Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You

Back in the day, I used to occasionally dredge the arkive and pull up a moldy artifact worthy of a re-read. 

After, all, these posts are never intended to be timebound, otherwise why bother? Nothing is more disposable than yesterday's news, so even when a post is oriented around the hysteria of the moment, it is in order to elucidate a deeper principle. If they're only about the left's daily tantrum, to hell with it. Who needs another voice yelling at you about things you can see with your own three eyes?

There were other excuses. For example, presumably few folks read the blog every day, let alone every year or decade, so for them an old post will be as new. 

For that matter, these decroded posts might as well be new to me, since they're banged out spontaneously in a certain frame of mind. Reading is very much a different mode, i.e., receptive but critical vs. expressive and perhaps a tad forgiving. 

Rereading a post allows me to view it with more critical distance and see if it passes the current sniff test. If something smells off, I can excise the rotten part and perhaps save the rest of the post from infection. Moreover, I inevitably encounter cringworthy passages I can blot from the Akashic record. 

The bottom line is, I really have no idea what's down there, so I'm as surprised as anyone else.

And frankly, at the moment I have nothing new to report, just the same old counter narrative. When this occurs, I never know if it's the end of the blog or just the end of a cycle. In any event, it affords me the opportunity to look down and back. Gnostalgia. 

Now, these are dark times. But so too was Obama's previous reign -- or incarnation, rather -- so I thought to myself, why not go back exactly 12 years and see what we were going on about? Maybe we can learn something, if only this too shall pass. No doubt into something even worse.  

Here it is, March 30, 2009:  Surfing the Eternal Waves of Novelty to the Sands of Time: 

We were discussing the freedom of the object -- which in itself is a strange sounding notion, being that we usually think of freedom as residing only in the subject, if indeed we acknowledge spiritual freedom at all. 

To put it another way, if the subject weren't free, then it would not only be an object, but we would have no name for it. Or any other names, for that matter. Bottom line: to say object is to say subject. Now, one of these must be prior, and it surely isn't the former.

The infinite plenitude of the object world reminds me of something I once read on the back of a Sinatra album by the king of comedically bad liner notes, a man named Stan Cornyn. 

For you youngsters out there, vinyl albums used to have an essay on back about the music therein, sometimes by a critic or celebrity, other times by an obsequious PR flack such as Cornyn. Although Frank -- overly harshly, in my opinion -- dismissed the song as "a piece of Shit," Cornyn enthused that Sinatra's phrasing   

comes out mmmmmmmmm all the way. If he runs out of gas on a phrase, which is a very rare bird for the man, then he runs out of gas two-and-a-half miles after anybody else would. He sings like he's got an extra tank of Texaco in his tummy (emphasis mine).

That's the point we're driving at: the object world always appears to us as if it's got an extra tank in its tummy: no matter how much we know, there's always more to be known. The tank never reaches empty, or we would be as God.

When we look at the world "the possibilities of life are infinitely more abundant than what is actually on display.... There is an incomprehensible prodigality in the very essence of life" (Balthasar). 

I remember something Whitehead said along similar lines -- that out of the infinite pool of possibilities, only a relative few undergo the formality of becoming. Potential is infinite. Reality is finite. Or, time is the serial crystallization of possibility.

Of course, the higher up the ladder we ascend, the more this becomes apparent. For example, one of our unavoidable limitations -- or sad conditions of existence -- is that a single lifetime can never be sufficient to actualize all that is latent within us. D'oh!

In the words of the Aphorist: The intellectual capital of the adult is often restricted to a small lottery he won in adolescence.

This is an odd situation that should be noticed by more people, but I think the problem is that most people foreclose their infinite potential so early in life, they don't really feel the sting, except in a vague or displaced manner. 

Then again, it would be a waste of timelessness to dwell on this inherent lack, because life itself floats atop this infinite sea of potential. Imagine if existence were as simplistic as imagined by the metaphysical Darwinist or bonehead atheist, deprived of its intrinsic mystery. 

This is indeed one of the purposes of a spiritual practice -- not to sit safely on the shore like the village atheist, nor to drown oneself in the ocean like the nondual mystic, but to ride these ceaseless waves of novelty from the depths of being to the shore of existence.

As Balthasar expresses it, we cannot look at the reality of undeveloped possibilities as "a realm of limitation and poverty." Rather, "the very purpose of this fullness in the womb of life is to illustrate life's richness and superabundance. It would betoken the poverty of being, and ultimately of the Creator, if everything possible were also actual" (emphasis mine).

Imagine the alternative: some musician might come along and write the last song, or a poet might compose the last poem: "That's it. We're done here. We've run out of songs and poems." 

But this can never happen. You can call it a privation, but it's also a mercy, for it means existence is a gift that never stops giving. The cosmic tank is always half full. 

Which is no doubt why we often inappropriately idealize artists, who seem to live on that shoreline between infinite potential and finite actuality. This is the dreamscape between thought and expression. To paraphrase someone, the Aeon is a child playing with colored balls along the shore.

In turn, the purpose of a secular indoctrination is to crush this natural mysticism and to replace the infinite world with godless abstractions and progressive concretions. Then, once the soul is sophicated, it projecst the "missing infinity" into time. Thus is born every spiritual perversion from leftism to scientism to liberation theology to gaia worship. It is the elevation of Ø to O.

