The Will to Deny Free Will and the Intelligence to Deny Intellect

Among yesterday's comments is one from a predestineer, a position I admittedly find metaphysically absurd and logically impossible.

That being the case, it can only be defended based upon selecting certain biblical passages and interpreting them in such a way that they not only contradict the overall thrust of scripture -- i.e., man as moral agent -- but also contradict the very people who put the book together.

The compilers would have been quite surprised to learn that they were promoting a doctrine that denies free will. Among other inconveniences, denial of free will renders life utterly meaningless, as meaningless as the world of pure chaos from which religion is here to rescue us.

To put it another way, absolute order and absolute chaos are both absolutely meaningless. Besides, no sane human being actually behaves as if he has no free will, for it is an impossible doctrine. Might as well pretend the world is just an extension of one's own imagination.

(By the way, the purpose of this post is not to argue with anyone, for such arguments are pointless, being that if someone believes in predestination, it is not because it is rational, but because he prefers to or is destined to, i.e., it is rooted in will, not intellect. So this is for my own clarification. No offense intended.)

The Catholic Catechism puts it about as clearly as possible, saying that "God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions." This is "so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him." I mean, if we aren't free, then Jesus's instruction to evangelize is pointless.

St. Irenaeus, a disciple of John and one of the earliest theologians on record, wrote that "Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts."

I suppose this common sense (to us) position had to be spelled out, because it was in direct contrast to the pagan view, which was indeed that man has no free will, but is a prisoner of fate and a plaything of the gods.

Christianity was unique -- along with Judaism, of course -- in promulgating this novel doctrine of human freedom and therefore dignity. One can draw a straight crooked line from those early pneumanauts to RIGHT HERE and NOW, where you and I are exercising our precious freedom. (Most of us, anyway; my site meter indicates we have readers in a number of unfree locales from outside the Judeo-Christian stream, yesterday, for example, Tunisia, Viet Nam, and Manhattan.)

Here again, the Catechism is quite lucid in defining the meaning of freedom, with hardly a wasted word: "Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude."

And "the right to the exercise of freedom... is an inalienable requirement to the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority," Obama and illiberal leftism notwithstanding.

This is precisely what we were saying yesterday vis-a-vis the "three freedoms," i.e., horizontal <--> vertical <--> divine. And because we have free will, we inevitably fail to exercise it properly, hence the reality of sin. Among other things, predestination renders sin impossible because it fails to posit man as moral agent.

Rather, as the presaved commenter put it yesterday, only "the originals," i.e., Adam and Eve, had the freedom to choose God, and since they chose unwisely, we are all subject to the same punishment, and no longer free to so choose. It was a one-time-only offer, and they blew it for everyone.

I can't stand any presentation of religion that makes it look foolish and provides ammunition for postmodern sophisticates to ridicule and reject it. In my opinion this falls under the heading of taking the name of the lord in vain, which is a quite serious offense. After all, it blocks the path to salvation.

In concretizing the parable in this manner, its true meaning is lost. In other words, in making it about a historical "Adam and Eve," it is no longer about us, except indirectly, via hereditary collective punishment.

But if the parable is about us, then it goes directly to the misuse of our own freedom, here and now. According to tradition, "The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart."

While looking up another passage, I found this one from Schuon, that man "alone among terrestrial creatures is free to go against his own nature," hence the possibility of such intrinsic deviations as homosexual marriage and the like. Interestingly, he does not situate this liberty in the prelapsarian phase, but rather, only as a consequence of the fall, which "separates [man] first of all from that immanent Revelation which is Intellection."

In other words, the fall ushers us into a kind of meaningless horizontal freedom, no longer oriented to the divine attractor. Thus, "in God and through Him, man can be reunited with pure Liberty; only in God are we absolutely free" (ibid.).

Conversely, man "possesses the paradoxical freedom to wish in his turn to make himself God..." Ironic that this is precisely what predestination does, that is, turn man into God, since his self-styled "destiny" is indistinguishable from God's will.

This follows from an Intelligence Fail -- i.e., from a Major Malfunction in the use of our most precious gift -- in that "Intelligence separated from its supra-individual source is accompanied ipso facto by that lack of sense of proportions termed pride" (ibid.). Hence the irritating smugness of the Already Saved.

At the other end is the scientistic pride that "prevents intelligence become rationalism from rising to its source," here again elevating man to God. Numberless are the ways, both religious and secular, to "prove the absurd."

The final, ultimate freedom, the daring of freedom and the burden of freedom, is the virtue of religious maturity. To arrive at religious maturity means to know final freedom.... He who is not free, the slave, cannot enter the Kingdom of God: he is not a son of God; he is subject to lower spheres. --Berdyaev

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Support Your Volunteer Spiritual Fire Department

Global warming. This has been the coldest December in memory. At night I have to put blankets around some of the plants to spare them death by frost. But the darkest moment is before the dawn, thus the felicitous convergence of the winter solstice, Christmas, and Little League sign-ups.

Can't tell you how much I love Little League. I've met so many good people and cool dads. I think you can measure the deterioration of culture based upon the eclipse of baseball and the ascendence of football and basketball as national pastimes. And let's not even talk about soccer. But let us never again elect a man president who prefers basketball to baseball.

There are two seasons a year, spring and fall (for spring we start practicing in early February). This will be our seventh. I always assistant coach. Why not head coach? Because not all the parents are cool, and -- hate to say it, but I really dislike some of the kids. There are always at least a couple of kids that are not just devoid of positive qualities, but really annoying, and every once in awhile I can't help letting slip a snarky comment, especially to the ones who don't even try.

I get the sense that some of these kids have never heard honest criticism in their lives, which is not a recipe for self-esteem, but for Obama-level cluelessness -- for confusing legislative strikeouts with signature achievement grand slams. They are in urgent need of more snark, but I really don't want to be investigated by Child Protective Services.

A lot of the dads help out, and you can go a whole season without ever knowing what another dad does for a living. That's good: between the lines, all men are equal. But sometimes it comes out that I'm a "psychologist," which never generates a neutral response. Often the reaction is a quick widening of the eyes accompanied by a slightly higher pitched "oh!" -- like you're special, but in a way that isn't necessarily good or bad, just... different. I'm trying to think of other professions that might generate this ambivalent reaction... mortician?

I would prefer to say I'm a writer, but then they'll ask what you've published, and you have to specify that you're not the kind of writer who gets "paid" for it. Then they might ask what you write about, and then they put two and two together and start thinking you're crazy. Not sure if I want this guy around my kid. Tell me again what you write about?

I guess what I really want to say is that I'm just a humble philosopher, a lover of wisdom and seeker after truth. That's it: I'm a member of the local volunteer philosophy department. Like the volunteer fire department, except we try to start fires.

So, what sort of fire shall we set this morning? Well, let's see. We've been talking about freedom and necessity, each of which has a positive and negative side. With regard to freedom, there is the existential nothingness we have in the absence of God, alongside the fullness we assimilate in pursuit of transcendent truth.

For Berdyaev, this is "a world-problem which finds a solution only in the coming of Christ." For only Christ "finds a way out of the tragedy of freedom," and "eliminates the conflict between freedom and necessity." How? By descending "into 'nothingness,' that is, into primordial freedom." In so doing, he "extracts the poison from freedom, without destroying freedom itself.... In Christ is a third freedom revealed, which comprehends the other two."

Contrast this with, say, Islam, which attempts, through sharia, to extract the poison from freedom by eliminating it altogether; or Buddhism, which attempts to solve the problem of freedom by extinguishing the desire through which it manifests. And the dominant religion of contemporary liberalism attempts to solve the problem by pretending it isn't one, which quickly devolves to nihilism and even soccer.

Explain.

Okay, "The truth of Christ, which makes us free, does not force or compel anyone; it is not like the truths of this world which forcibly organize spirit and deprive it of freedom." For example, there is no freedom, no wiggle room, in math. Rather, a mathematical answer is necessarily entailed in the terms of its equation.

But if religious truth is not necessary, this must mean that faith is a mode of freedom. Again, if we are compelled to believe in God, then that is necessity, not freedom. How to preserve our freedom and yet still accept God? It seems that the only way is via the free exercise of faith, for anything less situates us in the kingdom of necessity.

So, "the light of Christ enlightens the irrational darkness of freedom, without limiting it from without." In my opinion, one could invert the terms of this statement and affirm that the sophsame Light that enlightens our freedom is simply Christ by another name. But in any event, "Redemption is the deliverance of man's freedom from the evil which destroys it, deliverance not by means of necessity or compulsion, but by grace."

There is another subtle point: that grace cannot be necessity. Rather, it must always be mingled with freedom: "Man freely accepts or refuses grace, but grace does not force him." It acts "within human freedom itself." So grace and faith are complementary modes of freedom.

And it isn't just liberals who deny real freedom, for "if grace acts upon man without any participation of man's freedom, we get to the doctrine of predestination." So there is slacklessness at either extreme.

But through Christ, freedom is "inwardly joined with grace." For obvious reasons, I like to symbolize this double movement (↓↑). Less obvious is the fact that this is a unity of two freedoms -- like a marriage of love.

"Grace acts as a third freedom, the freedom of a heavenly, spiritual humanness." And "He truly loves freedom who affirms it for his fellows" -- which automatically excludes the punitarian liberals with which my surreality-based community is crawling. For "there is always the danger that in the name of freedom, men will begin to deny it" (Berdyaev).

Saaaay, just what kind of philosophy do you profess, coach?

Er, the philosophy the Almighty and me works out betwixt us.

