The Bad News: You're Out of Touch with Reality. The Good News: Reality Doesn't Exist

When last we spoke, we were discussing Paul Hollander's Extravagant Expectations: New Ways To Find Romantic Love In America, which is a seeming departure from his usual preoccupation with left wing lunacy. He wouldn't put it that way, of course, but in focusing on the distinction between reality and appearances, he demonstrates that the further leftward one travels, the less reflective of reality.

For example, in Anti-Americanism, he emphasizes that he has no issue with honest and accurate critiques of America, but rather, with ones "that are less than fully rational and not necessarily well founded." Purveyors of such beliefs betray a "perceptual distortion such that a caricature of some aspect of behavior or attitude is raised to the level of general belief."

In this regard, I think we need to pay attention to the form before the content; in other words, the vulnerability to this kind of cognitive distortion is prior to what is distorted. To put it more bluntly, in order to have crazy thoughts, one must first be crazy -- at least in some sense of the word, for what else is craziness but a distortion of reality?

So, how do we distinguish between crazy and realistic critiques? Well, I'm not very far into the book, but Hollander provides an example of a type of liberal with whom we are all familiar, who sarcastically asks what is so great about America:

"Is it the genocide of native peoples and the theft of their land? Or is it slavery and the slaughter of millions of Africans and the continued mutilation and attempted destruction of Black people?... Or how we stole part of Mexico; our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki..., refusal to launch a meaningful campaign against AIDS, the denial of reproductive rights for women and the destruction of world's environment." Oh, and support for Israel. Don't get him started.

Okay, so basically the United States wants to destroy the world and everyone in it. Anything else? "The U.S. flag is the symbol of the evil empire. Progressive people should reject it."

Since the craziness is prior to the crazy, the former must be a kind of free-footing attitude that can fluidly attach to other phenomena. Thus, Anti-Americanism can easily move between anti-conservatism, anti-Christianity, anti-Western civilization, anti-white male, anti-Jew, and now anti-Trumpism. Here again, are suggesting that no critique of Trump is valid? Of course not! But as always, we need to distinguish between the valid and the lunatic.

As Scott Adams has so ably described, Democratic operatives turned Trump into Hitler for political purposes, but now cannot turn off the hallucination. Not that they want to. Whether or not the manipulators at the top believe the lies, they certainly want their lo-fo supporters to believe them -- thus the absurd smearing of JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS and Steve Bannon as racist and anti-Semite. All without so much as a nod to reality -- except in defiance of it.

The point is, the same free-floating hatred of America easily attaches to conservatives, to Christians, to Trump, and elsewhere. Thus, the most contempt would be reserved for conservative Christian Trump supporters -- especially female -- which indeed we have seen.

For example, here is how brother Deepak describes us:

"To expand his base, Trump went beyond the seamy collection of Southern racists, religious fundamentalists, ill-informed and uneducated whites, gun fanatics, and reactionaries who are the base of the right wing, to embrace the deeply committed haters in the alt-right. It’s fully justifiable to be repelled by all of it." Yes, it's those even more hateful haters of the alt-right numbering in the triple digits that put us over the top.

So, we are the ones who are out of touch with reality. The good news? Reality is just a human construct anyway. That being the case, there is no way to arbitrate between one vision and another, because there is no reality to begin with. Rather, it's appearances all the way down. And since there is no reality, there can be no deviation from it. No one is crazy because no one is sane. How convenient for the left!

Which leads back to the book in question about modern relationships. Let's put it this way: in the modern world, people have certain expectations of their politics. But they also have certain expectations of romantic relationships. Is there some connection between the two?

Well, there was a time, not too long ago, that people didn't have grandiose expectations of either. Indeed, perhaps the central purpose of the founders was to create a political system in which government would have less power and influence. It is certainly not something we would put our hope in, except insofar as we hope it leaves us the hell alone.

As they say, the less things politicians control, the less it matters who controls the politicians. But the hundreds of millions raked in by the Clinton Foundation is simply a measure of just how much it matters who controls the politicians. The value of a 20 minute talk by Hillary Clinton has plummeted from $200-300,000 to negative territory, in that you'd have to pay people to listen to her now. What happened? What is the nature of the thing that has gone from being so valuable to being less than valueless?

Hollander begins with a socio-historical survey of how human beings have changed in the last couple hundred years, and the effect on intimate relationships. Much of it has to do with what I would call a process of "separation-individuation," only as applied to culture instead of the mother.

Separation-individuation describes a process that begins in psychic fusion with the mother, and ends in an adult autonomy simultaneously capable of mature dependency; note that the separation is for the purposes of a higher fusion later in life, e.g., with one's own family. As the Bible says, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."

But that was nevertheless in a traditional world in which one wasn't radically separated from the group, much less from God. In short, the invention of the individual -- the abstract and atomistic unit of Enlightenment humanity -- had yet to take place.

To be continued...

Strange Bedfellows: Romance & Politics

I recently finished a book called Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Romantic Love in America, after reading of it in another book by Theodore Dalrymple. The premise sounded fascinating: what do personal ads tell us about who we are and who we have become? Professor Backflap relieves me of the burden of explaining the whole idea:

"Hollander investigates how Americans today pursue romantic relationships, with special reference to the advantages and drawbacks of Internet dating compared to connections made in school, college, and the workplace. By analyzing printed personals, dating websites, and advice offered by pop psychology books, he examines the qualities that people seek in a partner and also assesses the influence of the remaining conventional ideas of romantic love.

"Hollander suggests that notions of romantic love have changed due to conflicting values and expectations and the impact of pragmatic considerations. Individualism, high expectations, social and geographic mobility, changing sex roles, and the American national character all play a part in this fascinating and finally sobering exploration of men and women to find love and meaning in life."

Now, this is not normally Hollander's beat. Or is it? He is a sociologist and intellectual historian who has published over a dozen books on communism, socialism, and the left in general; perhaps his most famous is Anti-Americanism. The theme of the latter is as follows:

"Why is it that while millions of people all over the world dream about living in the United States, many American intellectuals believe that this is a uniquely deformed and unjust society? How did the radical beliefs of the '60s survive and become, for many Americans, the new conventional wisdom? How is it possible that while communist systems are collapsing and seek a market economy, critics in the United States remain convinced of the evils of capitalism? Why are there more Marxists on any handful of American campuses than all over Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union? How can we explain that for important opinion makers at home and abroad, the United States has become a symbol of waste, greed, corruption, social injustice, and arrogance?"

So, what is the connection between the two? Not to get ahead of ourselves, but both attitudes -- the personal and political -- seem to involve "extravagant expectations."

Leaving personal relationships to the side for a moment, what is leftism but an extravagant expectation of how the world should be? Leftism expects something of the world that the world can never provide -- in a word... or two, transcendent meaning. Ever since Rousseau penned his malignant flapdoodle, the left has had an inappropriately romantic vision of politics. You might say that when the left falls in love, other people's hearts -- and bodies -- are broken.

Yes, like the wrong woman, the left's ideas are beautiful and seductive, their consequences ruinous. Both Hillary and Obama are Dem fatales.

Hollander reflects only briefly on the connection, noting that throughout his life he has "been interested in -- and indeed morbidly fascinated by -- the conflict between illusion and reality, the apparent and the real."

Let's stop right there, because this is precisely why we have a mind: to discern between reality and appearances. What is truth but the reality behind appearances? And what are phenomena but an appearance of the true?

At least in principle. For it is possible for appearances to become detached from the true -- both personally and politically -- which is when we *fall* into trouble. Indeed, you could say that the whole point of Genesis 3 is to warn us about the hazards of detaching knowledge from reality, AKA God. Do so and you are at once exiled from the Land of the Real. (That's my idea; Hollander has no religious angle at all.)

Schuon explains it perfectly; or at least I agree 100%: "To 'discern' is to 'separate': to separate the Real and the illusory, the Absolute and the contingent, the Necessary and the possible, Atma and Maya." But discernment is complemented by a concentration that (re)unites the two, such that we may affirm the following formula in some variant: "Real became illusory in order that the illusory might become real..." That's the circle of spiritual progress and Arc of Salvation.

Back to Hollander; his interest in reality and appearances is also "linked to the phenomenon of deception and self-deception, both at the individual and collective (or institutional) levels."

Let's pause again. Here we can see that appearances are not necessarily deception; or that deception is something added to appearances that turns them against us. Think of the difference between, say, myth and propaganda. Myth is an appearance that clothes a deep truth, while propaganda is an embodiment of the lie.

Before escaping to the West, Hollander had prolonged immersion in "experiences of political propaganda as the major institutional source and conveyor of illusions; later in the United States I found commercial advertising playing a similar role. Both phenomena were highly intrusive and impossible to ignore."

Here again we see the wrenching of phenomena from reality, such that the former becomes illusion instead of a mode of the Real. Then it is as if Kant is indeed correct: that we are confined to the closed circle of our own representations, no longer capable of contact with the noumenal.

This redounds to everything from multiculturalism to deconstruction to new-age perception-is-reality. But underneath it all it has a single name: relativism. Relativism in any form ensures that we are exiled to the barren land of appearances -- which are no longer of the real, rather, just appearances of other appearances, AKA turtles all the way down.