However, it isn't exactly correct to say that the infinite cannot be found in the finite, for in truth, this is the only place it can be found -- just as it is impossible to locate substance in the absence of form. Rather, form is precisely where you will find the substance, and vice versa. 

Thus, "the finite appearance as such is the coming to light of a certain infinity." The realization of finitude is at once the "revelation of its intrinsic infinity. This infinity truly becomes visible in its appearance as the excess that does not become visible." Again, finite reality always sings to us as if it's got an extra tank of Texaco in its tummy.

As such, any knowledge is surrounded by a penumbra of mystery, which gives it its... tang. Again, imagine how dreadful life would be if there were some one-to-one correspondence between object and subject. Obviously, subject and object are stuck with each other until death do they part, but a statically bi-polar situation would be a marriage made in hell.

And that's no joke, for Raccoon Hell is a place where everything simply is what it is, with no remainder. Knowledge of any kind is always surrounded on all sides by the great unKnown.

This latter is surely "known," only not in an explicit manner. It is this unKnowledge that allows us to tend toward the actualization of a self which can never be fully known to us. It is reminiscent of the "luminous darkness"of faith, which allows us to approach the unKnown God who is increasingly known without ever exhuststing his knowability.  

Thirst runs out before the water does. --NGD

Top Doc Reveals the Secret of Endless Creativity!

The previous two posts promised to reveal the One Weird Secret, but got sidetracked along the way. In order to prevent this from happening again, I'm going to reveal the secret at the beginning and take it from there: relativity in divinis. 

I'm not sure why Schuon translates it into Latin. To make it sound more venerable, I suppose. There's a tendency among traditionalists to root their ideas in antiquity, when they are actually quite modern and even postmodern -- in a manner of speaking -- bearing in mind that this designation has nothing to do with the calendar per se. "Transmodern" would be a better term, for transcendence is timeless. 

For this reason, you will search in vain for a "premodern" traditionalist. For one thing, no one in the premodern world knew of other traditions, at least in any deep and intimate way. Or, there was a name for other traditions: wrong; or ignorant, barbaric, heathen, haram, not exactly kosher, etc.  No one attempted to delineate the abstract and nonlocal metaphysical principles of which this or that religion is the local expression. 

Some thinkers touched on it, but didn't pursue it very far -- Augustine, for example, who claimed that "that which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients and never did not exist." In short, the principles have always been present, but known implicitly and imperfectly. 

Thomas too gets close but then pulls back. Let me see if I can find a quick example without getting lost in the weeds. This one is pretty darn abstract:

Intellect is the first author and mover of the universe.... Hence the last end of the universe must necessarily be the good of the intellect. This, however, is truth. Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe.

For which reason Schuon often repeats the gag that "there is no higher privilege than truth." Wait -- what about love? I appreciate the sentiment, but unfortunately man is able to love wrongly while still loving. Don't even get me started on my first girlfriend. In other words, we can love the wrong persons, ideas, or things. We can also have a disproportionate love, as Jesus often reminds us.

But intelligence is the conformity of mind to truth. We cannot know truth wrongly. Of course, we can know it partially, but we can't literally "know falsehood," because this is the opposite of knowledge. This latter occurs because the intellect is clouded by passion, or interest, or pride, or leftism, or some other crosscurrent. 

There are also levels of truth -- recall the image of the concentric circles -- but these are nested in higher truths (ones closer to the center) that determine the lower. No lower truth can fundamentally contradict a higher truth, despite the efforts of atheists and progressives to anchor their truths in something lower than Truth itself.

A few weeks ago I was discussing some of my reservations regarding Garrigou's strict Thomism, which characterizes God as immutably immutable, AKA radical changelessness. For me, this creates a host of problems, some intellectual, others more personal -- for example, how does one relate to a God who cannot relate to us (for to "relate" is to be relative to)? Why pray to a fixed God, and how can "create" and "immutable" be reconciled?  How can there be something other than God?

Of course, there are attempts to explain these things, but they remind me of the effort to save the appearances of geocentricity with an appeal to epicycles within epicycles, or the Newtonian system that eventually had to posit unknown variables to make it work. 

Maybe the truth is more prosaic -- that everything (every positive reality) has its analogue in God, only preeminently. Come to think of it, what is creativity but a kind of eminent change? Certainly it isn't difficult to understand it as a "perfection" in which we have the privilege of participating. Otherwise all change is bad, including the creation. But God himself said it was good!

Anyway, I had a fruitful back-and-forth with a reader on this subject, and I couldn't express it more eloquently than he did:

Well, the relativity of God is, precisely, what makes the world possible, along with a human consciousness that renders it intelligible. Of course, that does not preclude a non-relative dimension to the Absolute which is also necessary. The challenge is not to confuse metaphysical levels. 

Clearly there is a mutable aspect to the Divine, without which the relative could never arise (along with the imperfection we find in the world). But if the essence of God were only mutable, then the traditional notion of deity would go out the window. As Schuon remind us, we have to accept that there are two phases to ultimate reality -- an unmanifested mode and a manifested one (the latter being a necessary and ‘dynamic’ consequence of his infinity). 

Therefore, there must be attributes and qualities of God that do not change (His goodness, mercy, beauty, eternity, beatitude etc.) -- without which we cannot meaningfully speak of an Absolute at all -- but, at the same, we cannot deny the reality before our eyes that discloses a world that is evidently not God (“My Kingdom is not of this world”) but which, in the final analysis, cannot be other than God (i.e. in a limited or privative mode). 