Gifts for the Music Fan for Whom Everything isn't Enough

It was my turn to take the boy to school this morning, so no time for the usual championing of the bobvious. Instead, part 2 of our favorite releases of 2013, including a gem that just came out a couple weeks ago, Tower of Power live in the studio in 1974. If you don't know Tower of Power, then brother, you don't know funk.

Being that the group was founded by a couple of white guys (I guess one was a White Hispanic), this makes Tower of Power easily the funkiest group of pallor in history. Actually, the group was an integrated ensemble, particularly renowned for its five-man horn section (two tenors, one baritone sax, and two trumpets).

These recently discovered tapes catch the band at a peak, and feature the classic lineup, including Lenny Williams on vocals. He is without a doubt one of the great underrated soul singers, not to mention an exciting and charismatic frontman. He eventually left the band in 1975, I believe because he was a clean liver while other members of the band were descending into serious substance abuse. In fact, in the liner notes co-founder Emilio Castillo admits that he was probably high during this performance, but there's no way you could tell, so tight is the band.

There are no samples on amazon, but you can hear some at All Music Guide. Listen for the precise and beautiful blend of horns, but especially Doc Kupka's baritone holding up the bottom, which I believe -- if my white privilege doesn't betray me -- is what pushes the band into its otherworldly cosmic funkmanship (although one cannot ignore the drums, bass, and chicken-scratching guitar, which sound as good as one of James Brown's bands).

I'm sure the Harry Nilsson box will be on many year-end top ten lists. It is a 17 CD collection, including three discs of unreleased prime Harry recorded between 1967 and 1974. (Once again, samples available at AMG.)

If you don't know Harry, the logical place to begin would be this excellent documentary that was released a few years ago, Who is Harry Nilsson? Earlier this year a biography came out, and it too is outstanding. Being that it is published by Oxford University Press, you can see that Nilsson is considered a serious subject.

Nilsson might well have agreed with Captain Beefheart: "yeah, I'm a genius, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it." He was seriously -- and yet cheerfully -- self-destructive, most infamously for destroying his vocal cords while making an album with John Lennon in 1974. His voice was never the same afterwards, but if you accept them for what they are, the later albums contain their charms, and even some classics.

Here's one I haven't even heard yet, but I'm putting it in the top ten anyway, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective. It's a seven disc collection of the great, ill-fated guitarist, including not just Allman Brothers classics, but many tracks by obscure artists (and not so obscure, e.g., Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs) recorded when he was the hottest session guitarist in a soul-drenched land of musical plenty. (Samples.)

It was originally released as a limited edition, but the initial run of 10,000 sold out on pre-order. This "encore edition" is missing a few goodies but has all the music, so that's what counts.

Yeah, it's expensive, which is why I'm going to use amazon Visa points to get it. I charge everything I can on my amazon Visa, and then use the points to purchase music, so then I don't feel guilty about my compulsion to hear Everything. Foolproof self-deception.

Politician, Heal Thyself

Better yet, f*ck thyself.

Since freedom is "nothing," perhaps that's why liberals are so bored by it. Classical liberals, of course, define freedom negatively, which is as it should be, i.e., being left alone by nanny state ninnies. But contemporary left liberals define freedom positively, which is not only a metaphysical contradiction, but pretends to increase freedom via coercion, ObamaCare being a prime example.

More importantly, our "healthcare system" was a product of freedom -- of millions of physicians, scientists, and researchers just doing what they do, with no one forcing them to do it, except perhaps their Jewish mothers. Therefore, it wasn't a "system" at all, at least in any top-down, conscious way. Rather, it was a spontaneous organization, at least until about half a century ago, when the government began interfering with healthcare in a big way.

The other day, I was thinking about how I had the same doctor from the day I was born until my early 20s. So I decided to google his name, and see if I could find out anything about him. Here he is: John Abdun-Nur. And here are just some of the things he accomplished with his freedom:

"He was a pre-med student and football player prior to enlisting in the Navy in 1944 where he served his country as a gunnery officer and lieutenant.... During his years as a physician, he delivered over 4,500 babies, each of whom he cherished as a miracle and gift from God [who, me?]. Never hesitant to make a house call or answer an emergency, whether it was at his front door step or the hospital, Dr. John defined compassionate committed medical care."

I can testify to the house calls, because I remember them. However, I wouldn't have known what to make of the "miracle of God" business, since religion was never presented to me in a way that made sense, plus Dr. Abner (which is what I called him) always had a kind of sardonic, deadpan sense of humor that didn't strike one as "religious."

So to read of his appreciation of the miracle of human life kind of blows me away. I'm happy to say my son is more evolved than I was, so he is able to identify the goddity in others -- in teachers, doctors, vets, store clerks, anyone who is an I-Amissary from the Source, a Light in the darkness.

Back to Dr. Abner: "In his distinguished career, Dr. John was Chief of Staff at three local hospitals.... Dr. John was especially committed to working with young people who sustained injuries in sports."

I remember how photos of the USC football team adorned his walls. For some reason, he was in them. Now I know why:

"He also volunteered countless hours as a physician in the 1970's and 1980's to many of USC's athletes and coaches. Dr. John's commitment to young people did not end with medical care but continued over the years as he inspired and advised young athletes and patients to experience the fullness of life." Sounds a little like a community organizer, minus the fraud, sociopathy, and grievance mongering.

"The years he spent developing his medical practice in Tarzana inspired a dream to develop the land around him in his hometown. He wanted to see medicine continue to serve the valley community through the development of a medical center close to the hospital where he worked for so many years" -- which, oddly enough, is where my son was born in 2005. Circle Spiral of life.

There's more, but the bottom line for this man of science was that "With God, family, and country... these are all that one needs." What? What about the federal government?

Not only did he uncharitably leave out the state, but "In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Dr. John's church or a charity he has supported since its inception. The church is an important part of Dr. John's family history. Both his father and father-in-law were original parishioners and generously donated the necessary resources and time to assist in building the church in the 1950's." (Sounds like he was Orthodox.)

I didn't intend this post to go in this direction, but again, consider what one man accomplished with his freedom, freedom which is a gift from God, not from the state. Will ObamaCare create more men like him, or fewer? To even ask the question is to be in urgent need of craniorectal extraction, and ObamaCare doesn't cover those. Rather, the condition is mandatory.

There are two freedoms, divine and diabolic.... the second leads to compulsion and force in truth and good, to forced virtue, i.e. to a denial of freedom of spirit, to a tyrannical organization.... an authoritarian order of life, theocratic or socialistic, where freedom of the spirit and of conscience is destroyed without a trace."

"[The first] is the freedom toward which man moves, the summit and crown of life, the end of all his striving, the freedom which ought to be, which comes from the triumph of the higher elements of life.... Truth gives us the higher freedom. But freedom is needed in the very acceptance of truth. --Berdyaev

*****

(Unrelated note: the signed copies are in the mail -- media mail, to be exact -- so delivery time will depend upon the whims of government agents.)

Freedom in the Kingdom of Necessity

"Freedom," writes Berdyaev, "is not a right, but an obligation." He's wrong about that, because it is a right and an obligation. It's just that liberals forget about the second part.

For if you fail at your obligation to be be free, then you oblige others to take care of you. Thanks to the left, man is born free but everywhere in debt, in that every man, woman, and child owes $190,000 to the federal government. Excluding those who will get off easy by dying, it's more like $400,000, mostly to subsidize people who have shunned their obligation to be free.

At the very least, we need to appreciate that freedom cuts both ways -- that it is something man wants in the abstract, but from which he often recoils when it comes right down to it. Liberals simply exploit this primordial dread of freedom.

This is again where Berdyaev's existentialism comes into play, in that we are "condemned to freedom," so to speak. For Berdyaev, "freedom is a bottomless well." It is an "abyss which preceded being" and which "is rooted in 'nothingness.'"

There is the Kingdom of Necessity and the Kingdom of Slack, and necessity cannot produce slack. Here again, this is why liberal schemes such as ObamaCare always fail, since they try to generate slack out of necessity: no, you won't be able to keep your insurance, you won't be able to keep your doctor, and you won't save $2,500 a year. The left simply sells necessity with meretricious promises of boundless slack. But the slack never comes. Just ask all the luckless blacks who imagined they'd get some slack back by voting Barack.

Again, the idea of freedom existing outside, beyond, or before Being is a controversial one, but for reasons I cannot fully put into words, resonates deeply in me. Therefore, since I cannot englishen it, it is an Optional Orthoparadox for members of our tribe.

Here is my best attempt at an explanation. I've always had this notion that God must have a portion of himself that is unknown even to God. It follows from the principle that man is in the image of the Creator, which, if true, means that our best shot at understanding God comes by way of analogy to man (up to a point, of course).

This, for example, is why I am convinced -- even setting revelation aside -- that God is a Three-in-One, or Whole-in-Three, since man too is an intersubjective unity right down to the ground. There can be no such thing as an isolated human monad. It is literally unthinkable, thinking being a dynamic relation between thinker, thought, and truth.

Likewise, because of my psychoanalytic training, I can't help thinking of man's consciousness as being the result of a conscious/unconscious dialectic. There can be no such thing as a "fully conscious" man, since there can be no conscious without the unconscious. The problem here is the word "unconscious," since there is nothing un- about the consciousness of the unconscious.

