Metaphysics and God's Waiting Room

Maybe I'm a little slow, but yesterday it occurred to me just how radically opposed are Schuon's and Thomas's approaches to metaphysics. I mean, I've noticed it before, but only now do I have sufficient familiarity with Thomas to raise my hand and venture an opinion.

I'm not saying that one is right and the other wrong; it may even be that the two approaches are complementary, which is always our default position in these ultimate questions, where the One necessarily bifurcates into two, with the result that Philosophical Man generally tries to reduce one to the other.

For example, the One is presumably beyond our categories of subject and object, but bifurcates into them on contact with existence and finitude, so to speak. 

Thus, it can appear as if ultimate reality is pure subject, but this approach congeals into the cosmic heresy of idealism; alternatively, we can equate the One with the cosmos, a la Spinoza, and thereby commit the intrinsic heresy of pantheism. 

There is of course truth in each, and in general we can say that such ultimately partial crocktrines are true in what they affirm but false in what they deny: pure transcendence denies immanence, and vice versa. We need a doctrine that affirms both without reducing one to the other, nor compromising the essential unicity of God.

Anyway, if metaphysics is literally what comes after physics (in the classic Aristotelian scheme), then it seems to me that Schuon very much approaches it from the other end, in that metaphysics comes first, not last. Call it antephysics, or something.

In the Aristotelian framework, metaphysics concerns those things after the ones about the natural world. Prof. Wiki adds that it is the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. One only ventures into it once one has explained the visible and tangible world, and wishes to proceed over its horizon to their ultimate cause(s), i.e., the perennial questions of 

What is existence, and what sorts of things exist in the world? How can things continue to exist, and yet undergo the change we see about us in the natural world? And how can this world be understood?

This seems like a lot of work for a lazy man such as myself. Indeed, such a man wishes to believe he has access to ultimate reality without having to deal with the hassle of leaving the slackatoream and mastering real subjects. Our exemplars are folks such as, oh, Lao-tzu, who was able to capture the whole existentialada in an immortal pneumagraph consisting of a mere 81 stanzas (the Tao Te Ching). 

Of the actual man Lao-tzu we know next to nothing -- or about as much as will be known about the mysterious Gagdad Bob (GB to his imaginary friends) in 2500 years. Neither left any traces of what was going on behind that beatific and/or idiotic smile. As for LT,

Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left no traces. All he left us was his book: the classic manual on the art of living, written in a style of gemlike lucidity, radiant with human and grace and largeheartedness and deep wisdom: one of the wonders of the world (Stephen Mitchell).

Of GB, it was said that he spent 12 years happily toiling as a retail clerk (apocryphally on the "graveyard" shift) before "they" (the conspiracy) put him on the dayshift, and he spent nearly three decades pretending to be a "psychologist" before disappearing entirely into the night and fog of primordial slack. 

GB left us two books, the first one an essentially frivolous monument to perpetual juvenilia, the second an unfinished symphony of truth, so to speak, which one can read from either end and which culminates in the middle (or "top"), where there is a page that says ?! and nothing more. 

It is difficult to say whether this primordial questiomation point -- ?! -- is a cry for help, a plea to be left alone, or perhaps even a medical emergency. We just don't know.

Of the two halves of this mysterious artifact, one side proceeds from the material/objective/empirical world "up to" this (?!), while the other half proceeds in the opposite direction, from the (?!) back down to our familiar world of time and space. 

Thus, like the first book it is not so much circular as spiroidal. What other form could possibly be adequate to the subject? Obviously linearity wouldn't cut it, nor did GB pretend to be a poet, nor even gay. 

A few more features are known of GB's manual, or at least can be pieced together from hurriedly scribbled notes in books from his vast library. At times these notes appear contradictory, but whatever. Here is one example, and don't be surprised if you have no idea what he's driving at, since he probably didn't know either. Did his reach exceed his grasp? Or was it the other way around? I suppose it depended on the day.

Before the first --> view from inside cosmos --> ascent

  First part of the first part --> reality of appearances

   Second part of the first part (limits of science)

     Middle Earth (Incarnation / new Word Order / Resurrection) 

    First part of the last part --> descent --> science of the limitless

   Last part of the last part --> reality of appearances

Beyond the last --> view from outside cosmos

So, yeah, this is the type of nonsense we're dealing with. 

Let's get back to our main subject, which is Schuon's infra- or pre- or antephysics; the foyer of the Creation, as it were. I'm going to have to leave in a few minutes, so we'll get as far as we can. Perhaps the time constraint will spur us to make it less wooly.

God's waiting room. That's where we are. How long before we see God? Is he overbooked? Never mind. Please fill out these forms, and one of his nurses will be with you shortly.

I would like to write a sentence this simple, this lucid, this universal, and this effingcacious: 

The first thing that should strike man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle of intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- whence the incommensurability between it and material objects, whether a grain of sand or the sun, or any creature whatever as an object of the senses (Schuon). 

Reminds us of an aphorism:

The sentence should have the stone’s hardness and the branch’s trembling.

Schuon further describes "the primacy of thought -- hence of consciousness or of intelligence -- in relation to the material world surrounding us" (emphases mine).

So again, while a Thomist would say that all knowledge begins in the senses, for Schuon it begins with the bare phenomenon of thought itself, a position with which I would tend to agree, since there can be nothing weirder or more unexpected -- literally miraculous, really, -- than its appearance in a not only merely dead but really most sincerely dead universe:

Nothing is more absurd than to have intelligence derive from matter, hence the greater from the lesser; the evolutionary leap from matter to intelligence, is from every point of view the most inconceivable thing that could be (ibid.).

(?!), literally. 

Metaphysics and God's Waiting Room

Maybe I'm a little slow, but yesterday it occurred to me just how radically opposed are Schuon's and Thomas's approaches to metaphysics. I mean, I've noticed it before, but only now do I have sufficient familiarity with Thomas to raise my hand and venture an opinion.

I'm not saying that one is right and the other wrong; it may even be that the two approaches are complementary, which is always our default position in these ultimate questions, where the One necessarily bifurcates into two, with the result that Philosophical Man generally tries to reduce one to the other.

For example, the One is presumably beyond our categories of subject and object, but bifurcates into them on contact with existence and finitude, so to speak. 

Thus, it can appear as if ultimate reality is pure subject, but this approach congeals into the cosmic heresy of idealism; alternatively, we can equate the One with the cosmos, a la Spinoza, and thereby commit the intrinsic heresy of pantheism. 

There is of course truth in each, and in general we can say that such ultimately partial crocktrines are true in what they affirm but false in what they deny: pure transcendence denies immanence, and vice versa. We need a doctrine that affirms both without reducing one to the other, nor compromising the essential unicity of God.

