The Re-Unification Church of Bób

Loose ends.

The very purpose of the mind is to tie these loose ends together, i.e., to seek and to attain unity.  

Come to think of it, that's pretty much the structure of this post my day my life: every day is an effort at unification, synthesis, integration, you name it. 

Every morning I wake up to find my ontological shoes untied. Or, sometimes I just untie them myself for the fun of retying them. Thoughts are laces, and our posts tie the laces together. 

Many of us turn on our computers in the morning and react to the news of the day with a facepalm. But frankly, I love the smell of facepalm in the morning! All the more loose ends to tie up and weave into the cosmic rug.  

Every post has different laces. For example, the previous post attempted to tie together the laces of.... let's see, of cosmic intelligibility, mystery, time, eternity, change, possibility, necessity, fallenness, death, metanoia, redemption, the rhythm of the beating heart, and V.I. Lenin, AKA Vladimir Ilyich Ulynov!   

This is pretty much what I do all day, every day. Particles & wave, wave & particles, and wave back again. Hello! Catabolism and anabolism. Someone's gotta do it. 

It reminds me of that other Bob -- or in the parlance of the 19th century times, the Báb. According to Wiki, this prior Báb 

was a merchant from Shiraz in Qajar Iran who, in 1844 at the age of 25, claimed to be a messenger of God.

We see the obvious parallels, in that our Bob was a merchant from Market Basket in Malibu, California, who, at the age of 25, mysteriously claimed to be a grocery clerk, sent by errant goys, to correct some bull. 

Were my methods at times unsound? Undoubtedly, and I have acknowledged as much. But was I insane? Yes and no. Let's just say I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. 

Back to Báb and Bábism. The latter is 

a monotheistic religion which professes that there is one incorporeal, unknown, and incomprehensible God who manifests his will in an unending series of theophanies, called Manifestation of God. 

Sounds haramless enough. Tell us more. 

It has no more than a few thousand adherents according to current estimates...

Okay, that's a few thousand more than Bóbism, but the Báb had a 150+ year head start. Who can say how many Bóbis there will be in the year 2155? 

The Báb was eventually executed by firing squad. Nothing changes. F*cking Nazis.

Let us scour the Teachings of the Báb for any other pearls of wisdom or comedy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachings_of_the_B%C3%A1b#Summary). 

The Báb taught that the realm of language, as well as all other aspects of phenomenal reality, including natural and cultural objects were symbolic of a deeper spiritual meaning.... In this way, reality is a type of language that consists of words and letters that celebrate the divine revelation in all things.

Shit yeah. No argument there.

Unlike the Bób, the Báb did not blog. Nevertheless, 

The Báb foreshadowed later developments in media, by emphasizing the need for a rapid system of news communication, which would be available for all to access, no matter their wealth or social standing.  

So, he practically invented the internet.  

In his later writings the Báb described the divine or eternal essence to be unknowable, indescribable and inaccessible. 

That's half true. But as mentioned in yesterday's post and reconfirmed in this one, the loose ends of the apophatic God are complemented by their cataphatic reunification in a never-ending spiral. It's how God rolls, all day, every day.

Go North, Young Man!

You get what you pay for, and the following associations are entirely free!, meaning they won't cost you a thing except your time. Yes, but some readers will ask: where do I go to get my time back? 

Sorry, but that's above my praygrade. Only God could redeem your time, but first you have to ask. Oh, and don't forget to say thank you.    

For obvious reasons, I'll never have as much time to read as I want. The less obvious reason is that the more I read, the more there is to read. In other words, one thing leads to anauthor, and that author to seven others. There's no closure, even though the case is closed with regard to the big ticket items.

Regarding the latter, as we've discussed in the past, there is a covert but necessary relationship between the world's intelligibility and its... let's call it mystery. 

What this means is that the world is both completely understandable and never completely understood. Rather, it is intelligible to intelligence -- forever, or so long as time should continue.

"Forever," of course, is not synonymous with eternity, since the latter is timeless. We can't wrap our minds around the latter, being that we are necessarily timebound. 

Then again, I suspect that, deep down in the beating heart of things, there is some analogous relationship of timelessness <--> time in the divine economy, as systole is to diastole. Can't have one without the other -- or if you do, make sure to have a defibrillator handy.

I can't help thinking -- and this is just me, so take it with a pile of sodium chloride -- that time and timelessness constitute a primordial and irreducible complementarity a la Father and Son. I want to say there is a kind of trinity of the Heart, the Arteries, and the Circulating Blood.

What are the objections to such a heretical kettle of fishy bish bosh? I was about to say it started with the Greeks, who equated time with change, and change with appearances and deception. In order to apprehend the unchanging reality, one had to ascend beyond appearances and know the timeless Platonic forms of things. 

In short, time is seen as a privation of the "fullness" of eternity. 

Eh. I don't buy it. Among other reasons, I say that when the second Person of the Trinity goes to all the trouble of incarnating, he doesn't just take on human nature, but in so doing takes on everything this nature entails. And one of the things it entails is time. Isn't there something about "redeeming the time"? What's that supposed to mean?

Ash and ye shall recite. The time was 1930. The day was Wednesday. The man was T.S. Eliot: Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream / While jeweled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse. 

Now, what's that supposed to mean? It surely means that there is something messed up about time, but that it isn't time's fault. Rather, the fault lies with Man, who has severed time from eternity. He does this way down in Genesis 3, meaning that he never stops doing it. Or at least it constitutes one of those permanent temporaltations herebelow.

So, how is time redeemed? Where do we start? Well, the first thing to realize is that we cannot do it -- that man is powerless to redeem the time, and the more he tries, the more costly it is to Build Back Better. BBB will piss away trillions upon trillions, but far from redeeming us, it will only re-reamus.

But seriously. How? 

Let's begin at the beginning. To say beginning is to say time, since eternity is without beginning or end. Now, what or who is man? Not only does man have a beginning, but the beginning begins with man. 

What I mean by this is that man qua man is the being who is consciously aware of the passage of time and all it implies, not the least of which being its End, AKA the nul de slack of Death. 

Now we've got a problem, and a big one. Animals don't have this problem, since they live beneath time, so to speak; they are infratemporal. Nor do angelic intelligences sweat it, since they are above time and don't even perspire anyway.

So, it's a uniquely human problem. Therefore, if -- hypothetically speaking -- the Ultimate Reality assumes human nature, among the things it assumes is Time (as such) and temporality. This is how -- and the only way how -- time can be redeemed. Again, hypothetically.

As it so happens, yesterday I read a passage that goes to this question. 

Yes? Petey wishes to say that just because God and only God can redeem the time, it doesn't mean we (human beings) have nothing to do with it. 

Rather, precisely because God has done the hefty living, it is up to us to participate in it. God is the necessary reason, i.e., the condition-without-Who, while man is the sufficient reason, the condition-with-who (which sounds ungrammatical, but like V.I. Lenin -- Vladimir Ilyich Ulynov, Donny! -- we're making a deeper point about subject -- who -- and object -- whom). 

For this reason it is said that "with God all things are possible." Possible, not necessary. If they are necessary, then man is irrelevant. We are cut out of the deal. We are pure whom to the one and only Who.

What was the thing I read yesterday? Don't go anywhere. I read half a dozen books at a time, so I have to figure out which one. 

On a preliminary basis, I want to say that time is a kind of prolongation of eternity, but that redemption is what transforms what is otherwise an ever-diminishing line into an open circle, AKA endless spiral. This spiral perpetually closes in on itself without ever reaching its deustination, since God is God and we aren't.

It has something to do with "metanoia," i.e., that primordial turning-around that constitutes conversion. Note that the first convert was Eve, followed by Adam. Except they turned around in the wrong direction. D'oh! The first cultists.