You might say that leftism is a kind of deceptive personal ad from Ms. World, making impossible promises. Hollander speaks of "the political illusions and self-deception of many Western intellectuals who persuaded themselves of the admirable qualities of Communist systems."

And "Both political propaganda and commercial advertising misrepresent, distort, or at best stretch reality. Both attempt to conceal or obfuscate the difference between the way things are as opposed to the way they ought to be..." (emphasis mine).

Not surprisingly, Hollander parts company with "postmodernist academic colleagues who question the existence of objective reality altogether. Without a belief in objective reality, one could not propose that propaganda and advertising misrepresent and distort reality..."

I know. Controversial.

Now, what is the rationale of the so-called news, of a "free press" -- its reason for being? At the very least it should try to convey something of the reality beneath or behind appearances. Certainly it should not be a transmitter of propaganda, but that is precisely what it has become, and people know this. Except for the sorry 7% or whatever it is who actually trust the media. Everyone else knows MSM journalism comes down to cheesy personal ads that try to tart up the left and make it more appealing -- while denigrating the competition.

Example.

Okay. Here is an embarrassingly personal ad explaining the appeal of Hillary:

"I love Hillary Clinton. I am in awe of her. I am set free by her. She will be the finest world leader our galaxy has ever seen."

Not convinced?

"Millions of Clinton's supporters... expressed it among themselves, all the time, in raptures or happy tears with each new display of our heroine's ferocious intelligence, depth, and courage."

The author even gets into what we discussed above about reality and appearances, stating that beneath the deceptive appearances Hillary is really "an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself.... She belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents." Her "name belongs on ships, and airports, and [even] tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM." Well, she would put the hag in hagiography.

Hmm. This reminds me of one of the unrealistic -- but typical -- personal ads cited by Hollander. These women are so perfect, one wonders why they have to resort to advertising their qualities. There are dozens to choose from -- they're everywhere! -- so I'll just pick one at random:

"Blonde, slender, tall, willowy DWF. Very attractive with graceful lightness of heart, refined intelligence, smiling eyes. PhD/academic. Optimistic, elegant, physically sensual, aesthetically attuned. Lovely profile, long legs. Considered great package: head, heart, spirit. Puts people at ease." Etc.

I'll bite. What's the catch?

D'oh!

"Progressive worldview, passionate about social justice." And no doubt believes Hillary is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself....

Freakout on the Right!

NewsBusters has put together a video compilation of MSM freakouts, and truly, you'd have to be utterly soulless to not laugh out loud. I wrote down some of the comments, because they go to what we've been discussing in the last two posts about about defense mechanisms and decompensation:

--This is a different earth today than it was 24 hours ago (it sounds like Matthews was about to trespass our beat and say "cosmos")

--America is crying tonight

--It feels like the end of the world

--It is a moment filled with fear

--Is there a doomsday plan for this?

--History is put on hold once again

And the winner:

--Get your abortions now because we're going to be fucked (which of course reverses cause and effect)

If what I've been saying is true, it feels like the end of their world because it is the end of their world; this is precisely what decompensation feels like.

Note that it is not just different perceptions, i.e., content; rather, the entire context is transformed. In other words, it's not just a different contained but a radically different container.

Which is all the more pathological. Understand that the mind contains "stuff": thoughts, ideas, emotions, plans, memories, etc. We all know this.

However, it is also a kind of space in its own right. To a certain extent you might even say this follows the different functions of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, whether understood literally or figuratively.

That is, the left side is more linear and rational in the conventional sense, whereas the right is more holistic, intuitive, and translogical. Not surprisingly, what we call the "unconscious" is more deeply rooted in the right brain. Furthermore, the right brain develops ahead of the left, and contains our earliest preverbal (and therefore somatic) memories.

I'm tempted to review some literature on the subject, but it might take us too far afield. I'm not aware of any research that surpasses Allan Schore, who comprehensively integrates our hardware (neurology) and software (mind). The book I have linked is perhaps the most nakedly scholarly, but he and people he has influenced have written more accessible ones.

Let's just look up "right cerebral hemisphere" in the index... Hmm, over 30 entries. This one goes to what I said a couple of paragraphs above:

"The early maturing and 'primitive' right cortical hemisphere, moreso than the left, is particularly well reciprocally connected with limbic and subcortical regions" -- those latter two being the deeper emotional and even "reptilian" centers of the brain. The right "is dominant for the processing, expression, and regulation of emotional information."

Furthermore, "investigations into the neural bases for social interactions should focus on the role of the holistic, affective, and silent right hemisphere in the mediation of social life."

Gosh. There's a lot more interesting stuff of that nature, but following up on it would take all morning and beyond. The text is over 500 pages and there are over 100 pages of references. The guy does his homework.

Recall what Schore says about the processing and regulation of emotional information. In the examples of liberal freakoutery provided above, they all betray obvious difficulty processing what has happened. Note that there can be no merely cognitive, i.e., rational difficulty: we had a presidential election and somebody lost. Happens every four years. End of story.

But that is not the end of the story, because it has caused an earthquake of sorts in the collective right brain (again, whether understood literally or metaphorically). It "feels like the end of the world," and they are indeed living on a different planet than the day before. It's a new cosmos, baby!

It should also be pointed out that, as Schore mentions, the right hemisphere has much deeper roots that extend into our bodily representation. If you trace the mind all the way down to the ground, it merges with the body, thus the common observation of what are called "psycho-somatic" symptoms. I can scarcely articulate it better than moonbatress Sarah Silverman, who tweeted:

For a lot of people, this is the Great Depression, but this time it's emotional & physical. Our bodies r breaking down w fear & rage...

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) November 16, 2016

That r deep! In the shallowest conceivable way, of course.

Now, am I suggesting that the Bob is free of such primitive reactions? Of course not. Like anyone else, my telovator goes all the way down. I'm trying to remember how I felt in 2008 and 2012... Yes, I felt bad. I don't claim to be Spock. However, I did not cry. I was not filled with fear. It was not the end of the world, let alone a different planet. History did not stop. The cosmos was still the cosmos.

In other words, I was able to process and "contain" what had happened -- even though -- and time proved me correct -- I knew full well that Obama was undertaking a direct assault on my world, AKA the world envisioned by America's founders. I knew that we were in for fundamental transformation, good and hard.

But I've also cracked a history book, so I knew that the world is never ideal, never "safe," indeed, never a good place to invest one's hope. Do that and you are building your psyche on sand.

For the ground is not below. Rather, above. But the left -- and this is important, so pay attention -- has replaced religion with politics, so it is as if they have been abandoned by their God, with all that entails. There is no doomsday plan for that, since God is the only reliable doomsday plan, the only sensible hope in the face of the Worst Possible Thing(s).

Christianity assumes the misery of history, as Christ assumes the misery of man.

Christianity does not solve 'problems'; it merely obliges us to live them on a higher level.

And

How can anyone live who does not hope for miracles? --NGDx3

Liberal Defenses Against Reality

It is a truism in clinical psychology -- at least the kind in which I was trained -- that a crisis is an opportunity. That is, it is as if there is an incision in the psyche, such that one can see what is going on under the surface -- beneath the veneer of normality, so to speak.

Again, we all utilize defense mechanisms in order to get through the day life. As discussed in yesterday's post, what is called a "nervous breakdown" is essentially a decompensation, which is to say, a failure of defense mechanisms. The psychic walls have been breached and reality comes pouring in.

During the past week, the collective left has been behaving exactly like a person in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Clearly, they are struggling to cope with what is happening to them -- even though nothing has happened to them as of yet, since president-elect Trump won't even take office for another two months.

This suggests to me that liberalism itself is a collective defense mechanism. Over the past eight years we have seen (once again) that liberalism isn't actually useful for dealing with reality, which is to say, the real world. However, it seems that it is extremely useful for coping with the internal world of the psyche. In other words, its main purpose is as a defense mechanism, not a rational way to actually deal with the world.

Judged on the basis of its efficacy in the world, liberalism is a failure. That being the case, any rational person would be happy to be rid of it. But liberals are not happy, to put it mildly. Rather, they are experiencing varying degrees of terror. ("Fear has won. We are all scared.")

As to liberalism's efficacy in the world, consider just the fact that crime rates are greatly increasing. People are literally less safe. And yet, liberals are feeling terribly unsafe since last week. A couple days ago a defiant Mayor Emanuel warned us that Chicago will always be a sanctuary city, and that illegal immigrants "are safe in Chicago, secure in Chicago, and supported in Chicago."

Ironically, this suggests that illegals are the only people who are safe in Chicago! Wouldn't it be nice if he could say the same of the rest of the population? Chicago's murder rate is up 72%, shootings almost 90%. Don't worry -- it's only American citizens and legal immigrants.

At Happy Acres I found this cartoon, which is funny, but even more true than funny; I don't find it exaggerated at all:

Note how it incorporates a number of common defense mechanisms, beginning with denial. In reality, all defense mechanisms partake of denial, and can even be thought of as modes of denial, some more primitive than others.