Anyway, if metaphysics is literally what comes after physics (in the classic Aristotelian scheme), then it seems to me that Schuon very much approaches it from the other end, in that metaphysics comes first, not last. Call it antephysics, or something.

In the Aristotelian framework, metaphysics concerns those things after the ones about the natural world. Prof. Wiki adds that it is the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. One only ventures into it once one has explained the visible and tangible world, and wishes to proceed over its horizon to their ultimate cause(s), i.e., the perennial questions of 

What is existence, and what sorts of things exist in the world? How can things continue to exist, and yet undergo the change we see about us in the natural world? And how can this world be understood?

This seems like a lot of work for a lazy man such as myself. Indeed, such a man wishes to believe he has access to ultimate reality without having to deal with the hassle of leaving the slackatoream and mastering real subjects. Our exemplars are folks such as, oh, Lao-tzu, who was able to capture the whole existentialada in an immortal pneumagraph consisting of a mere 81 stanzas (the Tao Te Ching). 

Of the actual man Lao-tzu we know next to nothing -- or about as much as will be known about the mysterious Gagdad Bob (GB to his imaginary friends) in 2500 years. Neither left any traces of what was going on behind that beatific and/or idiotic smile. As for LT,

Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left no traces. All he left us was his book: the classic manual on the art of living, written in a style of gemlike lucidity, radiant with human and grace and largeheartedness and deep wisdom: one of the wonders of the world (Stephen Mitchell).

Of GB, it was said that he spent 12 years happily toiling as a retail clerk (apocryphally on the "graveyard" shift) before "they" (the conspiracy) put him on the dayshift, and he spent nearly three decades pretending to be a "psychologist" before disappearing entirely into the night and fog of primordial slack. 

GB left us two books, the first one an essentially frivolous monument to perpetual juvenilia, the second an unfinished symphony of truth, so to speak, which one can read from either end and which culminates in the middle (or "top"), where there is a page that says ?! and nothing more. 

It is difficult to say whether this primordial questiomation point -- ?! -- is a cry for help, a plea to be left alone, or perhaps even a medical emergency. We just don't know.

Of the two halves of this mysterious artifact, one side proceeds from the material/objective/empirical world "up to" this (?!), while the other half proceeds in the opposite direction, from the (?!) back down to our familiar world of time and space. 

Thus, like the first book it is not so much circular as spiroidal. What other form could possibly be adequate to the subject? Obviously linearity wouldn't cut it, nor did GB pretend to be a poet, nor even gay. 

A few more features are known of GB's manual, or at least can be pieced together from hurriedly scribbled notes in books from his vast library. At times these notes appear contradictory, but whatever. Here is one example, and don't be surprised if you have no idea what he's driving at, since he probably didn't know either. Did his reach exceed his grasp? Or was it the other way around? I suppose it depended on the day.

Before the first --> view from inside cosmos --> ascent

  First part of the first part --> reality of appearances

   Second part of the first part (limits of science)

     Middle Earth (Incarnation / new Word Order / Resurrection) 

    First part of the last part --> descent --> science of the limitless

   Last part of the last part --> reality of appearances

Beyond the last --> view from outside cosmos

So, yeah, this is the type of nonsense we're dealing with. 

Let's get back to our main subject, which is Schuon's infra- or pre- or antephysics; the foyer of the Creation, as it were. I'm going to have to leave in a few minutes, so we'll get as far as we can. Perhaps the time constraint will spur us to make it less wooly.

God's waiting room. That's where we are. How long before we see God? Is he overbooked? Never mind. Please fill out these forms, and one of his nurses will be with you shortly.

I would like to write a sentence this simple, this lucid, this universal, and this effingcacious: 

The first thing that should strike man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle of intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- whence the incommensurability between it and material objects, whether a grain of sand or the sun, or any creature whatever as an object of the senses (Schuon). 

Reminds us of an aphorism:

The sentence should have the stone’s hardness and the branch’s trembling.

Schuon further describes "the primacy of thought -- hence of consciousness or of intelligence -- in relation to the material world surrounding us" (emphases mine).

So again, while a Thomist would say that all knowledge begins in the senses, for Schuon it begins with the bare phenomenon of thought itself, a position with which I would tend to agree, since there can be nothing weirder or more unexpected -- literally miraculous, really, -- than its appearance in a not only merely dead but really most sincerely dead universe:

Nothing is more absurd than to have intelligence derive from matter, hence the greater from the lesser; the evolutionary leap from matter to intelligence, is from every point of view the most inconceivable thing that could be (ibid.).

(?!), literally. 

Empires of Time, Prisons of Space

In his Light on the Ancient Worlds, Schuon makes a number of points that go to our clear-as-muditations on progress, history, and the divine-human relations therein. 

For example, he writes of the inevitability of imperialism, whether for good or ill or worse:

Imperialism can come either from Heaven or simply from the earth, or again from hell; be that as it may, what is certain is that humanity cannot remain divided into a scattering of independent tribes; the bad would inevitably hurl themselves upon the good, and the result would be a humanity oppressed by the bad and hence the worst of all imperialisms.

This goes to the incessant tribe-on-tribe violence among native Americans we've been discussing. Note that it's not so much the Indians who are the problem, as a fragmented organization in which it only makes sense to be wary of strangers: more tribes, more conflict.  

Come to think of it, I have a big book called The Parable of the Tribes, which I've never actually read, but believe this to be its thesis. (How's that for a scholarly reference!)

Best I can do is quote Professor Backflap, who may be able to provide a clue as to why I purchased this book way back in 1980s. He begins with one of those gedankenexperiments:

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one {cough Putin cough} choose peace?

The question answers itself: every tribe needs to be armed to the teeth and paranoid to the hilt. More generally,  

Why is the world so beset by alienation, tyranny, and destruction? The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution that offers answers to these and myriad related questions....

When human beings became the first creatures to invent their own way of life, their societies appeared to become free to develop as people might wish. But what may have been freedom for any single society adds up to anarchy in the interacting system of societies. 

In this anarchy, civilized societies were condemned to engage in a struggle for power.... And the earth became a place where no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power (italics in original).

Just as it takes only one bad driver to create gridlock, it takes only one assoul to bring about a World Crisis, even if this assoul is basically in charge of a gas station with nuclear weapons. I read that even Switzerland -- which remained neutral in World War II -- is going to start charging Putin a hefty checking fee or something.

Anyway, I suppose imperialism is the best of crimes and the worst of crimes. Think of India. Before the arrival of the British, they were burning widows, even the good looking ones. Thus,

What may be called the imperialism of the good constitutes therefore a sort of inevitable and providential preventative war; without it no great civilization is conceivable (Schuon).

