A Brief History of Thought: Philosophical Starters and Non-Starters

It would be nice if higher education could redound to a greater number of intelligent persons, rather than merely revealing the existing ones. 

This led me to wondering: how many genuine philosophers can there be at any time? To be sure, every human being philosophizes and cannot help doing so. But the number of truly great philosophers is no doubt less than the number of great artists, scientists, or mathematicians.

And frankly, even many of the great ones aren't so great if you translate their ideas into plain English.

Here's the first thing that pops up when I searched "great philosophers ranked." Note that there are only 25 names on the list, but it nevertheless includes such embarrassments as Marx, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida, and a number of others are scarcely less stupid.

At this point the phrase popped into my head: Philosophical Starters and Non-Starters. Because there can self-evidently be only one true philosophy, then the competing philosophies will have to be dismissed either as pieces of this true philosophy, or as non-starters. 

A philosophy can be a non-starter for any number of reasons, but they all end in absurdity or self-refutation, or are built on premises that cannot be justified by the system.

Then I thought of an old book I have called The Story of Thought: The Essential Guide to the History of Western Philosophy, by Bryan Magee. It's only an introduction aimed at a lay audience, but it does include all the important philosophers in chronological order, presenting their key ideas in such a way that we can easily identify the non-starters. 

Obviously there's much more to their philosophies than what is addressed in the book, but nevertheless, if there is even a small error at the foundation of your philosophy, then it scarcely matters how complex and elaborate the structure built atop the initial error.

Bob, isn't this undertaking a little arrogant on your part? Are we supposed to believe you're even qualified to judge these vastly superior minds, let alone be in possession of the One True Philosophy?

Can't know until we try, and besides, it's just for kicks & giggles. For all we know, I'll get bored with the pre-Socratics and abandon the endeavor before it gets off the ground. 

Before touching on those pre-Socratics there's a short introduction going to the nature of philosophy: "every now and again we find ourselves drawing back and wondering what it's all about." Which reminds me of how Whitehead defines the task, something to the effect that philosophy revolves around the simple question: WTF is it all about?

This involves "asking fundamental questions that normally we do not stop to ask." But not only is the unexamined life not worth living, life itself is far too interesting to merely live it.

This is a potentially important point -- that there are as many philosophies as there are human endeavors, for example, philosophy of science, or of religion, of politics, of ethics, of law, of aesthetics, of religion, of knowledge, et al. Who's to say there's a single philosophy or even a single approach that unites them all?

That would be me. Until you hear otherwise.

But seriously, after a long life of thinkin' & wonderin' WTF it's all about, it seems to me that thinking as such is guided by a telos that draws us toward higher and deeper syntheses. Nor is Bob the first to think this. He thought he was first, but then he discovered folks such as Bernard Lonergan, who said much the same thing except in a much less folksy way. 

For example, his magnum opus, Insight, argues that humans come into the world with an unrestricted desire to know, which is to say, nothing less than desire to know everything about everything that is knowable.

Speaking only for myself, I have this desire, nor can it be satisfied by anything short of a Total Explanation. Frankly, we are entitled to such an explanation (lookin' at you, God) and we are the first to know when some clever philosopher is trying to fob us off with a partial explanation. In fact, as we shall soon discover, many of the great philosophers we will be discussing attempt to do just this.

To which we say: no fobbing. 

As alluded to above, I've been at this for a long time, and I suppose I first bumped into this principle back in grad school, via the thought of W.R. Bion. I won't bore you with details, but he's the one who used the symbol O to stand for the ultimate unknowable reality or absolute truth with which we are in permanent dialectical tension. Except it's not so much unknowable as endlessly intelligible. 

Later I encountered another thinker, Errol Harris, who said much the same thing, but you get the idea. Let's get back to The Story of Thought. I think I'll just skip over the pre-Socratics and go straight to Socrates, because not only is he not a non-starter, he is in many ways the starter and ender. 

Why is that? Because he begins and ends with Questioning, and, supposing you're a philosopher, you can't do better than that:

Socrates did not think he knew the answers to these questions. But he saw that no one else knew them either. When the oracle at Delphi declared him to be the wisest of men, he thought that this could mean only that he alone knew that he did not know anything.

Well, join the club, and welcome to my world. In a way, not only did he discover irony, but he was its very incarnation. Which reminds me of something Schuon says -- that there is more Light in a good question than most of those answers with which they try to fob us off.

Well, we haven't gotten far in our project, but we've gotten far enough to know that our way will be lit by irony and by unknowing. And of course, no fobbing.

The Long March of Astounding Stupidity Through the Institutions

Postcolonialism is suddenly in the news, as it is one of the most prominent contemporary pretexts for neo-medieval Jew hatred. This poisonous ideology focuses "on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands," and pretends to show how

Western cultural knowledge was applied to subjugate a non-European people into a colony of the European mother country, which, after initial invasion, was effected by means of the cultural identities of "colonizer" and "colonized."

So, these victims of oppression didn't only lose their lands, they lost their minds to the colonizers.

Except postcolonialism itself is an alien ideology that first colonized the minds of the (white) privileged before spreading to the so-called "oppressed." In other words, it is an ideology by and for overeducated White Folks, and its reason for being certainly isn't to help Oppressed Subaltern Peoples. 

Postcolonial theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, 

No it doesn't. Rather, it establishes pseudo-intellectual spaces for sub-mediocre minds to participate in their own subjugation, once they've been colonized by this parasitic ideology. We used to call it "brainwashing." Now it's called "higher education." 

Everyone already knows this, Bob. Do you have a novel take on this dreary subject, or just more red meat for the base?

You're right about the dreary part. I started to skim the Wiki article, but even that is too much to bear. How does a *bright* young student deal with this invasive colonization of his mind? What has to happen to the mind before it passively endures the brainwashing? It reminds me of those spiders whose venom first paralyzes their prey before they suck out and devour the substance.

Is there some kind of analogous cognitive venom that shuts off the mind's natural defenses against bullshit? Where's the skepticism, the rebelliousness, the BS detector? How does one go from this healthy specimen:

 

To this cognitive oompa loompa:

Among other things, postcolonialism is also post-commonsense, post-reality, and post-civilization. 

Nevertheless, here we are.

Let's get back to the possibly fruitful analogy of a neurocognitive venom that first puts the mind to sleep before killing it altogether. Who are the spiders? They are the "critical faculty," who need fresh minds the way a vampire needs fresh blood.

These arachnoid People of Tenure put the bite on undergraduates and "colonize the student mind." And "this colonization and co-optation of university departments has proceeded uninterrupted for years," mainly by softheads "on the soft side of campus, in the liberal arts and humanities" (Ridgley).

This might furnish a clue, for a softhead is "a silly or stupid person" who is "lacking intelligence or sense," i..e., a "fool, featherbrain, goose, rattlebrain, silly, cuckoo, scatterbrain, flibbertigibbet."

True, these are all ad hominem, but what if the hominem in question is indeed the problem?

What if the problem isn't mere stupidity but truly astounding stupidity? That's how Landes characterizes it in his astoundingly timely Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad. 

At the end of each chapter Landes furnishes a list of Astoundingly Stupid Statements uttered therein by various media, academic, and political figures. We won't bother repeating them here. For our purposes, it's enough to know that our Cognitive Elites are Astoundingly Stupid.

But again, how did this come about?

Well, let's think this through. At the time of our country's founding, 90% of the population worked in agriculture, which means that 100% of that 90% possessed highly useful and adaptive knowledge -- adapted to what we call reality, the reality of the seasons, the soil, seeds, tools, etc. (And roughly 100% of women were occupied with the equally important reality of raising children and keeping the home.) 

By 1900, that percentage was down to about 40%, still more than enough to protect us from the deluge of over-educated soft minds. But now? Oof: 

Clearly we have a situation in which people who are perfectly suited for honest labor are creating mischief everywhere, from college campuses to newsrooms to the White House. Astoundingly Stupid people have completed their Long March Through the Institutions.

Just getting started, but we're out of time...

Vertical Closure and Craniorectal Occlusion

How do progressive pundits, journalists, and People of Tenure avoid contact with reality? By maintaining and enforcing a closed ideological system that is projected onto the world instead of being receptive to it. 

For example, Ridgley points to their intellectually worthless "cargo cult journals" 

which are publications that mimic authentic academic journals. The articles are cited back and forth, and... have become little more than ritual gift exchange.

In other words, the left hand washes the other left hand, and "whatever happens confirms the theory" -- no different from "the magic of primitive societies" which provides "ex post facto rationalizations" to explain the world. 

But we already know all this. We know that the devil's strategy is to close the mind in on itself in tighter and tighter circles until it disappears up its backside, a la the Oozlum bird. Is there anything new to report on this front? 

Well, recall that man qua man is an open system, both horizontally and vertically. By definition the left is vertically closed, but they are also horizontally closed -- which is to say, enclosed in their ideology.

For Voegelin, closed existence is 

the mode of existence in which there are internal impediments to a free flow of truth into consciousness and to the pull of the transcendental.

Interesting that he speaks of the pull of the transcendental, for it is the complement of a... not so much a push from our side, but rather, something more akin to an erotic attraction, or what we call man's innate epistemophila. 

The word "push" connotes something more akin to what progressives do, which is to say, push their ideology into places where it doesn't belong -- e.g., into our faces and down our throats. This latter maneuver is in fact a deformation of consciousness, defined as 

the destruction of the order of the soul, which should be "formed" by the love of the transcendental perfection inherent in the fundamental tension of existence [the tension between the immanent and transcendent poles of consciousness].

What we characterized above as disappearing up one's own backside, Voegelin more politely (but less colorfully) calls doxic thinking, which "tends to focus on a doxa [i.e., opinion] and to confuse the model with the reality it represents."

So in this regard -- pardon our French -- opinions really are like assholes, except not everyone dwells therein. 

We're all familiar with the deeper meaning of Exodus, because this is where we live, precisely. Life takes the form of a journey toward, and in dialectical tension with, the transcendental telos, AKA Celestial Central. Like Moses, we never reach our deustinatuon in this life, but if we're lucky, nor are we enclosed in craniorectal darkness and tenure.

Here again, this is much like a solar eclipse whereby the moon covers the sun, except it's the moonbat occluding the Light: it is "the perverse closure of consciousness against reality" or "the attempt to evade it."

Now, as the Aphorist reminds us,

Along these lines, he makes another important point, that 

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.

Why is that? Obviously, because the finite can never be adequate to the infinite, or the relative to the Absolute. It can, however, be an adequation to the Absolute and Infinite, and -- long story short -- this is certainly where the Incarnation comes in to play. But Christ is not a "theology," i.e., an abstract mental system, rather, a person and a relationship.   

Christ is also the fulfillment of the Exodus referenced above. Certainly we could never complete the journey from our side, and believing otherwise is just Genesis 3 All Over Again, which is, among other things, a fall into craniorectality.

Note that upon this latter event, God asks Adam, Where are you? If Adam were honest, he'd respond, I'm right in here with the Oozlum bird. 

This post has plunged into unforeseen areas. Back to Ridgley. He calls it a "stunting of the intellect" whereby 

There is an ominous narrowing of horizons, until only a slit of absolute believing represents the totality of their intellectual pursuit.... Anything recognizable as inquiry, challenge, or analysis comes to an immediate halt.

Which is another way of answering God's eternal query, Where are you? For "In a cargo cult, believers construct an alternate world and wanted it treated as real." It's real, alright -- as real as a man with his head up his ass. 

The Karen-Mohammed Industrial Complex

How does a lunatic belief system "take"? As crazy and depraved as the left is, the craziness and depravity must exploit something real and enduring in the psyche, otherwise it could never take root.

Everyone knows this is how capitalism works. No one had to invent this "ism." Rather, it's just what people do when they're left alone, i.e., barter and trade, exchange and acquire, buy and sell. Yes, it may exploit acquisitiveness and greed, but that's just human nature. 

People do other things when they're left alone, for example, envy, hate, steal, lie, and scapegoat. They're also subject to pride, and like to lord it over others, or bring them down a peg. 

But enough about the left.

Actually, I think we've just discovered those enduring psychic realities that are exploited by the left's lunatic ideology. Of course, they call these shameful traits and impulses by other names, e.g., diversity, equity, fairness, inclusion, social justice, etc. For it is written:

The left is a lexicographical tactic more than an ideological strategy.

And

"Social justice" is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.

Bottom line:

Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.

Nowadays they call this guilt White Privilege, but it's just the same old envy with a Ph.D. in Postcolonial Studies.

Now, just as Islam colonized formerly Christian and Persian geographical areas, "postcolonialism" has colonized formerly American minds. 

You could say that this is the subject of the book I'm currently reading, Christopher Rufo's America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. It's excellent as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough, which is to say, all the way to the ground of human nature. Or, perhaps it will. I'm only up to p. 73.

Let's haul out some more aphorisms to set the stage, each going to the lower vertical, i.e., those unflattering traits to which the soul is heir: 

The greatest political puerility is to attribute to certain social structures the vices inherent in the human condition.

What is called the modern mentality is the process of exonerating the deadly sins. 

The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another's goods but who defends his own.

The left calls a critique of capitalism what is merely a lawsuit for possession.

Even if everyone were equal -- an impossibility even supposing an omnipotent state -- we'd have to invent inequality out of sheer tedium. 

As we've said before, progressivism is the institutionalization of man's fall, which they simultaneously deny and normalize. "Having promulgated the dogma of original innocence," they conclude that "the man guilty of the crime is not the envious murderer but the victim who aroused his envy."

They also promulgate a kind an "anti-psychology." I know this, because I luckily obtained my Ph.D. back when psychology was still a thing. Now there's no place in psychology for an old-fashioned guy like me. Indeed,

Civilization appears to have been invented by an extinct species.

The following sounds RACISS:

Modern civilization: the invention of a white engineer for a black king.

But Rufo explains how it came about:

Herbert Marcuse was the preeminent philosopher of the so-called New Left, which sought to mobilize the white intelligentsia and the black ghetto into a new proletariat....

The Karen-Ibram Industrial Complex. 

"The new movement was not the 'classical revolutionary force' of the proletariat. It was, instead, the coalition of opposites" which is to say, "the intellectuals and the slum-dwellers, the privileged and the dispossessed," a "new axis for revolution: racial conflict."

And here we are. They enacted it in 2020. Are they gearing up for an encore in 2024? I don't know. I haven't read the article, but I'm going to guess Yes.

The resurgence of public protests in support of Hamas has revealed a disturbing truth: the left-wing rioting following George Floyd’s death in 2020 was not an anomaly, but a tactic that activists can repurpose for any cause. Whether by coincidence or design, these recent outbursts could be a dress rehearsal for possible violence during next year’s election campaign.

The Karen-Mohammed Industrial Complex? 

Conservative leaders must prepare for that prospect. To prevent 2020 from repeating itself in 2024, conservatives need to consider what might spark a riot, how it can be prevented, and how to understand and manage the politics of rioting.

In the book, Rufo asks the question, "Does the public want an equality society or a revenge society?" To which the Aphorist replies,

The democrat in search of equality passes a straightedge over humanity in order to cut off what exceeds it: the head. Decapitation is the central rite of the democratic Mass.

Literally, if we're correct about the Karen-Mohammed Industrial Complex.

Oh my. Getting late. To be continued.

Of Brutalitarians and Bunkum Busters

We've suggested that the Incarnation is God's own reality tunnel -- a vertical tunnel from divine to human nature, and back -- but really, it's more like his bunker buster, able to penetrate the complex network of ideological tunnels in which man dwells. 

Better yet, it's a bunkum buster that helpfully incinerates the ideological bunkum that imprisons man in darkness. Or at least puts it in perspective. In this regard, perhaps it's more like a neutron bomb, allowing lesser truths to stand, so long as they don't overshadow the source and ground of Truth itself.

Imagine a weapon that could, say, destroy the (formerly) liberal arts departments but leave the STEM departments standing.  

I know, we already have such a weapon: it's called sanity. However, supplies of the latter are running dangerously low.

These preliminary sentiments were provoked by the book Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities. First of all, it's filled with fine insultainment, for example, "the American university"

is undergoing an infiltration by an army of mediocrities whose goal is to destroy it as an institution of knowledge creation and replace it with an authoritarian organ of ideology and propaganda.

So, if there's a war, they started it. For theirs is an authoritarian army using our young adults as human shields. If not a well-placed bunker buster, what do these barbarians deserve? Like Hamas, these are "brutal people"

who eagerly "live within the lie" and who even more eagerly coerce others to yield to that lie, particularly the most intellectually vulnerable persons on college campuses -- our undergraduates.

Living "within the lie" is precisely what we mean by the reality tunnel metaphor (which are again unreality tunnels). Such persons are in desperate need of precisely what they repel, which is to say, reality. 

Analogously, what are the Gazans most in need of? What is the one simple trick that would solve all the problems falsely imputed to Israel?

Correct: reality. Drop your weapons, let go of the genocidal fantasies, acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, and see what boons and blessings follow.

But like our own tenured barbarians, "They are frozen into a totalist belief system" constructed and maintained by "a ruling clerisy of the worst and the dullest": 

Wherever brutal minds get the upper hand, they destroy, they dumb down, they homogenize.... They eliminate opposition, they remove it, and they censor, block, and obliterate the record of knowledge -- anything that gives the lie to the stunted intellectual parochialism that animates them.

No wonder our own proglodytes support Hamas. Professional courtesy. 

they are bent on the destruction of what they only dimly understand and certainly that which they played no role in creating.

This "throng of half-educated ideologues" is 

motivated by social fantasy and pseudoscience and aiming to transform the university in accord with their primitive ideology. 

Granted, we can't drop a literal bunker buster on them, but is there a bunkum buster that could at least inconvenience these hate-filled brutalitarians and racists? Or is it too late? 

Getting back to the Incarnation as God's own bunkum buster, you can take this quite literally, as it was indeed a bomb dropped into time, and which utterly transformed western civilization. We even divide history into BC and AD, but of what good is it to us if this love bomb isn't available at all times? 

Yes, in entering history 2000 years ago God broke the fourth wall of the cosmos, but Christian doctrine insists that he has never stopped breaking it: it is both once and forever. 

The deeper point is again that God's bunkum buster has permanently shattered that wall -- or veil -- that divides us from him. And, like it or not, this is the smoking crater at the origins of western civilization. 

Which, in so many words, is the point of another book I read over the weekend, No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment. It's not a religious book per se, but it's all about our first amendment, which is of course all about religion. Hmm. Perhaps the bunkum buster we need is right there in the first amendment. 

As an asnide and affront and an end, is it any coincidence that the same people who hate free speech are so hostile to God and religion -- in particular, the religion of the founders? I think not.

The Pervertical Axis of Metanoia and Paranoia

I started a post that I intended to finish tomorrow, but one thing led to another, and this introduction is long enough to qualify as a post. Even though it's only an introduction to a post.

If our lives are spent tunneling through reality, is there light at the end of the tunnel? Yes, but first we need to turn around and look at it. You know, metanoia, which literally means to turn around and look up, idiot. 

This is in contrast to the para-noia which defines the left (and ideologues more generally). Noia is related to nous, i.e., the intellect, while para- relates to "defense" and "protection against," so paranoia is a defense against both reality and the mind capable of knowing it.  

To the extent that you are paranoid, then you are in a reality tunnel with no light at the end of it. Which is just another way of saying that you're chained inside Plato's cave, imagining that the dancing shadows are the light. 

Likewise, metanoia involves turning away from the shadows and toward the light streaming in from the mouth of the cave.

Now, paranoia is a psychological defense mechanism rooted in denial and projection, such that one's inside -- in particular, the Bad Stuff -- is projected outside and experienced as persecutory. 

Not only is paranoia much more common than one might realize, it is ubiquitous, only normalized via mass indoctrination. Indeed, worthless disciplines such as Critical Race Theory, or Women's Studies, or transgender ideology, are just paranoia with a Ph.D. You could say that they're just mind parasite laundering. 

A voice in my head says that transgender ideology is the sum of all intellectual heresies, and it's not wrong. For example, regarding the fondling fathers of transgenderism, Christopher Rufo writes that 

If men can become women, and women men, they believed, the natural structure of Creation could be toppled (Hillsdale Imprimis, Sept. 2023).

So, from metanoia to paranoia; one such professor characterized its work as "a secular sermon" 

that unabashedly advocates embracing a disruptive and refigurative genderqueer or transgender power as a spiritual resource for social and environmental transformation.

Oh, it's spiritual alright: except instead of turning toward the light, it wants us all to be riveted to the projected shadows, AKA darkness visible, AKA paranoia.

I remember writing a post that focused on the trans in transgender, which of course shares that prefix with transcendent. For there is no question that the so-called transgender person is seeking transcendence -- from their problems -- as if pretending to switch sexes somehow allows one to transcend the human condition.

To all you women out there who think that being a man solves anything: nah. Let's just stipulate that testosterone (and estrogen) create as many problems as they solve. 

Come to think of it, to paraphrase something Harvey Mansfield said in his book Manliness, masculinity is required in order to deal with the many problems caused by masculinity. 

So, yes, there is a "toxic masculinity" (or femininity) which is only transcended by "healthy masculinity" (or femininity). Or, just say that masculinity -- like any other human trait -- is situated on a vertical axis. Or pervertical axis, if you prefer.

Rufo points out that "the transgender movement is inherently political," and that it's just the same old Marxism transposed to the key of gender:

This is the great project of the transgender movement: to abolish the distinction of man and woman, to transcend the limitations established by God and nature, and to connect the personal struggle of trans individuals to the political struggle to transform society in a radical way.

To transform it from below, or rather, to force the shadows to be the light. 

Or, to quote Václav Havel regarding communist ideology, "It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality."

A Bridge to Everyone

We've been improvising on the theme of reality tunnels, which is to say, those neurocognitive psylos we conflate with "reality." 

If you think about it for a moment, you'll agree that, if human beings are confined to reality tunnels, then this requires no explanation, since we are in the same position as any other animal. Only if we somehow transcend instinct, neurology, and subjectivity, and actually come to know reality, is an explanation required. And it had better be a good one.

Note also that transcendence too will require an explanation, a principle, a ground. Certainly it makes no sense to affirm the tautology that human beings have an instinctive capacity to transcend instinct. 

And yet, we do, for it is in our nature (which doesn't imply that it is merely genetic). You could say that humans may be defined as the anti-Gödelian being, since we always and everywhere have this *inexplicable* capacity to transcend ourselves; put conversely, we can never be enclosed in any immanent system or ideology. Supposing you try, you've transcended the system.

Which is not to say a system can never be imposed upon man. This is where power comes in, but we'll deal with the left later, as some additional groundwork is needed.

This notion of the anti-Gödelian creature reminds me of what Schuon says -- something to the effect that man is "condemned to transcendence," so to speak. We just have to accept this truth, no matter how pleasant.

The spiritual man is one who transcends himself and loves to transcend himself; the worldly man remains horizontal and detests the vertical dimension (Schuon). 

Ah. Now it seems that transcendence implies -- or demands, rather -- the presence of a "vertical dimension" in the cosmos, and who am I to argue, since I could only do so from a vertical perspective? 

Indeed, who am I to argue, period? 

That's true. I am an animal. Not to belabor the point, but an anti-Gödelian animal. Unlike us, those purely immanent animals "cannot know what is beyond the senses" and "cannot choose against their instincts." Nor can they transcend themselves, and the most intelligent among them has no idea what Gödel is even talking about. 

Conversely, man

is essentially capable of knowing the True, whether it be absolute or relative; he is capable of willing the Good, whether it be essential or secondary, and of loving the Beautiful, whether it be interior or exterior. In other words: the human being is substantially capable of knowing, willing and loving the Sovereign Good (ibid.).

My dog is a good dog, but she knows nothing about the concept of goodness. 

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the one and universal Selfhood (ibid.).

About those reality tunnels we've been discussing. Schuon writes that

man is the bridge between form and essence, or between “flesh” and “spirit” (ibid.).

Bridge, tunnel, what's the difference, as long as we get to the other side.

Except we can't get to the other side without some divine assistance. In other words, our best bridge will be a "bridge to nowhere" unless it first proceeds from there to here. Finitude cannot reach infinitude. 

Which is what I meant yesterday with the idea that the Incarnation is God's reality tunnel to man, which thereby becomes our reality tunnel back to him.

To be continued...

God's Reality Tunnel To and From Himself

Continuing with the theme of God's own reality tunnel, Andrew Klavan writes of Jesus that

his story is the story of the meaning of life. Picture him as a bridge between the physical world and its immaterial meaning. His life is life, but it is also the truth about life and it is also the way between the two (The Truth and Beauty).

Bridge and way to the meaning of life. Sounds like a reality tunnel to me. 

Supposing it's true, of course. If it isn't, then it's no better or worse than any other unreality tunnel.

Well, what is the immaterial meaning that Christ reveals? 

Starting at the top, this would have to be the triunity of God, something we couldn't know absent God revealing it to us. Presumably he could have done so in other ways, but the Incarnation is the reality tunnel he saw fit to deploy.

But once revealed, it not only makes sense, but becomes a kind of master key: 

The Trinity is a fractal; it is the pattern of all creation that is repeated in every aspect of creation. Everywhere, in everything, there is always the object, the term, and the meaning (ibid).

True. A reminder that

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others. 

Klavan continues: "Metaphor is even built into the basic structure of creation." For example, "DNA is a code," and "A code is a kind of language." Creation itself

is a fractal: it is metaphors all the way down. The three-part Logos creates man, man creates metaphors for reality, reality is a metaphor for the Logos.

Everything points every which way, beyond itself, to its immaterial meaning. And as we've discussed on many occasions, in just what kind of cosmos is this possible?  

Our interaction with the world is fractal work: creation within creation, metaphor within metaphor, trinity within trinity proceeding out of and representing the Trinity that is the source and life of it all (ibid.). 

We've often pondered the fact that the first thing said of God is that he creates. Well,  

When we understand our inner experience as a little Genesis, the ongoing creation of creation, we begin to understand that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.

Again, a fractal of the Fractal. 

Why fractal? I don't know about Klavan, but for me it's the most adequate metaphor I can think of for oneness-in-manyness, and vice versa. If I recall correctly, Ted has a good image of the metacosmic situation.

I recalled correctly:

But I suppose what I really want to suggest is that the Second Person of the Trinity is God's own reality tunnel to and from himself via the Third Person. Indeed, the conclusion seems unavoidable. Here's another image I think we've used before, but just google "fractal trinity Tao" for more:

God's Own Reality Tunnel

Reality is one, but reality tunnels are... I was going to say infinite, but most people don't even bother to build an interesting one, rather, just pick up an ideology in college, or piece together a worldview from mediated memes floating around in the ether, and stick with it until the end.   

I know people who built their tunnels in the 1950s, '60s, or '70s, and haven't updated them since. Nor is it just a problem with progressives. There are plenty of conservatives who can't move on from Reagan, and are still living in the 1980s. 

I wonder: can a person be defined as a reality tunnel back to God? If so, we have to imagine a vertical tunnel, more like an elevator shaft than a gopher hole. And supposing we do inhabit a reality tunnel, how could it ever go all the way to the top of the cosmos, like a Tunnel of Babel? 

Let's look at the big picture: if Kant and his descendants are correct, then we are literally confined to an (un)reality tunnel composed of various categories and preconceptions. But Like anybody could even know that. For isn't Kant pronouncing a judgment from outside the Kantian tunnel? It's really just one more version of There is no truth, and that's the truth!, or I'm sorry, but I never apologize!

But this post wants to approach this problem from a different angle, that is, from the perspective of God's own reality tunnel. Now, God doesn't have problems. Or at least he didn't have any until You -- AKA Here Comes Everybody -- came along. Now he's got eight billion of them. 

But really, it's the same old problem, isn't it? You know, Adam. And Eve. And the Serpent, and all that. As Joyce put it, if you're abcedminded to this claybook, its the same meandertalltale told of all. 

Stop f'ing around and just come out with it!

Okay, I will: the Incarnation -- his claybook -- is God's own reality tunnel back to us meandertales.

Of course the tale still meanders (from our end), but from God's end it's One & done: it is accomplished.  

Christ is actually both the portal to and from us, which makes sense, his divine nature being the "to," his human nature the "from."

In other words, the Incarnation is from God, whereas our sanctification and theosis are back to God, the former a necessary condition for the latter (and our free cooperation with grace being the sufficient condition).

My, look at the time. It got late early. To be continued. 

How to Be Stupid Forever

Our friends are fallen and know they are fallen, while our adversaries are fallen but unaware (or in denial) of the fact. 

As for the apes, I bring them good and bad news: they're not fallen, but they can never know it. It's what makes them apes -- or rather, what prevents them from being human, no matter how much evolution they undergo. 

It's just a way of saying that no amount of material shuffling results in immateriality, duh. To believe otherwise is to believe in magic.

Don't get me wrong -- natural selection is a fact. But so too is human nature, and the former in principle cannot account for latter.

What principle would that be?

Well, man either has or does not have an immutable nature. Now, a mutable nature is no nature at all, for it violates the principle of identity; being would be reduced to becoming, spelling the end of the intelligible order. 

If there is only becoming, without any substance that undergoes the becoming, then this results not only in "the destruction of all truth" but in "the suppression of all thought and of every opinion, which would thus come to deny itself at the very moment it affirmed itself" (Garrigou-Lagrange).

Man's nature -- what sets him apart from lower animals -- is reflected in his rationality, which means that human intelligence is "not immersed in matter," but rather, is "essentially relative to intelligible being and not merely to sensible phenomena." 

That's a big deal, since the gap between the senses -- which are ordered to changing phenomena -- and the intellect -- ordered to intelligible being -- is literally infinite. Thus, to reduce man to the "sensible" or "empirical" animal would represent the death of the very intellect that defines man qua man.

But guess what?

Providence permits all these errors only so that the light of truth may be made even more radiant (ibid.).

In other words, absurdity is parasitic on intelligible being, not vice versa. We might say that God is the transcendental condition for the absurdity of the world. But only because God is certain, indeed, one of the few certitudes available to us, and certainly the Ultimate Certitude -- the One from which other certitudes follow. Put conversely, absent God, nothing is certain, not even that. 

I guess that makes me agnostic, but only about the world. Does it exist, and in what sense does it exist?

I almost forgot. Yesterday's post left off with a question:

The question is, is it possible to not be in a reality tunnel? Is there a reality outside the tunnel(s), and can we know it?

Yes. That is, if the ontology outlined above is correct -- that man has an immutable nature, and that this nature makes him the rational animal, which means that his intelligence is ordered to intelligible being. 

If this is not the case, then yes, we are indeed confined to our illusory reality tunnels, but not even that, for these would constitute "unreality" tunnels, nor could we ever know we were in one -- any more than my dog can (immaterially) reflect on her (immaterial) canine nature. 

Anyway, give a man an idea, and he can think for a day. But give him an ideological reality tunnel, and he can be stupid forever.

How To Tell Your Friends From the Apes

The title of the post is from a lecture once given by Robert Anton Wilson, which I first heard on the radio in the middle of the night some 38 years ago while working the graveyard shift in a supermarket. I don't recall anything about it except for the title, but credit where it's due.

Back then I was a big fan, but we all have to start our spiritual journey somewhere. Wilson was an 

author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews.  

In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth." Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."

In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what Wilson called "quantum psychology." 

Interestingly,

Wilson also joined the Church of the SubGenius, who referred to him as Pope Bob. He contributed to their literature, including the book Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob", and shared a stage with their founder, Rev. Ivan Stang... 

Thus, some influences remain, what with the faith in Slack and the skepticism toward manmade maps and models. Also, my doctoral dissertation was on a kind of "quantum psychology," and his apophatic mysticism is right up our alley.