Projection is another common defense mechanism, but one must first deny in order to project -- in other words, the denied part of the psyche is projected into the environment and/or into other people.

Hysteria is also a defense, usually involving somatization and dissociation. In the former, emotional pain and conflict are channeled into the body, while the latter involves discontinuities in identity, memory, and perception. You might say that their narratives are disrupted and distorted. It is quite common in adults who were traumatized as children. If you get too close to the trauma, they begin spewing a kind of agitated nonsense. The purpose of the nonsense is to conceal the truth from themselves.

An Immortal and Undeniable Aphorism: Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others (NGD). Thus, projection of guilt is central to the left. White privilege means that through a kind of metaphysical magic I inherit the projected guilt of the leftist.

Think of it: to deny guilt is to at once free oneself of responsibility, duty, and obligation. Therefore it is dehumanizing. Yes we are "born guilty," so to speak, but original sin is a very different thing from projection of guilt.

The point is, the leftist projects original sin into others, and calls it "white privilege." It is obviously crazy, but without it the left cannot function. The Bob never exaggerates. The other day a Clinton spokesloon declared that white women voted for Trump due to "internalized misogyny."

Yes, there is indeed such a thing as internalized misogyny. It's called feminism. But that is the subject of a different post, so we'll let it pass for now.

What else do we have... thought control and name calling. Let's begin with the latter. As you know, we are homeschooling the lad, and I have decided to teach him a course on logic. Why logic isn't taught to every child is a mystery to me. Just kidding! Ask yourself: who would benefit from such lessons in mental hygiene? It would absolutely wreck the left.

Ever since he was old enough to pay attention to the television, I've been informally teaching him about illogical methods of persuasion. It began with the commercials, but this year in particular we have been focusing on statements by politicians and their surrogates. So many fallacies!

Hillary Clinton's entire campaign revolved around ad hominem. In the book I'm using, it is the very first logical fallacy covered. Note, however, that ad hominem is not always a fallacy, in particular, if it is relevant to the matter under consideration. If I say, for example, that "Obama is a lying POS," that's ad hominem, but it is also true and can be substantiated ad nauseam.

But to say, for example, that Trump is Hitler, is just crazy talk. Or how about the latest from evil genius Noam Chomsky, who says that the GOP is the "most dangerous organization in world history." If he's being honest, then he is literally insane.

There is another interesting twist here, because ad hominem is what is called a psychological fallacy, in contradistinction to material and logical fallacies. You might say that the latter two fallacies are located in the person or materials used in making the argument, whereas psychological fallacies are ultimately in the audience; they are in essence appeals to the stupidity and prejudices of the people you are trying to convince.

As if we didn't know that liberal politicians treat their constituents like a lunatic treats an idiot! The point is, if you are convinced by ad hominem alone, then you are probably an imbecile.

Finally, thought control. This goes to another defense mechanism. We've all heard of "controlling" people, but what does this really mean? If we imagine a spectrum, hysterical and obsessional would be at antipodes. Hysterics are "out of control," while obsessives have an unusual need for psychic control. From an Old Textbook by Professor Gradschool:

"Obsessional defenses are repetitious acts or thoughts usually devoted to some act of controlling -- displaced from anxiety about controlling an internal state, an impulse or emotion..."

Such thinking is quite brittle, and the obsessional individual is prone to intense anxiety if the defense is threatened. In this view, the entire regime of speech codes is a kind of obsessional defense, for which reason safe spaces are needed when the defense is breached.

The end.

My Magnanimous Response to Liberal Cries for Help

Although I would prefer to move on, it's difficult to concentrate on anything else while this collective nervous breakdown of the left continues to unfold. And it is a nervous breakdown, or at least mirrors precisely what we mean by that colloquial term.

For exactly what happens when someone goes bonkers? Think of the many colorful variants: losing it, shattered, unhinged, screw loose... There must be more synonyms for craziness in the thesaurus than for most any other word, although I want to focus on more descriptive ones that evoke a visual image: unbalanced, crackbrained, not tightly wound, out of one's skull, beside oneself, wild-eyed, etc. There is a kind of folk wisdom embedded in such terms, as they are rooted in the experience of what the crazy person looks like to the observer.

The whole spectacle is of course superschadenfreudilisticexpialidocious, but only up to a point, that point being the threshold of violent acting out.

For example, Instapundit links to hasbeen screenwriter Paul Schrader, who writes that the election "is a call to violence.... This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violent resistance. We should be willing to take arms.... Alt right nut jobs swagger violence. It’s time to actualize that violence, like by Civil War Michigan predecessors I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed."

Who knew Taxi Driver was an autobiographical instruction manual? "Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up."

When a previously functioning individual loses his mind, we call it "decompensation." Of course, this can happen for genetic and biochemical reasons, but obviously this isn't what is occurring here, except in the sense that people who are genetically more vulnerable to mental illness are likely to be on the left.

Indeed, the whole mindset of the left is rooted in identification with victimhood, which is rarely healthy, even if you are an actual victim, the reason being that it is paralyzing to locate agency outside oneself (at least in a free society), and legitimizes primitive instincts of revenge. Nevertheless, it is a seduction to do so, and leftism is the seductress.

The feminine connotation is not accidental, for femininity is associated with maya, which is in turn broadly associated with illusion. As the Buddhists rightfully say, of all the forms of maya, that of woman is supreme. All men know this, while only some women do; but if they don't, it is only because it has been hammered out of them by feminism and other deviant ideologies.

In the cosmic scheme of things, the power of maya is not necessarily supposed to be a bad thing. Yes, it is an appearance, but an appearance of reality, precisely! Thus, is there anything on earth that surpasses the divine beauty of woman? Ask a man. For his real opinion. Or better, just observe how he votes with his... feet.

Nevertheless, the distinction between reality and appearances opens up a kind of space for ceaseless cosmic mischief. Think of the "femme fatale," the seductive but deadly charmer. And this can be traced all the way over the historical horizon and back down to the ground, for consider the subtext of Genesis 3: serpent seduces Woman, and Woman seduces Man.

From what and to where? Clearly, from reality (Eden, God, vertical paradise, celestial union, etc.) to appearances (earth, maya, separation from the Principle, etc.). We've posted on this subject before, for example, on the importance of God's first question to Adam, Where are you, bro? This prompts the first recorded human lie (the first lie having come from the serpent, who is symbolically closest to earth and therefore farthest from heaven).

God's question conveys the idea that Adam is literally in a new space. The lie reveals that this space is no longer rooted in reality and truth.

Incidentally, is any of this intended to be a criticism of womanhood in any conventional sense? No, not at all, except insofar as it illuminates a kind of reciprocal weakness in men and women. If you want proof, look at a map of female voting patterns, in which Clinton wins in a glandslide. Women are obviously much more susceptible to the political Lie than are men.

But men are susceptible to their own forms of the Lie. I suspect that they are attracted to leftism for very different reasons, at least on average. That is to say, women are likely seduced by the "nurturing" state, while men are attracted to the bullying state (and you can't have one without the other). Look at Obama: in what other legitimate context could he act out his bullying instinct? I mean, Michelle would kick his ass. Maybe as a teacher... or community organizer, but that's about it.

Back to craziness and decompensation. Decompensation presumes that we all have psychological defense mechanisms of varying degrees of maturity, intensity, and pervasiveness, e.g., denial, projection, repression, reaction formation, and others. The most primitive would be outright denial, while healthier ones include sublimation and humor. Ha!

Even so, every defense mechanisms partakes of denial, for that is what a defense mechanism defends us from: reality.

Decompensation "refers to the inability to maintain defense mechanisms in response to stress, resulting in personality disturbance or psychological imbalance." This may ultimately end in "persecutory delusions to defend against a troubling reality."

I don't normally like to merely "psychologize" people with whom I disagree. First of all, it's too facile and is easily misused. It is enough to take the left's ideas seriously, and to simply point out the errors in fact and logic.

But in the past week the left has been... crying for help, you might say. And I use the word "crying" advisedly, for we've all seen those video compilations of liberal freak-outs, not to mention all the stories about university safe spaces for electoral trauma. Cleary some kind of psycho-political breakdown is occurring.

Forgive me if I'm rambling, because I'm thinking this through in real time, and you are the beneficiaries of these not yet half-baked musings.

The reaction of conservatives can scarcely have been more different when we lost in 2008 and 2012. Yes, we were downcast, but I don't remember much in the way of assault and arson.

The first thing that occurs to me -- and we've discussed this idea in the past -- is the distinction between what are called the "paranoid-schizoid" (PS) and "depressive" (D) positions in developmental psychology. I hate to get all pedantic, so I'll be brief.

Fortunately, there is a wiki entry on the subject. Let's see if it suffices.

"A position... is a set of psychic functions that correspond to a given phase of development" and "can be reactivated at any time.... The earlier more primitive position is the paranoid-schizoid, and if an individual's environment and up-bringing are satisfactory, she or he will progress through the depressive position."

