder if Unity is really a number; strictly speaking, number only begins with Duality, which opens the door to that projection of the Infinite which is the indefinite.

Schuon agrees that

it is in the nature of Unity to tend towards an extrinsic overflowing: there where God is, there will also be the world.

And vice versa. This is not to say, of course, that God was compelled to create this world, only that he wouldn't be God if he didn't create worlds out of nothing. It's what he does-and-is. Nor would we be human persons in the absence of the Divine Person, rather, only pretentious monkeys.

Back to Rudyar. I sense that he has something more important to convey to us, something we didn't already know, but I could be wrong. 

[T]he metaphysician has to infer two levels of oneness -- an absolute level at which one is not even a principle of numeration, and a level at which, as such a principle, it contains all numbers in potentiality.

Ah ha. This might be the place where I came up with the idea that the cosmos is shaped like a Klein bottle or maybe a möbius strip or dynamic donut -- 

an immense globe of undefinable energy-substance. The core of this globe is absolutely homogeneous and unchanging, yet it is endowed with the mysterious capacity to exteriorize itself without these exteriorizations ever leaving the globe....

[T]he core of the globe could be imagined as being either absolutely solid or absolutely void; it would make no difference as long as the state of being at the center, whatever it is, never changes. From this central core, power could be imagined to radiate in all directions as a kind of "superabundance" of being, but the overflow of the One is intrinsically nothing but the One.

Sounds very much like Eckhart.  

Also sounds like the Cosmos is fractally organized:

Wholeness is in every whole, but it is also in what are inadequately called "parts" of the whole. The term part is confusing because parts are also wholes.... Accurately speaking, there are no parts, only wholes -- a hierarchy of wholes...  

Back to the wholeness of the spiritual organism:

All the parts of this spiritual organism grow together, says St. Thomas, like the five fingers of one hand. This proportionate growth demonstrates that a soul cannot have lofty charity without profound humility, just as the highest branch of a tree rises toward heaven in proportion as its roots plunge more deeply into the soil (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Out of time...

Brandon's Trifecta

Ripperger notes that "contradictory speech is a sign of one of three things."

The first and most common reason is that "the person is dishonest or disingenuous." This is usually the case in politicians and journalists. What kind of naif is Shocked, shocked to find that lying is going on in here!, in the government-media complex?  

Ripperger's second reason for contradictory speech is "real confusion in the mind of the individual." A normal person is sufficiently self-aware to be concerned about his contradictions. I know I would be alarmed if I woke up one morning to find more than one creator, one cosmos, one reality, one truth, one philosophy, one wife, etc.  

Consistency. That's what we strive for at One Cosmos. Although, at the same time, we enjoy the challenge of tossing this or that seemingly contradictory fact into the cosmic hopper, just for the fun of harmonizing it with the rest. 

Anyway, whereas in the case of the dishonest person it is a matter of a corrupt will or "spirit of falsity," anyone can be confused due to a "lack of understanding or due to the difficulty of the object of knowledge in relation to the limits of the human intellect." 

Most people are confused about a lot of things, for example, the appeal of Stephen Colbert. Nothing wrong with that, unless we paper over the confusion and pretend to a certitude that has no logical or factual basis. Then we're shading into mental illness, either functional (e.g., borderline personality) or organic (e.g., dementia).

Speaking of which, James Rosen actually asked the president why he thinks most Americans have profound concerns about his cognitive deterioration, to which Brandon replied I have no idea. 

Ironically, this is probably the most honest thing he said in the entire two hours of desperate obfuscation, dissimulation, and word salad. "One-armed paper hanger" comes to mind. 

Which brings us to the third cause of contradictory speech, that "the person can be mentally ill; in fact, contradictory speech is a clear sign of mental illness."

How convenient is that! For it allows us to recognize and steer clear of mentally ill people, because they spew forth contradictions like a squid releases ink.