Here's the passage I was looking for -- from a quasi-philosophical and quasi-devotional book by Bishop Sheen called The Life of All Living: only man can sin, and sin is ultimately

the loss of a higher life which is a gift of God, and the domination of the lower life which is that of this world.... [It] implies a turning away from God and a turning to a creature. Its greatest malice is that it is the death of Divine life which is in us.

Leave it to man to crucify his own savior, but there you go.

The point is that man is as it were a metannoying creature who can do a 180º in either direction, ultimately toward Life and Truth or death and falsehood. The choice is yours. But remember: on one side is the degenerate line, which is like an ever-diminishing ray of light until one is enshrouded in total darkness; the other an inspiraling and renewing journey toward Celestial Central. 

We'll end with this passage from the same book:

The continuation of the Incarnation is the union of Christ with every individual human nature in the world.... Christ just as really and truly lives now in His new and mystic body, as He did during His physical life.... The Incarnate did not exhaust himself in the Incarnation (emphasis mine).

Amen.

Go North, Young Man!

You get what you pay for, and the following associations are entirely free!, meaning they won't cost you a thing except your time. Yes, but some readers will ask: where do I go to get my time back? 

Sorry, but that's above my praygrade. Only God could redeem your time, but first you have to ask. Oh, and don't forget to say thank you.    

For obvious reasons, I'll never have as much time to read as I want. The less obvious reason is that the more I read, the more there is to read. In other words, one thing leads to anauthor, and that author to seven others. There's no closure, even though the case is closed with regard to the big ticket items.

Regarding the latter, as we've discussed in the past, there is a covert but necessary relationship between the world's intelligibility and its... let's call it mystery. 

What this means is that the world is both completely understandable and never completely understood. Rather, it is intelligible to intelligence -- forever, or so long as time should continue.

"Forever," of course, is not synonymous with eternity, since the latter is timeless. We can't wrap our minds around the latter, being that we are necessarily timebound. 

Then again, I suspect that, deep down in the beating heart of things, there is some analogous relationship of timelessness <--> time in the divine economy, as systole is to diastole. Can't have one without the other -- or if you do, make sure to have a defibrillator handy.

I can't help thinking -- and this is just me, so take it with a pile of sodium chloride -- that time and timelessness constitute a primordial and irreducible complementarity a la Father and Son. I want to say there is a kind of trinity of the Heart, the Arteries, and the Circulating Blood.

What are the objections to such a heretical kettle of fishy bish bosh? I was about to say it started with the Greeks, who equated time with change, and change with appearances and deception. In order to apprehend the unchanging reality, one had to ascend beyond appearances and know the timeless Platonic forms of things. 

In short, time is seen as a privation of the "fullness" of eternity. 

Eh. I don't buy it. Among other reasons, I say that when the second Person of the Trinity goes to all the trouble of incarnating, he doesn't just take on human nature, but in so doing takes on everything this nature entails. And one of the things it entails is time. Isn't there something about "redeeming the time"? What's that supposed to mean?

Ash and ye shall recite. The time was 1930. The day was Wednesday. The man was T.S. Eliot: Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream / While jeweled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse. 

Now, what's that supposed to mean? It surely means that there is something messed up about time, but that it isn't time's fault. Rather, the fault lies with Man, who has severed time from eternity. He does this way down in Genesis 3, meaning that he never stops doing it. Or at least it constitutes one of those permanent temporaltations herebelow.

So, how is time redeemed? Where do we start? Well, the first thing to realize is that we cannot do it -- that man is powerless to redeem the time, and the more he tries, the more costly it is to Build Back Better. BBB will piss away trillions upon trillions, but far from redeeming us, it will only re-reamus.

But seriously. How? 

Let's begin at the beginning. To say beginning is to say time, since eternity is without beginning or end. Now, what or who is man? Not only does man have a beginning, but the beginning begins with man. 

What I mean by this is that man qua man is the being who is consciously aware of the passage of time and all it implies, not the least of which being its End, AKA the nul de slack of Death. 

Now we've got a problem, and a big one. Animals don't have this problem, since they live beneath time, so to speak; they are infratemporal. Nor do angelic intelligences sweat it, since they are above time and don't even perspire anyway.

So, it's a uniquely human problem. Therefore, if -- hypothetically speaking -- the Ultimate Reality assumes human nature, among the things it assumes is Time (as such) and temporality. This is how -- and the only way how -- time can be redeemed. Again, hypothetically.

As it so happens, yesterday I read a passage that goes to this question. 

Yes? Petey wishes to say that just because God and only God can redeem the time, it doesn't mean we (human beings) have nothing to do with it. 

Rather, precisely because God has done the hefty living, it is up to us to participate in it. God is the necessary reason, i.e., the condition-without-Who, while man is the sufficient reason, the condition-with-who (which sounds ungrammatical, but like V.I. Lenin -- Vladimir Ilyich Ulynov, Donny! -- we're making a deeper point about subject -- who -- and object -- whom). 

For this reason it is said that "with God all things are possible." Possible, not necessary. If they are necessary, then man is irrelevant. We are cut out of the deal. We are pure whom to the one and only Who.

What was the thing I read yesterday? Don't go anywhere. I read half a dozen books at a time, so I have to figure out which one. 

On a preliminary basis, I want to say that time is a kind of prolongation of eternity, but that redemption is what transforms what is otherwise an ever-diminishing line into an open circle, AKA endless spiral. This spiral perpetually closes in on itself without ever reaching its deustination, since God is God and we aren't.

It has something to do with "metanoia," i.e., that primordial turning-around that constitutes conversion. Note that the first convert was Eve, followed by Adam. Except they turned around in the wrong direction. D'oh! The first cultists.

Here's the passage I was looking for -- from a quasi-philosophical and quasi-devotional book by Bishop Sheen called The Life of All Living: only man can sin, and sin is ultimately

the loss of a higher life which is a gift of God, and the domination of the lower life which is that of this world.... [It] implies a turning away from God and a turning to a creature. Its greatest malice is that it is the death of Divine life which is in us.

Leave it to man to crucify his own savior, but there you go.

The point is that man is as it were a metannoying creature who can do a 180º in either direction, ultimately toward Life and Truth or death and falsehood. The choice is yours. But remember: on one side is the degenerate line, which is like an ever-diminishing ray of light until one is enshrouded in total darkness; the other an inspiraling and renewing journey toward Celestial Central. 

We'll end with this passage from the same book:

The continuation of the Incarnation is the union of Christ with every individual human nature in the world.... Christ just as really and truly lives now in His new and mystic body, as He did during His physical life.... The Incarnate did not exhaust himself in the Incarnation (emphasis mine).

Amen.

My Head is a Landing Strip

Being that I am no longer subject to the constant deustraction of the Conspiracy, my head has become a full time landing strip for vertical murmurandoms. They're constantly buzzing my tower, but I'm just the air traffic controller. 

Here comes one now! 

Wait. I think this one must have been diverted from Deepak International. It's requesting to land in my head because his is completely full of it.

Let's see... Translating from the original sans-wit, it's telling me life consists only of moments, and that the human moment -- every oneavum for everyoneavus -- is the conscious bisection of time by eternity. 

Here comes another. It's been taxiing around up there for over 15 years, but no one will listen: 

Cap'n Huxley speaking: here & now, boys, here & now. Reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore; on your left is the dazzling abode of immortality, on your right the shimmering gate of infinity. Return your soul to its upright position and exsanguish all (me)mories, we're in for a promised landing. Touching down in shantitown, reset your chronescapes and preprayer for arrisall. 

I don't know whether to be embarrassed or mortified. Better check for drugs. 

Now that this thought is siting on the tarmacbook, it occurs to me that most of the truly memorable moments we recall from life are recalled as moments for precisely this reason, i.e., because of the vertical crosscurrents that blew through them. It's what makes them memorable.

And it works both ways, for what is trauma but an irruption from below, perpetuating a hellish moment that retains echoes of hell long after the moment has ended? 

No one knows where thoughts come from, because such knowledge would constitute another thought and thus really bug the quester. 

But let's propose an answer anyway and suggest that to entertain true thoughts -- AKA Truth -- is to participate in God, which is to say, Ultimate Reality. 

According to Thomas, "The human soul possesses such an abundance of various powers because it dwells on the borders of spiritual and material being," and "our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity." Putting these together, we might say that Infinitude (the first side effect of the Absolute) passes the border between pure spirit and matter, and extends down into man. And here we are.

This is precisely why, as Thomas says, "the intellect is therefore naturally capable of knowing everything that exists" -- to which I would only add supernaturally naturally capable.

Indeed, to say nature is to say supra- or transnature, otherwise we could never say it. No joke! In other words, to recognize nature is to have transcended it -- analogous to the recognition that even the itsiest bitsy of living matter represents a shocking ontological break from the mayaterial world. From the perspective of vertically, not only does Life = Matter + X, but more importantly, Matter = Life - (minus) X.

So, what is X? Y, wouldn't U like to Z! 

I suppose I first encountered this way of looking at things in E.F. Schumacher's Guide for the Perplexed, which I must have read waaaaay back when this whole adventure started around the late discolithic era. 

Not only was I a puerplexed lad of 25, but I was a coors-carrying idiot, in the literal sense of being rude, simple, ignorant, unskilled, and unschooled. Indeed, I was literally an unskilled laborer, laboring in a supermarket until I was 33 years old. Or as they say today, a hero.

Of course, in the long run, my utter vacuity turned out to be an asset, in that I had little in the way of faulty programming to deprogram or indoctrination to undoctrinate. That actually came later, once I made contact with Planet Higher Education. There were... let's see... over seven years of overlap between the supermarket and graduate school, in that I paid for the latter via the former. 

Speaking of which, it turns out I worked long enough as a retail clerk to qualify for a pension, for which I just put in the paperwork. This will amount to an additional $700 a month. To celebrate this modest windfall, I used the first installment to upgrade my subwoofer in the slackatoreum, from an SVS-2000 to the SVS-3000. The former already changed my life, so I can't imagine what the latter will do. It arrives today. I'll keep you posted. 

I frankly don't understand how people can live without a subwoofer -- not any old thump-thump subwoofer, but a musical one which, among other things, renders the music present to the body. The music then reaches the soul via both the ears and the skin. 

Let's redirect Bob's wavering attention and dig out his old G. for the P'ed. Lots of notes in the margins & end pages, meaning it must have stimulated the noggin. Any notes worth mentioning, or are they all embarrassing juvenilia? 

Interesting: here are the traces of a sentiment that has haunted me up to the present, where I scribbled to myself:

Why start with physics? What is the essential difference between animate and inanimate?

What this signifies is the dawning awareness that physics isn't metaphysics, nor can metaphysics be derived from it. Rather, the other way around. Oh, it's round alright. But there's no logical reason to begin at the bottom of the circle, and every reason to begin at the top. 

And once we turn the cosmos back right-side-up and outside-in, we see that there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that Life is reducible to physics. Nor is there any reason to elevate physics to our paradigmatic science -- as if anything that isn't physics isn't real, or that the most real reality is what is given to the senses. Nonsense! And not the perfect kind.

True, knowledge begins in the senses, but it doesn't end there unless you have a particularly nasty case of tenure. In fact, matter requires something immaterial -- in a Word, form -- to render it intelligibly real.

Let's end with some aphorisms from the Master, relating to our original theme of celestial thoughts and terrestrial airports:

God is the guest of silence.

In man’s extreme solitude he perceives anew the touch of immortal wings.

In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of midday.

The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things.

We only dig the channels for flash floods.

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

We are saved from daily tedium only by the impalpable, the invisible, and the ineffable.

At a given moment, the most important place on earth can be a palace, a pigsty, or a cell.

Man only has importance if God speaks to him, and as long as God speaks to him.

Things are not mute. They merely select their listeners. 

The steps of grace startle us like the footsteps of someone passing by in the fog.

                                                        Boo! 

My Head is a Landing Strip

Being that I am no longer subject to the constant deustraction of the Conspiracy, my head has become a full time landing strip for vertical murmurandoms. They're constantly buzzing my tower, but I'm just the air traffic controller. 

Here comes one now! 

Wait. I think this one must have been diverted from Deepak International. It's requesting to land in my head because his is completely full of it.

Let's see... Translating from the original sans-wit, it's telling me life consists only of moments, and that the human moment -- every oneavum for everyoneavus -- is the conscious bisection of time by eternity. 

Here comes another. It's been taxiing around up there for over 15 years, but no one will listen: 

Cap'n Huxley speaking: here & now, boys, here & now. Reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore; on your left is the dazzling abode of immortality, on your right the shimmering gate of infinity. Return your soul to its upright position and exsanguish all (me)mories, we're in for a promised landing. Touching down in shantitown, reset your chronescapes and preprayer for arrisall. 

I don't know whether to be embarrassed or mortified. Better check for drugs. 

Now that this thought is siting on the tarmacbook, it occurs to me that most of the truly memorable moments we recall from life are recalled as moments for precisely this reason, i.e., because of the vertical crosscurrents that blew through them. It's what makes them memorable.

And it works both ways, for what is trauma but an irruption from below, perpetuating a hellish moment that retains echoes of hell long after the moment has ended? 

No one knows where thoughts come from, because such knowledge would constitute another thought and thus really bug the quester. 

But let's propose an answer anyway and suggest that to entertain true thoughts -- AKA Truth -- is to participate in God, which is to say, Ultimate Reality. 

According to Thomas, "The human soul possesses such an abundance of various powers because it dwells on the borders of spiritual and material being," and "our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity." Putting these together, we might say that Infinitude (the first side effect of the Absolute) passes the border between pure spirit and matter, and extends down into man. And here we are.

This is precisely why, as Thomas says, "the intellect is therefore naturally capable of knowing everything that exists" -- to which I would only add supernaturally naturally capable.

Indeed, to say nature is to say supra- or transnature, otherwise we could never say it. No joke! In other words, to recognize nature is to have transcended it -- analogous to the recognition that even the itsiest bitsy of living matter represents a shocking ontological break from the mayaterial world. From the perspective of vertically, not only does Life = Matter + X, but more importantly, Matter = Life - (minus) X.

So, what is X? Y, wouldn't U like to Z! 

I suppose I first encountered this way of looking at things in E.F. Schumacher's Guide for the Perplexed, which I must have read waaaaay back when this whole adventure started around the late discolithic era. 

Not only was I a puerplexed lad of 25, but I was a coors-carrying idiot, in the literal sense of being rude, simple, ignorant, unskilled, and unschooled. Indeed, I was literally an unskilled laborer, laboring in a supermarket until I was 33 years old. Or as they say today, a hero.

Of course, in the long run, my utter vacuity turned out to be an asset, in that I had little in the way of faulty programming to deprogram or indoctrination to undoctrinate. That actually came later, once I made contact with Planet Higher Education. There were... let's see... over seven years of overlap between the supermarket and graduate school, in that I paid for the latter via the former. 

Speaking of which, it turns out I worked long enough as a retail clerk to qualify for a pension, for which I just put in the paperwork. This will amount to an additional $700 a month. To celebrate this modest windfall, I used the first installment to upgrade my subwoofer in the slackatoreum, from an SVS-2000 to the SVS-3000. The former already changed my life, so I can't imagine what the latter will do. It arrives today. I'll keep you posted. 

I frankly don't understand how people can live without a subwoofer -- not any old thump-thump subwoofer, but a musical one which, among other things, renders the music present to the body. The music then reaches the soul via both the ears and the skin. 

Let's redirect Bob's wavering attention and dig out his old G. for the P'ed. Lots of notes in the margins & end pages, meaning it must have stimulated the noggin. Any notes worth mentioning, or are they all embarrassing juvenilia? 

Interesting: here are the traces of a sentiment that has haunted me up to the present, where I scribbled to myself:

Why start with physics? What is the essential difference between animate and inanimate?

What this signifies is the dawning awareness that physics isn't metaphysics, nor can metaphysics be derived from it. Rather, the other way around. Oh, it's round alright. But there's no logical reason to begin at the bottom of the circle, and every reason to begin at the top. 

And once we turn the cosmos back right-side-up and outside-in, we see that there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that Life is reducible to physics. Nor is there any reason to elevate physics to our paradigmatic science -- as if anything that isn't physics isn't real, or that the most real reality is what is given to the senses. Nonsense! And not the perfect kind.

True, knowledge begins in the senses, but it doesn't end there unless you have a particularly nasty case of tenure. In fact, matter requires something immaterial -- in a Word, form -- to render it intelligibly real.

Let's end with some aphorisms from the Master, relating to our original theme of celestial thoughts and terrestrial airports:

God is the guest of silence.

In man’s extreme solitude he perceives anew the touch of immortal wings.

In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of midday.

The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things.

We only dig the channels for flash floods.

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

We are saved from daily tedium only by the impalpable, the invisible, and the ineffable.

At a given moment, the most important place on earth can be a palace, a pigsty, or a cell.

Man only has importance if God speaks to him, and as long as God speaks to him.

Things are not mute. They merely select their listeners. 

The steps of grace startle us like the footsteps of someone passing by in the fog.

                                                        Boo! 

Real and Fake Privilege

Forgive me if this post is all over the place. It has no preconceived plan. Rather, I'm just going to free associate in the hope that it will discover its point along the way. If it doesn't, well, that's mindjazz: sometimes your musical reach exceeds your improvisational grasp.   

Everyone can see that our culture has become feminized -- and emasculated -- over the past sixty years or so. Others can debate the surface causes and effects, but in this series of posts, we're attempting to elucidate the cosmic significance of this drastic change.   

Think of how differently fathers were depicted in popular culture prior to the ascent of the vaginocracy. Off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen TV shows with a father but no mother: Andy Griffith, Bonanza, The Rifleman, My Three Sons, Courtship of Eddie's Father, Make Room for Daddy, Bachelor Father... 

Andy Griffith and The Beverly Hillbillies featured Aunt Bea and Granny as mother figures, but it's difficult to imagine either one wearing a pussy hat. Nor would either one accept the notion that they were "oppressed," except perhaps by carpetbagging Yankee pussies.

But since the latter half of the 1960s, "Fatherhood, and the role of men," has been "under assault by feminist groups."

By the 1970s, fathers had become a central target for the media, especially entertainment. Fathers were increasingly portrayed as buffoons, even as evil, on prime-time television. Comedies, according to one study of thirty years of network television, presented blue-collar or middle-class fathers as foolish, although less so than portrayals of upper-class fathers (Schweikart & Allen).

One of the reasons for this is that men -- unlike feminists -- have a sense of humor about ourselves. We don't mind being caricatured, nor are we triggered by being teased. Comedy begins at home.

Back then (the '70s) the left was still capable of humor, so they were able to advance their agenda under cover of laughter. By the time conservatives figured out what was going on, it was too late:

Although it took about twenty years for sociologists to study the phenomena, scholars almost universally agreed by the 1990s that children of one-parent families suffered from more pathologies, more criminal behavior, worse grades, and lower self-esteem than kids from traditional families (ibid).

The left, of course, has a solution to each of these pathologies: normalize abnormality, decriminalize crime, eliminate academic standards, and instill pride based upon one's race (so long as it isn't Caucasian) and gender (so long as it isn't male).

It's all about privilege: the privilege -- actually, entitlement -- of growing up with a father married to your mother. There are "libraries... filled with books and studies about correlations between fatherlessness" and "various behavioral outcomes," proving beyond doubt that the privilege of having a father in the home is "more important to positive outcomes than race, income, or one's station at birth" (Eberstadt).

"Racial justice" is waaaaaay downstream from paternal justice. Not only are we not racists, but more importantly, we didn't abandon you and your mother, so don't blame white people.  

In fact, Eberstadt attributes the cancer of identity politics to the loss of real identity rooted in traditional family structure. As a former clinical psychologist, I rate this sentiment True-to-Self-Evident, bordering on Captain Obvious territory: I am a victim, therefore I am. But not really. It's a fake identity that evolved in order to patch up a brittle foundation of Being.

But progressive victims are always vindictims, i.e., bullies, for to say bully is to say counterfeit masculinity. Bullies such as Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Garlic Merman or Lil' Binger are the weak man's impersonation of a strong man.

Which raises an interesting question: why does the left always project? (https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/09/citizenship-and-courage/) What is it about leftism that results in the pervasive projection of primitive sexual and violent material? Let's bear in mind that correlation is not causation, so we need to determine whether projection is a cause or consequence of leftism, or perhaps both. 

Spoiler alert: yeah, it's both. But let's read what Hanson has to say anyway:

The Left is addicted to projection -- the psycho-political syndrome of attributing all of one’s own sins to one’s opponents. The woke apparently do this out of some Freudian effort to square the circle of their own guilt or sense of privilege, by fobbing off their own fearful realities onto others. 

True, true, and true. How do we know? For the simple reason that we are precisely the ones into whom the left projects, and we know on a first hand basis that we are none of the things the left attributes to us, whether it is racism, sexism, insurrectionism, anti-science-ism, etc. 

They could just ask, but then I might not give the answer that you want me to. Oh well. 

I don't want to be a psychological reductionist, but psychology is nevertheless part of the answer. Everyone projects sometimes, but some people project all the time, e.g., psychotic patients. Is the left psychotic? I don't know. Does the left distort reality in a systematic way? 

Take for example, the worn-out charge of “privilege”.... This trope originates exclusively from the Left. Purportedly, it signifies a rigged system in which white males have gained, unfairly and undeservedly, “privilege” to exercise cultural, economic, political, and social control over the “other”....

How odd, given that by any indicator the political Left is the party of wealth and privilege. The wealthiest ZIP codes are found in blue states such as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Twenty-six of the 27 wealthiest congressional districts, gauged by per capita incomes, are represented by liberal Democrats (Hanson). 

Psycho. 

Is that all? No, there's more: the party of wealth and privilege pretends it isn't, by projecting the wealth and privilege into us:

Registered Democrats on average have higher incomes than their Republican counterparts. Democratic presidential candidates have vastly outspent Republicans over the last 20 years. Note that the old liberal saw about “dark money” has steadily disappeared from the left-wing lexicon (nothing is darker than Mark Zuckerberg’s infusions of cash to warp particular voting precincts)....

The most elite and wealthy institutions in America are predominantly liberal bastions: Silicon Valley, entertainment, universities, professional sports, Wall Street, the mainstream media, and foundations (ibid.).  

As they say, if institutional racism is a problem, it's got nothing to do with us, since we have no control or even influence over these institutions.  

Okay, but does this have anything to do with fathers, especially the missing kind? 

I have to admit that I'm a little envious of people with privilege -- for example, my son, who gets to grow up with me as a father. How awesome must that be? I think I'll ask him when he wakes up. Then again, he might not give the answer that I want him to. 

Real and Fake Privilege

Forgive me if this post is all over the place. It has no preconceived plan. Rather, I'm just going to free associate in the hope that it will discover its point along the way. If it doesn't, well, that's mindjazz: sometimes your musical reach exceeds your improvisational grasp.   

Everyone can see that our culture has become feminized -- and emasculated -- over the past sixty years or so. Others can debate the surface causes and effects, but in this series of posts, we're attempting to elucidate the cosmic significance of this drastic change.   

Think of how differently fathers were depicted in popular culture prior to the ascent of the vaginocracy. Off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen TV shows with a father but no mother: Andy Griffith, Bonanza, The Rifleman, My Three Sons, Courtship of Eddie's Father, Make Room for Daddy, Bachelor Father... 

Andy Griffith and The Beverly Hillbillies featured Aunt Bea and Granny as mother figures, but it's difficult to imagine either one wearing a pussy hat. Nor would either one accept the notion that they were "oppressed," except perhaps by carpetbagging Yankee pussies.

But since the latter half of the 1960s, "Fatherhood, and the role of men," has been "under assault by feminist groups."

By the 1970s, fathers had become a central target for the media, especially entertainment. Fathers were increasingly portrayed as buffoons, even as evil, on prime-time television. Comedies, according to one study of thirty years of network television, presented blue-collar or middle-class fathers as foolish, although less so than portrayals of upper-class fathers (Schweikart & Allen).

One of the reasons for this is that men -- unlike feminists -- have a sense of humor about ourselves. We don't mind being caricatured, nor are we triggered by being teased. Comedy begins at home.

Back then (the '70s) the left was still capable of humor, so they were able to advance their agenda under cover of laughter. By the time conservatives figured out what was going on, it was too late:

Although it took about twenty years for sociologists to study the phenomena, scholars almost universally agreed by the 1990s that children of one-parent families suffered from more pathologies, more criminal behavior, worse grades, and lower self-esteem than kids from traditional families (ibid).

The left, of course, has a solution to each of these pathologies: normalize abnormality, decriminalize crime, eliminate academic standards, and instill pride based upon one's race (so long as it isn't Caucasian) and gender (so long as it isn't male).

It's all about privilege: the privilege -- actually, entitlement -- of growing up with a father married to your mother. There are "libraries... filled with books and studies about correlations between fatherlessness" and "various behavioral outcomes," proving beyond doubt that the privilege of having a father in the home is "more important to positive outcomes than race, income, or one's station at birth" (Eberstadt).

"Racial justice" is waaaaaay downstream from paternal justice. Not only are we not racists, but more importantly, we didn't abandon you and your mother, so don't blame white people.  

In fact, Eberstadt attributes the cancer of identity politics to the loss of real identity rooted in traditional family structure. As a former clinical psychologist, I rate this sentiment True-to-Self-Evident, bordering on Captain Obvious territory: I am a victim, therefore I am. But not really. It's a fake identity that evolved in order to patch up a brittle foundation of Being.

But progressive victims are always vindictims, i.e., bullies, for to say bully is to say counterfeit masculinity. Bullies such as Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Garlic Merman or Lil' Binger are the weak man's impersonation of a strong man.

Which raises an interesting question: why does the left always project? (https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/09/citizenship-and-courage/) What is it about leftism that results in the pervasive projection of primitive sexual and violent material? Let's bear in mind that correlation is not causation, so we need to determine whether projection is a cause or consequence of leftism, or perhaps both. 

Spoiler alert: yeah, it's both. But let's read what Hanson has to say anyway:

The Left is addicted to projection -- the psycho-political syndrome of attributing all of one’s own sins to one’s opponents. The woke apparently do this out of some Freudian effort to square the circle of their own guilt or sense of privilege, by fobbing off their own fearful realities onto others. 

True, true, and true. How do we know? For the simple reason that we are precisely the ones into whom the left projects, and we know on a first hand basis that we are none of the things the left attributes to us, whether it is racism, sexism, insurrectionism, anti-science-ism, etc. 

They could just ask, but then I might not give the answer that you want me to. Oh well. 

I don't want to be a psychological reductionist, but psychology is nevertheless part of the answer. Everyone projects sometimes, but some people project all the time, e.g., psychotic patients. Is the left psychotic? I don't know. Does the left distort reality in a systematic way? 

Take for example, the worn-out charge of “privilege”.... This trope originates exclusively from the Left. Purportedly, it signifies a rigged system in which white males have gained, unfairly and undeservedly, “privilege” to exercise cultural, economic, political, and social control over the “other”....

How odd, given that by any indicator the political Left is the party of wealth and privilege. The wealthiest ZIP codes are found in blue states such as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Twenty-six of the 27 wealthiest congressional districts, gauged by per capita incomes, are represented by liberal Democrats (Hanson). 

Psycho. 

Is that all? No, there's more: the party of wealth and privilege pretends it isn't, by projecting the wealth and privilege into us:

Registered Democrats on average have higher incomes than their Republican counterparts. Democratic presidential candidates have vastly outspent Republicans over the last 20 years. Note that the old liberal saw about “dark money” has steadily disappeared from the left-wing lexicon (nothing is darker than Mark Zuckerberg’s infusions of cash to warp particular voting precincts)....

The most elite and wealthy institutions in America are predominantly liberal bastions: Silicon Valley, entertainment, universities, professional sports, Wall Street, the mainstream media, and foundations (ibid.).  

As they say, if institutional racism is a problem, it's got nothing to do with us, since we have no control or even influence over these institutions.  

Okay, but does this have anything to do with fathers, especially the missing kind? 

I have to admit that I'm a little envious of people with privilege -- for example, my son, who gets to grow up with me as a father. How awesome must that be? I think I'll ask him when he wakes up. Then again, he might not give the answer that I want him to. 

Man Down and Woman Up!

This post may end abruptly, so do not be alarmed. The grinding sound you hear is just me tearing myself away from the fabric of extra-cosmic being and returning to sub-atmaspheric flight.  

Let's continue our exploration of the Mammals & the Pappals. Yes, the latter is a stupid sounding word, but it's too late to change it now. Besides, it's good enough to get the job done. Do not suppose the Principle can be tarnished by my verbal indiscretions.

To repeat: there are thousands of mammal species but only one pappal: that would be us, AKA Homo sapiens.

This is not to say there is no spiritual component to motherhood -- obviously -- only that the latter arises (chronologically, not ontologically) from the "bottom up," so to speak, and is a vertical prolongation of an antecedent biological reality, AKA nurturing and all this entails and implies on the human plane. Without this lengthy extrauterine nurturing the species would literally die, so thanks for the mammaries.

In contrast to motherhood, fatherhood begins as a spiritual reality and is prolonged "downward" into biology. It must be received from above and accomplished herebelow. In turn, this is a distant reflection of the Incarnation itself, through which the Son assumes the form of human nature. 

The main point is that a man, in order to be one, must achieve something; or know something, be something (someone), conquer something, etc. 

And please put down the rolling pin: nothing about what we're saying, or about to say, is a denigration or devaluation of the Feminine. If it is necessary to defend ourselves from the feminist rolling pin, we will do so with two words: Margaret. Thatcher.  

Wait -- put down the knife!

Ultimately a human being, qua humanness, is always both: maleandfemale he created them. But darn it, it isn't good that maleandfemale should be allone, so He splits them up. A central purpose of marriage is to consecrate their reunion. Unless you have a better idea.  

Note that the Logos begins as pure spirit, which drills down, so to speak, into biology. People who wonder why the Father can't be a mother, or Jesus her daughter, or priests women, just don't have a clue. It's like wondering why the Mother of God couldn't have been a man. Such fantasies are violations of the whole divine-human economy -- like "Admiral" " Rachel" Levine.

Also, in relation to God, the soul itself is feminine, since God is the agent and we the receptacle. Such schemes are full of nuances and qualifications, being that ours must be an "active passivity," but let's not veer into another topic. The point is, this dynamic obviously mirrors what goes in inside the Godhead in that our own little Yes to God is an echo of the big Yes that the Son says to the Father -- or Mary to the Holy Spirit, Abram to the Lord, Moses to I AM, etc. 

I suppose if man were a reptile, then the Savior would have to be a good egg. But we are not reptiles, or at least we don't have to be. Even Adam Schiff wasn't born that way. He looks and behaves like he was hatched, but the choice of devolving and living under a rock was his to make.

Which brings to mind an important point about our fallenness: not only can it not be understood outside the context of our deiformity, but in my opinion, it is a commentary on it. Although the Fall is always present, it cannot be a complement of our deiformity, since it is a privation. Nor is it literally a necessity, since to say necessity is to say eternity, and the good news is that we aren't necessarily eternal under-achievers. 

With these flourescent prelumenaries out of the way, let's go back to Rob Henderson's pneumagraphical essay. In it he notes that at the age of ten, 

my adoptive parents got divorced. My adoptive father, angry at my mother for leaving him, decided to stop talking to me as a way to get back at her. 

What kind of man would do this to a child? No kind of man. Except a bad and inadequate one.

But sometimes there is a hero. I won't say man, because the hee-ro could be Margaret Thatcher. But  

if I am honest, the teachers who had the most positive effect on me were usually men. Perhaps, after being shunned by both my biological father and my adoptive father, some part of me was seeking a male role model -- though, at the time, I never would have understood or admitted this.

Lucky for us,  

during my senior year, a male history teacher, an Air Force veteran, encouraged me to enlist. He knew my grades were awful -- I graduated in the bottom third of my high school class, with a 2.2 GPA -- but saw something in me, potential that I hadn’t yet discovered or maybe didn’t even want to.

Man Down and Woman Up!

This post may end abruptly, so do not be alarmed. The grinding sound you hear is just me tearing myself away from the fabric of extra-cosmic being and returning to sub-atmaspheric flight.  

Let's continue our exploration of the Mammals & the Pappals. Yes, the latter is a stupid sounding word, but it's too late to change it now. Besides, it's good enough to get the job done. Do not suppose the Principle can be tarnished by my verbal indiscretions.

To repeat: there are thousands of mammal species but only one pappal: that would be us, AKA Homo sapiens.

This is not to say there is no spiritual component to motherhood -- obviously -- only that the latter arises (chronologically, not ontologically) from the "bottom up," so to speak, and is a vertical prolongation of an antecedent biological reality, AKA nurturing and all this entails and implies on the human plane. Without this lengthy extrauterine nurturing the species would literally die, so thanks for the mammaries.

In contrast to motherhood, fatherhood begins as a spiritual reality and is prolonged "downward" into biology. It must be received from above and accomplished herebelow. In turn, this is a distant reflection of the Incarnation itself, through which the Son assumes the form of human nature. 

The main point is that a man, in order to be one, must achieve something; or know something, be something (someone), conquer something, etc. 

And please put down the rolling pin: nothing about what we're saying, or about to say, is a denigration or devaluation of the Feminine. If it is necessary to defend ourselves from the feminist rolling pin, we will do so with two words: Margaret. Thatcher.  

Wait -- put down the knife!

Ultimately a human being, qua humanness, is always both: maleandfemale he created them. But darn it, it isn't good that maleandfemale should be allone, so He splits them up. A central purpose of marriage is to consecrate their reunion. Unless you have a better idea.  

Note that the Logos begins as pure spirit, which drills down, so to speak, into biology. People who wonder why the Father can't be a mother, or Jesus her daughter, or priests women, just don't have a clue. It's like wondering why the Mother of God couldn't have been a man. Such fantasies are violations of the whole divine-human economy -- like "Admiral" " Rachel" Levine.

Also, in relation to God, the soul itself is feminine, since God is the agent and we the receptacle. Such schemes are full of nuances and qualifications, being that ours must be an "active passivity," but let's not veer into another topic. The point is, this dynamic obviously mirrors what goes in inside the Godhead in that our own little Yes to God is an echo of the big Yes that the Son says to the Father -- or Mary to the Holy Spirit, Abram to the Lord, Moses to I AM, etc. 

I suppose if man were a reptile, then the Savior would have to be a good egg. But we are not reptiles, or at least we don't have to be. Even Adam Schiff wasn't born that way. He looks and behaves like he was hatched, but the choice of devolving and living under a rock was his to make.

Which brings to mind an important point about our fallenness: not only can it not be understood outside the context of our deiformity, but in my opinion, it is a commentary on it. Although the Fall is always present, it cannot be a complement of our deiformity, since it is a privation. Nor is it literally a necessity, since to say necessity is to say eternity, and the good news is that we aren't necessarily eternal under-achievers. 

With these flourescent prelumenaries out of the way, let's go back to Rob Henderson's pneumagraphical essay. In it he notes that at the age of ten, 

my adoptive parents got divorced. My adoptive father, angry at my mother for leaving him, decided to stop talking to me as a way to get back at her. 

What kind of man would do this to a child? No kind of man. Except a bad and inadequate one.

But sometimes there is a hero. I won't say man, because the hee-ro could be Margaret Thatcher. But  

if I am honest, the teachers who had the most positive effect on me were usually men. Perhaps, after being shunned by both my biological father and my adoptive father, some part of me was seeking a male role model -- though, at the time, I never would have understood or admitted this.

Lucky for us,  

during my senior year, a male history teacher, an Air Force veteran, encouraged me to enlist. He knew my grades were awful -- I graduated in the bottom third of my high school class, with a 2.2 GPA -- but saw something in me, potential that I hadn’t yet discovered or maybe didn’t even want to.

Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe

Continuing with the vision mentioned in the previous post: it revolves around the centrality of the category Father as it pertains to Homo sapiens. 

A moment's reflection reveals something interesting about human beings: that they are the only creatures that grow up with a father. No, not a sperm-donor, which all mammals have; rather, father as transcendent category.

Again, mammals are characterized by having mamas, which puts them a step above reptiles, who have only egg-donors, not proper mothers. Thus, the spiritual category of Mother appears earlier in the biospheric record, for reasons we will explore as we proceed. 

Everyone has a mother, insofar as the mother must, at the very least, carry the child to term. But not every child has a father. Again, everyone has a sperm-donor, but this donor may well have vanished from the scene the very day the donee was conceived.

Let us briefly pull away from the macro and focus on the micro, or better, the meso. Now, we all know what Democrat policies have done to the black family over the past 55 years: destroyed it. How did Dems finally accomplish this after 150 years of trying? 

I remember taking the history of a black patient. I asked him something to the effect of whether he grew up with his father, and he responded, "You know what they say -- mama's baby, papa's maybe." I'd never heard that gag before, but for him it was a matter-of-fact characterization of a rather dysfunctional family.

I will spare you all of the tedious statistics proving the effects -- divorce, bastardy, unemployment, crime, poverty, violence, addiction, prison, the Congressional Black Caucus, etc. Note that this downward spiral has been accompanied and guided by psychopathic Father-Leader substitutes such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barak Obama, et al. Each of them is an enthusiastic supporter of the very policies that have resulted in the destruction of the black family.

Let's return to the essay by Rob Henderson linked in the previous post, on the subject of America's Lost Boys. "Lost" is a tad euphemistic, since the real problem -- for the restavus -- is impulsive, violent, predatory, and criminal boys between the ages of 15 and 25 or so. Take them out of the picture and we'd have the crime rate of Sweden. Before the Muslims got there.

Ferality doesn't just happen; rather, it is the predictable consequence of identifiable causes. More to the point, although ferality is the return to a "state of nature," ironically, this state could never have come about naturally, in that Homo sapiens evolved within the trinitarian matrix of Mother-Father-Child, with each member playing a distinct and vital role for the perpetuation of culture and (hopefully) civilization.

Here again I don't want to review all the tedious details. They are summarized in chapter 3 of The Bʘʘk of the Same Name. 

Jumping ahead a bit, let's put forth the following proposition: remove fathers from the equation and human beings are just like any other animal, only worse. 

Let's bat away one obvious objection: what about all the fatherless children who turn out just fine, not to mention all the children from intact families who become criminals, lunatics, assouls, and Congressional Black Caucus members?  

Put it this way: do not equate proper manhood with the mere physical presence of a father. Nor is spiritual manhood absent just because the physical father is. This question revolves around radiation and assimilation of a spiritual reality. Do not conflate spiritual and material categories, or at least bear in mind that the latter derives its content and significance from the former.

Analogously, Judaism and Christianity are "historical" religions. But don't conflate their historicity and their significance. In an example we've used before, an eyewitness to the Crucifixion itself may well have known nothing about it aside from the fact that it happened -- just like any other crucifixion. So?

The meaning is in the history but not reducible to it. Likewise, the meaning of fatherhood is present in fathers but cannot be reduced to them. If it is, then God is just a projection of human fatherhood rather than vice versa.

Let's briefly zoom down from the meso to the submicro: my own physical father was a good guy, but, with all due respect, if he were my only father, I would be a very different person, and not in a good way. One of the vital roles of good-enough-fathering is to help your child recognize good fathers, and ultimately the Father under whose authority we deputy terrestrial fathers operate. 

I won't always be here. Which is why I help my son recognize that this or that guy -- whether dead or alive -- is also a father. There aren't as many as there should be, but still plenty to go around if you know where to look. 

Not to get sidetracked into female nature, but it is impossible to imagine that feminism could exist if not for Daddy Issues; for what is feminism but the projection of Bad Daddy into "the patriarchy," even while casting the state as the fantasied Good Daddy?

The End for today.

Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe

Continuing with the vision mentioned in the previous post: it revolves around the centrality of the category Father as it pertains to Homo sapiens. 

A moment's reflection reveals something interesting about human beings: that they are the only creatures that grow up with a father. No, not a sperm-donor, which all mammals have; rather, father as transcendent category.

Again, mammals are characterized by having mamas, which puts them a step above reptiles, who have only egg-donors, not proper mothers. Thus, the spiritual category of Mother appears earlier in the biospheric record, for reasons we will explore as we proceed. 

Everyone has a mother, insofar as the mother must, at the very least, carry the child to term. But not every child has a father. Again, everyone has a sperm-donor, but this donor may well have vanished from the scene the very day the donee was conceived.

Let us briefly pull away from the macro and focus on the micro, or better, the meso. Now, we all know what Democrat policies have done to the black family over the past 55 years: destroyed it. How did Dems finally accomplish this after 150 years of trying? 

I remember taking the history of a black patient. I asked him something to the effect of whether he grew up with his father, and he responded, "You know what they say -- mama's baby, papa's maybe." I'd never heard that gag before, but for him it was a matter-of-fact characterization of a rather dysfunctional family.

I will spare you all of the tedious statistics proving the effects -- divorce, bastardy, unemployment, crime, poverty, violence, addiction, prison, the Congressional Black Caucus, etc. Note that this downward spiral has been accompanied and guided by psychopathic Father-Leader substitutes such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barak Obama, et al. Each of them is an enthusiastic supporter of the very policies that have resulted in the destruction of the black family.

Let's return to the essay by Rob Henderson linked in the previous post, on the subject of America's Lost Boys. "Lost" is a tad euphemistic, since the real problem -- for the restavus -- is impulsive, violent, predatory, and criminal boys between the ages of 15 and 25 or so. Take them out of the picture and we'd have the crime rate of Sweden. Before the Muslims got there.

Ferality doesn't just happen; rather, it is the predictable consequence of identifiable causes. More to the point, although ferality is the return to a "state of nature," ironically, this state could never have come about naturally, in that Homo sapiens evolved within the trinitarian matrix of Mother-Father-Child, with each member playing a distinct and vital role for the perpetuation of culture and (hopefully) civilization.

Here again I don't want to review all the tedious details. They are summarized in chapter 3 of The Bʘʘk of the Same Name. 

Jumping ahead a bit, let's put forth the following proposition: remove fathers from the equation and human beings are just like any other animal, only worse. 

Let's bat away one obvious objection: what about all the fatherless children who turn out just fine, not to mention all the children from intact families who become criminals, lunatics, assouls, and Congressional Black Caucus members?  

Put it this way: do not equate proper manhood with the mere physical presence of a father. Nor is spiritual manhood absent just because the physical father is. This question revolves around radiation and assimilation of a spiritual reality. Do not conflate spiritual and material categories, or at least bear in mind that the latter derives its content and significance from the former.

Analogously, Judaism and Christianity are "historical" religions. But don't conflate their historicity and their significance. In an example we've used before, an eyewitness to the Crucifixion itself may well have known nothing about it aside from the fact that it happened -- just like any other crucifixion. So?

The meaning is in the history but not reducible to it. Likewise, the meaning of fatherhood is present in fathers but cannot be reduced to them. If it is, then God is just a projection of human fatherhood rather than vice versa.

Let's briefly zoom down from the meso to the submicro: my own physical father was a good guy, but, with all due respect, if he were my only father, I would be a very different person, and not in a good way. One of the vital roles of good-enough-fathering is to help your child recognize good fathers, and ultimately the Father under whose authority we deputy terrestrial fathers operate. 

I won't always be here. Which is why I help my son recognize that this or that guy -- whether dead or alive -- is also a father. There aren't as many as there should be, but still plenty to go around if you know where to look. 

Not to get sidetracked into female nature, but it is impossible to imagine that feminism could exist if not for Daddy Issues; for what is feminism but the projection of Bad Daddy into "the patriarchy," even while casting the state as the fantasied Good Daddy?

The End for today.

Mammals & Pappals

There are thousands of mammal species on this planet, but only one pappal: Homo sapiens. 

"Mammal," of course, is etymologically related to yo' mama. Unlike reptiles or insects, yo' mama don't just lay eggs, wish them luck, and skedaddle. Rather, mammals are characterized by an extrauterine relationship of varying lengths between mother and child.  

Here's a dictionary definition: a mammal is

a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young.

Thus we see that Pete Buttigieg, for example, is excluded from this definition as a result of being an invertebrate.

Here's my problem, and it's not your problem, but here it is anyway: I've already seen this post in its entirety. It was a "vision," so to speak, and it was accompanied by the usual metacosmic certitude. 

Therefore, all that remains for me is to sketch it out. The sketching isn't for my benefit; again, I've already seen the end of this movie, so it's not as if I need to convince myself of its intrinsic truth.

So, is it for your benefit? No, I would never go that far. I just put it out there, mainly to keep the mind limber and the trolls piqued. 

Come to think of it, that's the same reason why I leave comments on this or that blog. The comments are always in the form of a joke or gag or aphorism, because these forms force the mind to create a little something out of nothing. An unexpected guffah-HA out of nowhere. More generally, any post that fails to provoke at least one guffah-HA is a failed post.

It's a spiritual exercise, really. A man who is tired of ridiculing the left is tired of life. 

But a man of the left isn't even a man, and of course I mean this literally, certainly not as an insult. There are degrees, of course, but I will repeat that a full blown man of the left -- from Stalin to Hitler to Mao -- is missing something vital, and we call this thing real manhood. 

To turn it around, who among us would call Castro a proper man except the improper men -- the genderless freaks -- of the left?

I apologize for the crack about being "genderless." For just as often it is not a matter of being genderless but of having too many genders, of being genderful.

Back to my problem. Although the end is certain, there are any number of pathways to get there, and writing a post means hacking a pathway through the jungle, or maybe finding one's way across a featureless desert. Where to begin?

I know: I'll begin at the end, with what triggered the vision to begin with. It was while reading an essay by the brilliant Rob Henderson about his own fatherless -- to say the least -- childhood. Calling him fatherless is like calling mentally ill and drug addicted street people "homeless" -- as if a home is the only thing lacking in their lives.

Except it's sort of the opposite of that: for what if Henderson, in spite of all the challenges, had had a strong, stable, and virtuous father protecting him the whole time? 

Let me begin with a couple of extracts, starting with a dramatic hook:

My earliest memory is of me gripping my mother, in the dark, burying my face so deeply into her stomach I can’t breathe. It’s dark. I come up for air and see two police officers looming over us. They want to take her away. I’m scared. I don’t want to let her go. I fasten myself to her as hard as I can. Suddenly, I’m in a long white hallway. I’m sitting on a bench next to my mother drinking chocolate milk. My three-year-old legs dangle above the floor. I sneeze and spill my milk. I look to my mom for help, but she can’t move her arms. She’s wearing handcuffs. I start to cry.

That year, I entered the Los Angeles County foster care system. I never saw my mother again (Link: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/americas-lost-boys-and-me).

Not an auspicious start for a pappalian mammal.

From the time I was born until I was 17 years old, nearly everything in my life was propelling me to a life as one of America’s lost boys -- the young men who fail to mature, do poorly in school, live on the economic margins, and become absentee fathers or fail to form stable families of their own. 

Who fail to become men, precisely. Obviously we're not talking about mere biological manhood, which can only be prevented by transgenderist quacks armed with puberty blockers and parricidal hormones. 

Henderson goes on to highlight the fact that

one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s. Meantime, over the past half-century, the number of men behind bars has more than quadrupled.

These are but symptoms of something more essential that is missing: manhood. 

As an asnide, we've all heard the jokes about Mayor Pete taking two months off of his do-nothing job for "paternity leave," meaning that he is fundamentally confused -- big surprise! -- as to what paternity is. For a real man doesn't take the occasion of the birth of his child to slack off, except maybe for a few days.

Rather, this is precisely when a real man begins to double-down on his career, in order to be able to provide the resources necessary for his wife and child to thrive. Paternity leave is not a thing, except when a man leaves work at the end of the day to spend time with the family. Maternity leave, however, is a thing. A 24/7 x 18+ years-or-so thing. A quintessentially human mammal thing.

To say that mothers have very different roles and functions from fathers has become "controversial." But even feminists know they can't sprout a johnson, therefore the need for these bitter nihilists to castrate men for the sake of equity. 

Henderson is presently in graduate school at Cambridge, where he is studying social psychology. I, of course, used to be a psychologist, but have in the meantime been kicked upstairs to full-time cosmic pneumatologist. Thus, we will be examining this subject from the standpoint of the perennial philosophy, psychology, and religion, not from the perspective of mere academic psychology, much less the "culture war" between civilization and barbarism (although the latter is an effect of what we'll be discussing).

Mammals & Pappals

There are thousands of mammal species on this planet, but only one pappal: Homo sapiens. 

"Mammal," of course, is etymologically related to yo' mama. Unlike reptiles or insects, yo' mama don't just lay eggs, wish them luck, and skedaddle. Rather, mammals are characterized by an extrauterine relationship of varying lengths between mother and child.  

Here's a dictionary definition: a mammal is

a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young.

Thus we see that Pete Buttigieg, for example, is excluded from this definition as a result of being an invertebrate.

Here's my problem, and it's not your problem, but here it is anyway: I've already seen this post in its entirety. It was a "vision," so to speak, and it was accompanied by the usual metacosmic certitude. 

Therefore, all that remains for me is to sketch it out. The sketching isn't for my benefit; again, I've already seen the end of this movie, so it's not as if I need to convince myself of its intrinsic truth.

So, is it for your benefit? No, I would never go that far. I just put it out there, mainly to keep the mind limber and the trolls piqued. 

Come to think of it, that's the same reason why I leave comments on this or that blog. The comments are always in the form of a joke or gag or aphorism, because these forms force the mind to create a little something out of nothing. An unexpected guffah-HA out of nowhere. More generally, any post that fails to provoke at least one guffah-HA is a failed post.

It's a spiritual exercise, really. A man who is tired of ridiculing the left is tired of life. 

But a man of the left isn't even a man, and of course I mean this literally, certainly not as an insult. There are degrees, of course, but I will repeat that a full blown man of the left -- from Stalin to Hitler to Mao -- is missing something vital, and we call this thing real manhood. 

To turn it around, who among us would call Castro a proper man except the improper men -- the genderless freaks -- of the left?

I apologize for the crack about being "genderless." For just as often it is not a matter of being genderless but of having too many genders, of being genderful.

Back to my problem. Although the end is certain, there are any number of pathways to get there, and writing a post means hacking a pathway through the jungle, or maybe finding one's way across a featureless desert. Where to begin?

I know: I'll begin at the end, with what triggered the vision to begin with. It was while reading an essay by the brilliant Rob Henderson about his own fatherless -- to say the least -- childhood. Calling him fatherless is like calling mentally ill and drug addicted street people "homeless" -- as if a home is the only thing lacking in their lives.

Except it's sort of the opposite of that: for what if Henderson, in spite of all the challenges, had had a strong, stable, and virtuous father protecting him the whole time? 

Let me begin with a couple of extracts, starting with a dramatic hook:

My earliest memory is of me gripping my mother, in the dark, burying my face so deeply into her stomach I can’t breathe. It’s dark. I come up for air and see two police officers looming over us. They want to take her away. I’m scared. I don’t want to let her go. I fasten myself to her as hard as I can. Suddenly, I’m in a long white hallway. I’m sitting on a bench next to my mother drinking chocolate milk. My three-year-old legs dangle above the floor. I sneeze and spill my milk. I look to my mom for help, but she can’t move her arms. She’s wearing handcuffs. I start to cry.

That year, I entered the Los Angeles County foster care system. I never saw my mother again (Link: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/americas-lost-boys-and-me).

Not an auspicious start for a pappalian mammal.

From the time I was born until I was 17 years old, nearly everything in my life was propelling me to a life as one of America’s lost boys -- the young men who fail to mature, do poorly in school, live on the economic margins, and become absentee fathers or fail to form stable families of their own. 

Who fail to become men, precisely. Obviously we're not talking about mere biological manhood, which can only be prevented by transgenderist quacks armed with puberty blockers and parricidal hormones. 

Henderson goes on to highlight the fact that

one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s. Meantime, over the past half-century, the number of men behind bars has more than quadrupled.

These are but symptoms of something more essential that is missing: manhood. 

As an asnide, we've all heard the jokes about Mayor Pete taking two months off of his do-nothing job for "paternity leave," meaning that he is fundamentally confused -- big surprise! -- as to what paternity is. For a real man doesn't take the occasion of the birth of his child to slack off, except maybe for a few days.

Rather, this is precisely when a real man begins to double-down on his career, in order to be able to provide the resources necessary for his wife and child to thrive. Paternity leave is not a thing, except when a man leaves work at the end of the day to spend time with the family. Maternity leave, however, is a thing. A 24/7 x 18+ years-or-so thing. A quintessentially human mammal thing.

To say that mothers have very different roles and functions from fathers has become "controversial." But even feminists know they can't sprout a johnson, therefore the need for these bitter nihilists to castrate men for the sake of equity. 

Henderson is presently in graduate school at Cambridge, where he is studying social psychology. I, of course, used to be a psychologist, but have in the meantime been kicked upstairs to full-time cosmic pneumatologist. Thus, we will be examining this subject from the standpoint of the perennial philosophy, psychology, and religion, not from the perspective of mere academic psychology, much less the "culture war" between civilization and barbarism (although the latter is an effect of what we'll be discussing).