Accordingly, any kind of ‘radical immutability’ is not tenable. We must, therefore, only speak of a qualified immutability that allows for the relative ontological reality of the world and man (which remain divine manifestations). Otherwise, one is left with the unsatisfying Vedantic notion that the created order is nothing but an illusory maya which is equally untenable.

To be continued... 

Top Doc Reveals the Secret of Endless Creativity!

The previous two posts promised to reveal the One Weird Secret, but got sidetracked along the way. In order to prevent this from happening again, I'm going to reveal the secret at the beginning and take it from there: relativity in divinis. 

I'm not sure why Schuon translates it into Latin. To make it sound more venerable, I suppose. There's a tendency among traditionalists to root their ideas in antiquity, when they are actually quite modern and even postmodern -- in a manner of speaking -- bearing in mind that this designation has nothing to do with the calendar per se. "Transmodern" would be a better term, for transcendence is timeless. 

For this reason, you will search in vain for a "premodern" traditionalist. For one thing, no one in the premodern world knew of other traditions, at least in any deep and intimate way. Or, there was a name for other traditions: wrong; or ignorant, barbaric, heathen, haram, not exactly kosher, etc.  No one attempted to delineate the abstract and nonlocal metaphysical principles of which this or that religion is the local expression. 

Some thinkers touched on it, but didn't pursue it very far -- Augustine, for example, who claimed that "that which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients and never did not exist." In short, the principles have always been present, but known implicitly and imperfectly. 

Thomas too gets close but then pulls back. Let me see if I can find a quick example without getting lost in the weeds. This one is pretty darn abstract:

Intellect is the first author and mover of the universe.... Hence the last end of the universe must necessarily be the good of the intellect. This, however, is truth. Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe.

For which reason Schuon often repeats the gag that "there is no higher privilege than truth." Wait -- what about love? I appreciate the sentiment, but unfortunately man is able to love wrongly while still loving. Don't even get me started on my first girlfriend. In other words, we can love the wrong persons, ideas, or things. We can also have a disproportionate love, as Jesus often reminds us.

But intelligence is the conformity of mind to truth. We cannot know truth wrongly. Of course, we can know it partially, but we can't literally "know falsehood," because this is the opposite of knowledge. This latter occurs because the intellect is clouded by passion, or interest, or pride, or leftism, or some other crosscurrent. 

There are also levels of truth -- recall the image of the concentric circles -- but these are nested in higher truths (ones closer to the center) that determine the lower. No lower truth can fundamentally contradict a higher truth, despite the efforts of atheists and progressives to anchor their truths in something lower than Truth itself.

A few weeks ago I was discussing some of my reservations regarding Garrigou's strict Thomism, which characterizes God as immutably immutable, AKA radical changelessness. For me, this creates a host of problems, some intellectual, others more personal -- for example, how does one relate to a God who cannot relate to us (for to "relate" is to be relative to)? Why pray to a fixed God, and how can "create" and "immutable" be reconciled?  How can there be something other than God?

Of course, there are attempts to explain these things, but they remind me of the effort to save the appearances of geocentricity with an appeal to epicycles within epicycles, or the Newtonian system that eventually had to posit unknown variables to make it work. 

Maybe the truth is more prosaic -- that everything (every positive reality) has its analogue in God, only preeminently. Come to think of it, what is creativity but a kind of eminent change? Certainly it isn't difficult to understand it as a "perfection" in which we have the privilege of participating. Otherwise all change is bad, including the creation. But God himself said it was good!

Anyway, I had a fruitful back-and-forth with a reader on this subject, and I couldn't express it more eloquently than he did:

Well, the relativity of God is, precisely, what makes the world possible, along with a human consciousness that renders it intelligible. Of course, that does not preclude a non-relative dimension to the Absolute which is also necessary. The challenge is not to confuse metaphysical levels. 

Clearly there is a mutable aspect to the Divine, without which the relative could never arise (along with the imperfection we find in the world). But if the essence of God were only mutable, then the traditional notion of deity would go out the window. As Schuon remind us, we have to accept that there are two phases to ultimate reality -- an unmanifested mode and a manifested one (the latter being a necessary and ‘dynamic’ consequence of his infinity). 

Therefore, there must be attributes and qualities of God that do not change (His goodness, mercy, beauty, eternity, beatitude etc.) -- without which we cannot meaningfully speak of an Absolute at all -- but, at the same, we cannot deny the reality before our eyes that discloses a world that is evidently not God (“My Kingdom is not of this world”) but which, in the final analysis, cannot be other than God (i.e. in a limited or privative mode). 

Accordingly, any kind of ‘radical immutability’ is not tenable. We must, therefore, only speak of a qualified immutability that allows for the relative ontological reality of the world and man (which remain divine manifestations). Otherwise, one is left with the unsatisfying Vedantic notion that the created order is nothing but an illusory maya which is equally untenable.

To be continued... 

Try Not to Gasp at Gagdad's Latest Post!

Just the usual Friday flight into a full-blown freeforall of freakflaggery.

We left off in the mydst of an elucidation of the One Weird Trick for clearing up metaphysical confusion and incoherence via seeing God stereoscopically (or better, tri-scopically).