More generally, one of my few goals in life was to adopt the playful attitude of people like Wilson, Alan Watts, and Terence McKenna, only in a serious way: to be seriously humorous or humorously serious. You can see it in that quote right above the comment box: A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes, or the one toward the bottom of the sidebar, The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. 

If you asked me to write something completely serious, I'd have to say no. I made a promise, and I must remain true to the call.   

Now, the title notwithstanding, this post originally had nothing to do with Wilson's talk. But let me skim the essay and see if anything else comes up. 

This is actually an important point:

the human mind behaves as if divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. The Thinker can think virtually anything; it can think it is mortal (materialist view) or immortal (theological view) or both mortal and immortal (reincarnation model.) It can think its way into creation of a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a Nazi universe, a nudist universe, a vegetarian Lesbian universe, etc. ad infinitum.  

The Prover is a much simpler mechanism and operates on the simple rule: What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. If the Thinker decides to become an anti-semite, the Prover will prove that Jews are evil; if the Thinker becomes a Marxist, the Prover will prove that Capitalists are evil; if the Thinker becomes a Woman's Liberationist, the Prover will prove that men are evil, etc. Conversely, if the Thinker thinks all people are basically decent really, the Prover will prove that, and if the Thinker decides that holy water from Lourdes will cure its lumbago, the Prover will often prove even that, to the astonishment of medical doctors. 

You could say that every belief system is a kind of conspiracy theory, and if that's all there is to it, the conclusion is ineluctable:

the Irish Catholic, the Iranian Moslem Fundamentalist, the Chinese Maoist, the Samoan tiki-worshipper, the Cambridge University agnostic etc. are all living in distinctly different universes, each of which has been manufactured out of thoughts and opinions.

In other words, absolute relativism, skepticism, subjectivism, etc. 

The sum total of imprinting, conditioning and learning... make up the software, or filter, through which we “see” existence.... This grid, which edits the experience to conform to the Thinker’s expectations, can be called our reality-tunnel.

The question is, is it possible to not be in a reality tunnel? Is there a reality outside the tunnel(s), and can we know it?

I suppose this is precisely where and how we can tell our friends from the apes (in my opinion, not Wilson's). For according to Garrigou-Lagrange, the immutability of human nature clearly opposes relativism and provides a stable "meta-ground" that is the basis for escaping this or that reality tunnel, so to speak. 

But we're out of time, so, to be continued...

The Open Cosmos

What is in the Devil's Toolbox? I would say his favorite tools must be those that are self-sustaining and allow him to take the rest of the day -- or century -- off. 

I'm thinking in particular of envy and ingratitude, because they cannot by definition be satisfied, and even feed on themselves: the envious and ungrateful only become more envious and ungrateful.

Conversely, greed, for example, can at least be temporarily satisfied, as can gluttony. But envy never rests -- which is why the left chose shrewdly in building a political philosophy around it. It is the engine that makes the left go, and why it is the most dynamic religion of our times.

People like to say that greed is the engine that makes capitalism go. This may or may not be true, but all the greed in the world won't result in wealth unless you first provide a product or service that someone wants. Thus, greed must be mediated by the desires of an Other. I'm as greedy as the next guy, but thus far I have nothing to show for it. 

Or, maybe I'm not as greedy as the next guy. If I were, I'd write things other people want to read. How hard could that be? Instead, I write what I want to read, because no one else has written it. So, I'm not greedy, just totally self-centered.

But I prefer to call it autotelic.

Come to think of it, if it weren't for the Almighty, this self-centeredness autotelism of mine wouldn't be healthy, would it? I say this because a closed system is inherently pathological. I won't bore you with details, but my doctoral dissertation (later published in an actual scholarly journal) was on just this subject. 

Suffice it to say, enclosed in my own Bobness, what would I be? Like Bob, only worse. Instead, we try always to come up with something the Almighty & Me Works Out Betwixt Us. Which is just another way of characterizing a vertically open system.

Which in turn goes to the subject of yesterpost, and to the difference between natural law and positive law. While we call it "natural," this is only because its roots must be "supernatural" or transcendent. Rather, it is only positive law that is located solely within immanence and therefore has only the force man gives it. 

I suppose an even deeper point is that there is no natural without the supernatural; in fact, I would say that this is one of those primordial complementarities without which we could neither be nor think. In short, nature is always already supernatural, or it would be utterly unknowable (knowledge being transcendent).

Let it be noted that, just as there is a “relatively absolute” -- the logical absurdity of this formulation does not preclude its ontologically plausible meaning -- so too is there a “naturally supernatural,” and this is precisely the permanent divine intervention, in virtue of immanence, in cosmic causality (Schuon). 

Noted. This again goes to our unique cosmic situation of being vertically open systems, open to transcendent truths that cannot not be, including on the moral and aesthetic planes. 

The reason why progressive thinkers deny nature -- AKA essences -- is not just in order to deny God, but in order to render the impossible possible, e.g., transgenderism, homosexual marriage, abortion rights, etc. One can favor any of these, but what can never be said is that they are in the nature of things. 

It is the very immutability of human nature that undergirds the possibility of change, progress, and evolution:

for only man by his very nature tends toward truth and justice (and, consequently, to God), thus meaning that this nature is certainly something loftier than the variable complex of given, changing phenomena (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Moreover, 

were we to do away with human nature, properly so-called, nothing would remain of natural ethics.... similarly nothing would remain of the natural law or of its immutability, and we would find that we could not avoid falling into a legalistic positivism which wishes to [legitimize] grave injustices and the worst forms of violence through the omnipotence of the State against right reason (italics in original).

So, One Cosmos, from God above to politics below.

It's the Religion, Stupid: Metastatic Leftism and the Devil's Toolbox

Let's learn something. How did it happen? The left's colonization of western civilization?

Roger Kimball captures the tactic well in his book The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America: “The long march through the institutions signified in the words of Marcuse, "working against the established institutions while working in them." By this means -- by insinuation and infiltration rather than by confrontation -- the counter-cultural dreams of radicals like Marcuse have triumphed.” 

So, mostly peaceful. Like cancer.

Before Marcuse there was Gramsci:

“Gramsci in the 1930s acknowledged that Western society was deeply religious, and that the only way to achieve a proletarian revolution would be to break the faith of the masses of Western voters in Christianity and the moral system derived from Christianity. He placed religion and culture at the base of the pyramid. This means that the mode of production [capitalism] is secondary.”