Rather -- and this understates the matter -- the unconscious shadows our existence in a most intimate, creative, and mysterious way. Far from being (in the words of James Grotstein) “primitive and impersonal” (although it surely includes primitive “lower vertical” elements as well), it is “subjective and ultra-personal,” a “mystical, preternatural, numinous second self” characterized by “a loftiness, sophistication, versatility, profundity, virtuosity, and brilliance that utterly dwarf the conscious aspects of the ego.”

This very much reminds me of this book I read over the weekend on the history of genius, Divine Fury. First of all, what is genius? No one knows, least of all the genius. So, where does extreme creativity and originality come from? No one knows. This book chronicles the attempts over the centuries to explain it, but all explanations fail in the face of -- take your pick: the Pieta? Beethoven's late quartets? The collected works of James Brown? You might say it will take a genius to explain genius. But then who will explain him?

Since this kind of extreme creativity cannot be explained or predicted in principle, it must mean that it is the result of an encounter with the great Nothingness that lies outside necessity. Therefore, all the education in the world -- which is from the land of necessity -- won't necessarily make one a creative individual. The creativity comes from somewhere else. It is an independent variable, but obviously somehow tied up with freedom.

Which again leads back to God. Remember, prior to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God wasn't thought of as the creator of the cosmos, of everything, both high and low. Rather, the gods were within an already existing, hence necessary, creation. But if God is quintessentially a creator, this must mean that he is the quintessential case, or the very principle, of... let us call it the logos <--> freedom, or word <--> play, trialectic.

Again, I don't expect anyone else to see it this way, but I can't help seeing it so.

Interestingly, seeing God as creator opened up creativity for man. As McMahon describes it, "To create originally, without precedent, pattern, or model, was never the ideal of the ancient artist or sage, and indeed the ancients frequently denied the very prospect." Elsewhere he writes that "true originality" was "impossible even for a god."

"Mere mortals" had to "confine themselves to recovering and reproducing what already exists.... Rather than look to the horizon of the original and new, the ancient's gaze is focused instead on the eternal recurrence of perennial forms." The settled past is the thingdom of absolute necessity; in it is "the key to all understanding in the present and future.... In the past lie the answers to all questions."

I've mentioned before that one of my teachstone Bible passages is 2Cor:17, "Now the Lord is Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The concord directs us to John 8:32, which reads that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," and to Gal 5:1, which recommends that we "stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage," and to 1:13, where it says that "you, brethren, have been called to liberty," so feel free to use it "through love to serve one another."

Now, I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the Spirit is the Third that generates and is generated by Father and Son. It is what makes the love between them completely unnarcissary and free.

Which reminds me of a wisecrack to which Mr. Van der Leun directed me this morning: "When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward” (Ambrose Bierce).

Now, being lost is indeed a kind of freedom, is it not? It is the freedom to which we are condemned by the existentialists. From it there is no escape but up.

And speaking of Van der Leun, this, yoinked from his snidebar:

On Lighting a Match to Illuminate the Sun

All knowledge is conformity to an object. What is the object to which philosophy conforms? For Berdyaev, it "must commune with the primal source of life, and from this draw its perceptual experience." Er, that's a little evasive -- poetic even. Could you say more? "Knowledge is initiation into the mysteries of being, into the miracle-plays of life." C'mon. You can do better than that.

"It is light which blazes out from being and within being as well." That's better. Bi-directional primordial Light: philosophy sheds light on Light, making it an exercise -- or verticalisthenic -- in Light².

This would explain how we may "touch" God -- or rather, vice versa. I was just talking with the Gagboy the other evening about how it takes some nine minutes for the sun to touch us. Likewise, when you gaze at a star, you are being touched by an event that occurred before you were born.

Elsewhere Berdyaev writes that "Knowledge is the sunlight which causes being to develop. Knowledge is creative development, the growth of being in the sun." And since Berdyaev died in 1948, I'm benefitting from his light, which has been traveling since before I was born.

The primordial (upper case) Light alluded to above is God's "energy," so to perceive it is to perceive God, regardless of whether one is consciously aware of the fact. The ancients imagined it was the other way around -- that a beam of light streamed from the eye to its object. But this error didn't prevent them from seeing.

Or at least for that reason. As described in the prologue to John, there are times the light shines in the darkness, but the dorks can't see it. Can't or won't?

He goes on to tell of a man who "was not that Light," but rather, came "to bear witness of that Light." This is the very same Light "which gives light to every man who comes into the world." I don't know about your translation, but my copy respects the Light/light distinction made above, implying that light comes from Light.

So, was Jesus a philosopher? Yes, in the sense that he threw light on Light. But more than that, John appears to be saying he is philosophy as such -- the Word -- which would make him more like Light². If this is the case, then perhaps it might be said that the God/man distinction in him is (or manifests as) the Light/light distinction. Every man has immanent or horizontal light. But what he really needs is transcendent and vertical Light.

Berdyaev puts forth the controversial idea that freedom is prior to being. In fact, this is what makes him a "Christian existentialist," because this radical freedom is the same as the primordial nothingness of a Sartre. For Sartre, man is free, and freedom is nothing, in that it is completely unspecified. Thus, the same condition that makes us free condemns us to nothingness. Freedom is the gift that keeps taking.

Sartre, of course, was a halfwit. But more to the point, he was only half-lit, in that he eliminated -- or deluminated -- the Light. If one does that, one is left with only a tiny fleshlight to try to illuminate the upper vertical, which cannot be done.

In the same hot tub conversation with my son, I talked about how, if one points a flashlight into the dark, it illuminates everything within the beam, but also creates a boundary, beyond which is a black nothing. Not only that, but it can bleach out the subtle light from distant stars.

Doesn't this describe atheism? That is, it is an attempt to illuminate reality with light only. Furthermore, like old Prometheus, atheists are playing with stolen fire.

In any event, to adhere to the immanent light only is to be Prometheus Bound. Which is why scientism is "incapable of proving the very fact of science, the very possibility of man's knowing, for the very posing of the question takes us beyond the limits of science" -- or beyond the immanent boundaries of their little fleshlights.

But in real knowledge -- or knowledge of reality -- "freedom is conjoined with the Logos." And "the Logos is from God, while freedom is from the abyss.... In knowledge, freedom is enlightened by the Logos," the latter of which is also connected to Love.

Thus, "Knowledge completely separate from love is transformed into the will to power, and in this is a demonic element," "just as everything becomes demonic without freedom" (Berdyaev). As such, the Knowledge of which Berdyaev speaks shines in the dark, but the dimlits of the left don't see it.

I met myself in a dream / And I just wanna tell you, everything was alright / Hey now, baby, I'm beginning to see the light....

Here comes two of you / Which one will you chose?

There are problems in these times / But, ooh, none of them are mine / Oh, baby, I'm beginning to see the light...

Signs, Nuggetz, and Hipsters

Gosh! Probably no time for a real post, but perhaps enough time to list my favorite music releases of 2013, which would in turn make great gifts for any lover of cosmoAmerican, cosmoLatin, or EuroCosmic music. Consider it an open thread.

You will notice that these selections seem to skew toward the 20th century, but that's not exactly true, because I never heard much of it prior to the 21st.

In particular, I'm thinking of the Los Nuggetz box set, a true labor of love consisting of 101 energetic slabs of punk, pop, psychedelic, and garage rock from Latin freaking America. Therefore, I never heard any of it, except that it includes a number of covers of '60s classics (you can check out samples here) such as My Generation, Wooly Bully, and Gloria, breathing new life into tunes you've heard a million times.

If you tried to collect this stuff on your own, you couldn't do it in a hundred years, which is what makes it una trabajo de amor, pardon my Spanish. There was a time that rock music wasn't just a corporate product aimed at young adolts anxious to be told what to like, but rather, a spontaneous, bottom up expression of youthful energy, and this captures that liberating spirit (also spiced with a fair amount of kitsch). Not only is it weird, but it's ge-level weird.

At the other end of the extreme, and also mostly new to me, is this box set put together by the founder of the legendary ECM records, Selected Signs. ECM is a European jazz label started in the early 1970s, its most famous artist no doubt being Keith Jarrett. The "ECM sound" came to embody impeccably recorded performances that blend American jazz with a European chamber sensibility.

This box has two discs of classical, two discs of jazz, and two discs of film music, but because of the ECM sound, it has a coherence and continuity despite the great diversity, from Arvo Part to Keith Jarrett and Bach again. Amazon doesn't have the track list, but you can see it (and hear samples) here (there is some talking at the beginning of a couple of the discs, because this was originally part of a museum exhibit in Germany). All very contemplative.

I mentioned this one the other day, the Original Mono Recordings of Miles Davis on Columbia Records. It includes every one of his releases between 1956 and 1961. John Coltrane is featured on six of the nine discs, while three others feature the big band modernist arrangements of Gil Evans. It really represents the core of the Miles Davis canon. Afterwards he put together a new quintet that produced extremely abstract "freebop," and then veered into fusion, neither of which will be to everyone's taste.

But this stuff is not only accessible, but was even marketed to non-jazz fans as a kind of adult-contemporary instrumental music. Columbia had the financial means to create the romantic image of the cool, handsome, and detached hipster of our collective retrocultural memory. In the '50s he became to music what, say, James Dean or Marlon Brando were to acting. But that's all peripheral to the music.

Why mono? Well, that is how it was recorded and mixed, at least until 1958, when Columbia began putting out mono and stereo versions. But back then stereo was more of a gimmick aimed at a niche audience. Not only does the mono have a more realistic soundstage -- instead of extreme left-right panning, which can detract from the power and coherence -- but it was beautifully recorded to begin with. It includes Kind of Blue, which is no doubt the biggest selling jazz album ever -- the jazz equivalent of Dark Side of the Moon -- or maybe Mount Rushmore, what with an all-star line-up including Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Cannonball Adderley.