Rather than building a careful bridge to our conclusion, let's start at the far end and then ski back down, i.e., descend from the celestial mountaintop to the terrestrial plains. After all, the book from which we are quoting is called From the Divine to the Human, and we mean it:

both conceptions -- the unitary and the trinitary -- meet and are resolved in their archetype, which is none other than the Absolute at once immutable and radiating; being what It is, the Absolute cannot not be immutable, and It cannot not radiate. Immutability, or fidelity to itself; and Radiation, or gift of Itself; therein lies the essence of all that is (Schuon).

Problem is, immutable and radiating are a bit like particle and wave herebelow. But in nether case is there contradiction, rather, complementarity, i.e., two views of a single reality.

Hmm. There are as many paths back down as there are up, and we're trying to choose just one. 

Come to think of it, if you really want to feel overwhelmed, there are as many paths as there are individuals. And ultimately, each person is essentially a path back to God. Or from God. Your choice.

The image comes to mind of a body stretched over an abyss so others can scurry over. But we'll bridge that cross when we get to it.

As Fr. Garrigou explains, even a single trail presents the vertical wayfarer with "great variety": "one part crosses the plain, another climbs more or less steep slopes; part of the road can be covered in daylight, part at night, and that in fair or stormy whether," etc. 

At the moment, for example, there's a bit of fog in our channel, but we're forging ahead anyway. Damn the torpidity!

In any event, there is no stasis in this cosmos, not even if we're mouldering in the doldrums: for as Garrigou says in The Three Ages of the Interior Life -- and he's boiling down the collective testimony of centuries of pneumanautical adventurers --  "Not to advance is to retrogress."  

That's pretty much our daily directive, isn't it?: oneward, inword, upward! What's the alternative?   

Nor is our progress -- or our retrogression, for that matter -- at a uniform rate of speed. Rather, -- at both ends, evidently -- our velocity increases as we approach the singularity (or diversity, depending): 

the soul ought to advance more rapidly toward God as it approaches Him more closely and is more drawn by Him, just as the stone falls more rapidly as it draws near the earth which attracts it.

Vertical gravity. Which, come to think of it, isn't so much an attraction as it is the tendency of space to curve around large objects. 

Now, what is the largest object? Yes, it is what men call God, but recall the image of the point surrounded by concentric circles: supposing you're a vertically untutored physicist orbiting around the center. Obviously, the circle is larger than the point, which is inconceivably -- literally -- small. Physics wins! 

But the physicist loses, in the time-honored manner of "gaining the whole material world while losing your immaterial soul." Yes, it's one of those pyrrhic victories in which the operation is a total success. Only the patient died.

So let's make a memo to ourselves: don't do that. It's not just soph-destructive, it's plain stupid, the height of absurcularity.  

Back to our mountaintop. Before descending, let's have a look around. Interesting. Here is a house with three doors. Well then, let's invite ourselves in!

Locked.

That's okay. The doors are labeled; or rather, each has a main heading in ALL CAPS, with various subheadings below. One door says ABSOLUTE. A second says INFINITE. The third says PERFECTION.

From outside, these appear as three different aspects or dimensions or modes. But behind the doors these three are somehow one. It's a bit like the Deep State: we know it's there because its effects are obvious, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Another image comes to mind of a triangular mountain. At its peak is the peak of another mountain, this one upside down. The three doors are at the point of contact between the peaks, but upper mountain is off limits, at least in this life. Among other things, it is infinite, while we aren't.

Note, however, that "infinite" has no positive content. Rather, it's just the negation of finitude. We know all about finitude, since we're plunged into it. What is its negation? Just nothing? No, it's something alright, both in form and content, respectively, for it is the radiation of the sovereign good, precisely.

Put it this way: as Plato well understood, it is in the nature of the Good to communicate, i.e., to radiate, itself. What good would the Good be if it kept all the goodness to itself? Not very!

Which leads to the subheadings on the doors, alluded to above. Or rather, it is like one of those blinky toys: tilt it one way and it says ABSOLUTE. Tilt it another way and it says FATHER. For which reason we just say ABBASOLUTE.

Now, the FATHER is necessary being, except in the ghetto, but that will take us far afield. And there is no FATHER in the absence of the SON, so he too partakes of necessary being in a "secondary" (so to speak) way. And of necessity they have a "relationship," this being what is called HOLY SPIRIT.

Here again, tilt the blinky and we see ABSOLUTE, GOOD (or PERFECT), and RADIATION. We also see a number of other primordial trinities, so I think we're on to something. To be continued.

Try Not to Gasp at Gagdad's Latest Post!

Just the usual Friday flight into a full-blown freeforall of freakflaggery.

We left off in the mydst of an elucidation of the One Weird Trick for clearing up metaphysical confusion and incoherence via seeing God stereoscopically (or better, tri-scopically).

Rather than building a careful bridge to our conclusion, let's start at the far end and then ski back down, i.e., descend from the celestial mountaintop to the terrestrial plains. After all, the book from which we are quoting is called From the Divine to the Human, and we mean it:

both conceptions -- the unitary and the trinitary -- meet and are resolved in their archetype, which is none other than the Absolute at once immutable and radiating; being what It is, the Absolute cannot not be immutable, and It cannot not radiate. Immutability, or fidelity to itself; and Radiation, or gift of Itself; therein lies the essence of all that is (Schuon).

Problem is, immutable and radiating are a bit like particle and wave herebelow. But in nether case is there contradiction, rather, complementarity, i.e., two views of a single reality.