Thus, as politics is downstream from culture, religion is upstream from the rest: Religion --> Culture --> Politics --> Economics, et al. 

According to Gramsci a “regime grounded in Judeo-Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until those roots were cut,” and those roots were found in the remnants of the Christian religion. “[T]o capture the West, Marxists must first de-Christianize the West.”

Since Western culture had given birth to capitalism and sustained it, if that culture could be subverted, the system would fall of its own weight.

Was he wrong?

The question is, do I have anything useful to add to this excellent historical analysis? Although it was a random outcome of the google machine, it accords with a book I'm currently reading, called Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities. 

The problem is, I'm not the conspiratorial kind, or rather, there's always a deeper con-spiracy going on, about which the conspirators themselves know nothing. 

Take your average drone toiling in the media-academic industrial complex: you could interrogate him all day long under torture to give up the names "Marcuse" or "Gramsci," but he'd be unable to do so, because he's never heard of them. 

Likewise, this banal utensil wouldn't know he's taking part in some grand conspiracy to overthrow the West. Frankly, he's never thought about it. He's an unreflective idiot. He's just in it for the paycheck and the social status. 

True, they're imbeciles, but why do all the imbeciles believe the same things? Especially delusional and/or evil things, such as transgender ideology, or pro-Hamas propaganda, or climate hysteria, or racialist nonsense? 

None of this conformity results from individuals "thinking through" the topic. The Blob can't take that chance, from the president on down. If the "most powerful man on the planet" is not permitted to have his own opinions, where does this leave some idiot college student or empty headed journalist?

It works much more like cancer, which starts out localized in this or that organ but invades nearby healthy tissue and spreads via the bloodstream or lymphatic system -- and like bankruptcy, it happens very gradually and then all of a sudden. 

I'm wondering: what would Satan do? Yes, of course he'd want to invade education. That would be the Big Prize, because then the metastasis into other institutions such as journalism takes care of itself.

Now normally we have an immune system that recognizes and takes out invading bacteria or unhealthy cells. Therefore, if I'm Satan, even before my Long March Through the Institutions, the first thing I want to do is weaken the immune system that would recognize the cancer and eliminate it before it can grow and spread.

What is -- or was, rather -- our civilizational immune system?

It is not found within the "four corners," as they say, of the Constitution. Rather, the Constitution is designed to protect things that transcend the Constitution, a reminder that Gödel's theorems apply even to political systems -- i.e., that a political system assumes principles for which the system cannot account. 

In this case, the Constitution points to the natural rights (or law) of the Declaration, which in turn points to the transcendent Creator. So, if I'm Satan, Job One is destroying any traces of this link, and rendering it "unthinkable," both in theory and in fact. 

To be continued... 

Athens and Jerusalem vs. Mecca and Manhattan

In place of Manhattan we could have used the less alliterate Ockham (William of, and his anti-realist nominalism), Königsberg (Kant), Prussia (Nietzsche and Marx), Frankfurt (School), Paris (Derrida). Whatever the case, the point is that the intellectual barbarians are inside the gates and institutions of Western civilization, and are doing their utmost to let in the literal kind. 

Vertical barbarism is prior to the horizontal kind, or in other words, ideas have consequences. 

One could say that Athens and Jerusalem represent the left and right brains, respectively, or immanence and transcendence, with Homo sapiens being the monkey in the middle. But again, we're not so much between these two as a dynamic synthesis of them. 

Now, many people have commented on what appears to be a surge of anti-Semitism in the world and on the progressive left in general. 

Actually, these over-educated youngsters are too stupid to be anti-Semitic per se; rather, the Jew-hatred is just an inevitable consequence of their ideological indoctrination: if Israelis are white (even though the majority are Mizrahi or Sephardic) and affluent (instead of intelligent and industrious), then they are colonizers, oppressors, and beneficiaries of illicit privilege. The indoctrination is like a cognitive web that indiscriminately catches Jews, that's all -- even Ethiopian ones, homosexual ones, and pro-Palestinian ones. 

I was thinking about the Athens/Jerusalem cliche on my walk yesterday, which is usually taken to mean the synthesis of "faith and reason" at the foundation of western civilization, but if yesterday's post was on the right track, then it's more significant than that, going to an ineluctably closed mental horizon vs. one that is open to transcendental memos and vertical murmurandoms. Yes, the content of the latter is important, but the phenomenon itself is equally important, especially on an individual basis.

For example, anyone can be given the content of revelation, but unless we are open to what it points to and from, it will likely just fall on rocky soil. After all, I myself learned the rudiments of Christianity as a child, more than enough to reject it on grounds of being frankly religulous. My being was not open to what was on offer, which was first and foremost a "relationship."  

A relationship to what? Yes, to the vast and unseen worlds comprising the realm of the metabob. I would, of course, eventually find out about the infrabob, but the one implies the other because there can be no down without an up, nor is mere "natural" Bobness self-explanatory. No one can be their own efficient or final cause. 

Thus, the openness must be prior to the content. Analogously, unless you're good at hallucinating, you have to have an internet connection before the content can arrive on your screen. Likewise, you need some sort of interior connection to Celestial Central in order to be in the proper disposition to receive the in-formation.

Which, of course, is what prayer, contemplation, and meditation are all about; likewise the sacraments, each being a conduit of grace. And again, it is our choice as to whether the conduit is allowed to flow or is short-circuited. 

I just said "our choice," but they say the seeking is already a function of the finding, which I suppose means that it's already a grace to seek it. In fact, "prevenient grace" is available to one and all, in contrast to the sanctifying grace available after conversion.

Back to the question above: a relationship to what? In a way, you could say "just that: a relationship." In other words, to relate is to be in between, so it's more relevant to ask "in between what?" 

Really, it's rather like life, which is always a dance between order and chaos. You'll know when the dance is over because you'll be dead. Life Itself is an open structure that imports matter, information, and energy while dissipating entropy.

Which makes me think that "mind" is like Life Itself in a higher key: it too is an open system, but open to what? What does it import and metabolize? 

Well, let's see. Truth, obviously. But prior to this must be the love we import as infants, which is thoroughly entangled with the development of our neurology. I heard a talk by Rob Henderson yesterday in which he cited the dismal outcomes of children caught up in the foster system. Something like half of them end up in the judicial system. Moreover, their outcomes are exponentially worse than children who suffer mere material poverty.  

My point is that the child is an open system that is certainly entitled to certain things such as love, stability, a mother and father, etc., in order to attain its telos. You might say that denied a healthy relationship with parents, they develop an unhealthy one with the surrogate parent we call the Law.