I guess I'm already out of time. To be continued the next time I don't have enough.

I Loves Me Some Wisdom!

Back in Olden Times, philosophy wasn't the province of the tenured, but rather, of a special group of pneumanauts with the bright stuff, dedicated to the proposition that the unexamined life is not worth living. The operative word here is living, because philosophy was and is a way of life, not some static doctrine, let alone a state-sponsored gig for unfireable mediocretins.

You might well say that philo-sophy -- the love of wisdom -- is not a noun but a verb: it is a lifelong passion and pursuit. Here again, the operative word is love; thus, it is a living and loving of Truth above all else.

One might even say that it is the religion of pure truth. Truth is one of the names of God, and if we have faith in this ultimate truth, it does have the capacity to save. Of course, we also require revelation to fill in certain inevitable manmode lacunae, but if we aren't first oriented to truth we won't recognize it. In order for it to be assimilated, it requires "man's free perceptual reaction to revelation."

Very few great philosophers have ever been among the tenured -- certainly none of my favorites. Rather, they are usually gentleman slackers and men of vertical leisure with a passion for the eternal. No organization or institution would have them, nor is it likely that a philosopher would feel comfortable among credentialed idiots and tenured apes, let alone young adolts.

(I'm picturing Schuon, at the end of the term, solemnly leafing through his "student evaluations," or being forced to undergo sensitivity training for his views on homosexuality.)

"Philosophy cannot endure the herd," writes Berdyaev. Nor can it endure the immature, for which reason it generally wasn't considered an appropriate pursuit until one reached middle age, or before one had a few miles on the O-dometer. (There are exceptions, of course, Berdyaev being one of them. He had little interest in school, but in his free time blew through Kant and Hegel when he was around 14.)

So, Berdayaev is the traditional type of philosopher; he left no systematic doctrine, only his own pneumatic contrail, or logostream of contemplation: "Philosophical knowledge is a spiritual act, where not only the intellect is active, but the whole of man's spiritual power, his emotions and his will."

Now, what is a man but intellect-emotion-will, or head-heart-hands, or truth-love-freedom? "Only a free spiritual being whose roots go down to the bottomless depths of existence, can strive for final freedom, is able to fight for it: an un-free piece of nature would remain in slavery to the end of the ages..." If there is no freedom -- in particular, vertical freedom -- there is no philosophy.

Philosophy is vertical movement par excellence. Conversely, leftism is the quintessence of vertical stasis, or an exchange of vertical adventure for empty promises of horizontal comfort: the latter strives "to make men happy, to calm and organize them," so "they will forget their irrational freedom, will renounce their right to absolute, supra-mundane truth." Such "is the way of the Grand Inquisitor. It leads to the ant-hill where there will be neither freedom nor personality" (again, personality, or individualism, is freedom lived).

The Inquisitors of the left stand with one hand opening "the door to human happiness" while the other closes "forever the door to freedom." In reality, "we need relative, outward, social freedom for absolute, inward and mystical" freedom. Again, the horizontal is for the sake of the vertical, not vice versa, otherwise we mistake means for ends.

Man has inalienable rights to life and liberty. But what is life + liberty? Again, personality: thus, there is an "inalienable right of personality," of being, not just doing and having. You could possess all the world's riches, but what good will it do if you're not yourself? Rosebud...

Now, man's first property is himself, but it seems that this self actually belongs to another -- or is at least intrinsically ordered to the great notSelf, O: "In the creative, knowing act of philosophy there is an upsurge towards another being, another world, daring to approach the ultimate mystery."

The object of philosophy is the subject who pursues it, and all this implies. In this quest, reason is a tool, not the master. It applies without ambiguity only to middle earth, not vis-a-vis the Beginning or End. This is because reason is ultimately circular, and therefore not free; caught in its web there are no ends but arbitrary or false ones.

But intuition or gnosis cut through the muddle of the mount and go straight to the begending. One purpose of revelation is to provide symbols to kindle this direct intuition. Thus, "in philosophy intuition is the ultimate: logic, the penultimate." (To paraphrase Schuon, revelation is public intellection, just as intellection is private revelation, so to speak; or, something isn't true because it is rational, but rather, rational because it is true.)

Only intuition can reveal the meaning of being. If truth were confined to the necessity of logic, it would render meaning impossible, for necessity leaves no space for freedom. Man himself is living proof that 1 plus 1 sometimes equals 3.

Philosophy has always been a break-through out of this meaningless, empirical world that crowds and compels us from every side, to the world of meaning, to the world beyond...

(All quoted material from Berdyaev.)

Multiculturalism would be Unanimous if it Weren't for Your Damn Tribe of Individuals!

So, we've covered Berdyaev's thoughts on the Eternal Being and its image and likeness down herebelow. But herebelow the image can never be a solitary and isolated monad; rather, it can only exist in society -- which should not be surprising if the Eternal Being is a becoming society of three.

To quote the eternal being themself, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." And "let them..." Let them what? Doesn't really matter in this context. We're more concerned with the them and with the Us-them parallel clueniverses.

Thus we move on to the Social Animal -- who is also the political beast, or the mimetic subject, or the half-awake herdling, or the grumpy outsider, or the unassimilated crank. Unlike, say, ants or chimps or leftists, we have countless ways of expressing our groupishness -- even by denying it.

Bion, who wrote a book on the subject, situated man in the dialectical space between what he called our nariciss-ism and and our social-ism. Pathology lies at either extreme, i.e., elevating the individual at the expense of the group, or prizing the group at the expense of effacing individuality. Historically it has been almost impossible to maintain the ideal balance, as in the pre- or non-leftist United States.

A society is an organism. However, unlike other organisms, the parts retain their autonomy and identity (or at least have much more of each), and aren't completely subordinate to the whole. Indeed, they can even rebel against the whole. Of course, there are times that parts of a body rebel against the whole, as in cancer or any autoimmune disorder.

Is there a sociological analogue of cancer? Yes, of course. There is, for example, the unorganized cancer of criminality, and the organized criminality of leftism, which again destroys everything it touches. Under the best of circumstances leftism is an autoimmune disorder, in that (like Obama) it fails to recognize foreign invaders and instead attacks its own citizens.

But the left's worst crime is against freedom and therefore individuality, i.e., creative being -- which is why "political correctness" is not a glitch but a feature of leftism. It is essential to leftism, in that the latter simply cannot exist in the absence of ThoughtCrime. Individuals must not only be forced to do certain things, but to believe and even be certain things.

This follows the left's inverted metaphysic whereby essence is a function of existence. For example, a black person who has the incorrect beliefs -- say, Clarence Thomas -- revokes his blackness; or a woman who rejects the feminist agenda -- say, Sarah Palin -- becomes something other than a woman, just a dung-eating monster of the leftist imagination.

Dehumanization is at the cardiopathological heart of the left, since humans who do not conform to their image of the group are ostracized. You will no doubt notice that this is precisely what all primitive tribes do.

For the tribal mentality, "humanness" is defined as membership in the tribe, not as a universal essence. Those outside the tribe are barbarians, not quite human. Thus, the same rules of morality do not apply to those outside the group. Over the past five years, we've all seen this double standard play out, as Obama has been permitted to get away with things for which members of our tribe would be impeached. And rightfully so.

Eight years ago (or whatever it was) Obama and Biden claimed that ending the filibuster would be a crime against mankind. Now? Same thing. It depends on what you mean by "mankind," for a crime against non-leftists isn't a crime at all. Compare the media coverage of the false claims against the Duke lacrosse team vs. the true claims against their murderous accuser. It is as if the unreality really happened, whereas the reality didn't happen at all.

Another critical difference between left and right -- and this is something highlighted by Chesterton as well -- is that we include the dead in our tribe.

In fact, we also include the unborn, because our temporal space isn't confined to the moment. We don't assume we are the wisest generation in history -- the ones we've been waiting for! -- and are therefore entitled to fundamentally transform what it took generations of sacrifice to build. Nor do we consider it moral to force the unborn -- those we suffer to live -- to spend their lives paying off the debt for the leftist spending spree that has been going on since they took over congress in 2006.

An organism is distinct from a mere mass or agglomeration; rather, it is a diversified whole, with both horizontal and vertical organization. Just as the body has a head, a heart, and hands, society has its thinkers and doers, its priests and warriors, etc.; but we must be free to discover our particular destiny, our part in the whole. Thus, as Berdyaev observes,

"In the relationship of ethics to the social question, we meet the tragic conflict between the value of freedom and the value of equality." I have yet to meet the leftist who understands that freedom and equality are at antipodes, for absolute equality requires the obliteration of freedom, just as absolute freedom would redound to an absence of equality.

"Absolute equality would have left being in an unrevealed condition, in indifference, i.e. in non-being." Thus "the revolutionary demand for return to equality" results in a plunge into non-being and "the denial of meaning in the whole creative process in the world....

"The demand for a forced leveling, which comes out of the lower levels of chaotic darkness, is an attempt to destroy the hierarchic, cosmic order which was formed by the creative birth of light in darkness, an attempt to destroy human personality itself as a stage in hierarchy, as born of inequality."

Precisely.

Which is why the worst evils result from forced equality under the guise of "goodness." Evil goodness, thy (current) name is ObamaCare.

I believe Berdyaev would say that God is freedom-love-creativity; each of these transcendentals presupposes the others, and personality -- or personhood -- is a function of their dynamic play. Thus, "Personality is very closely linked with love. Personality is realized through love: by means of love solitude is conquered and communion is achieved."