Hmm. There are as many paths back down as there are up, and we're trying to choose just one. 

Come to think of it, if you really want to feel overwhelmed, there are as many paths as there are individuals. And ultimately, each person is essentially a path back to God. Or from God. Your choice.

The image comes to mind of a body stretched over an abyss so others can scurry over. But we'll bridge that cross when we get to it.

As Fr. Garrigou explains, even a single trail presents the vertical wayfarer with "great variety": "one part crosses the plain, another climbs more or less steep slopes; part of the road can be covered in daylight, part at night, and that in fair or stormy whether," etc. 

At the moment, for example, there's a bit of fog in our channel, but we're forging ahead anyway. Damn the torpidity!

In any event, there is no stasis in this cosmos, not even if we're mouldering in the doldrums: for as Garrigou says in The Three Ages of the Interior Life -- and he's boiling down the collective testimony of centuries of pneumanautical adventurers --  "Not to advance is to retrogress."  

That's pretty much our daily directive, isn't it?: oneward, inword, upward! What's the alternative?   

Nor is our progress -- or our retrogression, for that matter -- at a uniform rate of speed. Rather, -- at both ends, evidently -- our velocity increases as we approach the singularity (or diversity, depending): 

the soul ought to advance more rapidly toward God as it approaches Him more closely and is more drawn by Him, just as the stone falls more rapidly as it draws near the earth which attracts it.

Vertical gravity. Which, come to think of it, isn't so much an attraction as it is the tendency of space to curve around large objects. 

Now, what is the largest object? Yes, it is what men call God, but recall the image of the point surrounded by concentric circles: supposing you're a vertically untutored physicist orbiting around the center. Obviously, the circle is larger than the point, which is inconceivably -- literally -- small. Physics wins! 

But the physicist loses, in the time-honored manner of "gaining the whole material world while losing your immaterial soul." Yes, it's one of those pyrrhic victories in which the operation is a total success. Only the patient died.

So let's make a memo to ourselves: don't do that. It's not just soph-destructive, it's plain stupid, the height of absurcularity.  

Back to our mountaintop. Before descending, let's have a look around. Interesting. Here is a house with three doors. Well then, let's invite ourselves in!

Locked.

That's okay. The doors are labeled; or rather, each has a main heading in ALL CAPS, with various subheadings below. One door says ABSOLUTE. A second says INFINITE. The third says PERFECTION.

From outside, these appear as three different aspects or dimensions or modes. But behind the doors these three are somehow one. It's a bit like the Deep State: we know it's there because its effects are obvious, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Another image comes to mind of a triangular mountain. At its peak is the peak of another mountain, this one upside down. The three doors are at the point of contact between the peaks, but upper mountain is off limits, at least in this life. Among other things, it is infinite, while we aren't.

Note, however, that "infinite" has no positive content. Rather, it's just the negation of finitude. We know all about finitude, since we're plunged into it. What is its negation? Just nothing? No, it's something alright, both in form and content, respectively, for it is the radiation of the sovereign good, precisely.

Put it this way: as Plato well understood, it is in the nature of the Good to communicate, i.e., to radiate, itself. What good would the Good be if it kept all the goodness to itself? Not very!

Which leads to the subheadings on the doors, alluded to above. Or rather, it is like one of those blinky toys: tilt it one way and it says ABSOLUTE. Tilt it another way and it says FATHER. For which reason we just say ABBASOLUTE.

Now, the FATHER is necessary being, except in the ghetto, but that will take us far afield. And there is no FATHER in the absence of the SON, so he too partakes of necessary being in a "secondary" (so to speak) way. And of necessity they have a "relationship," this being what is called HOLY SPIRIT.

Here again, tilt the blinky and we see ABSOLUTE, GOOD (or PERFECT), and RADIATION. We also see a number of other primordial trinities, so I think we're on to something. To be continued.

Eliminate Metaphysical Incoherence with this One Weird Trick!

There's a lot about conventional ("exoteric") religiosity that doesn't make conventional sense, which in turn makes conventional people with conventional IQs dismiss it. Is there a remedy for this? Or must we simply concede that "it's a mystery" and believe it anyway?

Yes and no. For regardless of how and what you think about the world or about its creator, there are limits to both the comprehensible and the expressible. Looked at one way, the gap between What Is and What We Can Know About It is infinite. But looked at another way, we can get pretty damn close to What Is, because every subject is plugged into the one Subject. 

Recall the image of the central point surrounded by concentric circles of different sizes, vs. the same point radiating outward in all directions. Now, science -- any science, or even science as such -- occupies one of those concentric circles, nor can it ever exit its own circle, at least under its own power. 

Physics can say E = MC². But it can never account for the consciousness that understands and communicates this truth. Doing so is -- literally -- above the paygrade of physics -- or located along a more interior circle, closer to the central point. And I don't pay my local physicist to give his opinions about the nature of that central point of nonlocal consciousness. 

The central point is not only "meta" physics it is transphysics; it is the Alpha and Omega of the natural world, its very ground and telos; it is the principle by virtue of which physics is even possible, let alone true.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd hit a wall with Fr. Garrigou's strict Thomism. Thinking about the reasons why, it is because he seems too devoted to a particular circle -- or orbit around O -- than to metaphysical consistency, in part -- I think -- because he wants to force universal metaphysics to conform to revelation. But this will always generate mal-paradox, incoherency, and even absurdity.