Now, many forms of contradictory speech are entirely benign, nor could civilization carry on in their absence. No one is brutally honest at all times. The very existence of good manners is a contradiction. And yet, there are people who cannot manage this -- e.g., babies, savages, leftists. But I threepeat myself.

President Brandon was of course born lying, but in his case there's something more going on; his contradictions are openly contradictory, and yet, he is the only person in the room who isn't confused by his confusion.  

It looks like Brandon has achieved the trifecta, in that he is a congenital liar; is confused but doesn't know it; and is suffering from a progressive neurodegenerative illness. 

Thus, most everything he says is an implicit or explicit contradiction, which is what makes trying to follow him so wearying. One cannot listen to him as one would to a normal person, since most of that he says makes no sense; one must strain to find the meaning, but it is often impossible. Try reading the following, and see what I mean. It's exhausting:

I mean -- and one of the things I find fascinating that’s happening -- and you all are dealing with it every day -- and it will impact on how things move -- is that a lot of the speculation in the polling data shows that the -- that the cables are heading south; they’re losing viewership. You know?

Well, Fox is okay for a while, but it’s not gated. And a lot of the rest are predicted to be not very much in the mix in the next four to five years. I don’t know whether that’s true or not.

*** 

I’ve spent a lot of time in South America and in Latin America. When I was Vice President, I spent the bulk of my eight years basically in Europe and/or in Latin America. I’m in contact with the leaders of the countries in South America, and we’re working closely with making sure that we do everything -- for example, with the -- to deal with helping the countries in question, particularly those in Central America, to be able to help them with their ability to deal with the inter- 

People don’t sit around in Guatemala and say, “I got a great idea: Let’s sell everything we have, give the money to a -- to a coyote, take us across a terribly dangerous trip up through Central America and up through Mexico, and drop us -- sneak us across the border, drop us in the desert. Won’t that be fun?”

People leave because they have real problems. And one of the things that I’ve done, when I was a Vice President, and got support with -- although I don’t have much Republican support anymore -- is provide billions of dollars to be able to say to those countries, “Why are people leaving? And how are you going to reform your own system?” And that’s what we’ve worked on a long time. It still needs a lot more work. And we’re focusing on that.

I also believe -- I’ve spent a lot of time talking about and dealing with policy having to do with Maduro, who is little more than a dictator right now, and the same thing in Chile and Af- -- not the same thing, but with Chile, as well as Argentina.

So, look, I made a speech a while ago, when I was Vice President, saying that if we were smart, we have an opportunity to make the Western Hemisphere a united -- not united -- a democratic hemisphere. And we were moving in the right direction under our -- under the last administration -- the Obama-Biden administration.

But so much damage was done as a consequence of the foreign policy decisions the last president made in Latin America, Central America, and South America that we now have --when I call for a summit of the democracies -- I called that, and a number of nations showed up for this Summit of Democracy -- what is it that’s going to allow us to generate -- we’ve actually had a reduction in the number of democracies in the world. And it seems to me there’s nothing more important.

We used to talk about, when I was a kid in college, about “America’s backyard.” It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard. And we’re equal people. We don’t dictate what happens in any other part of that -- of this continent or the South American continent. We have to work very hard on it.

But the trouble is: We’re having great difficulty making up for the mistakes that were made the last four years, and it’s going to take some time.

Got that?

Now, "one of the most important first principles for psychology is the principle of sufficient reason," which is basically a fancy way of saying that things have causes, and that the cause must be sufficient to explain the effect. 

But "those who suffer from delusions often are not operating according to this principle," in that they "think that certain things are causing their problems when those things (or people) are not capable of it." They blame that for causing this, even though neither this nor that may even exist, let alone be causally related.

The "Voting Rights Bill" is a case in point. All American citizens already have the right to vote. And yet, racists such as myself will supposedly prevent them from voting unless this bill is passed. Nary a sufficient reason in sight.

We'd better stop here: "being around the mentally ill a great deal and trying to think the way they do in order to understand them can lead to the psychologist's own mental illness" (Ripperger).