You could say that the motto of such great civilizations is: E Pluribus Unum. Or else. There's an element of force, but I guess it's preferable to the old Hobbesian war of all against all. 

Which in turn goes to our contemporary progressive barbarians, i.e., the Great Leap Backward of multicultural tribalism and identity politics.

Empires of Time, Prisons of Space

In his Light on the Ancient Worlds, Schuon makes a number of points that go to our clear-as-muditations on progress, history, and the divine-human relations therein. 

For example, he writes of the inevitability of imperialism, whether for good or ill or worse:

Imperialism can come either from Heaven or simply from the earth, or again from hell; be that as it may, what is certain is that humanity cannot remain divided into a scattering of independent tribes; the bad would inevitably hurl themselves upon the good, and the result would be a humanity oppressed by the bad and hence the worst of all imperialisms.

This goes to the incessant tribe-on-tribe violence among native Americans we've been discussing. Note that it's not so much the Indians who are the problem, as a fragmented organization in which it only makes sense to be wary of strangers: more tribes, more conflict.  

Come to think of it, I have a big book called The Parable of the Tribes, which I've never actually read, but believe this to be its thesis. (How's that for a scholarly reference!)

Best I can do is quote Professor Backflap, who may be able to provide a clue as to why I purchased this book way back in 1980s. He begins with one of those gedankenexperiments:

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one {cough Putin cough} choose peace?

The question answers itself: every tribe needs to be armed to the teeth and paranoid to the hilt. More generally,  

Why is the world so beset by alienation, tyranny, and destruction? The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution that offers answers to these and myriad related questions....

When human beings became the first creatures to invent their own way of life, their societies appeared to become free to develop as people might wish. But what may have been freedom for any single society adds up to anarchy in the interacting system of societies. 

In this anarchy, civilized societies were condemned to engage in a struggle for power.... And the earth became a place where no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power (italics in original).

Just as it takes only one bad driver to create gridlock, it takes only one assoul to bring about a World Crisis, even if this assoul is basically in charge of a gas station with nuclear weapons. I read that even Switzerland -- which remained neutral in World War II -- is going to start charging Putin a hefty checking fee or something.

Anyway, I suppose imperialism is the best of crimes and the worst of crimes. Think of India. Before the arrival of the British, they were burning widows, even the good looking ones. Thus,

What may be called the imperialism of the good constitutes therefore a sort of inevitable and providential preventative war; without it no great civilization is conceivable (Schuon).

You could say that the motto of such great civilizations is: E Pluribus Unum. Or else. There's an element of force, but I guess it's preferable to the old Hobbesian war of all against all. 

Which in turn goes to our contemporary progressive barbarians, i.e., the Great Leap Backward of multicultural tribalism and identity politics.

Hope, History, Boredom, and Melancholy

Although I strongly agree with much, if not most, of what Schuon has written, I could never have been a formal student, and besides, he would never have had me. For where we disagree, we really disagree. 

A case in point is on the question of Progress. Let's start with whether or not it exists, and in what sense. Certainly it doesn't exist in the "progressive" sense, but progressivism nevertheless ironically proves the existence of progress, in that it causes it to go backward, precisely (whether in academia, aesthetics, aberrant sexuality, antiracism, autocracy, illegal aliens -- and that's just the A's). 

A case in point would be energy production and all it entails (and it entails a great deal more than you might realize, cf. the highly raccoommended The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein; I see that he has a sequel coming out in April, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas -- Not Less).

Under President Trump we made tremendous progress in this area, while under Brandon we have executed a U-turn and careened backward in the name of "progress" in order to combat the wholly imaginary Existential Crisis of Catastrophic Climate Change. 

This post could veer in any number of insultaining directions, but let's stay focused.

For Schuon, progress "is the very negation of any celestial origin"; it tends to give with one hand what it yoinks with the other, and he's not wrong: 

All too often things which some people call “useful” are anything but useful in their results. “Progress” is healing a paralytic while depriving him of his sight.

More often than not progress is simply 

the exchange of one evil for another, otherwise our age would be perfect and sanctified. In the world of man, as it is in itself, it is scarcely possible to choose a good; one is always reduced to the choice of a lesser evil, and in order to determine which evil is the less, there is no alternative but to relate the question to a hierarchy of values derived from eternal realities, and that is exactly what “our age” never does.

But the question is whether this eternal standard is in past or in the future; ultimately it goes to the nature of time itself, and whether time brings only deterioration and distance from this ideal, or whether this ideal is in the future.

Now we're getting somewhere, i.e., this post is making a bit of progress.

I've been thinking about this question as a result of reading a book called The Lord of History, which I cannot recommend. Another placeholder, as it were, while I wait for the mailman to bring me something better. Nevertheless, let's make the most of the teacher God has given us: give us this day our daily bread.  

I suppose it really comes down to whether time is reversible or irreversible. Interestingly, physics itself can't fully account for time's irreversibility, at least last time I checked. 

I just googled this: 

While we take for granted that time has a given direction, physicists don’t: most natural laws are 'time reversible' which means they would work just as well if time was defined as running backwards (https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-time-and-why-does-it-move-forward).

Nevertheless, as we all know from everyday experience, time

has a direction, you always move forward, never in reverse. So why is the dimension of time irreversible? This is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.

The second law of thermodynamics is relevant, as is the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics. Still, these don't get us very far in explaining the gap between baboons and Beethoven. 

At any rate, when Christianity first made its appearance on the world stage, it was antagonistic to Greek thought, wherein the divine "consists in the unmoved eternal order of Ideas":

Immutable law, whether of nature or of society, represents to the senses the changeless eternity of the intelligible world. The phenomenon of movement itself is an imitation of immobility, being conceived as cyclical, both in the regular motions of the heavenly bodies and in the eternal recurrence which governs the course of history, so that the same events will be everlastingly repeated. 

By going round in a circle, even change thus conforms to the stable eternity of the ideal world, and no longer implies innovation (Danielou).

In ancient thought, there's no way around this depressingly absurcular roundness of temporality. No progress for you! 

The opposition is fundamental between this conception and the Christian belief in a unique, irrevocable value belonging to the historical Incarnation. 

It seems that the Incarnation includes and redeems history, which is convenient, since man cannot be man without existing in and as history. Moreover, 

It is this belief in the irreversibility of salvation that gives rise to the Christian virtue of hope, in contrast to the characteristic melancholy which flows from the Greek acceptance of an endless repetition. 

Speaking of which, this reminds me of something Champlain observed about the Indians, who, like other pagan peoples, were condemned to Nietzche's Eternal Return: on the one hand, Champlain "always regarded them as human beings like himself, and remarked on their intelligence. Often he commented on their physique and appearance, which was superior to European contemporaries." And yet... 