As Schuon puts it -- and this is not a critique per se, just a recognition of its limits --

dogmatist thought is so to speak static and exclusive, that is, unaware of the play of Maya; in other words, it admits of no movement, no diversity of points of view and of aspects, no degrees of Reality. It offers keys, but also veils; appeasing and protective veils assuredly, but veils which it itself will not lift.

To be sure, the veils can be lifted, just not from the "inside" (i.e., from within dogma, just as physics cannot lift the veil of consciousness). This goes to the universal distinction between dogmatic and mystical theology, which are, as it were, as circle is to radii (recalling the two images mentioned above).

Looked at this way, the most adequate dogmatic theology is nevertheless going to be a bit like physics (or any other science), which is always the map and not the territory. The most perfect scientific or mathematical map has no substantial content because it is a map or symbol of the substance. Just as you can't eat the menu, you can't visit God in the map.

Obviously, science cannot generate substance. Only God can do that. Nor can theology generate the substance of being. Only Beyond-Being can do that. 

Going back to Garrigou, I don't want to catalogue all the little things that irritated me, but it goes to the common criticism of scholasticism, that it is too... scholastic.  It ends up being rather circular, like trying to deduce how many angels can dance on the head of a pin instead of just looking out the window and counting them. 

Let's move on to our Weird Trick for resolving all of this. And when I say "our," I mean Schuon's, although I've thought this way for so long that it feels like mine:

To speak of the Absolute, is to speak of the Infinite; Infinitude is an intrinsic aspect of the Absolute. It is from the "dimension" of Infinitude that the world springs forth; the world exists because the Absolute, being such, implies Infinitude.

Now, first of all, think of this as the "bones" over which, say, Genesis 1, clothes with imaginative and mythopoetic flesh. Not only are we here at the limits of the expressible, technically we are beyond them. The two approaches are, in my opinion, complementary: we need both, in the same sense that the use of our left and right cerebral hemispheres opens up a deeper, stereoscopic view denied to one or the other.

Strictly speaking, in the beginning is actually NOTHING, and the good Padre acknowledgess this in another book, volume two of The Three Ages of the Interior Life:

when the mystics speak of God, they use many negative terms, such as "incomprehensible," "ineffable," "incommunicable." They say that negative contemplation, which expresses itself in this manner, is superior to affirmative communication.

O? Please continue.

Some terms are "essentially mystical," such that "if one took them in their scholastic meaning, they would no longer be true." In other words, -- or symbols -- radial lines can say things that will sound wrong or even heretical to the this or that dogmatic circle.

All spiritual writers speak, for example, of the nothingness of the creature, and say: the creature is nothing. A theologian, to render this proposition acceptable to his point of view, would add this precision: the creature by itself is nothing (emphasis mine).

The same spiritual writers will also say that God is nothing. But add these two nothings together and now you've got something! 

Garrigou cites a Blessed Angela of Foligno, who wrote of seeing nothing and I see all; certitude is obtained in the darkness; or St. John of the Cross, who, upon achieving vertical liftoff, writes Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing: and since he wishes for "nothing through self-love, all is given to me, without going in search of it."

We're not done, we're just out of time. Let's just say that the essence of the Weird Trick is to see God stereoscopically via the circle of dogma and the radii of mystical union. 

Eliminate Metaphysical Incoherence with this One Weird Trick!

There's a lot about conventional ("exoteric") religiosity that doesn't make conventional sense, which in turn makes conventional people with conventional IQs dismiss it. Is there a remedy for this? Or must we simply concede that "it's a mystery" and believe it anyway?

Yes and no. For regardless of how and what you think about the world or about its creator, there are limits to both the comprehensible and the expressible. Looked at one way, the gap between What Is and What We Can Know About It is infinite. But looked at another way, we can get pretty damn close to What Is, because every subject is plugged into the one Subject. 

Recall the image of the central point surrounded by concentric circles of different sizes, vs. the same point radiating outward in all directions. Now, science -- any science, or even science as such -- occupies one of those concentric circles, nor can it ever exit its own circle, at least under its own power. 

Physics can say E = MC². But it can never account for the consciousness that understands and communicates this truth. Doing so is -- literally -- above the paygrade of physics -- or located along a more interior circle, closer to the central point. And I don't pay my local physicist to give his opinions about the nature of that central point of nonlocal consciousness. 

The central point is not only "meta" physics it is transphysics; it is the Alpha and Omega of the natural world, its very ground and telos; it is the principle by virtue of which physics is even possible, let alone true.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd hit a wall with Fr. Garrigou's strict Thomism. Thinking about the reasons why, it is because he seems too devoted to a particular circle -- or orbit around O -- than to metaphysical consistency, in part -- I think -- because he wants to force universal metaphysics to conform to revelation. But this will always generate mal-paradox, incoherency, and even absurdity.

As Schuon puts it -- and this is not a critique per se, just a recognition of its limits --

dogmatist thought is so to speak static and exclusive, that is, unaware of the play of Maya; in other words, it admits of no movement, no diversity of points of view and of aspects, no degrees of Reality. It offers keys, but also veils; appeasing and protective veils assuredly, but veils which it itself will not lift.

To be sure, the veils can be lifted, just not from the "inside" (i.e., from within dogma, just as physics cannot lift the veil of consciousness). This goes to the universal distinction between dogmatic and mystical theology, which are, as it were, as circle is to radii (recalling the two images mentioned above).

Looked at this way, the most adequate dogmatic theology is nevertheless going to be a bit like physics (or any other science), which is always the map and not the territory. The most perfect scientific or mathematical map has no substantial content because it is a map or symbol of the substance. Just as you can't eat the menu, you can't visit God in the map.

Obviously, science cannot generate substance. Only God can do that. Nor can theology generate the substance of being. Only Beyond-Being can do that. 

Going back to Garrigou, I don't want to catalogue all the little things that irritated me, but it goes to the common criticism of scholasticism, that it is too... scholastic.  It ends up being rather circular, like trying to deduce how many angels can dance on the head of a pin instead of just looking out the window and counting them. 

Let's move on to our Weird Trick for resolving all of this. And when I say "our," I mean Schuon's, although I've thought this way for so long that it feels like mine:

To speak of the Absolute, is to speak of the Infinite; Infinitude is an intrinsic aspect of the Absolute. It is from the "dimension" of Infinitude that the world springs forth; the world exists because the Absolute, being such, implies Infinitude.

Now, first of all, think of this as the "bones" over which, say, Genesis 1, clothes with imaginative and mythopoetic flesh. Not only are we here at the limits of the expressible, technically we are beyond them. The two approaches are, in my opinion, complementary: we need both, in the same sense that the use of our left and right cerebral hemispheres opens up a deeper, stereoscopic view denied to one or the other.

Strictly speaking, in the beginning is actually NOTHING, and the good Padre acknowledgess this in another book, volume two of The Three Ages of the Interior Life:

when the mystics speak of God, they use many negative terms, such as "incomprehensible," "ineffable," "incommunicable." They say that negative contemplation, which expresses itself in this manner, is superior to affirmative communication.

O? Please continue.

Some terms are "essentially mystical," such that "if one took them in their scholastic meaning, they would no longer be true." In other words, -- or symbols -- radial lines can say things that will sound wrong or even heretical to the this or that dogmatic circle.

All spiritual writers speak, for example, of the nothingness of the creature, and say: the creature is nothing. A theologian, to render this proposition acceptable to his point of view, would add this precision: the creature by itself is nothing (emphasis mine).

The same spiritual writers will also say that God is nothing. But add these two nothings together and now you've got something! 

Garrigou cites a Blessed Angela of Foligno, who wrote of seeing nothing and I see all; certitude is obtained in the darkness; or St. John of the Cross, who, upon achieving vertical liftoff, writes Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing: and since he wishes for "nothing through self-love, all is given to me, without going in search of it."

We're not done, we're just out of time. Let's just say that the essence of the Weird Trick is to see God stereoscopically via the circle of dogma and the radii of mystical union. 

The Leftist Cycle of Intellectual Poverty

A smarter feller than myself once said that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket" (Hoffer).

However, our president is an exception to the rule, being that the Biden crime family began as a political racket, only to degenerate into the great cause of wokeism, identity politics, and "equity."

In fact, the tension in the left is between the racketeers and fanatics. Old school grifters like the Clintons never believed the left's BS, whereas the new generation of howling fanatics really does. 

These latter have spent their whole lives macerated in leftism, from the kindergarten of preschool to the kindergarten of college, and really believe their own nonsense. Truly, it is the organizing principle of their lives, and functions exactly like a religion. An especially exhausting religion.

Which is why no rational conversation is possible with these perverts. Disagreement with them isn't, like, just your opinion, man, but heresy, blasphemy, sacrilegious. It is over the line. Mark it zero. You're cancelled!

One of the ontological differences between left and right is that the former project agency and causation into the environment, while the latter experience the locus of control on the inside. 

You could say that this goes to the metaphysics of victimhood, in that the victim is by definition the passive subject of someone else's actions (or of some magical system such as  "structural racism," a leftist godwhistle that only the devout can hear).

Now, auto-victimization is obviously tempting, much more so if one is a loser. If you are a loser, then you have -- I suppose -- three main possible explanations, 1) you're just a loser, so deal with it, 2) it's someone else's fault that you're such a loser, or 3) bad luck. It takes a strong man to acknowledge options (1) and (3). But you are a loser, so naturally you'll gravitate to door #2. It's why the left was invented.

In short, "the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, and so on" (Hoffer). 

Indeed, Hoffer quotes an insultaining remark by Thoreau to the effect that "If anything ail a man," then "he forthwith sets about reforming -- the world."

You could say that this is Marx's eternal formula: I am a loser, therefore overturn the order of the whole durned thing.  

"It us understandable," writes Hoffer, "that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failures." But the tech overlords and woke capitalists who sponsor the Democrat party aren't exactly losers (at least in the financial sense). Why do they support and propagate this aberrant nonsense?

I can think of two main reasons, 1) power, and 2) envy insurance. The first is self-evident, while the second was discussed in the previous post, was it not? A wealthy celebrity or journalist is just a loser who got lucky, and on some level they know it. 

It's uncomfortable to be the subject of envy, so it is deflected by embracing leftism and projecting greed into us. This act of magical misdirection redirects the envy of the mob toward greedy and hateful deplorables, insurrectionists, white people, etc.  This ends in the ridiculous spectacle of fabulously lucky losers such as Michelle Obama or Colin Kaepernick blaming us for their bitter lives.

I guess it's flattering to be seen as having so much power over these people. And yet, the left has the power to cancel anyone at any time. 

About the religious structure of the left, Hoffer notes that "Every mass movement is in a sense a migration -- a movement toward a promised land." 

Boy and how! For life itself is a vertical adventure toward a promised land, except the left horizontalizes this into literal state of affairs that can be realized in this life. Apocalypse now.

Not only is this impossible, but it aggravates the very conditions that prompt the flight to utopia. Every leftist "solution" leaves a train of problems that provide the pretext for new solutions. Call it the cycle of intellectual poverty.

Why does the left hate freedom? It goes back to loserhood:

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.

It "is at the root of their discontent," for "unless a man has the talents to make something of himself," the freedom to do so is just the certainty of failure. Thus, just as the left practices a "repressive tolerance" in which mere tolerance isn't tolerated, so too does it help its dependents be free of freedom. 

Now, what are we supposed to do with the left side of the bell curve? Obviously, no amount of legislation or social planning can eliminate the lower half of any quality, whether it is intelligence, creativity, income, looks, talent, whatever. And very few people are in the upper or lower half of every quality. Most everyone is good or bad at this or that.

This gets into a large subject, but a good start would be minding your own isness and not comparing yourself to other people, because if you do, you'll always feel like the good Lord gypped you. Aw, fuck it, man. Lets go bowling.  

The Leftist Cycle of Intellectual Poverty

A smarter feller than myself once said that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket" (Hoffer).

However, our president is an exception to the rule, being that the Biden crime family began as a political racket, only to degenerate into the great cause of wokeism, identity politics, and "equity."

In fact, the tension in the left is between the racketeers and fanatics. Old school grifters like the Clintons never believed the left's BS, whereas the new generation of howling fanatics really does. 

These latter have spent their whole lives macerated in leftism, from the kindergarten of preschool to the kindergarten of college, and really believe their own nonsense. Truly, it is the organizing principle of their lives, and functions exactly like a religion. An especially exhausting religion.

Which is why no rational conversation is possible with these perverts. Disagreement with them isn't, like, just your opinion, man, but heresy, blasphemy, sacrilegious. It is over the line. Mark it zero. You're cancelled!

One of the ontological differences between left and right is that the former project agency and causation into the environment, while the latter experience the locus of control on the inside. 

You could say that this goes to the metaphysics of victimhood, in that the victim is by definition the passive subject of someone else's actions (or of some magical system such as  "structural racism," a leftist godwhistle that only the devout can hear).

Now, auto-victimization is obviously tempting, much more so if one is a loser. If you are a loser, then you have -- I suppose -- three main possible explanations, 1) you're just a loser, so deal with it, 2) it's someone else's fault that you're such a loser, or 3) bad luck. It takes a strong man to acknowledge options (1) and (3). But you are a loser, so naturally you'll gravitate to door #2. It's why the left was invented.

In short, "the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, and so on" (Hoffer). 

Indeed, Hoffer quotes an insultaining remark by Thoreau to the effect that "If anything ail a man," then "he forthwith sets about reforming -- the world."

You could say that this is Marx's eternal formula: I am a loser, therefore overturn the order of the whole durned thing.  

"It us understandable," writes Hoffer, "that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failures." But the tech overlords and woke capitalists who sponsor the Democrat party aren't exactly losers (at least in the financial sense). Why do they support and propagate this aberrant nonsense?

I can think of two main reasons, 1) power, and 2) envy insurance. The first is self-evident, while the second was discussed in the previous post, was it not? A wealthy celebrity or journalist is just a loser who got lucky, and on some level they know it. 

It's uncomfortable to be the subject of envy, so it is deflected by embracing leftism and projecting greed into us. This act of magical misdirection redirects the envy of the mob toward greedy and hateful deplorables, insurrectionists, white people, etc.  This ends in the ridiculous spectacle of fabulously lucky losers such as Michelle Obama or Colin Kaepernick blaming us for their bitter lives.

I guess it's flattering to be seen as having so much power over these people. And yet, the left has the power to cancel anyone at any time. 

About the religious structure of the left, Hoffer notes that "Every mass movement is in a sense a migration -- a movement toward a promised land." 

Boy and how! For life itself is a vertical adventure toward a promised land, except the left horizontalizes this into literal state of affairs that can be realized in this life. Apocalypse now.

Not only is this impossible, but it aggravates the very conditions that prompt the flight to utopia. Every leftist "solution" leaves a train of problems that provide the pretext for new solutions. Call it the cycle of intellectual poverty.

Why does the left hate freedom? It goes back to loserhood:

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.

It "is at the root of their discontent," for "unless a man has the talents to make something of himself," the freedom to do so is just the certainty of failure. Thus, just as the left practices a "repressive tolerance" in which mere tolerance isn't tolerated, so too does it help its dependents be free of freedom. 

Now, what are we supposed to do with the left side of the bell curve? Obviously, no amount of legislation or social planning can eliminate the lower half of any quality, whether it is intelligence, creativity, income, looks, talent, whatever. And very few people are in the upper or lower half of every quality. Most everyone is good or bad at this or that.

This gets into a large subject, but a good start would be minding your own isness and not comparing yourself to other people, because if you do, you'll always feel like the good Lord gypped you. Aw, fuck it, man. Lets go bowling.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The book has a number of aphorisms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The book has a number of aphorisms:

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

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

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

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

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

Careful, Mankind, There's a Beverage Here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Careful, Mankind, There's a Beverage Here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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