Correct. Here is what happens when PS defenses come to the fore (I am removing references to the "death instinct," since it is not strictly necessary to understand the phenomena):

"Paranoid refers to the central paranoid anxiety, the fear of invasive malevolence. This is experienced as coming from the outside, but ultimately derives from [projection].... Paranoid anxiety can be understood in terms of anxiety about imminent annihilation and derives from a sense of the destructive instinct of the child.... [T]he immature ego deals with its anxiety by splitting off bad feelings and projecting them out. However, this causes paranoia.

"Schizoid refers to the central defense mechanism: splitting, the vigilant separation of the good object from the bad object."

As for the depressive condition, it involves a more mature resignation and acceptance of reality; moreover -- and this is important -- it involves integration of primitive splitting of good and bad and therefore tolerance of ambiguity: "In working through depressive anxiety, projections are withdrawn, allowing the other more autonomy, reality, and a separate existence."

This goes to one of the most primary differences between left and right, for example, as outlined in numerous books by Thomas Sowell (such as The Vision of the Anointed). That is, conservatism is characterized by the tragic (read: depressive) vision of man, while leftism is always rooted in some harebrained utopian scheme. And utopia always evokes bullying (up to and including terror), because the enemies who stand in the way of utopia must be eliminated. How could any decent person be against a perfectly just and equitable world?

When I see the rioters throwing their tantrums, or the college students huddled in their safe spaces, or shellshocked MSM journalists on the brink of tears, I see children terrified by paranoid-schizoid ghosts of the nursery.

We're out of time...

Everything has Changed. Nothing has Changed.

We should not be frightened: what we admire does not die. Nor be delighted: neither does what we detest. --Nicolás Gómez Dávila

I awoke this morning thinking about this curiously airy state of mind since last Tuesday's election. It's too important merely to enjoy. Rather, we need to stand back from it and observe it -- be in it but not of it, you might say. Let us not mimic the unseemly emotional incontinence of the left when their savior healed the planet back in 2008.

Now that I'm pondering this, it seems I've always been this way -- that is, holding a part of myself in reserve from events around me. You know, the Witness. Or Ironist, anyway. For example, I attended a lot of rock concerts in my adultolescence, especially between about 17 and 25. You remember the drill: you get totally wasted beforehand, and hope to peak when the band comes on stage.

Nevertheless, even under those chemically fortified conditions, I was never able to "lose myself" completely. Let's say I'm at the Inglewood Forum, with 18,000 people who are singing and moving in unison in a kind of group trance. Now I find the whole idea creepy, but even then I was on the outside. I was inside the music, to be sure, but not inside, or at one with, the crowd. A part of me noticed what a bunch of undignified animals they were.

I could never figure out if this Witness was a good thing or a bad thing. Was it just a neurotic and excessive "self-consciousness," something I needed to annihilate? That was actually the idea behind a lot of psychotherapy models back then -- to completely break through all defenses and inhibitions, behind or underneath which we would find our radiant and unsullied True Self.

I actually started reading psychology before I ever dreamed of -- or was consigned to -- being a psychologist. I've mentioned before that I was caught by total surprise when my brain unexpectedly clicked on at around age 25, at which point I began reading everything in sight. Prior to that, I may have read one book on a voluntary basis -- Ball Four, by Jim Bouton. But being an autodidact meant being unguided by any coherent tradition or narrative; instead of approaching something from the center out, I just began nibbling randomly at the periphery.

Anyway, most of the psychology books I read back then were of the Strip Away All Inhibitions! variety. I'll bet I still have a few of them tucked away in my closet... Let us rummage...

Not sure why I haven't inflicted these upon the library. I suppose I was waiting for just this moment. Don't worry. I won't spend a great deal of time on this self-indulgence. Let's begin with R.D. Laing, who was quite big back then. His basic point in The Divided Self is that normality is madness and madness normality. In short, western civilization is insane, largely due to its pervasive repression. I'm sure he blames Christians for that. So let's all take our clothes off and engage in a cathartic primal scream.

There's an Aphorism for that: To educate man is to impede the 'free expression of his personality.' One wants to post a sign in public places: Thank You For Repressing Yourself. Or, No Shame, No Service. In fact, shame was a big thing we needed to do away with according to the New Psychology.

Time out for another Aphorism: Modern man imagines it is sufficient to open the windows in order to cure the soul's infection, that it is not necessary to clear out the trash.

I read somewhere that a mob of progressive snowflakes -- must have been in San Francisco -- actually engaged in a group primal scream to discharge their trauma over the election. And since they think in these terms, they imagine that the people who supported Trump were engaging in their own primal scream by electing him. It can't be the ideas. Rather, just a howling mob. (What would the left do without projection?)

I can see that if we proceed down this path, this post will rapidly spiral out of control. Back to matters at hand: this curious state of mind.

I am of course relieved, not so much because Trump won but because the left has been thwarted. But has my life actually changed? Unlike liberals who abuse their children with horror stories about the monster Trump, I assured mine that our lives wouldn't change much if at all under a Clinton administration. Indeed, I told him that if we didn't own a television set, we might very well notice nothing at all. I told him I was worried about the future of the nation, but reassured him that I would probably be dead by then.

Politics is like flypaper for irrational exuberance. I remember writing posts in the wake of the 2008 and 2012 elections, counseling readers -- or myself, anyway -- to not get caught up in the negativity, that Obama would surely crash and burn once he underwent the formality of actually existing, instead of being only a projection of infra-religious liberal fantasies.

So we certainly don't want to mirror the left by projecting our conservative fantasies onto Trump! And even if he accomplishes everything he sets out to do, it won't alter our existential circumstances. I mean, we're still going to die.

Nor will the struggle ever end. Look at the Reagan years, a "golden age" of conservatism. Some even imagined we had arrived at the End of History. But human nature emerged intact, such that we find ourselves battling for the same ideals -- indeed, the same ideals enunciated by the founders 240 years ago.

Now, progressives are by nature more prone to this illusion, because they literally believe history has sides and that they are on the right one. It makes no sense to them that history could suddenly veer off course three days ago. They have no theory to explain this. Well, no theory except, racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia: the "whitelash," as Van Jones put it.

People think this election was unusual in offering such flawed candidates. But elections usually come down to the lesser of two evils, because it's much easier for human beings to know what to hate than what to love. Politics, as they say, is the organization of hatreds. In my case, for example, I can say without reservation that I despise the left (not necessarily the individuals, mind you, but the ideology). But can I say without reservation that I love any politician, let alone Trump?

I've been thinking of another ironic aphorism to the effect that one can only embrace without reservation lost causes. Why is this? Well, prior to Tuesday I assumed Clinton was a sure thing, which made it easy for me to express my hostility toward the left with no ambivalence or restraint.

But now Republicans are in charge, and once your beautiful ideas are mingled with actual human beings -- or even just with reality -- you are bound to be disappointed. I'm thinking again of when Reagan became president -- or Thatcher prime minister. In both cases it took a couple of years for the improvement to manifest.

In Reagan's case, there was a sharp downturn in the economy before it began its unprecedented growth. For the past eight years the Matrix Media has given Obama a pass on the weak economy. I will be surprised if they give Trump a month. And if the positive results aren't immediately seen -- which is impossible -- there will be War.

Which means there will be War. The next four years -- starting this very moment -- will be relentless War. There will be no honeymoon, no slack, no courtesy, no forbearance. Scott Adams has suggested that the de-Hitlerization of Trump will take a little time, but that it will happen. I'd like to believe that, but I am skeptical. Reagan was never de-Hitlerized, and the media are only more ideological today than they were then.

My point is that it's a long season. Don't get too upset after a loss or too exultant after a victory. The first thing they ask when you win the Super Bowl or World Series is "do you think you can repeat next year?!" Because in reality there is no victory, only struggling toward it.

Furthermore, it is vital to struggle on behalf of the good, while leaving the rest to providence. Do the right thing for its own sake, not because you expect a certain result. The celestial goal is fixed, but the terrestrial route is always circuitous.

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems (NGD).

And no man can solve politics, because there is no human solution to the problem of Man.

Oh, and if you want to see what voters rejected last Tuesday, just look at the unrepressed expressions on the faces of the howling and demented mobs. They remind us of what we despise.

Pig Wrestling and Spiritual Warfare

If nothing else, this election shows that in order to defeat the inveterate (for it is in their nature) bullies of the left, one must bully right back. Genteel conservatives such as George Will and Charles Krauthammer win every argument but lose the war.

But is bullying a bully actually bullying? One of the most common cinematic themes is the bully getting his just desert, often at the hands of another bully. Many films come to mind, but True Grit is typical. Recall that Mattie, whose father has been murdered, is unable to find justice through official channels, so she hires Rooster Cogburn to get the job done.

Toward the beginning of the film, Mattie inquires about apprehending her father's murderer:

-- Why aren't you out looking for him [her father's murderer]?

-- I've no authority in the Indian Nation. He's now the business of the US Marshal.

-- Who's the best marshal they have?

-- I would have to weigh that... William Waters is the best tracker. He is half Comanche and it is something to see him cut for sign. The meanest is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double tough and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. The best is probably L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. Now he may let one get by now and again but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake.

-- Where would I find this Rooster?

-- At the Federal Court this afternoon.