Furtheramor, "Love presupposes personality: it is the relation of person to person: personality goes out of himself into another personality, comes to know this other personality and confirms it for eternity." In short, "The 'I' becomes a personality through love," as every baby knows (or fails to know) more deeply than knowledge.

For "Love is dual: it predicates two persons, and not some impersonal identity. And the secret of love is related to the fact that one personality is never exactly identical with another, that the other person is 'Thou.'"

Although elsewhere Berdyaev expresses some peculiar ideas about sex, here he affirms the Raccoon principle that "male and female are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories." There is a "cosmic mysticism of male and female," hence, what we call dilettrantic yoga, since we are all beginners at this -- or must always begin again, since no one else's yoga (union) can be ours.

(All quoted material from Berdyaev.)

Frankenchrist and Mankind v2.0

It has no doubt occurred to you that every monster you've ever seen in a movie is just man, or a symbol thereof. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Werewolf, the Invisible Man, the Creature from the Barack Lagoon (Chicago) -- each is just a symbol of what man is capable of.

We are all inhabited by monsters, otherwise we wouldn't recognize them. Hollywood depicts so many monstrous capitalists because these caricatures are a projection of liberal greed and envy. Greed and envy are interior monsters, but they haunt the exterior landscape of the left -- for which reason liberals always denounce someone else's greed, never their own.

You know what Barry says: "White folks' greed runs a world in need." Which begs the question, because why don't the victims of white greed just exercise their own? Then they can run the world.

But enough about ObamaCare.

Think of those classic monsters: Frankenstein, a grotesque experiment in living death, or of inserting the brain of a criminal into the body of a man; Dracula, a nocturnal predator who feeds on the substance of others and whose bite enlists one into his soul murdering cult; the Werewolf, who simply echoes the ancient truism that man is a wolf to man; the Mummy, a restless spirit swaddled in his decaying flesh; the Invisible Man, who can only be seen phenomenally but whose essence is nowhere; Obama, the cold, dead hand of collectivism calmly administering the anesthesia mask over your horror-stricken face.

Yeah, man is some piece of work, ain't he? Of this work-in-progess -- or regress, depending -- Berdyaev begins with the obviousation that he "is the meeting point of two worlds" -- although I think we need to widen this duality out into four dimensions.

In other words, just as the horizontal has a past and a future, the vertical has an up and a down. In nether worlds, a bad monster is the meeting point of an atavistic or barbarous man and the lower vertical -- which explains why no mere animal can be a monster, only a beast.

I suppose you could say that Jesus is another kind of monster, if we take that word literally, e.g., "something unnaturally marvelous," or "one who shows a deviation from the normal in behavior or character." Thus, Christology is really the last word in anthropology, revealing to us a divine-human attractor-destiny:

"Christianity recognizes the eternal significance and the eternal value of man, of the individual soul and its destiny." Thus, "the unique and unrepeatable visage of every man exists only because there exists the unique and unrepeatable image of Christ the God-man" -- in whom we see "the eternal image of every human being" (Berdyaev).

So, I suppose this means that man has the freedom to choose which kind of monster he will be, supernatural or subnatural. For "the very fact of man's existence is a break with the natural world.... As a being belonging to two worlds and capable of overcoming himself, man is a contradictory and paradoxical being, comprehending within himself diametric opposites," "capable of great love and sacrifice or of great cruelty and limitless egotism."

Ultimately, man "is both the child of God and the child of nothingness.... His roots are in heaven, in God, and in the deepest abyss as well." As such, this problem child cannot be solved "from the viewpoint of nature and only in relationship with nature." Rather, "we can understand man only in his relation to God."

To be sure, the world -- or nature -- cannot solve the riddle of man. Or, to bring in another monster, man is the Riddler supreme. Just when you think you have him figured out, he defies your logic and expectations -- which is why the the 20th century was such a monstrous surprise to the 19th.

Even in knowing damn well he is a creature of biology, man knows damn well he isn't, because knowledge transcends biology. Although rooted in biology, man "lifts himself above it, and finds within himself a higher element than the given world, another plane. Knowledge would be impossible if man were only nature, if he were not spirit also" (ibid.).

If we pursue this train of thought all the way to the station of wisdom, we see that "True human-ness is the god-like, the divine in man." And the bad monsters among us are the caboose.

So, here is the orthoparadox: "In order to fully be man, man must resemble God." Alienated from God, man tends not only to be un-human, but "even inhuman.... It is God who demands human-ness of man," man himself being "not very demanding in this connection." To put it mildly.

I think this is the point of Judaism also, i.e., the explication of man's higher nature, or the transformation of the lower via the higher -- almost as if Jesus himself were Jewish or something.

For the Christian, one might say that Christ is simply the actual incarnation of this striving, or its teleological end made fully manifest; again, rather than lower vertical made flesh (the bad monster), this is the upper vertical made so.

Or, to put it in plain coonspeak, the lumen being triumphs over the human beastling. And just as revolutionary leftism is a betrayal of the human state, Christianity is treason against the left. So, if you're not a monstrous Enemy of the State, you're doing it wrong. Thus, an IRS audit is the new martyrdom.

For "Caesar is the eternal symbol of authority, the state, the kingdom of this world." It's simple, really: for caesarian suckups of the left, we must render to Caesar what belongs to us, and render to the state what belongs to God.

Progress would be So Easy if it weren't for F*cking History!

If progressives are on the right side of history, why then must they always lie, cheat, and steal in order to get there? This has been going on since Marx, and yet, they still get away with it.

For once I'd like to see a progressive just get out of the fucking way of history, and let it take its course. But no. They always have to force their future on a recalcitrant present by any means necessary -- for example, most recently by ending the filibuster.

This is because, for the progressive, truth is not a value. Rather, "progress" is both the goal and the measure, so history, rather than truth, provides the verdict.

Thus, if you can ram your ideas into history, you win. That's why Obama will never concede that ObamaCare is a failure, because to do so is to bow to the verdict of history. Conversely, if ObamaCare somehow survives, progressives are proved right. Simple as.

After all, no collectivist bowed to the world-historical verdict of 1989. Instead, they just mutated into new forms of cultural Marxism, e.g., climate change, multiculturalism, the redefinition of marriage -- anything to undermine history's clear winner, that is, American style classical liberal conservatism.

The Era of Big Government wasn't over, because that can't happen. That was just to lull you into letting your guard down. They pretended it was over for the same reason a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest pretends to surrender. Surprise!

Not only does progressivism fail to bring progress, it backfires, every time. In short, it is King Midas in reverse: the left transforms "virtually everything it touches into rubble. Sometimes it happens quickly; sometimes it takes generations. But it is inevitable.... whatever the left transforms in its direction is damaged, and often destroyed."

With education the left has succeeded in stunting, warping, and misinforming millions of souls. But they want the body too, hence, the ineradicable dream of state run healthcare.

It's one thing for clueless well-to-do liberals to sing the praises of public education while shielding their own children from its malign influence by sending them to elite private schools. It's another thing entirely to force socialized medicine upon us, because should they succeed, then the entire system goes down with it.

It's not as if there will be safe enclaves -- the equivalent of private schools -- untouched by the disaster. Rather, there will be less innovation, fewer doctors, fewer miraculous new drugs, waiting lists, death panels. It's like dumping poison into the far end of a lake while imagining it won't effect your expensive lakefront property.

Frankly, despite the leftist takeover of education, a motivated soul can still find and assimilate truth. Indeed, in spite of it all, it is easier today to access truth than ever before. But a sick man who is motivated to get well can't just track down a book or go online. It's great to be an autodidact. But autosurgery is another thing entirely.

If there are fixed rules, then the left cannot win. And for them, the most irritating rules of all -- perhaps tied with the laws of human nature -- are embodied in the Constitution, so it has always been Job One for them to find a way around it, starting with Woodrow Wilson.

In a piece called An Outbreak of Lawlessness, Krauthammer writes that "If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today are whatever the majority decides they are that morning."

It's like allowing the home crowd -- since they are the majority -- to change the rules of the game if their team is behind. Likewise, "If we could make constitutional changes by majority vote, there would be no Constitution." (Next up: the twenty-second amendment; note how the author implies it was forced upon us by Republicans, when only two states voted to reject it.)

Recall what was said above about progressives always having to lie and cheat in order to force "progress" upon us. In the case of ObamaCare, it became the Law of the Land thanks to outrageous lies, bribes, secrecy, mob rule, and procedural trickery. Okay, good enough. New rules. We'll find a way to deal with them.

But for the left, the rules are only the rules if they are favorable to the left. Otherwise, there are no rules. Thus, Obama's "violation of the proper limits of executive power has become breathtaking." In "urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions" of canceled plans, "he is asking them to break the law. His own law" (ibid.).

Interestingly, Obama becomes indignant at the idea that congress should so much as think of changing or defunding the law legally: "Remember how for months Democrats denounced Republicans for daring to vote to defund or postpone Obamacare? Saboteurs! Terrorists! How dare you alter 'the law of the land'" (ibid.).

So, the rule of law is treacherous, while the rule of liberals is intrinsically virtuous.

Must be nice to have history on your side.

Mankind: Last Word in Creation or Lost World of Miscreants?

I suppose it's no coincidence that Genesis depicts man as God's last creation: the consummation, the crowning touch, the final act, the pièce de résistance.

How'd that work out?

Hmm. I see that Berdyaev proposes one answer to that question: "Only in Christ is the problem of man resolved."