I'm out of time, but how did we get here? What does this have to do with the title of the post?

I'm thinking. And what I'm thinking is, don't ask me, ask them -- for example, ask the quintessentially progressive BLM, whose stated goal was to "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure."

And from whom did they get that nonsense? From a couple of dead white males, Marx and Engels:

“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.... The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.”

“The modern family contains in germ not only slavery (servitus), but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services,” Engels wrote in  The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, quoting Marx. “It contains in miniature all the contradictions which later extend throughout society and its state.” 

I see that we never really got to the Mecca connection, but we will.

Our Escape is God's Inscape, Part One

So, man lives in the gap between appearances and reality. Unless one is a relativist, subjectivist, idealist, etc., in which case one pretends to live in appearances only. 

But we know there is a reality, if only because we can never know it exhaustively, rather, only asymptotically. To say that reality is intelligible being is not the end of the story, rather, only the beginning, since there's no end to its intelligibility. 

Yes, the soul knows all things -- potentially -- and our understanding extends to infinity. The world is a tapestry woven of mystery and intelligibility, meaning that we never stop weaving the rug that ties the cosmos together. At least I can't stop.

It reminds me of what they say about the Church: we have no way of knowing whether we are in the End Times or the just the beginning of the story. 

Two thousand years seems like a long time relative to a single lifetime, but what is it relative to the sun dying out in a few billion years? Like one of those mayflies who live but a day and know nothing of the seasons and all that. In any event, Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. 

Hmm. That last remark implies something beyond the Gap where we live -- again, the ever-changing one between reality and appearances. 

As we mentioned yesterday, because this gap is always evolving, it can look as if we're plunged into a world of pure becoming, nor can you blame a fellow for latching on to something like process philosophy, at least until he thinks through the implications, in which case there's no excuse.

But if our immediate experience has only access to the shifting sands of the Gap, then what? It's not much consolation to be told, Sure, there's a reality. It's just that you can never know it! 

Granted, we can never know it in a purely logical or rational way, for reasons articulated by Gödel: whatever we come up with on our end will be either complete or consistent, but never both.

But God -- supposing there is one -- would not be limited by the Theorems. He could tell us what's what and who's who, and in way that would still be true even after the sun and earth pass into darkness.

As you know, I have a beef with... No, that's not the best way to put it. I was going to say "religious language," but it's really a problem with language as such. Now, I love the sound of my own voice as much as the next guy, but language is for communicating across the gap between minds, and in order to do this there must be an unsaturated space for it to accumulate meaning.

No, not for low-level communication like a shopping list, nor for things like math and engineering, where ambiguity is the enemy. Rather, for the whole world mapped by art and religion, which transcends the material world. 

Two ideas: first, one of our rock-bottom theses is that 

In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter.

To which I would add that we are, gosh darn it, entitled to these truths, which implies that God is -- in a manner of speaking -- obligated to convey them to us in some form or fashion. And when I say "obligated," I'm thinking analogously of, say, the Constitution, which implies certain powers without which it cannot accomplish its main aims.

Likewise, man could never accomplish his purpose -- indeed, can have no purpose -- without a little assistance from outside the system and beyond the Gap. 

This much is obvious, or at least has been since Gödel; perhaps there was some wiggle room prior to him, but now there is no excuse: your world, no matter how impressively vast and complex, is ultimately an incoherent and meaningless tautology outside a vertical intervention we call "revelation" but I just call (↓) to keep it unsaturated.

I am happy to stipulate that life is utterly meaningless, and that there is no possibility of meaning, absent what we are calling (↓).  

Oh yes, the second idea, before we run out of time: it is that man is a dynamic open system on every level, both horizontally and vertically. This is self-evident as it pertains to biology, but equally so as it pertains to levels above, from psychology to religion.

Life is a Dream, But That's Not All It Is

Life is but a dream, but what if it weren't? There'd be no glorious nonsense, for example, Day dong a da ding-dong / A-lang-da-lang-da-lang / Ah, woah, woah, bip / Ah bi-ba-do-da-dip, woah:

The question is, is it true? Of course it's true, unlike the watered-down version by the Crew Cuts:

Art is an adequation, and in this case the Crew Cut's pale imitation is just inadequate. And this we can know objectively.  

But art and knowledge cannot be a pure adequation full stop, because otherwise our minds would be like cameras or Xerox machines cranking out identical copies of reality.

At the same time, finitude can never be adequate to infinitude, which is why we will never run out of art, and why science will forever approach but never reach its object. Besides, Gödel: every logical system includes statements that cannot be justified by the system.

So, there's a gap, and we live and move and have our being in this gap. It's where (and why) the freedom is, and how it is that we can become detached from reality, unlike other animals, for whom this gap is enclosed in instinct. Man alone has the space to know truth and falsehood, to do good or evil, and to create beauty or ugliness.

There's also the matter of right brain / left brain, which assures a kind of unending synthesis resulting from our neuropsychological stereoscopy.

If our first premise is that Being is intelligible, our second must be that it is endlessly and infinitely so -- that it is generative. Some people conclude from this that there is only becoming, but they are asses. 

A philosophy of pure becoming quickly leads to the reductio absurdum of absolute relativism and nihilism, and to a complete phenomenalism that makes the intelligible being of sensible things disappear; and once you've jettisoned intelligible being, there's no getting it back. Sure, night follows day, but you can never know if this is correlation or causation, because causation is reduced to a mere succession of phenomena:

Finally, the thinking subject, my very substance, disappears. The only thing left standing are phenomena that are accessible either to the external senses or to the internal senses (Garrigou-Lagrange).

Thus, imagination survives, but that is all that survives. Man is enclosed in his own dreams, and cannot advance a step outside them, nor ascend a step above. 

Which is quite different from the functional imagination that abides in the gap referenced above, for there is no longer any distinction between imagination -- the could be -- with being, AKA the is: "the verb to be, the soul of our judgments... disappears, since judgment is now nothing more than an empirical association." 

Interestingly, although such absolute relativism is the warped ontology of progressive wokesters and social justice warriors, it also renders justice itself impossible, for

The murderer could say to his judges, "I was not really the cause of this murder. It is a fact which followed upon my own actions, just as the day follows the night without being caused by it."

Which they come close to saying, except never consistently, thus our two-tier judicial system which mandates strict realism for enemies of the regime, but a squishy and forgiving relativism for its friends; a dream for pro-genocide rioters, a nightmare for J6 protesters.