Later they show Rooster on the witness stand, being cross-examined by a defense attorney who shows that he likely murdered a couple of suspects in his custody:

-- How long have you been a Deputy Marshal, Mr Cogburn?

-- Four years, come March.

-- How many men have you shot in that time?

-- The prosecution objects!

-- Overruled!

-- How many men have you shot since becoming a marshal?

-- I never shot nobody I didn't have to!

-- That's not the question. How many?

-- Shot or killed?

-- Let's restrict it to killed, a more manageable figure!

-- Well, twelve to fifteen, stopping men in flight and defending myself et cetera.

-- Twelve to fifteen? So many you can't keep a specific count. I have examined the records. A more accurate figure is available. Come now, how many?

-- Counting them two Whartons, twenty-three.

-- I felt you'd come to it with a little effort. Twenty-three dead men in four years. That makes about six men a year!

-- It's a dangerous business.

-- How much more for those you arrest!

I remember seeing that film when I was 13 or so. I wonder: was there anyone in the audience who didn't identify with Rooster over the condescending and smooth talking criminal lawyer who may know the law but not the human heart? But that was a different age.

One can well imagine a similar courtroom scene with Donald Trump on the stand and some sleazy and pretentious media figure cross-examining him. In fact, we scarcely have to imagine it, because we saw it in the debates. The left's entire campaign -- involving a conspiracy between the DNC and the Matrix Media -- revolved around this sort of shaming strategy.

Here we see an interesting dynamic: is it possible -- or does it make sense, at any rate -- to be shamed by the shameless? One of the outstanding characteristics of the left is that they are indeed shameless. They are routinely caught doing and saying things -- think only of Hillary or Obama -- which would cause you or I to be mortified. And yet, they have this superhuman -- or infrahuman -- ability to utterly deflect it.

A good example is dirty Donna Brazile, who was caught funneling debate questions to Clinton. Not only is she not ashamed, she is defiant -- even going so far as to claim she is being persecuted for being a Christian woman! Now, that brings shamelessness to a metaphysical level.

Or think of John Podesta, or the rest of the DNC cretins and MSM propagandists (but I repeat myself) revealed as duplicitous hacks. No shame.

Cut to the secret tape of Billy Bush and Donald Trump. A typical Republican -- the good trackers who follow the letter of the law and bring them back alive -- would have been sunk. John McCain refused to get into the mud with Obama and the left, as did Mitch Romney. The criminals got away.

They say it is pointless to wrestle with a pig, because you both just end up dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. But what if the winner of the pig wrestling match gets to be president? The odious "never-Trumpers" not only imagine it possible to defeat pigs without getting muddy, but to engage in the process while maintaining one's honor, dignity, and savior faire intact -- without so much as a single hair out of place.

The first instinct of a normal human being in our victorious situation -- in other words, a conservative -- is to be magnanimous, to seek unity, to reach across the aisle, and all that. Ignore this instinct! This is spiritual warfare, not cricket.

To extend the metaphor, it is more like a deadly mud-wrestling match with a pig, in which only one party comes out alive. In such situations one does not have the luxury of being kosher.

Even so, I recommend firmness, not cruelty. As Churchill said, if you have to kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite.

-- I still think you showed poor judgment in this affair, but you're not the scoundrel I took you for. You have my thanks and, with certain reservations, my respect.

-- How nice! How is sis?

-- Gravely ill, I'm afraid, but still able to direct her affairs. She commissioned me to pay you the balance of the moneys due. You will find that it also covers an additional sum... for saving her life.

What if I Told You that Democrats Want You Back in the Matrix?

I suppose the theme of The Matrix has been beaten to death. Yes, it's a cliché, but perhaps not yet a completely worn out one, or at least I can squeeze out one last dollop of truthpaste.

As Mohammad and José will soon be the most popular names of Democrat children, perhaps a generation from now Neo will be a common name among children of conservatives. I know that I am raising a Red Pill child -- a red diaper baby -- from the ground up. At 11 he already has more politico-economic sense than I did at 40. Of note, I don't force anything down his throat. That would be the way of the blue pillheads.

Rather, I ask him to explain from first principles or economic logic what is wrong with this or that Democrat promise -- for example, raising the minimum wage, or raising taxes, or a federal law forcing "gender pay equality." Each of these has an emotional appeal -- and only an emotional appeal -- but is easily demolished via an understanding of first principles (such as supply and demand) and the incentives being put in place.

This goes to why I transitioned from left to right. Did I already mention this? I'm forgetting, because I detailed it in a lengthy comment while attending a seminar a couple of weeks ago, but then the comment was lost due to malfunctioning hotel wifi.

You could say that it had to do with accidentally stumbling upon a number of what I thought to be "universal truths" to which any intellectually honest person would be forced to assent, irrespective of whether one calls oneself liberal or conservative. Truth is truth, obviously.

Actually, that tautology goes to one of the things I discovered after realizing that Truth is true: that for the left, this is not the case. Rather, what they say is true. But this simply follows from the principle that truth is relative -- or, as it is more commonly expressed, that no one can know the truth, such that all opinions are equally valid.

We have seen this principle ruthlessly applied during the Obama era. For example, it is at the very heart of all the racial healing Obama has brought about over these past eight years. We don't need to rehearse the whole disgusting record, but on numerous occasions I have seen liberal apologists on TV being confronted with the facts of the Michael Brown case (among others), only to respond that the facts were in the eye of the beholder, and besides, it illustrated a much greater problem -- for example, of police brutality toward minorities, or discrepant rates of incarceration.

But when shown that those are equally bogus, the blacktivists simply retreat into deeper swamps of bogosity. There is simply no reaching them with fact or logic. While I have the highest admiration for scholars such as Heather MacDonald who dispassionately lay out the facts, she is coming from one level, while the left is coming from another.

Or, back to our original theme, she is coming from outside the Matrix, while her detractors are coming from deep within it, such that it would require a muscular proctologist to pry them out.

Let's pause for a moment. This is not a political disagreement per se, because that would presume two sides operating from the same level. For example, let's say I am having a mathematical argument with someone holding a baseball bat. I suggest that 2+2=4, and he expresses his disagreement by fracturing my skull. Has he actually prevailed? Well, yes. But has truth been vanquished? No. Truth remains true, regardless.

The structure of that little absurd scenario is identical in form to most any argument with a liberal. For example, I say: labor, like anything else, doesn't escape the principle of supply and demand -- increase its cost and you will have less of it, AKA more unemployment. The liberal responds with his verbal brickbat: YOU HATE POOR PEOPLE YOU ARE A TOOL OF CORPORATE GREED YADA YADA!

Different levels, you see.

Here's a principle we can surely agree upon, right? After all, we're all Americans. Freedom of speech. Why do we have free speech, anyway? A typical liberal might suggest that it is gift of the government, but that is not what the founders had in mind.

Rather, it is a natural right that comes from the Creator; or in other words, it is in the nature of things. If you understand what a human being is, then you understand why he is entitled to freedom of thought, speech, and association -- why he requires these things in order to be human.

Which is why there are no speech codes on the right. Taste, yes. Decorum too. But on what possible divine-human principle can one ground governmental restrictions on speech? (And they are of course governmental so long as universities are propped up by federal and state funding.) To deny speech is to deny man; more insidiously, it is to prevent man, i.e., man in his principial fullness.

Or, as the Aphorist says: "All truths converge on the one truth, but the routes have been barricaded." Conversely, "God is the impediment to modern man."

In other words, the road to God is assiduously blocked by the left, for the very reason that God is the left's biggest roadblock. Discover God, and the left's principles disintegrate. This is precisely why "The left's theses are trains of thought that are carefully stopped before they reach the argument that demolishes them" (NGD).

Now, the only way out of the Matrix is via God. And I mean this quite literally, for any escape from the Matrix is categorically impossible without divine aid.

What I mean is that absent the transcendent Absolute, we truly are consigned to Kant's phenomenal Matrix. Of course we cannot know reality, rather, only the appearances given us by our neurology. We are in a closed circle from which we can never escape. End of story. Relativism reigns supreme, in which case it is indeed just as valid to say that Michael Brown was a Gentle Giant as it is to say he was a vicious thug too stupid to anticipate what happens when you charge a policeman and try to separate him from his gun.

I know I mention him a lot, but if you don't believe me, then believe Gödel. For our purposes, what Gödel proved with epic finality is that every Matrix has a hole. It brings to mind Leonard Cohen's great line that There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in.

Ponder that one for a moment, for it extends vertically all the way back to our implicit memories of Eden, for what exactly happened there? We could say that man, faced with a primordial choice, chose the blue pill. For which reason we have the second commandment reminding us not to worship our own manmade idols, or to take up residence in our blue pill hallucinations.

Come to think of it, that is also why we have the second amendment to defend ourselves from blue pill poppers who want to force their barbarous idols upon us.

The left long ago lost the debate of ideas. Which is why their most effective idea is to just flood the zone with blue bodies:

How Do We Get Outta Here?!

This post was written yesterday (Sunday), not today. As I wrote it, it had a different vibe from weekday posts. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it is more detached from time constraints, and even from any audience. It feels more like just... thoughts bubbling up from the ground. More so than usual, at any rate.