That quote precedes a chapter entitled God's Latest Image. Recall that our last few posts explored the nature of the Eternal Being. We will now proceed to look into the claim that man is the very image and likeness of this eternal being.

One thing we're all dying to know is how man can be the image of the sovereign good, and yet, be such a flaming assoul. What went wrong? Who goofed?

One proposition we can affirm at the outset is that science does a poor and inadequate job of addressing such questions. This is because science can (honestly) deal only with the is, not the ought (and even then, only the surface of the is, not the hidden depths). We can all stipulate that man is a problem child.

But even in so-stipulating, there is the implicit suggestion that there is some way man oughtta be. And science ought not pretend it knows how or why we oughtta.

It seems that man cannot live in the absence of this Ought. And to live in the land of Ought is to know transcendence. No animal fantasizes about slowing the rise of the oceans, or giving free healthcare to illegals, or aborting babies. Rather, those battles are all fought in the land of Ought. Which hints at the nature of the problem, since the Ought cuts both ways, with roughly half the population believing we ought to do things we ought not do.

With that in mind, let's plunge ahead and see if Berdyaev has any answers. Here's one: "All attempts at external perception of the world, without immersion in the depths of man, have produced only a knowledge of the surface of things."

Thus -- and this would be a central tenet of our merry anticult -- depth of world and depth of soul are covalent. There are things so shallow that only a tenured person could believe them, just as there are realities so profound that only the deep person can see, know, and touch them.

Or, let's just say that the world has this surprising and inexplicable dimension of depth. Why surprising? Well, for starters, no other animal has it. Take away food, threats, walks, and testicles, and an adult dog falls asleep, because there is "nothing there." But for man, there is always an inexhaustible something there. Boredom is an animal holdover, an atavism.

Are there such beasts? Oh my yes, and they are the source of much mischief. Liberals, for example, are people who are so bored with their own lives that they want to mess with yours. They ought not be doing that. And yet, they spend their lives telling us what we ought to be doing! That's not irony, that's a truism.

Well, there is some irony. For example, any spiritually normal person knows one ought not lie, especially about important matters (there are degrees of lying). And yet, Obama and the Democrats promulgated a network of lies in order to commit the most massive consumer fraud in the history of the country. Why? Because if they didn't, then you wouldn't do what you ought to do, which is support the government takeover of healthcare.

Berdyaev puts forth another principle that is dear to our headlights: "The act of man's exclusive self-consciousness of his significance precedes every philosophical perception." If you take this to its ultimate conclusion -- or if you reverse direction and understand the principle it is based upon -- you will see that this is actually a logical/metaphysical way of affirming the truth that man is in the image of the Absolute, for which reason he may know or be aware of absoluteness.

And this is something that must be affirmed by theist and atheist alike, on pain of being unable to affirm anything. In other words, in affirming the non-existence of God, the atheist is implicitly affirming his own significance, otherwise why take him seriously at all? How, for example, is his testimony superior to that of a rock, or a worm, or any other contingent fact at the periphery of existence?

So: "like an absolute a priori," the self-evident significance of man "precedes every philosophic perception of the world..." This is one of those things that cannot not be the case, for "if man were to consider himself as one of the external, objectivized things of the world, then he could not be an active perceiving subject." He would be entirely contained by the world instead of being able to contain it.

But can man really authenticate his own significance? How would that be possible? It is not possible, which is why materialists always speak out of both sides of their buttocks, one cheek shouting "listen to me!," the other one admitting that we should pay no attention to his gaseous pronouncements. This gives rise to the battle cry of the tenured: "Look at me, I'm nothing!"

If we continue following our line of reason -- that man's significance precedes his philosophical perceptions and statements -- we arrive at the startling conclusion that anthropology is prior to ontology. Or again, to express the same truth in biblical terms, I AM precedes It Is; which is just another way of saying that behind, beyond, and beneath it all there is a Person, not an object, or an equation, or whatever other alternatives there are (and there aren't many).

But does this not aggrandize man? Well, yes and no. It only aggrandizes man if we yank him out of his proper context and presume that he is the reality as opposed to the image. When man makes himself the measure, then it's time to reach for your revolver.

We must always remember -- or never forget -- that "Man is the meeting point of two worlds." Now, these two worlds can be distinguished in various ways, but any attempt to eliminate the complementarity -- not dualism -- results in pathology. The leftist can attempt to drive out transnature with a pitchfork, but she always comes back. Likewise, one can attempt to make the world go away via sub-religious fundamentalist magic, but it too always returns.

So it's... complicated: "With equal firmness," man may hold "the most contradictory ideas about himself, equally justified by the facts of his nature... now one of these natures, now the other, seems to prevail." Again, this redounds to an ultimate antinomy, that man is on the one hand "the image and likeness of God," and on the other "a drop in the ocean of the necessities of nature."

Pneumacognitive dissonance. Just gotta tolerate it. For "with almost equal right we may speak of man's divine origin, and of his development from the lowest forms of nature." In short: vertical and horizontal. It's where we are, and one ought not pretend otherwise.

It is almost incomprehensible how a tiny bit of nature... should dare to rise against nature and demand his rights as a descendent of another world, as a being with another destiny.... Man is not only of this world but of another world; not only of necessity, but of freedom; not only out of nature, but from God.... In his essence, man is a break in the world of nature, he cannot be contained within it. --Berdyaev

Man is a Clearing through which Freedom Passes on the Way to its Source

The remodel marches on, now into the Food Preparation Area. But in their boyish zeal to demolish our vintage 1964 WifeSaver kitchen, the wrecking crew seems to have wrecked our telephone service. So, no internet. But the wife informs me that her car has a "wifi hotspot," so I should be able to post this. If so, these brutes will be relieved to learn they haven't caused a 24 hour setback in the progress of theology.

Still, it doesn't feel right. For example, usually I at least check out Drudge to see if there are any world-historical irruptions I need to know about. But I'm completely unplugged from the hysteria du jour.

So, yesterday we were discussing how God's freedom redounds to our creativity. One could also circumnavelgaze it the other way 'round: God's creativity redounds to our freedom. Think about that one for a moment: a genuine creation eludes even the grasp its creator, because it is never a predictable or fully determined product reducible to antecedent conditions.

In other words, the creative production cannot be explained by its necessary or sufficient causes. Rather, there is always an "x-factor" of genuine freedom tossed into the mix, and freedom is irreducible to anything other than freedom. If you are not the first one to be surprised by your creation, you're doing it wrong.

Imagine, for example, composing a song. In so doing, one is creating something that has never existed before, and which will never exist unless one brings it into being. Obviously, the canons of Mozart, or Monk, or Mingus, would never have existed if those three hadn't brought them into being. And even the most complete description of a composer's brain, right down to the last synapse, would not equip one to predict his next tune.

Better yet, imagine a person. Today, thanks to science, no one but a liberal can deny the fact that each person is an utterly unique genetic configuration that has never occurred before and will never happen again. Here we see an implicit connection between freedom and uniqueness. In a formula I have stolen in the past, freedom is individuality lived. You might say that personhood is the highest instance of freedom we can know. And since God is a person... Or, since God is freedom, he must be a person, right?

"Only a personalist doctrine of the world," writes Berdyaev, "can give meaning to creativity." Such a doctrine "recognizes the originality of personality, derived from nothing outside or general, from no other means. God is a concrete personality and therefore a creator: man is a concrete personality and therefore a creator..."

As such, there is a critical orthoparadoxical corollary to the truth that all men are created equal. That is to say, because they are created, they are necessarily created unequal. But that is a rather infelicitous way of putting it, partly because it is expresses it in the negative. What we really want to say is that because we are created, it is evil for the state to pretend that we are all identical and to force us to be the same, e.g., buy the same health insurance.

Here it is useful to distinguish between our abstract equality and our concrete differences. As it so happens, this parallels God's own abstract necessity and concrete identity. Or in other words, God surely must be. But just how he is is partly determined by how things play out in Him. Otherwise one is placed in the awkward position of denying freedom in God, and in turn placing man (assuming our freedom is real) above God.

Much of this is apparently controversial, so it is gratifying to see that Berdyaev has my back: "The concept of the Absolute is the extreme limit of objectivizing abstract thought. In the Absolute there are no signs of existence, no evidences of life." This is the God of whom we may posit blank existence, but nothing more -- similar to the abstract mankind that is created equal.

But if we leave it there -- God as abstract Absolute, a la Aristotle -- then we "deny all movement in Him," and "are compelled to deny that he has creative power." For as alluded to above, "the creation of something new is linked with potentiality." Man surely has this potentiality, in that "he is not actualized to the point of losing all possibility of change and movement." Why then should God be so deprived?

Well, in traditional theology change is identified with imperfection. Thus, God is presumed to be absolutely changeless.

But aren't there certain types of changelessness that are imperfect or evil? I'm currently reading Barbara Tuchman's classic A Distant Mirror, and in a sense, it is one long indictment of the implications of venerating the idol of Changelessness -- or what Hartshorne calls the sin of etiolatry, i.e., idealizing God-as-cause to the total exclusion of God-as-effect (which, in the process view, becomes an inspiraling new cause).

In point of fact, if one is going to be intellectually consistent, a God incapable of change makes both the world and man "meaningless and absurd." We are necessarily "useless to God," for we are denied "all possibility of novelty, creativeness, freedom, all of which mean a break-through into the closed system of being."

For Berdyaev, the whole existentialada reduces to bad comedy if freedom isn't real and meaning is just an illusion. Conversely, if freedom is real, it means that both "man and the world answer the call of God, and hence this is not [just] God's answer to himself."