"And yet they are somewhat saturnine." 

By saturnine, writes Fischer, Champlain "meant that they had an undertone of melancholy." This "interested him, and he reflected much on it." I don't know what he concluded, but depression and hopelessness are always conjoined. 

I don't recall Schuon writing anything about hope and history, but Dávila provides a number of helpful hints:

For history to be of concern to us, there must be something in it that transcends it: There must be something in history more than history.

Nothing that satisfies our expectations fulfills our hopes.

History would be an abominable farce if it were to have a worldly culmination.

If history made sense, the Crucifixion would be superfluous.

Christ was in history like a point on a line. But his redemptive act is to history as the center is to the circumference. 

Hope, History, Boredom, and Melancholy

Although I strongly agree with much, if not most, of what Schuon has written, I could never have been a formal student, and besides, he would never have had me. For where we disagree, we really disagree. 

A case in point is on the question of Progress. Let's start with whether or not it exists, and in what sense. Certainly it doesn't exist in the "progressive" sense, but progressivism nevertheless ironically proves the existence of progress, in that it causes it to go backward, precisely (whether in academia, aesthetics, aberrant sexuality, antiracism, autocracy, illegal aliens -- and that's just the A's). 

A case in point would be energy production and all it entails (and it entails a great deal more than you might realize, cf. the highly raccoommended The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein; I see that he has a sequel coming out in April, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas -- Not Less).

Under President Trump we made tremendous progress in this area, while under Brandon we have executed a U-turn and careened backward in the name of "progress" in order to combat the wholly imaginary Existential Crisis of Catastrophic Climate Change. 

This post could veer in any number of insultaining directions, but let's stay focused.

For Schuon, progress "is the very negation of any celestial origin"; it tends to give with one hand what it yoinks with the other, and he's not wrong: 

All too often things which some people call “useful” are anything but useful in their results. “Progress” is healing a paralytic while depriving him of his sight.

More often than not progress is simply 

the exchange of one evil for another, otherwise our age would be perfect and sanctified. In the world of man, as it is in itself, it is scarcely possible to choose a good; one is always reduced to the choice of a lesser evil, and in order to determine which evil is the less, there is no alternative but to relate the question to a hierarchy of values derived from eternal realities, and that is exactly what “our age” never does.

But the question is whether this eternal standard is in past or in the future; ultimately it goes to the nature of time itself, and whether time brings only deterioration and distance from this ideal, or whether this ideal is in the future.

Now we're getting somewhere, i.e., this post is making a bit of progress.

I've been thinking about this question as a result of reading a book called The Lord of History, which I cannot recommend. Another placeholder, as it were, while I wait for the mailman to bring me something better. Nevertheless, let's make the most of the teacher God has given us: give us this day our daily bread.  

I suppose it really comes down to whether time is reversible or irreversible. Interestingly, physics itself can't fully account for time's irreversibility, at least last time I checked. 

I just googled this: 

While we take for granted that time has a given direction, physicists don’t: most natural laws are 'time reversible' which means they would work just as well if time was defined as running backwards (https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-time-and-why-does-it-move-forward).

Nevertheless, as we all know from everyday experience, time

has a direction, you always move forward, never in reverse. So why is the dimension of time irreversible? This is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.

The second law of thermodynamics is relevant, as is the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics. Still, these don't get us very far in explaining the gap between baboons and Beethoven. 

At any rate, when Christianity first made its appearance on the world stage, it was antagonistic to Greek thought, wherein the divine "consists in the unmoved eternal order of Ideas":

Immutable law, whether of nature or of society, represents to the senses the changeless eternity of the intelligible world. The phenomenon of movement itself is an imitation of immobility, being conceived as cyclical, both in the regular motions of the heavenly bodies and in the eternal recurrence which governs the course of history, so that the same events will be everlastingly repeated. 

By going round in a circle, even change thus conforms to the stable eternity of the ideal world, and no longer implies innovation (Danielou).

In ancient thought, there's no way around this depressingly absurcular roundness of temporality. No progress for you! 

The opposition is fundamental between this conception and the Christian belief in a unique, irrevocable value belonging to the historical Incarnation. 

It seems that the Incarnation includes and redeems history, which is convenient, since man cannot be man without existing in and as history. Moreover, 

It is this belief in the irreversibility of salvation that gives rise to the Christian virtue of hope, in contrast to the characteristic melancholy which flows from the Greek acceptance of an endless repetition. 

Speaking of which, this reminds me of something Champlain observed about the Indians, who, like other pagan peoples, were condemned to Nietzche's Eternal Return: on the one hand, Champlain "always regarded them as human beings like himself, and remarked on their intelligence. Often he commented on their physique and appearance, which was superior to European contemporaries." And yet... 

"And yet they are somewhat saturnine." 

By saturnine, writes Fischer, Champlain "meant that they had an undertone of melancholy." This "interested him, and he reflected much on it." I don't know what he concluded, but depression and hopelessness are always conjoined. 

I don't recall Schuon writing anything about hope and history, but Dávila provides a number of helpful hints:

For history to be of concern to us, there must be something in it that transcends it: There must be something in history more than history.

Nothing that satisfies our expectations fulfills our hopes.

History would be an abominable farce if it were to have a worldly culmination.

If history made sense, the Crucifixion would be superfluous.

Christ was in history like a point on a line. But his redemptive act is to history as the center is to the circumference. 

Slack History Month

American Indians -- like all primitive peoples -- were oriented to the past. The Golden Age. The primordial Womb of Time. They had no history, and not only because they lacked writing, but because they hadn't discovered it (history); nor had any white Karens arrived on the scene to devote a month to pandering to their vanity and firming up an important voting bloc.

Or perhaps -- analogous to what often occurs in individual development -- their culture(s) represented a kind of collective psychological defense against the passage of time. If you're a human, time is obviously a problem, if only because of aging and death. Make it stop! 

Think of, say, Michael Jackson, who defended himself against the transition to adulthood by sleeping with children, mutilating his face, bleaching his skin, adopting an exaggeratedly childlike affect and demeanor, etc. Who wants to grow up? I didn't, but then I didn't have sufficient wealth to arrest my development at 16 and keep time at bay. I tried, but my only available weapons were beer and college, so I gave up in my early 30s. (College, not beer.)

A commenter on the previous post agrees that "No doubt the Indians meted out terribly cruel punishments to their adversaries," but adds that Christians are guilty of the same and even worse.  

It is of course a banality to point out that Christians have committed grave sins, the question being whether they committed them because they were Christian or in spite of it. Conversely, no Indian was ever excommunicated from the tribe for excessive cruelty to strangers.

Only the Church considers itself a congregation of sinners. All other communities, religious or lay, feel themselves to be a confraternity of saints (NGD).

For example, Champlain writes of a random encounter with a luckless party of eleven Indians of another tribe who had been innocently fishing: 

An Algonquin warrior of the Petite nation ran up, seized a woman, and cut off her finger, "for a beginning of their usual torture."  

Ho hum. Just another day frolicking in the woods. Did they delight in torture because they were Indians? Or just because they were human? Either way, "Champlain rushed to her defense."

"I came at once," he wrote, "and reprimanded the chief," who was his friend, Iroquet. Champlain was very angry. He said to Iroquet, "This is not the act of a warrior, as he calls himself, to behave cruelly toward women who have no other defense but tears, and whom by reason of their weakness and helplessness we should treat with humanity."

To which Iroquet responded, "Yo, don't torture shame me, French dude." 

Iroquet was clearly aware of no transcendent principle that frowned upon treating strangers as piñatas. There was no mechanism from within their culture to apply the brakes to what otherwise came naturally. Aphorisms come to mind:

Educating the individual consists in teaching him to distrust the ideas that occur to him.

To educate man is to impede the “free expression of his personality."

Those who remove man’s chains free only an animal.

Of course, I am not judging the Indians. We cannot understand any people nor any era of history by viewing them simply as anticipations of, or preparations for, or links to, a subsequent age. We can't judge them by principles of which they had no awareness.

Except they must have had some awareness, however inchoate, that hurting innocent people is a bad thing, otherwise they wouldn't be human. Humans are intersubjective, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. 

Put it this way: a human being is the only animal who tortures his fellows (up to and including the Son of God), not because he lacks empathy but precisely because he possesses it. Why else would a Hitler, for example, enjoy watching snuff films of enemies of the Reich being tortured and killed? Why does Putin get his jollies by treating 40 million Ukrainians as so many ants? Ants don't get their jollies that way.

Back to our story. After accusing them of a "base and brutal disposition," one warrior became "enraged by the interference of this meddlesome Frenchman" (trigger warning -- not for the squeamish):

He turned defiantly on Champlain and said, "See what I shall do, since you speak of it." He seized an Iroquois infant who had been nursing at the breast of its mother, took it by the foot, and smashed its head against a tree.

This, in my opinion, is what you call "consciousness of guilt," only immediately transformed to sadistic rage.  

Woman is a biological category. If only biology exists, then why shouldn't we oppress them and treat them as slaves? By virtue of what principle should we treat them as equals? Nevertheless, Champlain

also disapproved of the way Indian warriors treated women and compelled them to "serve as mules." And "as to the men," he wrote, "they do nothing but hunt deer and other animals, fish, build lodges and go on the war path."

All of this reminds me of what Sowell says about economics: the question isn't why people are so poor, being that we are born with nothing and for 99% of human history died the same way, with no wealth. The question is how a certain culture in a certain time and place began lifting itself above subsistence and generating and accumulating wealth.  

Along these lines, let's end with this provocative sentence from The Lord of History, going to how the Slack we westerners take for granted somehow began seeping into the human timestream: the author

shows how the bare possibility of history (as distinct from chronicle) arises from the revealed knowledge of God's creative work, and why this particular dimension of thought was discovered late in time.

Slack History Month

American Indians -- like all primitive peoples -- were oriented to the past. The Golden Age. The primordial Womb of Time. They had no history, and not only because they lacked writing, but because they hadn't discovered it (history); nor had any white Karens arrived on the scene to devote a month to pandering to their vanity and firming up an important voting bloc.

Or perhaps -- analogous to what often occurs in individual development -- their culture(s) represented a kind of collective psychological defense against the passage of time. If you're a human, time is obviously a problem, if only because of aging and death. Make it stop! 

Think of, say, Michael Jackson, who defended himself against the transition to adulthood by sleeping with children, mutilating his face, bleaching his skin, adopting an exaggeratedly childlike affect and demeanor, etc. Who wants to grow up? I didn't, but then I didn't have sufficient wealth to arrest my development at 16 and keep time at bay. I tried, but my only available weapons were beer and college, so I gave up in my early 30s. (College, not beer.)

A commenter on the previous post agrees that "No doubt the Indians meted out terribly cruel punishments to their adversaries," but adds that Christians are guilty of the same and even worse.  

It is of course a banality to point out that Christians have committed grave sins, the question being whether they committed them because they were Christian or in spite of it. Conversely, no Indian was ever excommunicated from the tribe for excessive cruelty to strangers.

Only the Church considers itself a congregation of sinners. All other communities, religious or lay, feel themselves to be a confraternity of saints (NGD).

For example, Champlain writes of a random encounter with a luckless party of eleven Indians of another tribe who had been innocently fishing: 

An Algonquin warrior of the Petite nation ran up, seized a woman, and cut off her finger, "for a beginning of their usual torture."  

Ho hum. Just another day frolicking in the woods. Did they delight in torture because they were Indians? Or just because they were human? Either way, "Champlain rushed to her defense."

"I came at once," he wrote, "and reprimanded the chief," who was his friend, Iroquet. Champlain was very angry. He said to Iroquet, "This is not the act of a warrior, as he calls himself, to behave cruelly toward women who have no other defense but tears, and whom by reason of their weakness and helplessness we should treat with humanity."

To which Iroquet responded, "Yo, don't torture shame me, French dude." 

Iroquet was clearly aware of no transcendent principle that frowned upon treating strangers as piñatas. There was no mechanism from within their culture to apply the brakes to what otherwise came naturally. Aphorisms come to mind:

Educating the individual consists in teaching him to distrust the ideas that occur to him.

To educate man is to impede the “free expression of his personality."

Those who remove man’s chains free only an animal.

Of course, I am not judging the Indians. We cannot understand any people nor any era of history by viewing them simply as anticipations of, or preparations for, or links to, a subsequent age. We can't judge them by principles of which they had no awareness.

Except they must have had some awareness, however inchoate, that hurting innocent people is a bad thing, otherwise they wouldn't be human. Humans are intersubjective, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. 

Put it this way: a human being is the only animal who tortures his fellows (up to and including the Son of God), not because he lacks empathy but precisely because he possesses it. Why else would a Hitler, for example, enjoy watching snuff films of enemies of the Reich being tortured and killed? Why does Putin get his jollies by treating 40 million Ukrainians as so many ants? Ants don't get their jollies that way.

Back to our story. After accusing them of a "base and brutal disposition," one warrior became "enraged by the interference of this meddlesome Frenchman" (trigger warning -- not for the squeamish):

He turned defiantly on Champlain and said, "See what I shall do, since you speak of it." He seized an Iroquois infant who had been nursing at the breast of its mother, took it by the foot, and smashed its head against a tree.

This, in my opinion, is what you call "consciousness of guilt," only immediately transformed to sadistic rage.  

Woman is a biological category. If only biology exists, then why shouldn't we oppress them and treat them as slaves? By virtue of what principle should we treat them as equals? Nevertheless, Champlain

also disapproved of the way Indian warriors treated women and compelled them to "serve as mules." And "as to the men," he wrote, "they do nothing but hunt deer and other animals, fish, build lodges and go on the war path."

All of this reminds me of what Sowell says about economics: the question isn't why people are so poor, being that we are born with nothing and for 99% of human history died the same way, with no wealth. The question is how a certain culture in a certain time and place began lifting itself above subsistence and generating and accumulating wealth.  

Along these lines, let's end with this provocative sentence from The Lord of History, going to how the Slack we westerners take for granted somehow began seeping into the human timestream: the author

shows how the bare possibility of history (as distinct from chronicle) arises from the revealed knowledge of God's creative work, and why this particular dimension of thought was discovered late in time.

Are You Not Innertained?!

So, the philosopher who knows what he's talking about is "a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does" (Gilson). 

But the converse is not true: folks who don't know what they're talking about aren't an insult to the philosopher who knows what he's talking about, especially if his philosophy explains exactly how and why these idiots can and must exist. For it is written:

Men are divided into two camps: those who believe in original sin and those who are idiots.

And

To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

I don't pretend to know all the answers -- rather, only the problems. These problems aren't only existential -- and therefore not susceptible to any political solution -- but are ontological, woven into our very substance. For it is also written that 

No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.

So, idiots aren't an insult, but they are a potential threat if placed in a position of power and authority over us -- for example, if, say an enfeebled dementia patient somehow became president. But that would never happen.

Let's pretend Brandon actually received 81 million legal votes. Now, subtract from that 81 million the number of Brandon voters who were fully aware that he suffers from advanced dementia but voted for him anyway; you'll also need to subtract the number who would have voted for Brandon even had they known he was so with enfeebled dementia.  

Good. Now divide that figure by 81 million, and you have the degree to which the election was rigged. (My calculation comes out to .97, or 97%.)   

That was a joke. Obviously the real figure is 100%.

Now that I'm retired, I've had time to ponder what this blog is all about, and I've come to the conclusion that it's about metaphysical entertainment. Which you may think is easy or trivial, but at least this is the only place on the internet to indulge in such elevated frivolousness.

The other day I was watching an episode of Comedians in Cars, and Jerry compared himself to a woodchuck: a woodchuck chucks wood. It's what they do. Likewise, he tells jokes. It's what he does.

The point is, Are you not entertained?! If not, then I still haven't failed, because I am entertained. When I stop being entertained by myself is when the blog will stop. 

Some loose ends. A few posts back we said something about native Americans that bothered a reader or two. No offense, but if Aquinas isn't an advance over sweat lodges, pantheism, casinos, and Ward Churchill, then I need to get a new hobby. 

I have nothing whatsoever against Indians. Indeed, I would like to help them not be mired in superstition and the half truths of natural religion, just as I would expect them to help me if the roles were reversed. There is a better way. If not, then there's no such thing as verticality and perfection.

Anyway, a reader resuscitated this dead thread with a new comment to the effect that Schuon choose to live in the United States so he could "be close to a native American community to practice their primal religion."

Now, whatever this was, I seriously doubt that it was their "primal religion." In order to practice that, one would have to go back either to when there had been no contact between them and the old world or very shortly thereafter. Is it even possible to return to this level of innocence and naïveté, back to Eden, as it were?

Sure. At least to a degree. Not too long ago I read a book about the French explorer Champlain by David Hackett Fischer. 

Champlain was a genuine friend to the native Americans he encountered, and made favorable comments about their intelligence, appearance, and athleticism, nor did he approve of the way they were treated by Spanish conquerors, but nevertheless harbored no illusions about their barbarism and cruelty, since he personally witnessed it.

For example, in one of his first encounters in 1603, he describes a large gathering of many nations in celebration of a victory over a common enemy:

The Indian drums were beating in celebration. More than a hundred fresh Iroquois scalps were on display. Wounded Iroquois captives were tightly bound to stakes, and their torture had already begun. Blood dripped from what remained of slashed and shattered fingers, as they stoically awaited their fate.

They were stoic because they were well aware of the rules of the game: if the roles had been reversed, then they would be the ones who would be taunting their captives and cutting off appendages. 

Champlain notes that the Indians "worshiped one Great Spirit, believed in the immortality of the soul, and had an idea of the Devil," but "lived by a primitive system of customary law, and an ethic of lex talionis, the rule of retaliation." He added that "They have one evil in them, which is that they are given to revenge."

Yeah, maybe a little. On one occasion he helped one tribe prevail in battle over another: "Everyone knew what was coming. A fire was built and Champlain watched in horror as many warriors came forward and claimed the victor's role of torturer":

Each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time, so as to make him suffer more torment. They stopped from time to time, and threw water on his back. Then they tore out his nails and applied fire to the tips of his fingers and his penis. After that, they scalped him, slowly poured very hot gum on the crown of his head, pierced his arms near their wrists, and with sticks they tried to pull out his sinews by brute force.... This poor brute uttered strange cries, and I felt pity to see him treated this way.

Still, he knew it was not only pointless to intervene, but counter-productive. 

When he was dead they were not satisfied. They opened his body and threw his entrails into the lake. After that they cut off his head, arms and legs, which they scattered about, but they kept the scalp, which they flayed, as they did with the scalps of all the others whom they had killed in their attack.

The finale was "to cut his heart in several pieces and give it to his brother to eat, and to other companions who were prisoners."

Equity: "Some of the captives were kept alive so that they could be tortured by wives and daughters," who "greatly surpass the man in cruelty, for by their cunning they invent more cruel torments, and take delight in them."

Multiculturalism: "Torture and cannibalism of captives was an ancient custom among these nations." Champlain noted that it had an escalating quality (one is reminded Girard's scapegoat theory) "designed to exceed the horror of tortures past."

One wonders if they developed a kind of PTSD that kept the cycle going: "the continuing practice of turture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done":

The Indians were driven by their fear, which appears to have been deepened by the torture... In dark nights along the lake, the torturers dreamed terrible dreams.

Back to the commenter, who adds that "three of the four founding members of the Perennialist School became practicing Muslims -- the first of which, Guénon, abandoned his Roman Catholicism and spent the remainder of his life in Cairo Egypt."

There's an oxymoron in there, because how could the perennial philosophy or religion only be founded in the 20th century? If that's the case, then it's hardly perennial, now is it?

As to Guénon, well, onó ináwa shyó. But conveniently, there's an entire chapter devoted to him in a book I'm currently reading, called The Lord of History: An Essay on the Mystery of History, by Jean Daniélou. But right now I gotta run.... 

Are You Not Innertained?!

So, the philosopher who knows what he's talking about is "a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does" (Gilson). 

But the converse is not true: folks who don't know what they're talking about aren't an insult to the philosopher who knows what he's talking about, especially if his philosophy explains exactly how and why these idiots can and must exist. For it is written:

Men are divided into two camps: those who believe in original sin and those who are idiots.

And

To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

I don't pretend to know all the answers -- rather, only the problems. These problems aren't only existential -- and therefore not susceptible to any political solution -- but are ontological, woven into our very substance. For it is also written that 

No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.

So, idiots aren't an insult, but they are a potential threat if placed in a position of power and authority over us -- for example, if, say an enfeebled dementia patient somehow became president. But that would never happen.

Let's pretend Brandon actually received 81 million legal votes. Now, subtract from that 81 million the number of Brandon voters who were fully aware that he suffers from advanced dementia but voted for him anyway; you'll also need to subtract the number who would have voted for Brandon even had they known he was so with enfeebled dementia.  

Good. Now divide that figure by 81 million, and you have the degree to which the election was rigged. (My calculation comes out to .97, or 97%.)   

That was a joke. Obviously the real figure is 100%.

Now that I'm retired, I've had time to ponder what this blog is all about, and I've come to the conclusion that it's about metaphysical entertainment. Which you may think is easy or trivial, but at least this is the only place on the internet to indulge in such elevated frivolousness.

The other day I was watching an episode of Comedians in Cars, and Jerry compared himself to a woodchuck: a woodchuck chucks wood. It's what they do. Likewise, he tells jokes. It's what he does.

The point is, Are you not entertained?! If not, then I still haven't failed, because I am entertained. When I stop being entertained by myself is when the blog will stop. 

Some loose ends. A few posts back we said something about native Americans that bothered a reader or two. No offense, but if Aquinas isn't an advance over sweat lodges, pantheism, casinos, and Ward Churchill, then I need to get a new hobby. 

I have nothing whatsoever against Indians. Indeed, I would like to help them not be mired in superstition and the half truths of natural religion, just as I would expect them to help me if the roles were reversed. There is a better way. If not, then there's no such thing as verticality and perfection.

Anyway, a reader resuscitated this dead thread with a new comment to the effect that Schuon choose to live in the United States so he could "be close to a native American community to practice their primal religion."

Now, whatever this was, I seriously doubt that it was their "primal religion." In order to practice that, one would have to go back either to when there had been no contact between them and the old world or very shortly thereafter. Is it even possible to return to this level of innocence and naïveté, back to Eden, as it were?

Sure. At least to a degree. Not too long ago I read a book about the French explorer Champlain by David Hackett Fischer. 

Champlain was a genuine friend to the native Americans he encountered, and made favorable comments about their intelligence, appearance, and athleticism, nor did he approve of the way they were treated by Spanish conquerors, but nevertheless harbored no illusions about their barbarism and cruelty, since he personally witnessed it.

For example, in one of his first encounters in 1603, he describes a large gathering of many nations in celebration of a victory over a common enemy:

The Indian drums were beating in celebration. More than a hundred fresh Iroquois scalps were on display. Wounded Iroquois captives were tightly bound to stakes, and their torture had already begun. Blood dripped from what remained of slashed and shattered fingers, as they stoically awaited their fate.

They were stoic because they were well aware of the rules of the game: if the roles had been reversed, then they would be the ones who would be taunting their captives and cutting off appendages. 

Champlain notes that the Indians "worshiped one Great Spirit, believed in the immortality of the soul, and had an idea of the Devil," but "lived by a primitive system of customary law, and an ethic of lex talionis, the rule of retaliation." He added that "They have one evil in them, which is that they are given to revenge."

Yeah, maybe a little. On one occasion he helped one tribe prevail in battle over another: "Everyone knew what was coming. A fire was built and Champlain watched in horror as many warriors came forward and claimed the victor's role of torturer":

Each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time, so as to make him suffer more torment. They stopped from time to time, and threw water on his back. Then they tore out his nails and applied fire to the tips of his fingers and his penis. After that, they scalped him, slowly poured very hot gum on the crown of his head, pierced his arms near their wrists, and with sticks they tried to pull out his sinews by brute force.... This poor brute uttered strange cries, and I felt pity to see him treated this way.

Still, he knew it was not only pointless to intervene, but counter-productive. 

When he was dead they were not satisfied. They opened his body and threw his entrails into the lake. After that they cut off his head, arms and legs, which they scattered about, but they kept the scalp, which they flayed, as they did with the scalps of all the others whom they had killed in their attack.

The finale was "to cut his heart in several pieces and give it to his brother to eat, and to other companions who were prisoners."

Equity: "Some of the captives were kept alive so that they could be tortured by wives and daughters," who "greatly surpass the man in cruelty, for by their cunning they invent more cruel torments, and take delight in them."

Multiculturalism: "Torture and cannibalism of captives was an ancient custom among these nations." Champlain noted that it had an escalating quality (one is reminded Girard's scapegoat theory) "designed to exceed the horror of tortures past."

One wonders if they developed a kind of PTSD that kept the cycle going: "the continuing practice of turture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done":

The Indians were driven by their fear, which appears to have been deepened by the torture... In dark nights along the lake, the torturers dreamed terrible dreams.

Back to the commenter, who adds that "three of the four founding members of the Perennialist School became practicing Muslims -- the first of which, Guénon, abandoned his Roman Catholicism and spent the remainder of his life in Cairo Egypt."

There's an oxymoron in there, because how could the perennial philosophy or religion only be founded in the 20th century? If that's the case, then it's hardly perennial, now is it?

As to Guénon, well, onó ináwa shyó. But conveniently, there's an entire chapter devoted to him in a book I'm currently reading, called The Lord of History: An Essay on the Mystery of History, by Jean Daniélou. But right now I gotta run.... 

An Immodest Proposal

I should acknowledge up front that I really don't have much to say, at least nothing new. A string of meh books has left me bereft of material to pilfer and playgiarize with.  

I do have one new idea, but it would require too much work, plus it's wholly impractical anyway: it involves taking seriously the notion that I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

Well, not me literally. Rather, Western civilization. Christendom. Classical liberalism. The modern world, minus all the leftard scolds spoiling the fun and ruining it for everyone else. 

Our ideological adversaries are permitted to unapologetically insist they've got all the answers -- or else! -- e.g., feminists, homosexual activists, equitarian thieves and hustlers, etc., so why can't we? 

Let's begin with that famous quote by Joe Sobran, hanging right here on my sacred meme screen. Which sentence is wrong?

WESTERN MAN man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible.

Correction: you can express this idea in academia. Once.

It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. 

That last observation manages to be simultaneously a banality and HATE SPEECH!!! 

Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared. 

They have to, otherwise what's their excuse? Israel was colonized until 1948. So what? They've moved on. Most of Africa has been decolonized and independent for nearly as long. They have not moved on, to put it politely. What's the difference? Could it be that there is a correct way to go about things? 

The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will...

That's for sure. Every time I hear this slur, I wonder what depths of loserhood and self-perceived inferiority must motivate the charge (unless it's from white Karens, in which case it is to signal virtue to fellow People of Pallor and superiority over the People of Color for whom they presume to be Saviors). 

... because they [we] don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. 

"Black History Month" is what we psychologists call a reaction formation to what must be an unconscious feeling of Black Inferiority. Blacks who don't feel inferior must surely be embarrassed at the sickening pandering. 

The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it.

Here again, this isn't us saying it, it's them: they just translate "superiority" to "privilege," in order to transform the pain of envy into the pleasures of victimhood and entitlement.

They crudely project this superiority-privilege into whites, even though plain vanilla Americans are way down the list of, say, median household income, after Indian-Americans, Taiwanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Persian-Americans, Nigerian-Americans, Indonesian-Americans, Korean-Americans, etc.

And superiority excites envy.

Envy is part of the standard equipment of every human being, and if you don't manage it, it will manage you -- just like food, sex, or money. Envy is as important to understanding human psychology as are genetics, interpersonal relationships, and the drive for status. (Perennial raccoomendation: Envy, by Helmut Schoeck.)    

Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call "minorities."

Which has become the motive force behind the Brandon Administration. Brandon is our first truly Black president, in the sense that he is unabashedly pursuing the Equity Agenda, which is the newphemism for the old Envy Agenda. (One might be tempted to say Obama was the first black president, but he was the first white female president and the first homosexual president.) 

Now, what sent me down this line of thought? It was the following passage from a book I'm rereading called Being and Some Philosophers, by Etienne Gilson (published in 1949):

There are countries where no professor of any science could hold his job for a month if he started teaching that he does not know what is true about the very science he is supposed to teach, but where a man finds it hard to be appointed as a professor of philosophy if he professes to believe the truth of the philosophy he teaches (emphasis mine).

This despite the fact that science provides only likely knowledge whereas philosophy teaches not only certain knowledge -- truths that cannot not be true -- but without which the practice of science would be strictly impossible.

Neverthelesss, "if a philosopher feels reasonably sure of being right, then it is a sure thing that he is wrong." Such a man is

a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does. He is a man to steer clear of; in short, he is a fanatic.

"Fan" is short for fanatic, and my dictionary defines the former as an ardent admirer or champion (as of a person, technique, or pursuit): ENTHUSIAST. 

So, guilty as charged. I'm a big fan of truth, reality, and civilization. As is our pal Nicolás:

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth. 

Violence is not enough to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference to the particular values that founded it.

An Immodest Proposal

I should acknowledge up front that I really don't have much to say, at least nothing new. A string of meh books has left me bereft of material to pilfer and playgiarize with.  

I do have one new idea, but it would require too much work, plus it's wholly impractical anyway: it involves taking seriously the notion that I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

Well, not me literally. Rather, Western civilization. Christendom. Classical liberalism. The modern world, minus all the leftard scolds spoiling the fun and ruining it for everyone else. 

Our ideological adversaries are permitted to unapologetically insist they've got all the answers -- or else! -- e.g., feminists, homosexual activists, equitarian thieves and hustlers, etc., so why can't we? 

Let's begin with that famous quote by Joe Sobran, hanging right here on my sacred meme screen. Which sentence is wrong?

WESTERN MAN man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible.

Correction: you can express this idea in academia. Once.

It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. 

That last observation manages to be simultaneously a banality and HATE SPEECH!!! 

Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared. 

They have to, otherwise what's their excuse? Israel was colonized until 1948. So what? They've moved on. Most of Africa has been decolonized and independent for nearly as long. They have not moved on, to put it politely. What's the difference? Could it be that there is a correct way to go about things? 

The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will...

That's for sure. Every time I hear this slur, I wonder what depths of loserhood and self-perceived inferiority must motivate the charge (unless it's from white Karens, in which case it is to signal virtue to fellow People of Pallor and superiority over the People of Color for whom they presume to be Saviors). 

... because they [we] don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. 

"Black History Month" is what we psychologists call a reaction formation to what must be an unconscious feeling of Black Inferiority. Blacks who don't feel inferior must surely be embarrassed at the sickening pandering. 

The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it.

Here again, this isn't us saying it, it's them: they just translate "superiority" to "privilege," in order to transform the pain of envy into the pleasures of victimhood and entitlement.

They crudely project this superiority-privilege into whites, even though plain vanilla Americans are way down the list of, say, median household income, after Indian-Americans, Taiwanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Persian-Americans, Nigerian-Americans, Indonesian-Americans, Korean-Americans, etc.

And superiority excites envy.

Envy is part of the standard equipment of every human being, and if you don't manage it, it will manage you -- just like food, sex, or money. Envy is as important to understanding human psychology as are genetics, interpersonal relationships, and the drive for status. (Perennial raccoomendation: Envy, by Helmut Schoeck.)    

Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call "minorities."

Which has become the motive force behind the Brandon Administration. Brandon is our first truly Black president, in the sense that he is unabashedly pursuing the Equity Agenda, which is the newphemism for the old Envy Agenda. (One might be tempted to say Obama was the first black president, but he was the first white female president and the first homosexual president.) 

Now, what sent me down this line of thought? It was the following passage from a book I'm rereading called Being and Some Philosophers, by Etienne Gilson (published in 1949):

There are countries where no professor of any science could hold his job for a month if he started teaching that he does not know what is true about the very science he is supposed to teach, but where a man finds it hard to be appointed as a professor of philosophy if he professes to believe the truth of the philosophy he teaches (emphasis mine).

This despite the fact that science provides only likely knowledge whereas philosophy teaches not only certain knowledge -- truths that cannot not be true -- but without which the practice of science would be strictly impossible.

Neverthelesss, "if a philosopher feels reasonably sure of being right, then it is a sure thing that he is wrong." Such a man is

a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does. He is a man to steer clear of; in short, he is a fanatic.

"Fan" is short for fanatic, and my dictionary defines the former as an ardent admirer or champion (as of a person, technique, or pursuit): ENTHUSIAST. 

So, guilty as charged. I'm a big fan of truth, reality, and civilization. As is our pal Nicolás:

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth. 

Violence is not enough to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference to the particular values that founded it.