Programming note: early appointment tomorrow Wednesday, so no post. As to the election: I'm not falling for it this time, as I did in 2012, so Clinton wins easily. With a liberal-industrial complex that subsumes the media clones, the cultural zone, the feminist crones, the low IQ drones, and their wealthy padrones, she just has too many shortcuts to 270. So this world -- at least the plane they operate on -- belongs to the wicked one. What else is new? Just more grist for the cosmic mill.

So: God is simultaneously the source of our greatness and of our nothingness. Remove God from the equation, and we are certainly not great and not even nothing; rather, just an absurdity. All life becomes a kind of brownian motion writ large.

But in reality we are always situated between these two poles, from which our freedom arises. In other words, if there is only God, then we are not free, rather, only prolongations of his omnipotence; and if there is no God, then freedom is either illusory or meaningless. In other words, we are either determined, or we have "freedom" with no telos, which equates again to absurdity.

Suppose you awakened one morning in a desert or a dense forest, with no map or compass. How would you find your way out? Well, that is approximately our situation down here, isn't it? Here we are. How do we orient ourselves? Is there a north star, a fixed reference to guide us?

For most of human history, religion has served this purpose -- more specifically, religion understood as communication from beyond the world system. Within the world we have things like math, or logic, or induction, or empirical observation, but none of these can transcend themselves. Ultimately they are closed circles. They are like dry bones with no animating spirit.

Hmm. Is there perhaps something that unifies those modalities just mentioned? Yes: intelligence. Could the existence of intelligence itself lead the way out? For how did intelligence get in here, if it doesn't somehow already inhere in here?

First of all, what is intelligence? There are different ways of looking at it. There is human intelligence, but there is also the intelligence of a single cell, compared to which matter is utterly stupid. But how does intelligence arise from utter stupidity?

No, supposing that intelligence exists, we must trace it all the way down, prior to the emergence of life. It must somehow be in the nature of things.

We are accustomed to scientism denying final causation, AKA teleology. But here they also deny causation at the other end. Thus, we are to believe that intelligence simply emerges with no formal or final causation; or that an actuality exists with no prior potential to have become actual. It must therefore be an uncaused cause. Which is another name for God.

One of Aquinas's proofs of God is that every effect has a cause, and that a cause cannot give to the effect something it does not have.

By way of analogy, imagine a chandelier hanging by a chain. We may follow each link upward to try to discover what is causing it to hang suspended in mid-air. You can try to avoid the problem by suggesting that the chain just goes on forever, but this simply defers explanation of how the chandelier is hanging there in the first place. No link can explain that, no matter how many we posit.

Note that we begin with an empirical observation: a light suspended in mid-air. However, with pure metaphysics -- even if we cannot see it -- we know that there must be something like a "ceiling" to which the chain is affixed. Ultimately the power of each link derives from that -- again, even if we have no way of seeing the first.

Could intelligence be similar to the chandelier? Does it go all the way up? And down? Note that it is strictly impossible for it to go all the way up unless, like the chandelier, it is hanging from something. It can only go up if it has first come down, otherwise you are just positing a form of the "endless links" theory.

"How is it possible," wondered Einstein, "that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?"

Note that he assumes a couple of premises: that mathematics is "a product of human thought"; and that it is "independent of experience." First of all, those two seem contradictory: if mathematics is independent of experience, then it cannot be a product of human thought; and human thought is an experience, in which case mathematics would be dependent upon it.

Most if not all of these problems vanish if we do not start by severing being and knowing. Note that Einstein tries to have it both ways: if math is a product of human thought, then it is on the knowing side; but if it is independent of it, then it is on the being side.

Even prior to Kant we have Descartes inverting the cosmos with his "I think, therefore I am" gag. In other words, he tries to derive being from thinking, which no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time, but completely fails at providing any kind of self-sufficient guiding star (remember, we are lost in the desert bewilderness, trying to find a way out).

How about starting where we always start, with Being Is? The real miracle is that Being Is, therefore I Think. For me, that would be our ground floor -- or rather, the ceiling to which the Lamp of Intelligence is affixed.

Schuon expresses it in as concise and lucid a manner as is possible:

"The first thing that should strike a 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."

Not that "I think"; rather, that "thinking is." Or better, intelligence is. In fact, we can cut out the middleman altogether and just say: I AM. This presumes that existence is personal -- or rather, that Being is a Person, with all this implies. You might say that persons dangle from Personhood, as does intelligence from Truth.

"[C]ertainly, it is not our personal thought that preceded the world, it was -- or is -- absolute Consciousness, of which our thought is a distant reflection precisely -- our thought which reminds us, and proves to us, that in the beginning was the Spirit."

For "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."

Absurd and inconceivable, perhaps, but this has never stopped our Ministry of Truth from propagating it.

"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve" (Eugene Wigner).

Except that we do understand it if we get our bearings right. And we even deserve it by virtue of our God-given intelligence, for intelligence without truth is an absurd cruelty.

Humble Brag and Grandiose Humility

Ah yes, the relationship between being and knowledge. Who cares, anyway? Put another way, why do I care so much? Who bothers with such nonsense? Don't you have more important things to do?

Sure there are more important things. But "Thinking that only important things are important hints of barbarism" (NGD).

Besides, "I do not speak of God in order to convert anyone," writes the Aphorist, "but because it is the only subject worth speaking of."

I guess I'm just built this way. It's in my nature. I am my own argument against Darwinism, because where's the utility in selecting for traits that have nothing whatsoever to do with survival? And my most conspicuous traits are absolutely good for nothing. Just ask my in-laws!

I suppose artists feel the same way about their non-utility. Or should, anyway. But more often than not, their art is mingled with their narcissism, resulting in more, not less, self-importance. Toss stupidity into the mix, and you have an incurable liberal: the triple threat of uselessness, self-importantance, and stupidity.

"No one is important for a long time without becoming a fool" (NGD). And no one can be a celebrity for even a short time without becoming a jackass. Conversely, "Even if humility did not save us from hell, in any case it saves us from ridicule."

The temptation is always there to diminish God and elevate oneself. But some circumstances make it easier to do that -- fame, power, money, intelligence, any gift, really. For some people it isn't grand enough to be in the image and likeness of God. Rather, they want to be God.

That's got to be the ultimate humble brag, right? Not the Creator of the universe, only the image and likeness. And yet, between these two is an infinite abyss that prevents it from being a boast, for anything not-God is by comparison nothing.

Now, what is the relationship between being and God? "Being is ‘ambiguous,’" writes Schuon, "because it is at the same time absolute and relative, or because it is absolute while being situated in relativity, or again, to express ourselves more boldly though perhaps all the more suggestive, because it is the ‘relative Absolute.’"

Being is ultimately the object of thought. Again, Kant severed this link, such that our knowledge is no longer "about" anything but itself. Being is rendered noumenal, completely beyond any human knowledge.

Like anyone could know that! Again, Kant is committing the error we discussed in last Friday's post -- that in order to limit thought, one must think both sides of the limit.

You have two alternatives as to where to begin your cognitive adventure: to begin in being, or to begin in thought. But if you begin in the latter, then the adventure is over. Or at least it is guaranteed to go nowhere, since it can never recover the being you have cut off at the outset.

One of the ironies of modernity -- or whatever you call this era through which we are living -- is that people simultaneously accept the Kantian rupture (e.g., "perception is reality") while implicitly holding to a scientistic paradigm that presumes to know all (at least in principle).

So, is science about being? Or just about itself? The deconstructionist must regard scientism as naive (i.e., pre-critical), while the scientist must regard the deconstructionist as an intellectual buffoon (as if quantum theory, for example, is just words about words).

Well, they're both wrong in their own ways, and deserve one another. Scientism is naive; and postmodernism is pernicious buffoonery.

Being that I am the twisted product of an extensive modern education, I didn't completely sort this out for myself until... let's see... until 1999, when I read philosopher of science Stanley Jaki's Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. And even then, it didn't completely sink in, because that was before I would have been able to connect it to the whole western -- which is to say, Christian -- tradition.

What was once plain common sense is now a revolutionary statement: that objects are prior to the subject. Jaki: "A book with the subtitle, 'a treatise on truth,' must... convey its author's resolve to face up to the question: 'What is truth?'"

And by truth he does not mean opinion. But nor does he mean "dogma." It's more like what I was saying the other day about 1) man being entitled to truth, and 2) Bob not wising to get into arguments with people over the nature of truth. Rather, there is only one logical path -- or one that doesn't end in implosion, absurdity, or self-refutation -- and this is it. To be sure, there are any number of alternative paths, but they necessarily end nowhere.

Our first step -- whether we admit it to ourselves or not -- is "the registering of objects." If not, then "the philosopher will be guilty of a sleight of hand, however sophisticated." For "he will have to bring in through the back door the very objects the use of which his starting point has failed to justify." The man with the umlaut strikes again!

Recall the crack about any radical dualism ending with a bit of one side on the other: "If objects are not presented as a primary datum, some other factors will expropriate that role.... For objects will not cease claiming their rights to be recognized for what they are: objects and not their disembodied conceptual factors."

There is no way out of this truth except via deception, self- or otherwise: "This truth cannot be evaded, let alone refuted, because the refutation itself is an act of communication, an implicit" appeal to an objective means whereby other subjects may be be reached.

This goes to the reality of communication. In this post, for example, I am communicating to you via objects called words. Therefore, even before anything else I say, I must implicitly believe that my readers will register these objects and decode their meaning.

Which, as it so happens, mirrors the structure of reality: intelligible objects transmitting their meaning to intelligent subjects.

To express it baseballically, "The pitcher is the philosopher, the ball he throws is the book in which his treatise on truth is literally embodied. And since he throws that book... at his fellow philosophers, his treatise on truth must be such as to assure rigorously the reality of that book or ball."

Pathetic

"When we get right down to it," wrote Bob yesterday, "the ultimate question is the relationship between epistemology and ontology, of knowing and being."

Why is this the ultimate question? Because if thinking does not disclose being, then we can know nothing of ultimate reality. If knowing isn't about being, then it's just about... phenomena, or appearances, or more knowing. Knowledge becomes as enclosed in itself as tenure.

This thought occurred to me while reading an article linked at Happy Acres. In it Anthony Esolen naïvely laments the fact that the modern -- or postmodern -- college student prefers to study himself:

"They were angered by my suggestion... that there was something narcissistic in the common insistence that people should study THEMSELVES rather than people who lived long ago and in cultures far removed from ours by any ordinary criterion, and that there was something totalitarian in the impulse of the secular left, to attempt to subject our curriculum to the demands of a current political aim."

I can't even imagine wanting to be a college professor in this climate. It would be analogous to being a physician for people who refuse to be treated, or a police officer in a... Democrat precinct where they would sooner shoot you than allow you to do your job.

Esolen is essentially complaining that students don't want to know what is going on beneath the surface, rather, only to be reinforced about their particular surface. Happy Acres Guy suggests that this may have to do with race and intelligence, but I would prefer to just say intelligence, because I don't need the hate. It is sufficient to say that abstraction varies with intelligence, and that the stupider one is, the more difficult to take on a universalist perspective, or even to see beyond oneself.

This is well understood in developmental psychology, at least the last time I checked. One of the first things you learn about is Piaget's stages of childhood cognitive development. They have been tweaked and adjusted over the years, but there is no gainsaying the fact that children start out with concrete thinking and become more capable of abstraction as they develop.

Some friends were over for dinner the other night, and their 17 year old daughter was doing some calculus homework.

Calculus. Where does that lie on the abstraction spectrum? Certainly it is above my pay grade, mathwise. I took algebra in the 9th grade, which I flunked. I retook it in the tenth grade, but this time paid attention and aced it. I took geometry in the 11th, and received a gentleteen's C, followed by Algebra II in the 12th -- which I think is trigonometry -- but discretely withdrew after one semester and one D. My point, if I have one, is that I never got to calculus.

I also took physics in the 11th grade, but learned precisely nothing. However, since the teacher graded on a curve, somehow nothing didn't translate to an F. Probably something to do with nonlocality.

My parents -- in particular, my mother -- just expected me to take these brainy types of courses, despite the lack of aptitude. It was an unspoken assumption that I would attend college, although I myself literally never gave it a thought. Somehow, I just thought things would work out without my having to work them out -- that Slack would prevail.

Nevertheless, I did go on to college -- the junior kind -- and majored in Business Administration, because I had no earthly idea what else to major in. There I took Business Math, which I actually passed. I squeaked by in Economics and even Accounting, but once I got to a four year university, hit the wall with Money & Banking and some other course with lots of numbers.

What are we talking about here? Right: abstraction. And knowledge. And being. But believe it or not, this pathetic post is over, because I have to get ready for work. We'll continue down this road tomorrow, and try to redeem ourselves. I think I have some ideas for some ideas.

We Hold this Irrational Faith to be Entirely Self-Serving...

Continuing with yesterday's post, we were pointing out how if determinism is the case, then error cannot exist; and that if we are not free, then we wouldn't even have the word. Therefore, it is logically impossible to say that "determinism is true" -- just as it is logically impossible to affirm that "truth doesn't exist."

I suppose it is possible to say that truth doesn't exist, so long as you don't mean it in a logical way; rather, only as an intuition or hunch. But then we're back to faith, and what you're really saying is that faith is a reliable guide to know things we cannot otherwise know.

A paradox enters here, because it would imply that what is determined is not strictly true (since there can be neither truth nor falsehood). What I mean is, imagine a closed system; or better, imagine that the system of logic really were complete and self-sufficient. If that were the case, then everything within the system would be as predetermined as 2 + 2 = 4.

But in reality, no human system is complete, and every system contains assumptions that cannot be proved by the system. Rather, they come from outside the system, via anything from spontaneous hunches, to tacit foreknowledge of an impending solution, to God reaching down vertically via revelation. But ultimately the human circle can only be completed by and with God.

That latter is another Unavoidable Truth. You can of course say that God doesn't exist, but be mindful of what you are implying with that statement.

First of all, if it is true, then it is false, because you have eliminated any ground or basis for truth. But let that pass. What is really happening is that you are truly subjecting yourself to the Ultimate Con, because you are pretending to close a circle that in principle can never be closed by human effort.

In the absence of God, man is like a gaping wound on the surface of being. What I mean is that human beings are uniquely "opened up" to knowledge and experience, but without any reason for being so. Prior to the emergence of man, animals are indeed self-contained within their own neurology and instincts. Animals are not capable of exiting that closed circle, or of even knowing that there is anything outside their immediate experience.

I was attempting to explain this principle to a fellow over at Instapundit the other day. I see from subsequent comments that he is a conservative. But he's obviously not conservative all the way down -- and up. For he was simultaneously insisting that Darwinism is true, and that man may discover his first principles in logic.

I ask you: how can this be the case? Even if you stipulate the Darwinism part, how did randomly evolved animals escape the closed circle of Darwinism in order to know it from the outside? How do definitionally immanent creatures attain transcendence? I attempted to express this in an aphoristic way that was perhaps too aphoristic: "If Darwinism is true, then it is false."

That is not an argument, it's just a logical entailment. It is a necessary conclusion. Conversely, if you are going to affirm that Darwinism is literally true, then you can only do so by stepping outside Darwinism and making an appeal to faith, as per the above. But then you've opened a whole can of cosmic wormholes, such that Darwinism becomes a rather meager thing. It's just one wormhole among many.

When we get right down to it, the ultimate question is the relationship between epistemology and ontology, of knowing and being. As we said the other day, Kant is the one who officially presided over the divorce, ironically, in 1776, when the Critique was published.

I say "ironic" because that was the same year a bunch of dead white guys opened up their political manifesto (after a brief paragraph of throat-clearing) with the line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

We can only thank Providence that Kant wasn't there, because he would have immediately taken issue with the gag about self-evident truths. How would they have expressed it in a manner acceptable to Kant?

"We hold this truth to be self-evident, that truth is unknowable by man. Rather, we can only know forms of our own sensibility. In other words, we have only access to appearances, never reality.

"Having said that, we infer that there must be a noumenal reality behind the phenomenal appearances. It's just that we can't know anything about it.

"Anyhoo, that's the bad news. The good nous (lol!) is that religion is all about the noumemal. I know what you're thinking -- 'so, religion is a lot of nonsense about the unknowable?' Not so fast! It might be true. You never know. That's why religion involves faith.

"Therefore, I propose this rewording: 'We hold this irrational faith to be entirely self-serving...'"

As it is unable to explain that consciousness which creates it, science, when it finishes explaining everything, will not have explained anything. --Nicolás Gómez Dávila

I'm Not Arrogantly Arguing, I'm Humbly Insisting

As we were saying, if science has no limits, it means -- paradoxically -- that man has all the more. It is paradoxical because man, and only man, is capable of science, let alone a limitless one.

What's a good -- or at least bad -- analogy? It is like being a king, only the more power this king has, the smaller his kingdom, to the point that the kingdom vanishes entirely with his absolute power over it.

Likewise, when man possesses limitless science, he causes himself to disappear. He ends with a total explanation of nothing, certainly as it pertains to man. Which of course brings to mind an Aphorism or two:

"Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist's opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession."

"What ceases to be thought qualitatively so as to be thought quantitatively ceases to be thought significantly."

A world reduced to quantity is Hell. And science deals only with quantity. Not to knock science, because quantity surely exists. It's just that we mustn't allow the tool to become the master.

BTW, I mentioned in a comment that for the last week or so I've been commenting at Instapundit, mostly just one liners and other assorted insultainment.

To back up a bit, that is how I started this blog, by commenting elsewhere, and people then following me here. I thought that perhaps I might reach out to members of the scattered tribe who don't know the tribe has reassembled over here, just a click away. You know -- "be ye fishers of Raccoons," and all that.

Anyway, every once in awhile I toss in a more metaphysical zinger such as the above -- "when man possesses limitless science, he causes himself to disappear" -- but it either clanks or generates an argument.

Now, a zinger like that -- like one of Don Colacho's aphorisms -- is not meant to start an argument. Rather, it's meant to provoke a guffaw-HA experience, a sudden flash of insight, like "how stupid of me not to have thought of that!" At any rate, if my site meter can be trusted, not a single soul has wandered over here from there.

Which is fine. I don't do this for the attention, only the uncritical adulation. But another thing I've noticed is that my ideas are equally offensive to materialist and religionist alike. I'm trying to put myself in their shoes and figure out why.

I would guess that both see my humble self as arrogant, the former as arrogant-stupid, the latter as arrogant-grandiose. Both accuse me of pretending to know things that cannot be known, while the scientism types accuse me not knowing things that everyone knows. Bill Maher to the left of me, Rick Warren or Joel Osteen to the right.

Dávila: "One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of imbeciles, if religion's case were not just as serious."

Here is an example of an Aphorism that is not an argument. Rather it is just the Truth. One can either recognize or not; one can either assimilate the principle or fall short of it:

"There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap."

I was trying to patiently explain this in my own bobnoxious way to a commenter at Instapundit, but he kept insisting that it was possible to ground thought in pure logic. I was only trying to help -- not argue -- but not a single point got through.

Frankly, I don't think we need Gödel to tell us that any logical system contains assumptions that cannot be proved by the system.

Furthermore, this truism is not confining -- it's liberating! It means that man is always free, no matter how much you try to cram him into your secondary ideological reality. Gödel's theorems are simply a more abstract and operational way of saying that man is always conformed -- or condemned, depending on your politics -- to transcendence.

Because man is free and open to transcendence -- which amount to the same thing -- reducing him to any system erodes both his freedom and the vector of his freedom, AKA God. God must be the ground and destiny of our freedom, or else it is as if freedom dangles from the sky, unattached to anything.

So many outstanding Aphorisms on this subject, for example, "If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, error does not exist." Think about that one: we may not know truth, but surely we know error. But we can't know error unless truth exists, so there!

For the same reason, we can only know of necessity because of freedom. Absent freedom, we wouldn't even have the word. And think of the irony -- that a person who is totally cynical of transcendence -- say, a Bill Maher -- is the one they call a "free thinker." But "free" is precisely what he cannot be, if freedom means anything. And only someone as modest as your humble servant could be so sure of the truth.

Limitless Science, Limitless State

"To limit thought you must think both sides of the limit."

I first heard that somewhere else in another form, but I can't remember where. Maybe it was Robert Rosen; he said something to the effect that no matter where you draw the line, there will be some part of one side on the other. My son ran into this dilemma a few weeks ago, when he was trying to imagine "nothing." Obviously, whatever you imagine, it will still be something.

Likewise, no matter where you draw the line between subject and object, there will nevertheless be some of one in the other. How's that? Well, to even call something an object -- to even notice it -- is to abstract some essence from it, so that it stands out from everything else. This is what Aristotle refers to as the "first act of mind," and there is no way around it short of lobotomy or tenure (but I repeat myself).

In fact, this is one of the things Socrates was attempting to explain to Kant yesterpost. More generally, a great many philosophers over the past several hundred years only believe what they do because they have simply dismissed people like Aristotle and Aquinas without bothering to understand them.

But it is written (in more than one Aphorism): To feign knowledge of a subject, it is advisable to adopt its most recent interpretation. And The only man that saves himself from intellectual vulgarity is the man who ignores what it is fashionable to know.

Truth cannot be measured by the calendar. Back when I was a liberal, I did not know this. So, for example, when I undertook the task of studying philosophy, I assumed that I could take a shortcut by ignoring pretty much everything before the 19th century, and just cutting to the chase. Why bother with all the antiquated stuff that's been superseded by better minds?

Therefore, I began at the end, with the existentialists (both philosophical and literary) -- Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Kafka, and even "Christian existentialists" such as Kierkegaard and Berdayev (although I was thoroughly unqualified for the latter two).

Back to the paradox of limits. I think I also encountered the concept in various works of the Catholic philosopher of science Stanley Jaki. In fact, one of his books is called The Limits of a Limitless Science. That title popped into my head the other day, because I was thinking of how the tyrannical ideas of a "limitless science" and a "limitless state" are mutually reinforcing.

Think of the founders, who created what was supposed to be a limited government. Why? Well, for one thing, they were very much aware of the limits of man. Because man is morally flawed, self-interested, warped by passion, and subject to error, the last thing they wanted to do is to give this beast more power over the rest of us beasts.

But in the new and improved view of the left, there is no limit to knowledge and virtue -- their infamous Fatal Conceit -- and therefore no justifiable limit to the powers of the state. I don't have time to get into how many progressives have expressed this deeply moronic view, but happily, Jonah Goldberg has performed this service in his Liberal Fascism.

As I have said before, the battle war between left and right is not symmetrical. Let's say I believe leftists are deluded assouls. Conversely, leftists think I am deplorable. Fine. I have no problem with that. The difference is that the deplorables wish to have less power over the assouls, whereas the assouls wish to have more power over me.

But because man is what he is, there will always be more assouls than deplorables. The attack on deplorables is really a form of ethnic cleansing. But that is what the left does: it has no limits. Which is why the state can never be too powerful, taxes can never be too high, speech can never be too regulated, and thought can never be too policed.

Wait a minute. There's a switcheroo in there: how does the left go from having no limits to imposing all sorts of limits on our freedom?

Easy. In fact, there's an Ap... horism for that: As the state grows the individual shrinks. Therefore -- and you can look it up, i.e., crack a history book -- the limitless government of left wing statists inevitably ends in mortifying existential shrinkage.

What does this have to do with a limitless science? Only everything. For if science has no limits, it means that -- paradoxically -- man has all the more.

To back up a bit, the proper name for unlimited science is scientism, and as scientism grows, man necessarily shrinks. For example, if scientism says that man is just an ape with a couple more randomly evolved tricks, this hardly elevates the stature of man.

If only what is measurable is real, then whole dimensions of humanness are violently excised from our being. If free will is an illusion, then it is perfectly appropriate for the state to ignore our God-given liberties. If there is no soul, then abortion can provoke no moral qualms. Indeed, since morality itself is just a social convention, then we can ignore it altogether.

So, why is there no limit to the Clinton's greed, ambition, corruption, and will to power? Because there is no limit to the left's.

One of the severest tests of the scientific mind is to know the limits of the legitimate application of the scientific method. --Clerk Maxwell

Skepticism of Skepticism

Ah, yes, the Total Explanation. I always have to check where we left off in order to begin anew. But this morning we don't have much time, let alone to explain everything. Then again, no amount of time would be sufficient to explain the timeless, so there's that.

In addition to being entitled to a Total Explanation, I also believe it should be accessible to Pure Thought (via the quasi-divine Intellect). I suppose that's why I am so drawn to Schuon: he comes closer than anyone to a Total Explanation via Pure Intellect.

Frankly, this used to be the whole point of philosophy. Then Kant came along and said that there can be no Total Explanation, because all we are really explaining is ourselves. This is said to be a great advance in the progress of philosophy, when in actuality it is just giving up. It is an a priori surrender. Like anyone could know that you can't know it all!

Which sounds like a joke, but it isn't. I remember Peter Kreeft expressing this view in his Socrates Meets Kant. That is, unlike all previous philosophers (although Descartes no doubt -- or dubiously, rather -- paved the way), Kant presumes to begin in epistemology rather than being.

In the words Kreeft puts into his mouth, Kant claims that being "conforms to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforming to being," such that "in knowing, the known object conforms to the knowing subject rather than vice versa."

Therefore, we don't really know being -- or the world -- at all. Rather, "the form, or intelligible content, of our knowledge comes from us rather than the world."

There you have it: a Total Explanation that explains precisely nothing!

Nice trick. The left has been dining out on it ever since, with the rest of us picking up the bill. For here is where Perception is elevated to Reality -- to the point that one's own mental troubles are conflated with Micro-aggressors everywhere:

"Reason's job [is] not to mirror the nature of things but to construct the nature of things, as an artist constructs his art: not to discover the form in the matter and abstract into universal principles, but to put the form in the matter, to impose the form on the matter as a sculptor imposes shape on marble, or a musician imposes melody on sound."

Kant presumed to critique the efficacy of pure reason. Fair enough. But Socrates-Kreeft turns the tables on him by similarly critiquing the Critique: now who's the more critical, Kant or Coon?

Here is how Socrates picks Kant apart using nothing more than the everyday power of pure thought:

"If Aristotle is wrong about knowledge mirroring reality and you are right about reality mirroring knowledge, it seems that you still have to assume his old notion of truth when you say that your new notion of truth is true, or the way things really are."

Kant: wha? (I'm paraphrasing.)

The point is, if Kant is correct, then it necessarily leads to what I said yesterday about man's stupidity being total and ineradicable:

"We must give up the whole of the task of philosophy as it was so nobly conceived by two thousand years of philosophers before you. We must cease claiming to know truth..." In short, if truth cannot be known, how can Kant's critique be true?

Kreeft-Socrates tosses in a nice gag by Wittgenstein, that "to limit thought you must think both sides of the limit."

Heh. Out of time.