Likewise, "God does not force us to recognize Him, as do material objects." Rather, "He appeals to man's freedom." Thus, God is not fundamentally stick but carrot: not a threat, but an attractor. Or in other words, humanly speaking, he is not material or efficient cause, but rather, formal and final cause. He lures us from above and beyond rather than goading us from behind or below, as do natural (i.e., horizontal) instincts.

Here we see the fundamental distinction between the horizontal and vertical worlds. Like all animals, man is in the horizontal world. Unlike other animals, he also spans the vertical world. Thus, as Berdyaev explains, "for this reason he is not included completely in this world of necessity: he transcends himself" and reveals "a freedom which does not derive from this world."

Now, only God can create a being. Man can surely create, but the one thing he cannot create is another being. And when he attempts to do so, he creates a mess. Nevertheless, the left never stops trying. The left can create perfect slaves, subjects, automatons, clones, parasites, intrusive busybodies, human ATMs, LoFo lemmings, and skin-encapsulated grievance mongers, but it can never create the New Man and New World of its fantasies.

In conclusion, God must be understood, not as a diminution of man's freedom and activity, but rather as the condition which makes these possible.... Faith in God is the charter of man's liberty. Without God, man is subject to the lower world.

Our Creativity is God's Freedom

Internet traffic being what it is during the holidays, posts may or may not appear the rest of the week. I'm thinking they probably will, because I don't want the traffic in my head to get backed up. At least until Thursday.

We've been having a leisurely dialogue with brother Berdyaev, now moving on to his thoughts on The Eternal Being, or the One who cannot not be. Of this subtle being, he makes the excellent point that

"The whole problem is that I must discover what God has concealed from me. God awaits an act of freedom on my part, free creativeness" (emphasis mine). Thus, "My freedom and my creativeness are my obedience to the mysterious will of God."

Remember, freedom and creativity are almost synonymous, for one is impossible in the absence of the other, and both are "ultimate." We might think of freedom as the last -- or first -- word in God, but freedom is meaningless without creativity, and God is obviously not meaningless. Rather, his freedom is his creativity and vice versa, and the two together generate a ceaseless flow of meaning: a trialectic of creator-created-meaning.

What about our freedom? Some people wonder why God didn't create human beings to automatically obey his will, but this would deny the possibility of both freedom and creativity in us. Rather, we must, as Berdyaev suggests, freely respond to God in our own creative way.

We are obviously co-creators of the creation, as we've already discussed. But I would suggest that God's love extends so far as to permit us to be "co-creators" of him as well. This may sound shocking when first heard, but it is precisely what is maintained in process theology, and one doesn't have to get all heretical to see that this is indeed what sets Christianity apart: in the oft-repeated formula of the early fathers, God becomes man so that man might become God.

Now obviously, we do not become God literally. Rather, you might say that God is inflected through the human person, like clear light through a prism. Human sanctity is none other than a free collaboration with God, permitting another instance of (lower case i) incarnation. Such an "imitation of Christ" is only possible because there was a Christ to imitate -- that is, a complete infusion of, and identity with, God and man.

I believe Berdyaev would say that the Incarnation fundamentally changes man, forever. Because of it, man has capacities that did not previously exist -- or existed only in potential -- one of which is this more intimate divine-human partnership.

Of this partnership, Berdyaev says that "God is the Lover, and he cannot and does not wish to exist without the loved one."

Some may object to the "cannot," but in my opinion, this is precisely the point of the Trinity: that to not love would violate God's very nature. And love obviously implies the other, who has his own freedom and creativity with which to respond to God's primordial love. Nothing in the Trinity can be "forced," or "compelled," or "automatic," or "determined." IMGO (in my grandiose opinion).

Berdyaev agrees that "love is realized in the mystery of the Three-in-one, which is equally above and below, in heaven and on earth."

And although Hartshorne came later, Berdayaev is in agreement with him that the notion of a static and absolutely unchanging God -- "pure act, without potential, self-satisfied, and needing nothing" -- is of Greek, not biblical origins.

At the very least, we must appreciate the orthoparadox that "absolute rest in God is joined in Him with absolute movement." You might say that his "need" for the other is perfect, whereas ours is clouded by self-interest and other middling relativities.

Think about it: in the Bible it is suggested that we should strive to be perfect, like our father in heaven. Now, if God were the static being described by Aristotle, this would mean that humans should likewise be "without potential, self-satisfied, and needing nothing." Does this sound like good advice to you? If so, you are more Buddhist than Raccoon Dude-ist.

An orthoparadox is not a contradiction but an irreducible complementarity. Thus, "God's longing for another, for a loved one and that loved one's free answer of love is an indication, not of incompleteness or impairment in the being of God, but rather of the plenteous fullness and perfection of His being."

We won't dwell on the question of suffering in God, because either you accept it or you don't. I do. Again, I think the doctrine of absolute immobility is a Greek import.

Longtime Raccoons will recall that I use the symbol (↑↓) to designate our creative partnership with God, or O. Let Berdyaev explain why:

"All the complexity of religious life, the meeting and communion of God and man, is linked with the fact that there are two movements and not one: from God toward man[↓], and from man toward God [↑]." Ultimately the two arrows are one open spiral, and this openness is the space of freedom, of love, of creativity.

I think people who believe in predestination essentially posit a metaphysic of pure (↓), which absolutely denies man's freedom, because everything is a monistic and deterministic (same thing) God. In such a view, our genuine freedom and creativity are denied, because God causes everything directly (as in Islam).

It is fair to say that scientism, or any other form of materialism, is a kind of pure (↑), with nothing there to meet it at the other end. Thus, it is an exercise in utter vanity, a vacuous striving with no possibility of meaning, let alone truth -- like trying to pull oneself up by one's own pathetic jokestrap.

Here again, Berdyaev agrees that a religion of pure (↓) -- based only on the "one movement from God toward man, only upon the will of God" -- "would be quite simple." That is, "life in the world would be easy, it would be easy to realize the Kingdom of God." Nor, with no freedom, would there be any tragedy.

In the face of a senseless tragedy or evil, one often hears some variant of "well, it's God's will, so it must be good." I don't know about you, but that is not a God I can accept. As Berdyaev expresses it, "Autocracy in heaven is quite unjust on earth" -- as is any top-down tyranny.

Just about out of time. We'll leave off with one more refreshing blast from Berdyaev:

God does not lord it over men.... He does not demand the slavish worship of a bond-servant. God is freedom; He is the liberator, not the master. God gives a sense of liberty, not of subjection. God is spirit, and spirit knows no such relationship as that of master and slave.

See What Happens, Barry? This is What Happens When You F*** a Hundred Million Strangers in the Pocketbook!

WALTER: Is this your handiwork, Barry?

Barry does not respond.

WALTER: Is this your bill, Barry?

DUDE: Look, man, did you--

WALTER: Dude, please!. . . Is this what you meant by "fundamental transformation," Barry?

DUDE: Just ask him if he -- ask him about the insurance, man!

WALTER: Is this your signature, Barry? Did you actually sign something written by Reid and Pelosi without even reading it?

DUDE: Is the website yours?

WALTER: Is this your website, Barry?

DUDE: We know it's his fucking website, Walter! Where's my fucking doctor, you Marxist hack? And who stole my Social Security number?

WALTER: Look, Barry. . . Have you ever heard of Jimmy Carter?

DUDE: Oh, for Christ's sake, Walter!

WALTER: You're going to enter a world of pain, son. We know why you're suddenly calling it the ACA instead of ObamaCare. We know you stole the election --

DUDE: With the fucking IRS!

WALTER: With the fucking IRS. And we know that this is your signature legislation, Barry.

WALTER: This piece of shit is beyond the wildest dreams of your worthless commie father, isn't it, Barry?!

DUDE: Congress is gonna cut your fuckin' dinero off, Barry.

WALTER: Ah, this is pointless.

WALTER: All right, Plan B. You might want to watch the polls, Barry.

He is heading for the door. The Dude, puzzled, rises to follow him.

WALTER: This is what happens when you FUCK a hundred million STRANGERS in the ASS, Barry.

OUTSIDE

Walter is striding down the lawn with his attache case looking like a charging MSNBC host. Without looking back at the Dude, who follows:

WALTER: Fucking postmodern language problem, Dude.

He pops the Dude's trunk, flings in the briefcase and takes out a tire iron.

WALTER: Maybe he'll understand this.

He is walking over to the presidential limo.

WALTER: YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS, BARRY!

CRASH! He swings the crowbar into the windshield, which shatters.

WALTER: YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS?!

CRASH! He takes out the driver's window.

WALTER: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCK WITH OUR HEALTH, BARRY!

Lights are going on in houses down the street. Distant blue dog Democrats bark.

WALTER: HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS, BARRY!

CRASH!

WALTER: HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS! FUCK A HUNDRED MILLION CITIZENS IN THE WALLET, BARRY!

CRASH!

An Inspiring Post About Nothing

In yesterday's post we discussed What We Can Know. But there is no knowledge in the absence of a knower. Just as the world has its appearance and its reality, its surface and its depth, the knower is situated along a gradient of meaning within the horizon of subjectivity.

As our knower attains depth and density within this space of meaning, the world becomes increasingly transparent. The logocentricity of the cosmos assures that there is always this two-way mirror between world and mind, or intelligence and intelligibility. Nothing -- nothing that exists -- can be essentially unknowable.

