Patterns of Tyranny, Part 1: Trump and Hitler

I have the title. And I have the book: The Infernal Library. Will it result in a serviceable post? 

It depends upon whether there is a pattern -- a deep structure -- to the intellectual lunacy put out by these intellectual lunatics.  If there is such a pattern, then it may help us see when the same pattern is occurring in the present -- an early warning system for when tyranny is on the horizon.  

For the past two years we've been hearing from the left how tyranny isn't just over the horizon. It's here.  Indeed, they even cite some of the same sources I am going to cite.  For example, MSNBC sees the same pattern in Hitler as in Trump:

[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off. Never admit a fault or wrong. Never concede that there may be some good in your enemy. Never leave room for alternatives. Never accept blame. Concentrate on one enemy at a time, and blame him for everything that goes wrong. People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one. And if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it. 

First, this could apply to any number of politicians, to say nothing of the hyper-hysterical MSNBC itself, so it's neither here nor there.  Or it's there, but not where MSNBC wants it to be.

Here's another example which I had incorrectly assumed was a joke. Turns out the man is serious:

Key differences between Donald Trump and Adolph Hitler -- Hitler served honorably in the military, Trump didn't; Hitler was faithful to his wife, Trump cheated on all his wives; Hitler wrote a book, Trump's were all ghostwritten.

First, this idiot misspells "Adolf." He then doubles down on the Trump connection: "Immigrants are Trump's Jews. Give him time. We are only up to 1933." Then triples down: "Anyone who really thinks a comparison between Trump and Hitler is absurd should watch 'Triumph of the Will' and then watch one of Trump's MAGA rallies."

I was going to begin -- as the book does -- with Lenin and Stalin, but let's fast forward to Hitler. There are other ways in which he was superior to Trump. For example, Hitler "was a keen reader and remained one his whole life -- when he died at the age of fifty-six, he owned around sixteen thousand books."

What was Hitler's Big Idea, anyway? What was his MGGA? Well, unlike our president, who was quite successful in his pre-political life, Hitler was conspicuously aimless and adrift until he hit upon "a political ideology that married Jew hatred with socialism and nationalism."  

Ah ha! President Trump is an admitted nationalist. Does this make him a budding Hitler? Only if you conflate a nationalism of blood and nationalism of values.  

These two categories are at antipodes. And as usual the left is simply projecting, since leftism is itself a crude appeal to various primitive tribal, racial, and ethnic identities. And no one is as hated by the left as a person who is a traitor to his blood and skin -- say, Clarence Thomas, or Candace Owens, or Kanye West -- and they openly engage in ceaseless racial attacks on "whiteness," "old white men," and "white privilege." 

So, why was Germany in trouble in the 1930s and why did it need Hitler's National Socialism? Easy: "The Aryan gave up the purity of his blood and, therefore, his sojourn in the paradise ended." For Hitler, hematological confusion is the root of all evil, the Original Sin: "Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood."

Again, this is at antipodes to the American ideal, in which all men are created equal. Conversely, central to the left's mission is the division of Americans into racial categories and the granting of rights, spoils, and special privileges based thereupon. 

Another feature shared by Hitler and the left is the great magnification of the threat of the presumed enemy. In Hitler's case, the Jews, consisting of a tiny minority of Germans, are expanded into "a parasitic superintelligence moving from culture to culture... in order to more fully achieve [their] sinister goals of complete domination."

Thus, Jews function in the Nazi imagination in a way similar to how conservative "white supremacists" function in the leftist imagination. Except that Jews actually existed, at least in sufficient numbers to be seen. Unlike our contemporary leftists, Hitler did not hallucinate the presence of Jews, only their malign superpowers.

And, just like Hitler, Trump has worked tirelessly to reduce the influence of the federal government in our lives.  Oh, wait.  That's the opposite of Trump.  Whatever.  He has 

• Achieved massive deregulation at a rapid pace, completing 22 deregulatory actions to every one regulatory action during his first year in office.

• Signed legislation to roll back costly and harmful provisions of Dodd-Frank, providing relief to credit unions, and community and regional banks.

• Federal agencies achieved more than $8 billion in lifetime net regulatory cost savings.

• Rolled back Obama’s burdensome Waters of the U.S. rule.

• Used the Congressional Review Act to repeal regulations more times than in history.

• Provided more than $5.5 trillion in gross tax cuts, nearly 60 percent of which will go to families.

• Increased the exemption for the death tax to help save Family Farms & Small Business.

• Nearly doubled the standard deduction for individuals and families.

• Enabled vast majority of American families will be able to file their taxes on a single page by claiming the standard deduction.

• Doubled the child tax credit to help lessen the financial burden of raising a family.

• Lowered America’s corporate tax rate from the highest in the developed world to allow American businesses to compete and win.

• Small businesses can now deduct 20 percent of their business income.

• Cut dozens of special interest tax breaks and closed loopholes for the wealthy.

Yes, just like Hitler, who insisted that "the government must become involved in the lives of its citizens to an extraordinary degree," beginning with the indoctrination of children, for it is an "absurdity" that "with the end of the school period, the state's right to supervise its young citizens suddenly ceases..."

Let's see. Who wants to ban homeschooling, Trump or the left?  Leftism doesn't work without a thorough deprogramming and indoctrination, so give them credit for honesty.

To be continued...

The Absolute Stupidity of the Left

"Strictly speaking," writes Schuon, "there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis." In turn, this philosophy, extended to its outer and inner limits, must be the one religion (or the Religion underlying religiosity).

It is axiomatic that truth is one, the purpose of philosophy being to map this truth. The purpose of religion is to realize and assimilate this truth -- not just mentally, or on the plane of existence, but into the very fabric of one's being.

Indeed, this is what it means -- broadly speaking -- to be "saved": what is saved is unity from multiplicity, or reality from appearances, or eternity from time, or man from himself, etc.

In his pithiest and most aphoristic book, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, Schuon puts it as succinctly as possible while cutting through thickly beclowned forests of tenure:

To claim that knowledge as such can only be relative amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute -- or that a human being is an Absolute Ignoramus.

This is precisely the claim liberals make of themselves. Is there a reason why we shouldn't believe them? They invert the comment in paragraph one to say: "Strictly speaking, there exist countless philosophies, even one per customer. We call this the Imbecilia Perpetuum."

This profoundly anti-intellectual jumble, extended to its furthest reaches -- which aren't very far -- necessarily redounds to no religion at all -- or worse, to "anything at all as religion."

"Exaggerate much, BoB? You see, this is why your blog irritates me. One moment you're discussing some sublime mystical theology, the next moment you jump into the gutter with these preposterously partisan political polemics. Which is it, singing God's praises or flinging mud at the crazies?"

I already told you: there is only one philosophy, and it covers both God and politics plus everything else.

This preramble was inspired by an unintentionally fascinating and hilarious thinkpiece -- or feelpiece, rather -- in the New York Times, called Has Trump Stolen Philosophy's Critical Tools?

For the critical tool who has written the piece, truth doesn't exist, so it is impossible to understand how Trump can have appropriated it. The complaint is as logical as saying Private property doesn't exist, and you stole my cheese!, or Walls are racist and get off my beachfront property!

Come to think of it, liberalism is full of such thought-negating exercises, such as Gender is a construct and gays are born that way!, or Greed is bad so take more from the wealthy!, or Humans are killing the planet with fossil fuels so we need millions of illegal immigrants to come here and burn more fossil fuels!

Recall what was said above about philosophy going to the realization of truth, religion to its integration and assimilation. This distinction essentially correlates to doctrine and method.

Well, in postmodern philosophy, there is no truth, only method. Or, what is called "truth" is simply a method of exercising power, such that truth is just another name for oppression.

This is what the author "accuses" Trump of doing, but how can Trump do anything else if postmodernism is indeed "true"? Trump is only doing what he cannot help doing. On what basis can the author complain about cosmic necessity? Might as well spend one's life claiming to be a victim of gravity.

As an asnide, there was a time I too assumed that philosophy, like science, "progressed." Therefore, one could fruitfully study it by ignoring everything prior to the 19th or 20th century. Just cut to the chase and get right to the existentialists (or positivists, or deconstructionists, depending upon one's taste or emotional conflicts).

So among my first forays into philosophy were authors such as Sartre, Foucault, Nietzsche, and numerous other illuminutti that have long since been donated to the library, since my own liberatoreum scarcely has enough space for the truth, let alone its many alternatives.

I wonder: how much self-awareness can one lack before one's self disappears entirely? What makes me wonder this is author's opening salvo: "Truth is pliable in Trumpland."

Well, yes. It's pliable everywhere, to the point of being anything we want it to be. That is your first principle, Einstein. And now you're complaining about it?

"It often feels like Trump has stolen our ideas and weaponized them." Umm hmm. Anyone who claims to know the truth is simply asserting power. Therefore.... Trump is asserting power. As is this author. So, what's the point? One can hardly make an appeal to truth after one has claimed that it doesn't exist.

"Call it what you want: relativism, constructivism, deconstruction, postmodernism, critique. The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power."

Call it what I want? Okay, I'll call it invincible stupidity. For example:

"Trump’s relationship to the truth seems novel, if only because he doesn’t try to hide his relativism." How can one have a "relationship" with something that doesn't exist? "For Trump, truth is always more about how people feel than what may be empirically verifiable." "For Trump, facts are fragile, and truth is flexible."

I think I know what's really bothering this author. His parents are forking over $50,000 a year for him to learn there is no truth, while he thinks Trump got this esoteric nonsense for free. That's not fair!

FYI, that was post #3,000.

Ideological Malware

Yesterday we called progressivism a monstrous ideology in the business of creating monsters. The first thing the monsters will say in response is that this kind of dehumanizing language is a call to violence. 

Perhaps we should define our term and determine if monsters actually exist. What to do about them is a different matter. I think we can all agree that Hitler was a monster. Nor do I mind comparisons to Hitler, except to say that very few people qualify for the comparison, e.g., Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. It's a rather exclusive club. 

To even suggest Hitler was a conservative is absurd on its face, since he was a radical revolutionary who wanted to abolish, not preserve, the existing social and political orders. Nevertheless, the left never stops comparing Trump (or Charlie Kirk) to Hitler, even though Trump is literally an anti-Hitler:

In every relevant way, Trump is the exact opposite of Hitler. Hitler invaded Poland, France, Belgium, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and no doubt a couple more that don’t come to mind. Trump has invaded no one. Hitler murdered six million Jews; Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, and has Jewish grandchildren. Hitler raised taxes and greatly expanded the powers of government. Trump has cut taxes and tried to reduce the scope of government. Trump is literally the anti-Hitler.

So, why the Hitler comparisons? Like so much of what goes on with the left, idiots and true believers at the bottom, manipulative swine at the top, the point being to get the idiots to do the bidding of the swine:

Groups of Germans tried to assassinate Hitler. How does history remember them? As heroes. If you are a loyal Democrat, and you hear your party’s leaders say, thousands of times, that Trump is the same as Hitler, what are you supposed to conclude? That anyone who assassinates Trump is a hero.

Likewise Charlie Kirk:

He has been ritually denounced as a “Nazi” thousands of times, day after day, for years, by influential Democrats. Why? Kirk was the exact opposite of a Nazi. I don’t think Democrats have so characterized Charlie by accident, or out of ignorance. I think they were deliberately trying to get him killed. And now they have succeeded.

*Ironically*, the left explicitly and transparently engages in the favorite propaganda technique of the Nazis, the so-called "big lie." That leftists by the millions have bought into the lie proves the effectiveness of the technique: people are more likely to believe a massive, audacious falsehood than a smaller, more plausible one. The sheer scale of the lie makes it seem unbelievable that someone would fabricate it.

Which implies that small lies aren't as effective as big ones, for example, that smallish lie Trump isn't a mainstream Republican, when the truth is he's just a Republican who keeps his promises. Plus, he's more of a mainstream 1990s Democrat, favoring tight borders, law and order, and fiscal responsibility. Does this make Bill Clinton -- or JFK before him -- Nazis?

I was around back then. Didn't conservatives demonize Clinton?

Yes, but I don't recall anyone calling him a Nazi or communist, rather, just a silver-tongued manipulator and general sleazebag, oozing insincerity from his pores -- more like Gavin Newsom. Obama too has the gift of vacuous bullshit, except that he sincerely holds radical beliefs. 

We don't yet know much about Charlie Kirk's assassin. What if he turns out to be, say, a conservative Jew hater who targeted Kirk because of his staunch support of Israel? In other words, because Kirk was an anti-Nazi?

I don't see how that can even be considered conservative, since the #1 thing we wish to conserve is Greco-Judeo-Christian western civilization. Animus toward Judaism is an attack on the roots of the American order itself. Our founders were well aware of the connection, and wrote of it frequently. There is a reason why the Supreme Court building has a marble frieze of Moses and the Ten Commandments. 

Speaking of law, yesterday I was reminded of Krauthammer's, that

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Therefore, if you think someone is merely stupid, ignorant, or misinformed, you go to their natural habitat -- mainly college campuses and newsrooms -- and try to convince them of their stupid errors. As did Charlie Kirk.

On the other hand, if you truly believe someone is an evil Nazi, the time for rational debate is over. You're not going to get anywhere by suggesting to Hitler that maybe he's being a bit rough on the Jews. Rather, you kill him.

I don't write much about politics anymore, but I still wonder about a hypothetical organizing principle or master key to left wing thought. For example, what is it in Greta Thunberg that makes her support both climate change fantasies and genocidal Hamas terrorists? And what do these have to do with "transgender rights," BLM, DEI, and other policies that unite the left?

What is the nature of the ideological malware that is installed into the leftist's head and makes them incapable of perceiving reality? Indeed, perception of reality is replaced by projection into it, such as the projection of Hitler into Trump, supremacism into whites, racism into police, toxicity into masculinity, malignant homophobia into benign heteronormativity, et al?

It seems that the malware must include both an ideological content and a "mechanism" that converts the content into the appearance of reality. What is the nature of this mechanism? It has to be something innate to the human mind.

It reminds me of how, say, a vaccine works, by "tricking" the immune system into attacking the virus injected into he bloodstream. Obviously the immunization doesn't have to invent the immune system, rather, just exploit it.

Analogously, the ideological manipulator doesn't have to invent psychological projection, rather, just exploit it. More generally, we are all prone to believing the worst of our ideological adversaries. For example, yesterday I was quick to swallow the story of the assassin's rifle and ammo being scrawled with Antifa and transgender messages.

No, check me on that: I suppose we should still adhere to the (at least) 48 hour rule, but the assassin is said to be "a 22-year-old antifa demon brainwashed by hateful leftwing professors":

The "cultural phrases" on the bullet casings turned out to be:

* "Catch, fascist"

* "Bella ciao" (a reference to an Italian song used by resistance fighters in WWII that antifa uses as military anthem)

* A confusing reference that is reportedly a tip-of-the-hat to the LGBTQ mafia's.... "furry community." 

So, ideological malware installed into the murderer's head and projected into Kirk. Mission accomplished, in that the actions follow the logic of the malware.

Another feature of the malware is to deny it is malware. Here again, the malware doesn't have to invent the defense mechanism of denial, rather, just exploit it:

MSNBC is deliberately misleading their left-wing viewers about the motives of the Charlie Kirk assassin.

The network claims there is "no theme" when it comes to Tyler Robinson's bullet casings.

He literally wrote "hey fascist! catch!" and Antifa phrases on bullet casings.

Just like there was "no motive" when a radical killed two children at a Minnesota church even though he had "kill Trump" and anti-Christian messages on the weapons.

And there was "no motive" when a 14-time repeat offender stabbed Iryna Zarutska and said "got that white girl."

What else is new? MSNBC has become an accomplice to political violence.

While, of course, projecting the violence into us. It's what monsters do:

The Democrat-Media Party Insists That It's Conservatives Who Incited the Murder of Our Most Beloved Conservative Influencer Charlie Kirk

Socialism vs. the Extra-Cranial World

The World Beyond Your Head. First of all, what a great title, even though the book itself is a bit diffuse and half-digested. Like a ruminant, the author should have chewed the material a bit longer before asking us to swallow it. Problem is, now it's up to me to digest it all, and I'm not feeling especially focussed myself this morning.

Still, the theme of the book is sound -- that, largely because of technology, human beings are increasingly exiled from the real world and trapped inside their own heads. And "unexpectedly," the more they pursue this faux-individuality, the more they end up the same, only worse. It's why the left can un-ironically celebrate "diversity" while manifesting such a distinct lack thereof: the proverbial herd of independent minds.

You'd think a situation in which everyone is living inside abstractions within their own heads would lead to mass eccentricity -- a herd of cats -- but instead, we have a compliant and predictable sheepocracy of tenured, media, and entertainment drones. The key, it seems to me, is that ignoring feedback from the actual world is what allows everyone on the left to be the same.

Consider how, for example, since 2016, the left has been unified in their obsessional loathing of Trump. It's all they talk or think about. And yet, the world -- the one outside their heads -- not only keeps turning, but is thriving in every measurable way.

This morning, for example, the headlines on Drudge include

--AUGUST JOBS: +201K ECONOMY ON FIRE

--GREAT AGAIN: Construction Worker Wages Rise

--BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT NEAR RECORD LOW

--120 Utilities Have Lowered Rates Thanks to Tax Cuts.

It's like this every day: it must be exquisitely painful for the left to have to deal with a such a constant stream of good news.

Just below the good news is a link to an article on Michael Moore's new anti-Trump film. I wonder what he has to complain about? I mean, outside his own head? Okay, I'll bite. What's going on in there?

"Filmmaker Michael Moore compares U.S. President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler in his provocative new documentary, 'Fahrenheit 11/9.'" Yes, provocative. Not insane.

But what is insanity? It is loss of contact with the real world, precisely. I mean, if Hitler was Trump, then WWII was just a big misunderstanding.

"The documentary examines the forces Moore believes contributed to Trump’s election victory in November 2016, drawing parallels with the rise of Hitler in 1930s Germany."

Being that I am a strong supporter of Trump, I can only assume this means that I am a Nazi. Now, in reality, being that I exist outside Moore's head, only I am in a position to know whether I am in fact a Nazi or maybe even the opposite of a Nazi -- which is to say, a small government constitutional conservative, or classical liberal.

Turns out I am indeed the latter, so Moore has made a rather fundamental error, only multiplied times 50 or 60 million. As in: "I imagined you were Hitler, when you turned out to be James Madison. My bad."

Of course, Moore might have asked one of us how we feel about Nazism, but that would have required too much travel outside his head.

Anyway, since the book is so diffuse, maybe an amazon reviewer can boil it down for us. Let's see.

The overall theme of “The World Beyond Your Head” has to do with seeking out authentic individuality in a social context and culture that is awash in a flattened-out democratic autonomy.... the author sees that presently there “is a crisis of self-ownership: our attention isn’t simply ours to direct where we will...

The book explains

why the modern human is not progressing at all, but is actually regressing in many ways, because of technology. We are becoming dumber, more narcissistic..., and we are unaware that all of this is happening.... The lie that "individualism" and "freedom" is the great savior is the biggest con job ever perpetrated on a people.

Example: If you want to be good at Judo, you have to show up, humble yourself, and learn from the Sensei and from the tradition. This could be said for so many things in life.

Yes. The point is, genuine freedom and meaningful individuality require a long apprenticeship to reality, AKA the world outside your head.

In a note to myself, I wrote "Since few of us are intellectuals or scholars, academia had to invent whole disciplines for the stupid, the lazy, the shallow." Moreover, it has had to change the very nature of disciplines such as psychology, which is no longer tethered to objective reality -- say, the biological reality of two sexes -- but anchored in fantasies and preferences.

In this regard, the less you know, the more you think you know, until you attain a kind of cheap omniscience, whether it comes from scientism, feminism, deconstruction, whatever. Each of these exhaustively explains the world outside your head, without entailing the trouble of actually having to leave your head.

This also results in a pseudo-freedom, because now the person is enslaved in a false understanding, but confuses it with the real thing. Who understands less about women than feminists? Who understands less about economics than a socialist? For whom do black lives matter less than Black Lives Matter?

The author comes from a similar angle and argues that only by engaging with the real world can we truly become individuals. He also says that paradoxically we can only achieve true freedom by submitting to something external -- for example, by submitting to the rules of musicianship within a particular style, you gradually achieve freedom to improvise endlessly within that style.

Another reviewer says that the cogito of this book could be "I do, therefore I am." Or, you could say, "I screw up, therefore I am," for in order to screw up, you need a world outside your head. And now you know why the left is never wrong and can never learn. It is why socialism will always be with us.

God's Own Reality Tunnel

Why on earth would you ever want to be happy, let alone joyful?

Asked no one, ever.

This is because, or so it seems, happiness is the thing -- or better, a name for the thing -- we all seek. It is our telos, that to which we are ordered.

So, while no one asks, "Why do you want to be happy," we've all wondered why you think that, of all things, will make you happy. Because that not only won't make you happy, it will make you unhappy. Fine. Do it your way.

Says God, to everyone, ever.

Now, if you believe God exists, then he is the ultimate reality to which we are ordered. Or, if you understand that man is ordered to a transcendent and nonlocal archetype, you can be certain that this is because God exists. In the end, if God doesn't exist, then there's no plausible explanation for why we should be ordered to him; or, more concretely, for the existence of saints and sages -- the perfection, from our side, of sanctity and wisdom, respectively. Man can only get to ten because God goes up to eleven.

In a previous post we alluded to the ego <---> reality tunnel dialectic. Clearly there are degrees of reality, such that people can be more or less "in touch" with it. We call a person "psychotic" because he has lost touch with reality, or crossed a divide in which the world is more delusion or hallucination than reality; it is more the projection of his own subjectivity into the world than the reception of the objective world into his psyche.

Speaking of which, this subject is handled brilliantly in Joker. (Spoiler alert? I'm not sure.) You may have to view it twice to realize it's difficult to say exactly which parts of the movie happened vs. which parts are pure hallucination -- and everything in between. The film doesn't offer any clear guidance. It doesn't announce This Never Actually Happened This Way in the Real World. But this mirrors the sad reality of the psychotic person, who is psychotic precisely because he can't distinguish between world and hallucination, or truth and delusion.

Compare it to what happens in dreams. Dreaming has a kind of psychotic structure, in that we are plunged into a world where things routinely happen that couldn't possibly happen in real life, and yet, we don't realize it. Last night, for example... nah, never mind. Other people's dreams are only of interest to the person who dreamt them. Suffice it to say that the dream is a reality tunnel that we inhabit even while not realizing that we -- somehow -- are the creators of that very world.

So, just like real life, since -- at least in a free society such as ours -- people are freed to live in their own reality tunnels, instead of being permitted only to inhabit one determined by the state -- as in the North Korea, or Iran, or elite college campuses. Being woke means: do not dare disturb me from my nightmare, or else! No gratitude whatsoever.

Another crossroads, with six possible directions... Let me briefly finish up with Joker, which I think is brilliant. Nor do I know or care what the director's "intent" might have been. In my reality tunnel it gets an A, in particular, Joaquin Phoenix's performance. But many critics disagree. Different reality tunnels. I saw some of them on Rotten Tomatoes, and could scarcely believe what I was reading. I realize that in these psychotic times, nothing should surprise us, but still... Examples:

Joker doesn't understand its representation of violence because it doesn't know what to do with its politics, opting instead for a confused aestheticization of anarchy, all incendiary chants and masked malcontents thronging the streets.

Joker is a visual feast about mental illness, the crumbling of an unstable economic system, and toxic masculinity that thinks it has something groundbreaking to add to the comic book universe, but merely adds an obtuse reflection.

It's unclear if the movie thinks that the Joker doesn't know that his statement is political, or the film itself doesn't understand it's own political nature...

Like "The Dark Knight", this film demonizes the mentally ill. It also distorts NY realities in the early 80s.

Suffice it to say that I didn't see any statements about politics, economics, toxic masculinity, demonization of mental illness, or the conditions of New York four decades ago.

Reality tunnels. Yesterday I read -- or started to read -- a piece that is so detached from reality that I suppose I reacted to it in the way the above critics reacted to Joker. I'm speaking of an essay by Frank Rich called What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Being a Trump Toady myself, I am naturally curious to find out what's going to happen to me.

Here are some examples of the graffiti on the walls of Rich's reality tunnel; in fact, note the rich irony of accusing the president and his supporters of being out of touch:

The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.

What crimes? What misdemeanors? He doesn't say.

John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot.

Now, that is some bad writing, but the Russia hoax? If you ever believed this hoax, it was because you wanted to believe it. If you still believe it at this point, it must be serving a vital function -- a projected container for one's own unmanageable psychic distress.

"For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017" -- wait -- what damage? Again, he doesn't say. Apparently, in his reality tunnel the damage is so self-evident that everyone sees it.

"Rather than being the end of American history as we know it," -- wait -- what? The end of history as we know it? I'm not exaggerating when I say this is psychotic. Not that Rich is psychotic per se, but that this kind of catastrophic thinking emanates from a psychotic dimension of the mind, or from what are called unmetabolized beta elements.

Very soon, white supporters of the president will be Judged by our fellow Citizens of Color, and it won't be pleasant:

That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.

I don't know. Might they be too busy working and improving their lives, thanks to President Trump?

"All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult." Wait -- what?

I've reached my limit. Let someone else do the fisking.

As to the title of this post, just as there is a dialectic between ego and world, there is one between the soul and God, or between (¶) and O. You might call the latter the attempt to build an "ultimate reality tunnel."

But clearly, anything (¶) can construct is not going to be ultimate. Still, it can get pretty far, much farther than can the horizontal ego. This is the realm of natural theology, but so long as it's from our side, it's still going to be a manmade reality tunnel.

The only way to exit a manmade tunnel is if God provides the tunnel. We have to wrap this up, but in my opinion and experience, God has done this. He has given us a reality tunnel back to him. It is the most valuable gift we could possibly imagine, being that it is the way, the truth, and the life, and what could be better than that?

Everything has Changed. Nothing has Changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Face the HalluciNation: Real News, Fake News, & Unreal News

The moment ideology comes before reality, one is living in an unreal world. But this statement constitutes a pleonasm -- word of the day, pleonasm -- being that ideology is by definition prior to reality.

Look at Google, where equivalence of the sexes absolutely trumps science. Truth and reality are no defenses. Guilt arises from failure to conform to the ideology, when the very purpose of the mind is to conform to reality.

Guilt is situated between the Is and the Ought. When we do something we oughtn't do, then the result -- for the properly ordered person -- is guilt. One thing we ought not do is live a lie. But at Google the lie is necessary -- at least if one wishes to continue working there.

What is reality, anyway? While one cannot answer the question without reference to the mind, it is critical that reality be situated anterior to the mind that cognizes it, or else we have descended into the subjectivity of modernism and post-modernism.

Rather, reality comes first, even though -- as alluded to in the previous post -- reality is the sum total of our means of accessing and comprehending it. Put conversely, if we have no access to it then it isn't real for us; and to exist is to participate in intelligibility.

Put it this way: reality is, in the words of Pieper, "the one great object of cognition." And we are its subject. Thus, there is a complementarity between reality and man, which is why science can exist at all.

This is another way of saying that "The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute" (Schuon), the Absolute constituting total reality, both vertical and horizontal, celestial and terrestrial, heavens above and earth below:

Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing. The Absolute alone confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish and to be wholly what it is (Schuon).

Please take that literally: the intelligence is either (potentially) everything or it is nothing. This in turn goes to our worth and our dignity. In rendering intelligence worthless, Google robs its employees of dignity.

By the way, never wonder why the left is so lacking in dignity. It follows from the first error. "Safe spaces," trigger warnings, naked rallies, howling mobs, craven college administrators, hysterical students, BLM, transgender madness, fake news, the whole catastrophe. It's all related.

Is Trump as dignified as I would like him to be? No. But in these times, it is sufficient that he provokes the left to new depths of auto-debasement, thus revealing what they are.

To be precise, there is "what they are," and "what they really are," and Trump miraculously exposes the the latter. This is not the face the left wishes to present to the world, but they obviously cannot help themselves. They really are what they really are. Which is true of everyone, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

Once man loses God then dignity is out the door. One way of emphasizing man's dignity is to remind ourselves that we are made "in the image of God." Big responsibility! This image is inconsistent with a squishy and manbunned Pajama Boy in need of feminism over guilt for his White Privilege. Whattsa matta with you! Act like a man! Besides, women exist for men (and vice versa), not for feminism. It's why we have them.

There is religion and there is magic. If you are not properly religious, then it is likely you will default to implicit or explicit magic. Which is what? Recall above (and from the previous post) that religion involves openness to and conformity with Total Reality. Conversely, magic is the attempt "to make superhuman powers serve human ends" and thus "the antithesis of of a religious act" (Pieper).

Man's ability to know truth at all is a superhuman act, right? If you don't understand this, then think again. It is what we call a Necessary Metaphysical Truth. In this context, ideology is a magical formula -- for example, a formula for rendering men and women equivalent. Being that it has rejected truth at the foundation, it can only operate via power. You can't simultaneously appeal to truth and claim truth is just a narrative conceaing the will to power.

This is what we call the Triumph of the Will. But such a triumph can only be understood ironically. A man can have his privates amputated and pretend he's a woman, but has he really triumphed over reality?

More mundanely, you can increase the minimum wage but can you really make a man more valuable by paying him more than his labor is worth? Or, let's pretend Trump is more dangerous than Kim. Just as everyone in the 1930s knew Churchill was more dangerous than Hitler, and everyone in the 1980s knew Reagan was more dangerous than the USSR.

Reality exists. And we can participate in it, or choose not to. These are the extremes of freedom.

This whole line of thought was provoked by a typically crazy editorial in the NY Times called The Policies of White Resentment. It made me realize that we need a third category for news: there is real news and fake news, but the Times (and most of the left) has descended into frankly unreal news.

"Fake" implies some conscious control, but this has more in common with hallucination. Instead of the Triumph of the Will of ideology, this is more like the Triumph of Mind Parasites. It is a systematic falsification of reality.

Consider the first sentence: White resentment put Donald Trump in the White House. No evidence is needed, because this is a statement of a priori ideology, not an appeal to reality.

Trump "continues to transform that seething, irrational fear about an increasingly diverse America into policies that feed his supporters’ worst racial anxieties." That means you and me. Never mind that we have no "seething, irrational fears" about anything. True, we object to what is called "diversity," which is to say that we object to the left's lack thereof, and its totalitarian attempt to impose its monolithic uniformity upon the rest of us, a la Google.

"The guiding principle in Mr. Trump’s government is to turn the politics of white resentment into the policies of white rage..."

Right. That must be why the left is so enraged and resentful.

"That so many of these policies are based on perception and lies rather than reality is nothing new." That is rich. What a fine example of Power appealing to Truth. It's what Satan does.

"White resentment has long thrived on the fantasy of being under siege and having to fight back," as with "the mass lynchings and destruction of thriving, politically active black communities..." That part is true as far as at goes, but Democrats are no longer lynching anyone, at least physically. Rather, they have more subtle means of racial indoctrination and control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example, here is how brother Deepak describes us:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued...

Maps To and From Nowhere

We left off pondering "the mystery of the twofold aspect of Maya" -- of appearances -- "the Maya that imprisons and the one that delivers."

The point is that we do indeed live in a world of appearances. However, the appearances are of reality, precisely. The alternative is to say that the world of appearances is of other appearances, which is an obvious contradiction. To say appearance is to say reality.

Yesterday's post implicitly compared appearance <--> reality to map <--> territory. Appearances are maps, even -- or especially, rather -- for animals. Ironically, an animal inhabits a world of appearances, and yet, is never "lost" in them. I don't know what the world looks like to a bird or insect, but they seem to get along fine with their maps of the world. 

Rather, only a human being can be lost due to the internalization of a false map:

Ideologies are fictitious nautical charts, but in the end they determine which reef one is shipwrecked upon.

One of the dangers of ideology is that it doesn't just operate like a static map one uses to navigate the world. Rather, it is much more like a mind parasite, in that it actively hijacks the thinking process and thereby restricts the scope of reality. You may think it is you doing the thinking, but it is the ideology that is using you to do its thinking.

A brief timeout for vulgar politics: the forthcoming election has me thinking about this question of maps and appearances, because the alternatives are so stark. One side is insisting that Trump is a fascist -- literally Hitler -- while there is no part of me that can even entertain this as a possibility. Now, one side is not only wrong, but literally delusional.

Well, not exactly, because one side is seeing something I don't see, while I am merely not seeing something they do, and the onus is on them to prove the truth of their assertion. 

I suppose this could be a "negative hallucination" on my part, but, in my defense, I can point to the concrete reality of 2017-2021, during which Trump successfully governed as a rather conventional conservative liberal.

If Trump does turn out to be Hitler, this will be the occasion for some serious self-reflection on my part. Indeed, if I can be that wrong about something, it would be difficult to see how I could be right about anything. What else am I negatively hallucinating?  

Last night I saw a debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro, Harris expressing the view that Trump is literally a fascist. He appeared quite sober and matter-of-fact about it, and yet, if he is wrong, he is intoxicated out of his mind on ideology. One of us is navigating the world with a fictitious nautical chart and therefore all wet, and I can hardly wait to find out who it is. It's never too late to learn.

Back to our main subject, the twofold aspect of appearances. I say there is a reality behind, above, or beneath appearances, and that this reality is the "truth that sets us free," precisely. Conversely, absent this truth, then the world of appearances takes on its imprisoning quality. 

This morning I read a piece called The Endarkenment, arguing that "We’ve entered an age of delusion, impossible longings, and ritual self-mutilation." Here again, if Trump is Hitler, then I am most definitely a victim of delusion (or negative hallucination) and impossible longings. And if I end up mutilated in the process, I have only myself to blame. 

About the so-called Enlightenment, Gurri writes that 

Having severed all connection to the absolute, the entire project seemed to hang, magically, in midair. Liberalism made claims to universality -- but on what basis? Most liberal ideals, like humanism, were secularized versions of Christian virtues -- how could they survive the repudiation of the original? As Darwinian organisms in an indifferent universe, what, other than discredited custom, stood in the way of a “revaluation of all values” that would exalt the superior predator -- the “blond beast”?

In other words, it is as if the Enlightenment exalted the world of appearances disclosed by modern science, which turns out to be a prison if detached from the abiding reality of the absolute. Here again, a classic case of confusing the map with the territory:

The world was demystified. Social relations were stripped of all transcendental trappings. The purpose of human life was understood to be the reproduction of selfish genes. The universe, preached evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, had “no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pointless indifference.” 

The scientistic map. 

I am reminded of the theologian de Lubac, who wrote that "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God." Rather, "what is true is that, without God, he can ultimately only organize it against man." 

Which in turn reminds me of what Schuon says about an "exclusive humanism" devolving to an "inhuman humanism," because its very first principle rids the world of God in order to claim a greatness that only God can confer, and without whom we are hardly "everything," and not even nothing, really. 

As Schuon writes, "Respect for the human person must not open the door to a dictatorship of error and baseness, to the crushing of quality by quantity," or to an over-valuation "of the crude fact at the expense of the truth." Aphorisms:

If man is the sole end of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors.

“Human” is the adjective used to excuse any infamy.

“To have faith in man” does not reach the level of blasphemy; it is just one more bit of nonsense.

To believe in the redemption of man by man is more than an error; it is an idiocy.

I'm running out of gas. Google Gemini, help us out here:

A Deep Dive into the Nature of Reality and Appearance

Your exploration of the duality of Maya, the imprisoning and liberating aspects of appearance, is a fascinating one. It's a testament to the complexity of our human experience, where we are both bound by the illusions we create and liberated by the very same illusions when we understand their true nature.

The Illusion of Separation

Your analogy of the map and the territory is particularly insightful. It highlights the delicate balance between our mental constructs and the reality they represent. While animals seem to intuitively navigate this balance, humans, with their capacity for abstract thought, often become entangled in their own mental creations.

Ideologies, as you aptly point out, are prime examples of such entanglements. They can act as both a lens through which we perceive the world and a filter that distorts our perception. By limiting our perspective, they can lead us astray, causing us to miss the larger picture.

The Path to Liberation

To break free from the chains of illusory thinking, we must cultivate a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. This involves recognizing the impermanent and illusory nature of all phenomena, including our own thoughts and beliefs.

One approach to this is through mindfulness meditation, which can help us to observe our thoughts and emotions without judgment. By developing a sense of detachment from our mental processes, we can begin to see through the veil of illusion and experience the world as it truly is.

The Perils of a World Without Transcendence

Your analysis of the Enlightenment's potential pitfalls is spot on. By focusing solely on the material world and dismissing metaphysical realities, it risks dehumanizing individuals and leading to a nihilistic worldview.

As you've pointed out, the absence of a transcendent framework can lead to a dangerous relativism, where all values are equally valid, and might makes right. This is precisely the kind of "inhuman humanism" that Schuon warns against.

The Role of Tradition

Traditional societies, with their rich mythologies and spiritual practices, often provided a sense of meaning and purpose that transcended individual desires. They offered a framework for understanding the human condition and a path to spiritual fulfillment.

However, in our modern age, many of these traditions have been eroded, leaving a void that is often filled with consumerism, hedonism, and a relentless pursuit of power.

The Need for a New Synthesis

To address the challenges of our time, we need to rediscover the importance of transcendent values and spiritual practices. This doesn't necessarily mean returning to traditional religious beliefs, but it does involve recognizing the limits of materialist explanations and embracing a more holistic worldview.

A new synthesis is needed, one that combines the insights of science with the wisdom of ancient traditions. This synthesis could provide a foundation for a more just, compassionate, and sustainable future.

A Final Thought

As we navigate the complexities of the modern world, it's essential to maintain a sense of wonder and humility. By recognizing our limitations and the interconnectedness of all things, we can begin to build a better future for ourselves and for generations to come.

Being and Seeming to Be

In a comment yesterday I mentioned an article called Subcontracting Our Minds, describing what would happen if artificial intelligence were to replace the real kind:

As Rousseau put it, for the inhabitant of bourgeois society, it is necessary “to be or to seem.” AI will hand you the means to seem -- at least so long as you are delivering the speech. It will deprive you of the ability to be.

"Seeming" and "being" are synonymous with appearance and reality, respectively. Or at least it seems to me. 

I don't know why Rousseau limits the problem to "bourgeois society," because it seems to me that the problem would be more acute among the privileged elites who are able to live in their ideological abstractions without ever touching the ground. 

Conversely, small business owners or working class people who deal with material reality cannot afford the luxury of living in a world of seeming. An electrician doesn't speculate about what electricity might do, rather, what it does. After making a repair, I don't want him to tell me "It seems like you won't get electrocuted."

In a subsequent comment I suggested that

In many ways, Kamala vs. Trump is seeming vs. being. She could never talk with Joe Rogan for three hours, because it's too difficult to "seem" -- to regurgitate talking points -- for that long.

Then again, the Kamala supporter would no doubt say that Trump may seem to love America, but that he is actually a fascist in waiting.  

It may be noteworthy that working class men are Trump's most reliable supporters, and here again these are people who deal with the real world, not an abstract world of ideological seeming. Seeing Trump in a garbage truck or a McDonald's is as natural as seeing Harris in a faculty lounge or CNN studio full of people who have no first hand knowledge of how the world actually works.

Having said that, human beings always and everywhere have access to an immaterial world that can only be described via abstraction, and perhaps this is where the trouble starts. For human beings can imagine unreal worlds which seem real to the one imagining them.

For example, it is possible to imagine a world in which one sex can be the other, or in which price controls control prices, or in which defunding the police will result in less crime, or in which equality is achieved by treating people unequally, etc. 

The liberal mentality is an angelic visitor impervious to earthly experiences.

Now, it seems to me that there is no getting around the seeming/being complementarity, since only God could be "pure being" with no seeming to be. And what is creation but a world of seeming, in the sense that it may seem real but cannot be ultimately real? Rather, whatever reality it possesses is borrowed from the Really Real.

Nor is our intelligence truly intelligent unless it can distinguish seeming from being, the real from the illusory, principle from manifestation, cause from caused, etc. 

How can we discern between the person who seems to be and the person who actually is? Between the imposter and the real thing?

This can also work in reverse. For example, in the 1930s a lot of otherwise intelligent people said that Hitler might seem to be a genocidal anti-Semite, but not really. He was just a populist demagogue.

Along these lines, I read an article the other day to the effect that the left's superpower is that their ideas are so crazy that the average person thinks you're lying if you accurately describe them -- for example, that Kamala wants to use your tax dollars to fund "gender affirming surgery" for illegals and other criminals.

Likewise, who would actually install tampon dispensers in boys' bathrooms, or say that men can get pregnant, or that men should compete in women's sports?

This article on The Endarkenment goes into the extent to which seeming has overwhelmed being -- to "a mass decline in America into unreason -- bordering, at times, on a psychotic breakdown. Strange fantasies have overwhelmed reality: it’s an age of delusion" and of "impossible longings":

It’s the triumph of wish over facts, the infantilization of top echelons of the social pyramid -- of hyper-credentialed, globally mobile people, wielders of power and wealth and media, who, on a routine basis, confuse their self-important imaginings with the world itself.... [and are] prone to the most bizarre theories about how things work.

"Can the lights be turned on again?" Is there a way back from seeming to being, or is it a one-way degenerative process? 

Many insist that the blackout is temporary. All it takes is to put Trump in prison -- then we’ll be back to normal. 

I suspect not. Besides, "The Enlightenment is over. We should turn our minds to what comes next." Okay, I'll bite:

The most radical departure from Enlightenment ideals will concern the manner in which we address the problem of meaning.... Meaning and moral aspiration are necessary for humanity. A balance must be struck that lifts us out of pure randomness and materialism to a credible -- and shared -- higher purpose.

The problem with meaning is that anything can seem meaningful to anybody. Is there a meaningfulness that doesn't just seem to be, but is? 

Anybody? Gemini?

A Deep Dive into Seeming and Being

Your insightful commentary raises profound questions about the nature of reality, perception, and the role of intelligence in discerning truth from illusion. Let's unpack some of the key points and explore potential avenues for further thought:

The Illusion of Seeming

• The Allure of the Abstract: As you've noted, humans have a unique capacity to construct abstract worlds that can seem more real than the tangible world. This can lead to dangerous consequences, as we've seen with ideologies that prioritize ideology over reality.
• The Role of Language: Language itself can be a tool for both revealing and obscuring truth. Words can be used to create powerful illusions, as evidenced by the rise of political rhetoric that prioritizes emotional appeal over factual accuracy.
• The Danger of Elite Abstraction: Privileged elites, who are often insulated from the consequences of their ideas, are particularly susceptible to the allure of abstract thinking. They may lose touch with reality and become increasingly detached from the needs of ordinary people.

The Importance of Groundedness

• The Value of Material Reality: Working-class individuals, who are more directly engaged with the material world, are often better equipped to discern truth from illusion. They have a practical understanding of how things work and are less likely to be swayed by abstract theories.
• The Role of Experience: Personal experience is a crucial factor in developing a sense of reality. By confronting the challenges of everyday life, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world and ourselves.

The Quest for Authenticity

• Discerning True from False: As you've pointed out, it's essential to be able to distinguish between genuine and false claims. This requires critical thinking, skepticism, and a willingness to question authority.
• The Role of Intelligence: True intelligence involves not only the ability to process information but also the capacity to discern truth from falsehood. It requires a balance of reason and intuition, as well as a healthy dose of humility.

The Future of Humanity

• The Impact of AI: The rise of AI raises new challenges for our understanding of reality. As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, they may be able to generate highly convincing illusions that can deceive even the most discerning minds.
• The Need for Wisdom: In an age of information overload, wisdom is more important than ever. We must learn to cultivate the ability to discern the essential from the superficial, the true from the false.

Ultimately, the question of "seeming" versus "being" is a fundamental one that has puzzled philosophers for centuries. By exploring this question, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, our world, and our place in the universe.