As we know, there are people who see surfaces only, but this is a function of their own shallowness. There are others who see what might be called "false depths" as a result of paranoia, projection, and ideology. The left is full of such individuals.

These primitive proglodytes forge their illusions "for the triumph of the general over the individual," for politics over person, for force over freedom. The essential problem of the left is that they cannot tolerate the Nothing required for knowledge. Instead, they fill this vibrant space with the debris and detritus of their own broken souls.

As alluded to at the end of yesterday's post, the world is both being and non-being, or a dialectic of something and nothing. To put it another way, it is surely created. But not "all the way," so to speak. It has always been a principle of Judaism that the creation is left unfinished, so that man may participate in its perfection. After all, we can't bloody well imitate the Creator if there is nothing left to create!

Berdyaev agrees that "the world is not finished" and that "its completion is left to man," who must deploy both his knowledge and his freedom to "continue the world's creation."

But remember what was said yesterday about the abyss of nothingness at the foundation of freedom. This suggests that creation is very similar to what is described so well in the Tao Te Ching: for example, in building a house, we need the walls but we live in the empty space they enclose. No one can live in a wall.

Likewise, the purpose of a cup is to render emptiness useful. We need the emptiness in order to fill it with something. Just so, even God needs emptiness, which, it seems to me, is the deeper meaning of "creation from nothing." In a very real sense, all creativity is from nothing, at least relatively speaking.

This is because the future is not determined, and this lack of determinacy may be thought of as the temporal nothingness that is the basis of our freedom (or dread, depending). If the world were wholly determined, there would be no freedom, no creativity, no progress.

So "the world does not enter into me, passively." Again, there is always an element of co-creation, such that "The world I face depends upon my attention and my imagination, upon the intensity of my thought," which is naturally "determined from within, not from without."

To say this results in the world's increasing transparency is another way of saying that the light shines through the creation more vividly: "The knowledge of existence is the accumulation of light and meaning within existence; it is the illumination of being, and consequently its renaissance [literally, rebirth], its hitherto-unknown enrichment."

And speaking of birth, "Knowledge has a conjugal, masculine-feminine character," for "it is the meeting and union of the two, the possession of the feminine element by masculine sense and meaning."

It seems that most people emphasize the masculine pole, but just as a cup is useless without its empty space, knowledge is impossible in the absence of the feminine mystery that lures us into it. Vive la différence! Or rather, vice versa, for this difference is life, on every level.

Two big errors: radical union with the cosmos, as in Buddhism; and radical separation from the cosmos, as in scientism. Both deny the beautiful differences alluded to above. Thus, "fusion with cosmic life does not liberate personality, but rather dissolves and destroys it." Conversely, all the knowledge of the tenured will never add up to reality, since "the endlessness of the objectified world cannot be the cosmic whole."

In the absence of the Nothing of freedom, "Man moves in a vicious circle. To break out of that circle requires an act of spirit," and this act must be free. Again, if it is determined, then we are by definition in the closed circle.

It is useful to distinguish between two knowers in man, one who knows the objective world, one who knows the subjective world. In the Book For Which the Blog is Named, I symbolize these (•) and (¶), respectively. Why the irritating symbols? In order to preserve the nothingness without which they cannot accumulate experiential meaning. Again, think of that Taoist cup, without which you shouldn't play baseball.

About those two modes of knowing, Berdyaev writes that man "is a dual being, living in both the phenomenal and noumenal world." Thus, "On the one hand, man is phenomenon, a thing of nature, subject to the law of this world." This concrete fellow is (•).

The other fellow -- (¶) -- "is a 'thing in itself,' a spiritual being, free from the power of this world." Note the operative word: free. This is the essential bit of Nothing that makes one either a spiritual pneumanaut or a cynical and morbid existentialist. The choice is yours, but only if you know how to properly use your Nothing.

As Petey always says, our inspiration is God's expiration. And being that it can only occur now, there is no expiration date. "Spirit is, as it were, the breath of God penetrating man's being." Our in-breathing of this spirit of freedom communicates "a higher dignity, a higher quality in [our] existence, inner independence and unity...."

"Spirit is a break-through into our heavy-laden world: it is dynamic, creativity, up-surge." It is by this spirit that image transforms to likeness, in a divine-human partnership: "Spirit emanates from God, is poured in, or breathed into, man."

Even so, you still have to inhale.

God is completeness toward which man cannot avoid striving. (All quoted material from Christian Existentialism)

Nevertheless, God is a Jazzman

Christian Existentialism unscrambles excerpts from Berdyaev's thirty odd books and helpfully reassembles them under various headings, such as What Can We Know?, The Eternal Being, and God's Latest Image (that would be us). As I said, Berdyaev himself is not systematic or organized, so this approach makes him much more accessible, not to mention aphoristic and blogworthy.

For example, just what can we know? Are we really stuck inside of Kantville with the transcendental blues, or can we know stuff?

Well, first of all, Berdyaev -- proto-Raccoon that he is -- doesn't begin with being. Rather, he insists that Personality is prior to being. This follows from our understanding that God is above all else an irreducible "I."

In God's famous wisecrack -- some variant of I Am That I Am -- the accent is on the I rather than the AM. Or in other words, AM is a consequence of I, because the converse could never be true, for the same reason you can't get blood from a turnip. In a way, trying to derive persons from being is more than a little like trying to turn stones into bread.

Now, if there is something prior (meaning ontologically, not chronologically, prior) to person, it is freedom. You might say Berdyaev posits a third stance alongside existentialism and essentialism. Pardon the pedantry, but the former makes essence a function of existence, while the latter posits essence as prior to existence.

In practical terms, this means that, for the left, for example, who you are is a function of existential considerations such as race, or class, or sexual orientation. Or in other words, you're nobody 'til somebody hates you.

But for the essentialist-conservative, all the categories the leftist holds sacred are just accidents and contingencies. For the conservative liberal, the real purpose of life is to actualize our essence, not reduce ourselves to some fixed victim class of the left. The left's approach effaces identity and personhood as a necessary consequence.

But again, interestingly, Berdyaev posits freedom as even prior to essence. This makes perfect sense to me, in that it seems that real personal essence would be inconceivable in the absence of freedom.

Or other words, either we are free or we are not. If we are not free, then personal identity is just an illusion. We may imagine we are "choosing," but the choices are determined by our essence (or worse, existence).

Therefore, it seems to this Raccoon that personhood is really a dialectic -- or play, if you like -- of essence and freedom, or of I and Slack. Our essence is a mere abstraction until it encounters being in freedom, which results in our concrete I at any moment.

I mean, isn't this how it works? I think I'm being quite literal here, not at all distant from how it feels to be being someOne.

To make it even more concrete, it is exactly like jazz. Jazz, you might say, is America's gift to the world. But before that, it is God's gift to America. It is a kind of objective correlative to American-style freedom, or to the ordered liberty of the founders. Old white men indeed. Rather, the founders were funky old jazzers.

I realize this will sound offensive in the context of slavery, but the black experience in America is really a microcosm of the whole process, elevated to a plane of transcendental beauty. When we think of quintessential American music, what is it? Mostly jazz, blues, soul, rhythm & blues, gospel. Each of these, in its own way, is "the sound of freedom."

Now, why would a formerly enslaved people create such a beautiful sound? Perhaps for this very reason. Since physical -- i.e., horizontal -- freedom was restricted, blacks poured forth this longing on the vertical plane, via musical expression.

Furthermore, music was very much a way to express identity and personhood that were otherwise denied by cultural oppression. Take anyone, for example Louis Armstrong, or Duke Ellington, or Thelonious Monk. To a racist-existentialist, they are simply boy, or n-----, an anonymous designation determined by race, by existence. But the existential yoke is really on the racist, for each of these men not only expressed their unique identity via music, but created whole musical worlds that will endure and be explored forever, whereas the racist is buried in an anonymous grave that no decent person wants to visit.

So in his own way, the racist makes himself as unfree as his projected existential dunce partner. In other words, the racist needs the "inferior" race in order to imagine he is superior. The same dynamic exists in contemporary liberalism, since the white liberal's identity is thoroughly entangled in his sanctimonious and condescending attitude toward the blacks he presumes to pity.

Why more blacks aren't offended by liberal condescension is something of a mystery, but no more mysterious than the liberals who do the condescending. It takes two to engage in this freedom-denying dialectic of existence and accident, just as it takes three to engage in the trialectical spiral of freedom, person, and essence.

Returning the Berdyaev, "Personalism must recognize the primacy of freedom over being," for "the philosophy of primacy of being is a person-less philosophy." And the latter is also a deterministic philosophy, because it tries to make freedom a function of being, "which in the final analysis means that freedom is the child of necessity."

This leads to a rather controversial conclusion, radical in its implications, but no less radical than the Coonifesto. I can understand if one recoils from this conclusion, but I accept it wholeheadedly, for it makes sense of a great deal of nonsense (and vice versa):

"[F]reedom cannot be derived from being." Rather, it "is rooted in nothingness, in bottomlessness, in non-being, if we use ontological terminology. Freedom is without foundations; it is not determined, it is not born of being....

"The primacy of freedom over being is also the primacy of spirit over being. Being is static: spirit is dynamic.... spirit is subject and subjectivity: it is freedom and creative act."

And finally, "man faces, not abstract truth, but Truth as the way and the life. 'I am the truth, the way and the life.' This means that truth is concrete personality, its way and its life'.... Truth is dynamic in the highest degree.... It is given only in creative act" (Berdyaev).

Bottom line: I can imagine this on God's eternitable. At any rate, it's on mine: