Humble Brag and Grandiose Humility

Ah yes, the relationship between being and knowledge. Who cares, anyway? Put another way, why do I care so much? Who bothers with such nonsense? Don't you have more important things to do?

Sure there are more important things. But "Thinking that only important things are important hints of barbarism" (NGD).

Besides, "I do not speak of God in order to convert anyone," writes the Aphorist, "but because it is the only subject worth speaking of."

I guess I'm just built this way. It's in my nature. I am my own argument against Darwinism, because where's the utility in selecting for traits that have nothing whatsoever to do with survival? And my most conspicuous traits are absolutely good for nothing. Just ask my in-laws!

I suppose artists feel the same way about their non-utility. Or should, anyway. But more often than not, their art is mingled with their narcissism, resulting in more, not less, self-importance. Toss stupidity into the mix, and you have an incurable liberal: the triple threat of uselessness, self-importantance, and stupidity.

"No one is important for a long time without becoming a fool" (NGD). And no one can be a celebrity for even a short time without becoming a jackass. Conversely, "Even if humility did not save us from hell, in any case it saves us from ridicule."

The temptation is always there to diminish God and elevate oneself. But some circumstances make it easier to do that -- fame, power, money, intelligence, any gift, really. For some people it isn't grand enough to be in the image and likeness of God. Rather, they want to be God.

That's got to be the ultimate humble brag, right? Not the Creator of the universe, only the image and likeness. And yet, between these two is an infinite abyss that prevents it from being a boast, for anything not-God is by comparison nothing.

Now, what is the relationship between being and God? "Being is ‘ambiguous,’" writes Schuon, "because it is at the same time absolute and relative, or because it is absolute while being situated in relativity, or again, to express ourselves more boldly though perhaps all the more suggestive, because it is the ‘relative Absolute.’"

Being is ultimately the object of thought. Again, Kant severed this link, such that our knowledge is no longer "about" anything but itself. Being is rendered noumenal, completely beyond any human knowledge.

Like anyone could know that! Again, Kant is committing the error we discussed in last Friday's post -- that in order to limit thought, one must think both sides of the limit.

You have two alternatives as to where to begin your cognitive adventure: to begin in being, or to begin in thought. But if you begin in the latter, then the adventure is over. Or at least it is guaranteed to go nowhere, since it can never recover the being you have cut off at the outset.

One of the ironies of modernity -- or whatever you call this era through which we are living -- is that people simultaneously accept the Kantian rupture (e.g., "perception is reality") while implicitly holding to a scientistic paradigm that presumes to know all (at least in principle).

So, is science about being? Or just about itself? The deconstructionist must regard scientism as naive (i.e., pre-critical), while the scientist must regard the deconstructionist as an intellectual buffoon (as if quantum theory, for example, is just words about words).

Well, they're both wrong in their own ways, and deserve one another. Scientism is naive; and postmodernism is pernicious buffoonery.

Being that I am the twisted product of an extensive modern education, I didn't completely sort this out for myself until... let's see... until 1999, when I read philosopher of science Stanley Jaki's Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. And even then, it didn't completely sink in, because that was before I would have been able to connect it to the whole western -- which is to say, Christian -- tradition.

What was once plain common sense is now a revolutionary statement: that objects are prior to the subject. Jaki: "A book with the subtitle, 'a treatise on truth,' must... convey its author's resolve to face up to the question: 'What is truth?'"

And by truth he does not mean opinion. But nor does he mean "dogma." It's more like what I was saying the other day about 1) man being entitled to truth, and 2) Bob not wising to get into arguments with people over the nature of truth. Rather, there is only one logical path -- or one that doesn't end in implosion, absurdity, or self-refutation -- and this is it. To be sure, there are any number of alternative paths, but they necessarily end nowhere.

Our first step -- whether we admit it to ourselves or not -- is "the registering of objects." If not, then "the philosopher will be guilty of a sleight of hand, however sophisticated." For "he will have to bring in through the back door the very objects the use of which his starting point has failed to justify." The man with the umlaut strikes again!

Recall the crack about any radical dualism ending with a bit of one side on the other: "If objects are not presented as a primary datum, some other factors will expropriate that role.... For objects will not cease claiming their rights to be recognized for what they are: objects and not their disembodied conceptual factors."

There is no way out of this truth except via deception, self- or otherwise: "This truth cannot be evaded, let alone refuted, because the refutation itself is an act of communication, an implicit" appeal to an objective means whereby other subjects may be be reached.

This goes to the reality of communication. In this post, for example, I am communicating to you via objects called words. Therefore, even before anything else I say, I must implicitly believe that my readers will register these objects and decode their meaning.

Which, as it so happens, mirrors the structure of reality: intelligible objects transmitting their meaning to intelligent subjects.

To express it baseballically, "The pitcher is the philosopher, the ball he throws is the book in which his treatise on truth is literally embodied. And since he throws that book... at his fellow philosophers, his treatise on truth must be such as to assure rigorously the reality of that book or ball."

Pathetic

"When we get right down to it," wrote Bob yesterday, "the ultimate question is the relationship between epistemology and ontology, of knowing and being."

Why is this the ultimate question? Because if thinking does not disclose being, then we can know nothing of ultimate reality. If knowing isn't about being, then it's just about... phenomena, or appearances, or more knowing. Knowledge becomes as enclosed in itself as tenure.

This thought occurred to me while reading an article linked at Happy Acres. In it Anthony Esolen naïvely laments the fact that the modern -- or postmodern -- college student prefers to study himself:

"They were angered by my suggestion... that there was something narcissistic in the common insistence that people should study THEMSELVES rather than people who lived long ago and in cultures far removed from ours by any ordinary criterion, and that there was something totalitarian in the impulse of the secular left, to attempt to subject our curriculum to the demands of a current political aim."

I can't even imagine wanting to be a college professor in this climate. It would be analogous to being a physician for people who refuse to be treated, or a police officer in a... Democrat precinct where they would sooner shoot you than allow you to do your job.

Esolen is essentially complaining that students don't want to know what is going on beneath the surface, rather, only to be reinforced about their particular surface. Happy Acres Guy suggests that this may have to do with race and intelligence, but I would prefer to just say intelligence, because I don't need the hate. It is sufficient to say that abstraction varies with intelligence, and that the stupider one is, the more difficult to take on a universalist perspective, or even to see beyond oneself.

This is well understood in developmental psychology, at least the last time I checked. One of the first things you learn about is Piaget's stages of childhood cognitive development. They have been tweaked and adjusted over the years, but there is no gainsaying the fact that children start out with concrete thinking and become more capable of abstraction as they develop.

Some friends were over for dinner the other night, and their 17 year old daughter was doing some calculus homework.

Calculus. Where does that lie on the abstraction spectrum? Certainly it is above my pay grade, mathwise. I took algebra in the 9th grade, which I flunked. I retook it in the tenth grade, but this time paid attention and aced it. I took geometry in the 11th, and received a gentleteen's C, followed by Algebra II in the 12th -- which I think is trigonometry -- but discretely withdrew after one semester and one D. My point, if I have one, is that I never got to calculus.

I also took physics in the 11th grade, but learned precisely nothing. However, since the teacher graded on a curve, somehow nothing didn't translate to an F. Probably something to do with nonlocality.

My parents -- in particular, my mother -- just expected me to take these brainy types of courses, despite the lack of aptitude. It was an unspoken assumption that I would attend college, although I myself literally never gave it a thought. Somehow, I just thought things would work out without my having to work them out -- that Slack would prevail.

Nevertheless, I did go on to college -- the junior kind -- and majored in Business Administration, because I had no earthly idea what else to major in. There I took Business Math, which I actually passed. I squeaked by in Economics and even Accounting, but once I got to a four year university, hit the wall with Money & Banking and some other course with lots of numbers.

What are we talking about here? Right: abstraction. And knowledge. And being. But believe it or not, this pathetic post is over, because I have to get ready for work. We'll continue down this road tomorrow, and try to redeem ourselves. I think I have some ideas for some ideas.

We Hold this Irrational Faith to be Entirely Self-Serving...

Continuing with yesterday's post, we were pointing out how if determinism is the case, then error cannot exist; and that if we are not free, then we wouldn't even have the word. Therefore, it is logically impossible to say that "determinism is true" -- just as it is logically impossible to affirm that "truth doesn't exist."

I suppose it is possible to say that truth doesn't exist, so long as you don't mean it in a logical way; rather, only as an intuition or hunch. But then we're back to faith, and what you're really saying is that faith is a reliable guide to know things we cannot otherwise know.

A paradox enters here, because it would imply that what is determined is not strictly true (since there can be neither truth nor falsehood). What I mean is, imagine a closed system; or better, imagine that the system of logic really were complete and self-sufficient. If that were the case, then everything within the system would be as predetermined as 2 + 2 = 4.

But in reality, no human system is complete, and every system contains assumptions that cannot be proved by the system. Rather, they come from outside the system, via anything from spontaneous hunches, to tacit foreknowledge of an impending solution, to God reaching down vertically via revelation. But ultimately the human circle can only be completed by and with God.

That latter is another Unavoidable Truth. You can of course say that God doesn't exist, but be mindful of what you are implying with that statement.

First of all, if it is true, then it is false, because you have eliminated any ground or basis for truth. But let that pass. What is really happening is that you are truly subjecting yourself to the Ultimate Con, because you are pretending to close a circle that in principle can never be closed by human effort.

In the absence of God, man is like a gaping wound on the surface of being. What I mean is that human beings are uniquely "opened up" to knowledge and experience, but without any reason for being so. Prior to the emergence of man, animals are indeed self-contained within their own neurology and instincts. Animals are not capable of exiting that closed circle, or of even knowing that there is anything outside their immediate experience.

I was attempting to explain this principle to a fellow over at Instapundit the other day. I see from subsequent comments that he is a conservative. But he's obviously not conservative all the way down -- and up. For he was simultaneously insisting that Darwinism is true, and that man may discover his first principles in logic.

I ask you: how can this be the case? Even if you stipulate the Darwinism part, how did randomly evolved animals escape the closed circle of Darwinism in order to know it from the outside? How do definitionally immanent creatures attain transcendence? I attempted to express this in an aphoristic way that was perhaps too aphoristic: "If Darwinism is true, then it is false."

That is not an argument, it's just a logical entailment. It is a necessary conclusion. Conversely, if you are going to affirm that Darwinism is literally true, then you can only do so by stepping outside Darwinism and making an appeal to faith, as per the above. But then you've opened a whole can of cosmic wormholes, such that Darwinism becomes a rather meager thing. It's just one wormhole among many.

When we get right down to it, the ultimate question is the relationship between epistemology and ontology, of knowing and being. As we said the other day, Kant is the one who officially presided over the divorce, ironically, in 1776, when the Critique was published.

I say "ironic" because that was the same year a bunch of dead white guys opened up their political manifesto (after a brief paragraph of throat-clearing) with the line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

We can only thank Providence that Kant wasn't there, because he would have immediately taken issue with the gag about self-evident truths. How would they have expressed it in a manner acceptable to Kant?

"We hold this truth to be self-evident, that truth is unknowable by man. Rather, we can only know forms of our own sensibility. In other words, we have only access to appearances, never reality.

"Having said that, we infer that there must be a noumenal reality behind the phenomenal appearances. It's just that we can't know anything about it.

"Anyhoo, that's the bad news. The good nous (lol!) is that religion is all about the noumemal. I know what you're thinking -- 'so, religion is a lot of nonsense about the unknowable?' Not so fast! It might be true. You never know. That's why religion involves faith.

"Therefore, I propose this rewording: 'We hold this irrational faith to be entirely self-serving...'"

As it is unable to explain that consciousness which creates it, science, when it finishes explaining everything, will not have explained anything. --Nicolás Gómez Dávila

I'm Not Arrogantly Arguing, I'm Humbly Insisting

As we were saying, if science has no limits, it means -- paradoxically -- that man has all the more. It is paradoxical because man, and only man, is capable of science, let alone a limitless one.

What's a good -- or at least bad -- analogy? It is like being a king, only the more power this king has, the smaller his kingdom, to the point that the kingdom vanishes entirely with his absolute power over it.

Likewise, when man possesses limitless science, he causes himself to disappear. He ends with a total explanation of nothing, certainly as it pertains to man. Which of course brings to mind an Aphorism or two:

"Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist's opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession."

"What ceases to be thought qualitatively so as to be thought quantitatively ceases to be thought significantly."

A world reduced to quantity is Hell. And science deals only with quantity. Not to knock science, because quantity surely exists. It's just that we mustn't allow the tool to become the master.

BTW, I mentioned in a comment that for the last week or so I've been commenting at Instapundit, mostly just one liners and other assorted insultainment.

To back up a bit, that is how I started this blog, by commenting elsewhere, and people then following me here. I thought that perhaps I might reach out to members of the scattered tribe who don't know the tribe has reassembled over here, just a click away. You know -- "be ye fishers of Raccoons," and all that.

Anyway, every once in awhile I toss in a more metaphysical zinger such as the above -- "when man possesses limitless science, he causes himself to disappear" -- but it either clanks or generates an argument.

Now, a zinger like that -- like one of Don Colacho's aphorisms -- is not meant to start an argument. Rather, it's meant to provoke a guffaw-HA experience, a sudden flash of insight, like "how stupid of me not to have thought of that!" At any rate, if my site meter can be trusted, not a single soul has wandered over here from there.

Which is fine. I don't do this for the attention, only the uncritical adulation. But another thing I've noticed is that my ideas are equally offensive to materialist and religionist alike. I'm trying to put myself in their shoes and figure out why.

I would guess that both see my humble self as arrogant, the former as arrogant-stupid, the latter as arrogant-grandiose. Both accuse me of pretending to know things that cannot be known, while the scientism types accuse me not knowing things that everyone knows. Bill Maher to the left of me, Rick Warren or Joel Osteen to the right.

Dávila: "One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of imbeciles, if religion's case were not just as serious."

Here is an example of an Aphorism that is not an argument. Rather it is just the Truth. One can either recognize or not; one can either assimilate the principle or fall short of it:

"There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap."

I was trying to patiently explain this in my own bobnoxious way to a commenter at Instapundit, but he kept insisting that it was possible to ground thought in pure logic. I was only trying to help -- not argue -- but not a single point got through.

Frankly, I don't think we need Gödel to tell us that any logical system contains assumptions that cannot be proved by the system.

Furthermore, this truism is not confining -- it's liberating! It means that man is always free, no matter how much you try to cram him into your secondary ideological reality. Gödel's theorems are simply a more abstract and operational way of saying that man is always conformed -- or condemned, depending on your politics -- to transcendence.

Because man is free and open to transcendence -- which amount to the same thing -- reducing him to any system erodes both his freedom and the vector of his freedom, AKA God. God must be the ground and destiny of our freedom, or else it is as if freedom dangles from the sky, unattached to anything.

So many outstanding Aphorisms on this subject, for example, "If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, error does not exist." Think about that one: we may not know truth, but surely we know error. But we can't know error unless truth exists, so there!

For the same reason, we can only know of necessity because of freedom. Absent freedom, we wouldn't even have the word. And think of the irony -- that a person who is totally cynical of transcendence -- say, a Bill Maher -- is the one they call a "free thinker." But "free" is precisely what he cannot be, if freedom means anything. And only someone as modest as your humble servant could be so sure of the truth.

Limitless Science, Limitless State

"To limit thought you must think both sides of the limit."

I first heard that somewhere else in another form, but I can't remember where. Maybe it was Robert Rosen; he said something to the effect that no matter where you draw the line, there will be some part of one side on the other. My son ran into this dilemma a few weeks ago, when he was trying to imagine "nothing." Obviously, whatever you imagine, it will still be something.

Likewise, no matter where you draw the line between subject and object, there will nevertheless be some of one in the other. How's that? Well, to even call something an object -- to even notice it -- is to abstract some essence from it, so that it stands out from everything else. This is what Aristotle refers to as the "first act of mind," and there is no way around it short of lobotomy or tenure (but I repeat myself).

In fact, this is one of the things Socrates was attempting to explain to Kant yesterpost. More generally, a great many philosophers over the past several hundred years only believe what they do because they have simply dismissed people like Aristotle and Aquinas without bothering to understand them.

But it is written (in more than one Aphorism): To feign knowledge of a subject, it is advisable to adopt its most recent interpretation. And The only man that saves himself from intellectual vulgarity is the man who ignores what it is fashionable to know.

Truth cannot be measured by the calendar. Back when I was a liberal, I did not know this. So, for example, when I undertook the task of studying philosophy, I assumed that I could take a shortcut by ignoring pretty much everything before the 19th century, and just cutting to the chase. Why bother with all the antiquated stuff that's been superseded by better minds?

Therefore, I began at the end, with the existentialists (both philosophical and literary) -- Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Kafka, and even "Christian existentialists" such as Kierkegaard and Berdayev (although I was thoroughly unqualified for the latter two).

Back to the paradox of limits. I think I also encountered the concept in various works of the Catholic philosopher of science Stanley Jaki. In fact, one of his books is called The Limits of a Limitless Science. That title popped into my head the other day, because I was thinking of how the tyrannical ideas of a "limitless science" and a "limitless state" are mutually reinforcing.

Think of the founders, who created what was supposed to be a limited government. Why? Well, for one thing, they were very much aware of the limits of man. Because man is morally flawed, self-interested, warped by passion, and subject to error, the last thing they wanted to do is to give this beast more power over the rest of us beasts.

But in the new and improved view of the left, there is no limit to knowledge and virtue -- their infamous Fatal Conceit -- and therefore no justifiable limit to the powers of the state. I don't have time to get into how many progressives have expressed this deeply moronic view, but happily, Jonah Goldberg has performed this service in his Liberal Fascism.

As I have said before, the battle war between left and right is not symmetrical. Let's say I believe leftists are deluded assouls. Conversely, leftists think I am deplorable. Fine. I have no problem with that. The difference is that the deplorables wish to have less power over the assouls, whereas the assouls wish to have more power over me.

But because man is what he is, there will always be more assouls than deplorables. The attack on deplorables is really a form of ethnic cleansing. But that is what the left does: it has no limits. Which is why the state can never be too powerful, taxes can never be too high, speech can never be too regulated, and thought can never be too policed.

Wait a minute. There's a switcheroo in there: how does the left go from having no limits to imposing all sorts of limits on our freedom?

Easy. In fact, there's an Ap... horism for that: As the state grows the individual shrinks. Therefore -- and you can look it up, i.e., crack a history book -- the limitless government of left wing statists inevitably ends in mortifying existential shrinkage.

What does this have to do with a limitless science? Only everything. For if science has no limits, it means that -- paradoxically -- man has all the more.

To back up a bit, the proper name for unlimited science is scientism, and as scientism grows, man necessarily shrinks. For example, if scientism says that man is just an ape with a couple more randomly evolved tricks, this hardly elevates the stature of man.

If only what is measurable is real, then whole dimensions of humanness are violently excised from our being. If free will is an illusion, then it is perfectly appropriate for the state to ignore our God-given liberties. If there is no soul, then abortion can provoke no moral qualms. Indeed, since morality itself is just a social convention, then we can ignore it altogether.

So, why is there no limit to the Clinton's greed, ambition, corruption, and will to power? Because there is no limit to the left's.

One of the severest tests of the scientific mind is to know the limits of the legitimate application of the scientific method. --Clerk Maxwell

Skepticism of Skepticism

Ah, yes, the Total Explanation. I always have to check where we left off in order to begin anew. But this morning we don't have much time, let alone to explain everything. Then again, no amount of time would be sufficient to explain the timeless, so there's that.

In addition to being entitled to a Total Explanation, I also believe it should be accessible to Pure Thought (via the quasi-divine Intellect). I suppose that's why I am so drawn to Schuon: he comes closer than anyone to a Total Explanation via Pure Intellect.

Frankly, this used to be the whole point of philosophy. Then Kant came along and said that there can be no Total Explanation, because all we are really explaining is ourselves. This is said to be a great advance in the progress of philosophy, when in actuality it is just giving up. It is an a priori surrender. Like anyone could know that you can't know it all!

Which sounds like a joke, but it isn't. I remember Peter Kreeft expressing this view in his Socrates Meets Kant. That is, unlike all previous philosophers (although Descartes no doubt -- or dubiously, rather -- paved the way), Kant presumes to begin in epistemology rather than being.

In the words Kreeft puts into his mouth, Kant claims that being "conforms to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforming to being," such that "in knowing, the known object conforms to the knowing subject rather than vice versa."

Therefore, we don't really know being -- or the world -- at all. Rather, "the form, or intelligible content, of our knowledge comes from us rather than the world."

There you have it: a Total Explanation that explains precisely nothing!

Nice trick. The left has been dining out on it ever since, with the rest of us picking up the bill. For here is where Perception is elevated to Reality -- to the point that one's own mental troubles are conflated with Micro-aggressors everywhere:

"Reason's job [is] not to mirror the nature of things but to construct the nature of things, as an artist constructs his art: not to discover the form in the matter and abstract into universal principles, but to put the form in the matter, to impose the form on the matter as a sculptor imposes shape on marble, or a musician imposes melody on sound."

Kant presumed to critique the efficacy of pure reason. Fair enough. But Socrates-Kreeft turns the tables on him by similarly critiquing the Critique: now who's the more critical, Kant or Coon?

Here is how Socrates picks Kant apart using nothing more than the everyday power of pure thought:

"If Aristotle is wrong about knowledge mirroring reality and you are right about reality mirroring knowledge, it seems that you still have to assume his old notion of truth when you say that your new notion of truth is true, or the way things really are."

Kant: wha? (I'm paraphrasing.)

The point is, if Kant is correct, then it necessarily leads to what I said yesterday about man's stupidity being total and ineradicable:

"We must give up the whole of the task of philosophy as it was so nobly conceived by two thousand years of philosophers before you. We must cease claiming to know truth..." In short, if truth cannot be known, how can Kant's critique be true?

Kreeft-Socrates tosses in a nice gag by Wittgenstein, that "to limit thought you must think both sides of the limit."

Heh. Out of time.

I Demand a Total Explanation!

So: the arc of history bends toward its own fulfillment, its Omega point, which we can aldously see from Here-and-now, boys. Or at least the view is on offer; it is forced on no one.

I was thinking about this yesterday during a walk; I've mentioned this before, but I believe that every man, living in any time or in any place, has the intrinsic right to a Total Explanation, or at least as much of an explanation as he can assimilate. God furnishes this explanation in the form of religion, and religion coevolves with man (for example, polytheism is prior to monotheism, or exterior sacrifice prior to interior).

You may think to yourselves: wha? But for the vast majority of human history, these explanations were indeed adequate. Yesterday while reading Sowell's revised edition of Wealth, Poverty and Politics, I was reminded that 95% of human history took place even before the discovery of agriculture; or in other words, "virtually everything that we today recognize as civilization dates from the beginning of agriculture" during the last 5% of our existence.

We don't know much about what sort of Total Explanation man had for himself during the vast 95%, because written language hadn't been invented. But I'll bet you anything it was adequate. I say this because it has only been in the last 1% or less of our existence -- basically in the last 200 years -- that people have begun to reject our venerable Total Explanations, and even to say that no such explanation is possible -- which means in effect that man's stupidity is total.

Actually, if my math is correct, it's only been in the last .02% of our existence (200 ÷ 100,000). If so, that is a rather tiny blip on the scale. It might well be that we are merely going through a brief period of transition, as the Total Explanation reconstitutes on a higher and more comprehensive scale. Certainly this is what we endeavor to do around here: to preserve the God-given Total Explanation via assimilation of new knowledge and perspectives. Nor do we care where it comes from, so long as it is True.

For example, it was really only in the last century that the various revelations came into full contact with one another. There was some scattered contact in the 19th century -- e.g., Schopenhauer falling in love with his translation of a translation of the Upanishads, or Vivekananda speaking to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893. I wonder what he said to the curious audience?

Here: "In this speech Vivekananda tried to explain the reason of disagreement between each other and different sects and religions. He told the story of a frog. In the story, a frog used to live in a well. It was born there and brought up there and it used to think his well was the biggest body of water in the world.

"One day, a frog from the sea came to that well. When the frog from the sea told the frog of the well that the sea is much bigger than that well, the frog of the well didn't believe it and drove the frog of the sea away from his well. Vivekananda concluded: 'That has been the difficulty all the while. I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Muslim sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world.'"

Remember, that was just the start. A little over half a century later, Schuon published his first major work, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, in which he attempts to tackle just this problem: the coexistence of diverse Total Explanations. For him, religion was an expression of universal metaphysics. Thus, this solves the problem of diversity -- just as, analogously, the "problem of color" is really an extension of the existence of light. As color issues from light, religion issues from universal metaphysics (and likewise faith from intellect).

I am not critiquing this idea, merely setting it forth. However, bear in mind that there are only four other alternatives upon discovering that other peoples have their own Total Explanations: we can insist that only ours is correct and all the others wrong; dismiss all of them as equally wrong; pick and choose what we like from this or that one; or find some way to harmonize them. Note that the latter need not necessarily be accomplished "horizontally," but rather, can be approached vertically and hierarchically (which is what I attempt to do).

In my view, our Total Explanation can profit a great deal by learning about the other guy's Total Explanation. For Schuon, each "intrinsically orthodox religion" may "serve as a means of expressing all the truths known directly by the eye of the Intellect..." Whereas for a few people these universal truths are directly accessible by the Intellect, for most they are only accessible via faith -- which I think is where the real inter-religion problem arises, because faith tends to particularize the universal, and thus have difficulty appreciating the other guy's view.

If only people could appreciate their religion from the summit and not the foothills! Even Islam would be cleansed of its low-lying troubles -- as is seen in the case of Sufism, which doesn't hurt anybody.

Consider the sixth commandment, Thou shall not murder. I ask you: do you not murder because it's a commandment, or because your higher intellect spontaneously knows this in the form of natural law -- i.e. the law engraved on your heart?

For me -- and probably you -- it is the latter. And yet, it is a commandment. Therefore, we can assume that there was a time when this wasn't so easily recognized, which is precisely why God had to emphasize it. My point is that the sixth commandment is an example of a universal truth, accessible via the intellect, particularized in dogma. Others are easily accessible to the awakened intellect, e.g., don't steal, don't lie, don't envy, don't worship graven images, etc.

This reminds me of another thought that popped into my head yesterday: that the gift of speech obligates one to be honest. Can you see why? First of all, if truth doesn't exist, then speech is ultimately as pointless as the chirping of insects. But "free speech" can only be given to a free being, and responsibility is naturally prior to freedom (freedom is meaningless in the absence of responsibility or duty or obligation). Therefore speech obligates us to the truth. But how many people can work this out on their own? So we just give them the commandment -- which is again a kind of prolongation of intellect into faith. Faith is a kind of light, only it is a reflected light.

Nor can we know everything via the intellect -- or at least I can't. However, once you begin to appreciate how much universal truth the intellect is capable of seeing, then you start to have more faith in faith, as it were. It's like the old crack: I believe in order to understand. You do this in the faith that your faith is a prolongation of the intellect, and that your faith will over time be increasingly illuminated by the intellect from which it proceeds.

This whole post veered into unanticipated byways. We'll leave off with an Aphorism or two:

All truths converge upon one truth, but the roads have been barricaded.

And In order for a multitude of diverse terms to coexist, it is necessary to place them on different levels. A hierarchical ordering is the only one that neither expels nor suppresses them.

The Arc (and Arc) of History

Continuing with the theme of principles of history, it seems that history can have no meaning if it has no end. In this sense, "end" has two connotations, i.e., conclusion and purpose.

Obviously we can't know what something is for until we see what it is. Thus, until we've seen all of history, we can't know what any of it was for.

As Balthasar observes, "until the last of us has lived, the significance of the first cannot finally be clear" (in Dawson). I am reminded of, say, a British soldier who dies during the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. In all likelihood he died thinking the Nazis won World War II.

Has anyone seen all of history? Supposedly yes. For example, "Before Abraham was, I am," or "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." These are statements that can only be made from a perspective beyond history.

Time is an expression of the timeless; or at least the two are in a ceaseless dialectic. Everyone knows there is eternity in time, but I believe there must be something analogous to time in eternity. It is a Greek prejudice that time = ungood and timeless = doubleplus good.

In any event, Dawson writes that "It is through Christianity above all that man first acquired that sense of unity and purpose in history without which the spectacle of... unending change becomes meaningless and oppressive." To be sure, Jews had the idea, but Christians claim to have its fulfillment.

Er, we're just winging it this morning, as usual, hoping that this post -- like history -- will reveal its own point at some point.

Quinn (in Dawson) makes reference to the "Augustinian sense of the past as both timebound and timeless; as action humanly complete yet still striving for greater completion, towards fulfillment beyond time."

Exactly. As Dávila says, "The real history exceeds what merely happened." Thus, -- in a point we've belabored before -- a photograph of Christ on the cross would not better inform us what the event was all about than scripture, and better yet, scripture illuminated by the Spirit.

Note that in one sense there can be no general principles in history, in that every event is unique and unrepeatable. It "cannot be made intelligible unless bound into some larger scheme of order, predictability, recurrence," for "randomness has no meaning" (ibid.).

How do we reconcile the radically individual and the metacosmic universal? Perhaps you have a better idea, but I can't imagine anything other than Incarnation, which is precisely the universal-become-individual. The particular on its own can never become universal; the part cannot be the whole. But the whole can be in the part, and in a sense must be in the part in order for it to be a part and not an atomistic monad.

You might say that Christ is the incarnation of this very principle -- for something cannot happen unless it is possible in principle. Think again of the Jews, who had the principle but not (from the Christian perspective) its instantiation.

Hegelians and Marxists claim to have disclosed the principle of history, which reaches us in its most vulgarized form in the likes of Obama and the progressive left. For example, as Obama likes to say, "the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice."

Well, as Dávila reminds us in his pointed way, "Our last hope is in God's injustice." Obama had better hope he doesn't get what he deserves! Likewise Black Lives Matter and the whole no-justice-no-peace crowd. In a just world, Hillary would be behind bars and the IRS would be shut down.

The progressive merely denies divinity and replaces it with his own pseudo-absolute. He calls it "social justice," which in one sense -- as Hayek has explained -- is not even meaningless, just nonsense. But it's worse than nonsense, for it is "the term used to claim anything to which we do not have a right" (Dávila).

Or in other words, "social justice" is founded upon injustice -- just as leftist dreams of "equality" can only be achieved via grotesque inequalities (e.g., state enforced discrimination). In short, the primary cause of inequality is liberty and equality, just as the inequality between two pitchers is due to the equality of the strike zone. The umpire doesn't make the bad pitcher's strike zone bigger in order to equalize the two.

I'll conclude with Quinn's observation that Christ is "Lord of History. He is the moment from which all moments derive their meaning. He is the norm by which all moments derive their meaning. Christ entered History. He enters it still. He is History."

So the arc of history bends toward its Omega point, which we can see always from Here. And if the Cubs should win the World Series, their fans will not see the eschaton through a glass, darkly, but face to face.

In History but Not Of It

Does history reveal a principle? Or does one require a principle -- a kind of master key -- in order to approach and understand it? It reminds me of an Aphorism, that Truth is in history, but history is not the truth.

History is not the truth. But Truth is in history. This aphorism rings a bell, but now that I'm staring directly at it, the meaning eludes me. I'm going to let it stew for awhile in the right brain, and come back to it.

The Christian view would be that history requires a key, and that this key is Christ. Whatever else Christ is, he is the key to history. For example, think of how the early Christians read Christ into their own backstory, the Hebrew Bible. Christ was not only the key that illuminated it, but the telos toward which it had been heading all along.

Which brings to mind another Aphorism, that Everything in history begins before we think it begins, and ends after we think it ends.

Take again the example of Christ. Upon his death -- his "end" -- the disciples discovered that his "beginning" was not merely with his birth; rather, that he was prior to any physical beginning ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God"). The same principle allowed them to understand previously mysterious utterances such as "Before Abraham was, I Am."

And of course, his end was only a beginning, and this beginning has been handed off from person to person down to the present day. When does it end? "I am with you always, to the very end of the age." So in reality, he is before the beginning and after the end. No wonder history is not the truth -- for one thing, it is in time -- it is time -- whereas truth is timeless.

So, to say that truth is in history is another way of saying that the eternal is in time, and that this is what we call history. If the eternal is not in time, then history is indeed a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing more than tenure.

You might say that history is transfigured in and by Christ. Note that the reverse is not true -- that Christ is not transfigured by history.

But what exactly do we mean by transfiguration? It is "a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state." Surely history could never accomplish this to anyone, at any time. Nor could Darwin, for that matter -- which is why, for example, The laws of biology alone do not have fingers delicate enough to fashion the beauty of a face.

For what is beauty if not a kind of transfiguration of matter? From whence does this power come? From matter itself? How could that be? You might well say that "Truth is in matter, but matter is not the truth." For in beauty, the wall of matter is turned into a window of spirit, revealing a metaphysical transparency that surely transcends any version of vulgar materialism.

Beauty is here to teach us. Pay attention! For it is one of the primordial links between man and God. It begins before we think it begins -- in spirit -- and ends after we think it ends -- it has no expiration date.

How did we get here? Well, I have a pile of books on my desk which might go to the subject of Cosmic Principles (our recent cooncern), one of which is Christopher Dawson's Dynamics of World History, which I read about twelve years ago. I pulled it down because I thought it might shed some light on this path we've been exploring the last couple of weeks.

Dawson was a great historian, and a Christian historian. This does not mean that he was merely a "historian of Christianity" -- although he was that too -- but that for him, Christianity was the key that opened the whole existentialada; it is the truth of which history is the reflection (not to put words in his mouth; I'm sure he would express it differently).

Here are a few notes I scribbled to mysoph in the back of the book. They must be important, or I wouldn't have bothered plagiarizing with them).

"Every historian has a meta-history; the best ones know it."

"Secularism is religious emotion divorced from religious belief."

"Contempt for religion is a historically conditioned product of a particular historical time and place; worship of rationality is irrational."

"History is not complete; we participate in it. And yet, it is complete. It has an end."

"When contemplating the past, we see something unfolding in time. Or is it a timeless paradigm, an act of imagination in which elements of the past are held together in our imagination?"

That last one brings to mind an Aphorism: Authentic history is the transfiguration of the raw event by intelligence and imagination.

Here is something from the introduction, written by Dermot Quinn: "The fact does not tell the story; the story, as it were, tells the fact.... To see meaning beyond the local is to see it in the local."

And here we are again, seeing truth in the facts, even while facts are not the truth. So I guess my right brain figured it out.

To really round this off, we could agree with the well known gag that "the past is a foreign country." If so, then Christ would be the key to trancelighting it into terms we can understand.

"History and theology are nothing if not meditations on the nature of Time itself. Their shared object of inquiry is human time, sacred time, even that mysterious eternal moment that is Christ Himself" (Quinn).

And "to the Christian the mystery of history is not completely dark, since it is a veil which only partially conceals the creative activity of spiritual forces and the operation of spiritual laws" (Dawson). (All Aphorisms courtesy Nicolás Gómez Dávila.)

Principles of the Unprincipled

We're on the subject of principles, in particular, those cosmic principles that cannot not be true -- for example, that truth exists and man may know it. If it doesn't exist, then you may stop talking -- and thinking -- now. And forever. There would be no point. Except mere animal satisfaction and survival. Which also would have no point.

Speaking of which, why is it that man is subject to distinct joys and pleasures of which the animal can know nothing? Why are there pleasures of the mind and joys of the spirit?

Nicolas?

An intelligent idea produces sensual pleasure.

Very good. I--

I'm not done!

Go on then.

It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the rest of the animals.

Like aesthetic pleasure?

Exactly. For To be stupid is to believe it is possible to take a photograph of the place about which a poet sang. And When things appear to us to be only what they appear to be, soon they become even less.

Each of those aphorisms reveals a principle. In fact, what makes the Aphorisms so resonant is that they usually do that -- it is the secret to their power (that and the poetic means of expression). Come to think of it, I can think of few things more powerful than a Cosmic Principle beautifully expressed.

Think of the alternatives: there can be truth expressed in a banal or shabby way, just as there can be falsehood expressed in a beautiful way.

Then again, I'm not so sure about the latter, for awareness of real beauty tends to converge upon truth. We'll leave music and painting to the side, but can a person who loves truth be fooled by a beautiful falsehood masquerading as truth?

You will recall how the media swooned (and still swoons) over Obama's rhetoric, but to me it always betrayed its inner ugliness, its hidden agenda. You can't put lipstick on a pig.

Or, you can. But it's still going to be ugly -- perhaps even more ugly in a way, in the sense that its essence is being distorted. There is such a thing as "ugly cute," as in the case of certain dog breeds. The AKC doesn't downgrade a pug because it doesn't look like a lab.

This morning in a link at Happy Acres I was reminded of what ugly falsehood in puffed-up rhetoric smells like. It is by the professional negro Tavis Smiley, who claims to be frightened that Donald Trump will literally bring back slavery.

Before addressing the aesthetic barbarism, the man is quite obviously hallucinating, in that he is seeing something that does not -- and will never -- exist. Scott Adams discussed this yesterday:

"In nearly every scenario you can imagine, the person experiencing an unlikely addition to their reality is the one hallucinating. If all observers see the same addition to their reality, it might be real. But if even one participant can’t see the phenomenon – no matter how many can – it is almost certainly not real."

To suggest that America under Trump will enslave blacks is, to put it mildly, "an unlikely addition to reality." (Of course, Adams goes too far in suggesting that if a single person doesn't see a phenomenon, it isn't real, for "negative hallucinations" are actually more common than the positive variety, plus it ignores the qualifications necessary for vertical perception; but these are subjects of a different post.)

Here is an example of elaborate falsehood, or a kind of ornate vacuity; note also the pomposity, an important feature of this type of crude persuasion:

"I’m not sure [Trump] and I share an understanding of what makes a nation truly great. For me, it starts with how you treat the children, the poor, the aged and infirmed, how you embrace equality as you labor for equity. Equality means that everyone gets the same in America, whether they need it or not. Equity says we commit to ensuring that all fellow citizens have the basic resources that will give them commensurate opportunities to contribute meaningfully to our society."

Is there a principle in there somewhere? Everyone gets the same in America, whether they need it or not. Okay. My question for Mr. Smiley clown: Are you getting the same as everyone else? Or is Time paying you more than it pays, say, its janitors?

"While I’m not an angry black man, I do have a righteous indignation that burns inside me about the myriad of injustices that result in a daily contestation of people’s humanity."

Translation: you're an angry black man yelling at your hallucinations.

And frightened by them, in that these hallucinations are indeed "hair-raising, bone-chilling, spine-breaking, [and] nerve-wracking."

This illustrates one of the elementary principles of developmental psychology, called "projective identification." It is more primitive than mere projection, such that the person projects unconscious material (e.g., thoughts, desires, emotions, impulses) into the environment, and feels them returning in a (usually) persecutory manner.

A common example would consist of projecting anger into someone else, and then re-experiencing it as fear. In reality, the person is just fearful of his own projected anger. I want to say that this is a particularly transparent case, but the process is ubiquitous on the left. It is the only way to make sense of "trigger warnings," "safe spaces," "dangerous speech," and the like. These people are literally afraid of their own shadows. But then, Jung is wasted on these youths.

I don't want to leave on such an aesthetically depressing note. Let's conclude with some aphorisms that beautifully illuminate the type of intellectual and rhetorical pathology exemplified above:

'Social justice' is the term used to claim anything to which we do not have a right. And 'Social' is the adjective that serves as a pretext for all swindles.

As for how to avoid vacuous bloviating,

The fewer adjectives we waste, the more difficult it is to lie. And Prolixity is not an excess of words but a dearth of ideas (Aphorisms of Don Colacho).

Lord Save Us From the Bullshit!

While idly perusing Instapundit this morning, I was reminded of the great Law of Brandolini: that The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

The law is self-evidently true, but why? Why is it so difficult -- if not impossible -- to correct people? I no longer even try, at least with most volks. I had never thought about it before, but it must be because I intuitively understand the Law -- that to set them right will require a major commitment of time and energy.

Now that I think about it, when I was a liberal, I was pretty much oblivious to the Law. Indeed, I assumed that people were quite susceptible to correction with the usual simplistic leftist memes. But in reality, calling someone racist, sexist, or homophobic is rarely convincing. It is emotionally satisfying to the liberal, but merely off-putting to most everyone else.

In a way I envy my son, because he will not have to spend half his life refuting the bullshit he spent the other half assimilating. When I look back at the bullshit I once believed, it's appalling. Why did my parents not protect me from the bullshit? No doubt because that was when the culture and educational establishment were just beginning to take on their present outlines of being the primary transmitters of bullshit. Who knew then that our entire reality was being systematically turned upside-down and inside-out by the left?

A few prescient people, but they were on the fringes. But there is no doubt that a number of 20/∞ visionaries began noticing it by the 1950s, which is precisely when the modern conservative movement got off the ground. The movement is indeed reactionary, in the sense that it is a reaction to all the bullshit.

I just read a book -- not recommended -- on this very subject, called First Principles: Self-Governance in an Open Society. The reason it is not recommended is because the primary sources discussed by the author are so much better than the author's own analysis, which is on the banal side. However, he cites all the right people: Hayek, Weaver, von Mises, Kirk, Buckley, Paul Johnson, Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Gilder, etc., each of whom, in his own way, attempted to cut through the bullshit.

But why does it take so much energy? I was thinking of this yesterday morning on the way to work while listening to Rush. He was discussing the wikileaks material that is so devastating to Clinton, and was, as usual, full of passion (in a positive way; there was no hysteria, anger, or resentment, as with the left).

I thought of the energy it requires to rouse this level of passion day after day, year after year. But as alluded to above, I no longer wish to do that. I want to have a calm and tranquil life. I don't like the tension. I am pleased that lightning rods such as Coulter, Milo, or David Horowitz exist, but I certainly wouldn't want to be them.

The other day in a comment, Rick asked a question about my transition from left to right, but my response was lost in the digital ether. I remembered that back in the 1990s, when writing about politics from a liberal perspective, I came to a number of conclusions that not only contradicted the party line, but pretty much blew up the whole thing -- although I didn't realize it at the time.

Specifically, I remember writing something about the noxiousness of political correctness, about the intellectual incoherence of relativism, about the bizarre conclusions of feminist extremists, and about the left's magical use of language to alter reality. In each case I naively assumed that I was just saying ideologically neutral things with which any reasonable person would agree. I mean, who could support the linguistic tyranny of political correctness, or believe that men and women are identical, or think there is no objective morality?

Right away I was in violation of Brandolini's law, as I had no idea how much energy it takes to refute these things. Indeed, you could literally spend your entire life doing so, to little wholesale effect. For example, I'm thinking of the hundreds of hours it took for Dennis Prager to get through to me. Just to refute the simple bullshit! But I'm not sure that anything short of this would have succeeded in penetrating my thick skull.

Back to the book alluded to above; in fact, back to the thread we were on prior to that, which was "principles of history."

Actually, I am more interested in Principles as such. I often think of putting together a list of simple, straight-forward principles which not only cut through the bullshit, but permanently inoculate the mind against taking it on board to begin with. Any intellectually honest person would be compelled to assent to these principles, on pain of logical incoherence, absurdity, or self-refutation. Merely to utter one would be to slay a spiritually and intellectually destructive dragon -- like holding the Cross before a vampire, or the Enquirer in front of Hillary.

Where and what are these Principles?

As I have mentioned before, the first one is surely that Truth exists and man may know it. What is the alternative? That truth doesn't exist? Or that man cannot know it? Either one is the end of all rational thought, for it is to condemn man to an absolute and irremediable cosmic stupidity.

Now if Religion is true, it seems to me that its very purpose would be to incarnate these Principles without which our minds cannot be saved -- especially from themselves. Or in other words, religion is here to save us from the bullshit, precisely. Or, let us say that a religion is true insofar as it conveys to us the Principles and cuts through the bullshit.

I want to say that Thomas Aquinas did this, but again, think of the energy he expended to get the job done! How many millions of words did he write? You could literally spend your entire life studying him, but is there an easier way, a Raccoon way, a Tao te Slack?

It seems to me that the Ten Commandments would be a fine way to start. The first three, in one form or another, are absolutely essential to mental hygiene, that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; that Thou shalt have no other gods before me; and that Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

For me, this is all really a way of saying that Truth exists and man may know it: that Truth is what saves us from slavery and sets us free; that we are not It; and that attempts to fashion our own truth separate from the one Truth are doomed to failure.

There is another principle we've often discussed, which happens to be the founding principle of the United States: that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thus, our founding document takes Principle One and Commandments one through three for granted. For example, recall that Jefferson's original idea for the design of the seal of the United States was Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt; or Hamilton's crack that the sacred rights -- and I would add principles -- of mankind are written in human nature "by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased by mortal power"; or Jefferson's gag that "the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time."

It only makes sense, because truth and freedom must be complementary. That is to say, an unfree being could never discover truth, and if truth doesn't exist, then we are hardly free -- rather, just condemned to meaningless horizontal drift through the cosmic bullshit.

To become cultivated is to understand that a particular class of questions is meaningless.

But

The leftist emulates the devout who continue venerating the relic after the miracle has been proved to be a hoax. --Aphorisms of Don Colacho.

Light Pollution

I've read of certain songwriters who always have their ears open for snippets of conversation they can incorporate into lyrics, or which can sometimes inspire a whole song. Smokey Robinson did that a lot -- he overheard someone say "I second that emotion," and the song wrote itself. Similarly, John Lennon turned a couple of Ringo-isms into songs, "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "A Hard Day's Night."

So, I was at the seminar last Friday when the presenter made an offhand reference to "light pollution." He was talking about how many more stars are visible in the desert, away from all the light pollution of the city. It immediately occurred to me that there is a post hidden in that term -- either that or a hit song.

Our ancient furbears wouldn't have comprehended the idea. For them there was light and darkness, the former an unambiguously good thing, the latter a dangerous -- and even dark! -- quality. You couldn't have too much light. But you could certainly have too much darkness. Remember, before the invention of electric light in the 19th century, darkness was total. Nowadays we rarely encounter anything like it, even, say, while camping. That's only pretend darkness.

It is important to bear this in mind whenever we encounter the symbolism of dark and light in premodern literature -- for example, "the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," or "I am the light of the world." Those were very bold and vivid statements in a world that couldn't just flip a switch to illuminate their space.

From the earliest times, it seems that light and thought have been equated. To prove that claim, I'm looking in the index of my Familiar Quotations, but the references are too numerous. Too much light! Here's a line by Paul from 1 Timothy: "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of day: we are not of the night, nor of the darkness." Here's one from Ecclesiastes: "Wisdom exceeds folly, as far as light exceeds darkness." And from 1 John: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

Interesting. The 18th century poet Thomas Gray writes of the possibility of too much light, or at least more than we can handle: He saw; but blasted with excess of light, / Closed his eyes in endless night. And Matthew Arnold makes reference to Light half-believers of our casual creeds, / Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed...

Here's a crack by Goethe: Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we shall need no other light. Ah. Here's a good one from Theodor Roethke: Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: / The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

Here is a cosmic -- if somewhat pantheistic sounding -- sentiment expressed by Jean Toomer : Beyond plants are animals, / Beyond animals is man, / Beyond man is the universe, / The Big Light, / Let the Big Light in!

Ooh. This was still the common sentiment when I began attending college: "A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning" (Disraeli). It has since become a place of darkness, thought control, and indoctrination.

There are obviously many more, but let's move on.

I'm thinking of the Upanishads, which often symbolize God as the sun and Light as wisdom or liberation. The Isha Upanishad says Worlds there are without suns, covered up with darkness. To these after death go the ignorant.

Well, not anymore. Now you can just go to college. Progress!

To darkness are they doomed who worship only the body, and to a greater darkness they who worship only the spirit. What is the solution to this conundrum? Incarnation. You know, the Light becomes darkness that the darkness may become Light.

It seems that there was once a recognition that all light was of the Light. For this reason, you wouldn't confuse a candle with the sun, nor would you utilize a flashlight to try to locate it. Which is why you don't go searching after God with just the light of (lower case r) reason. Rather, reason itself is a reflection of the Light you seek.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad lays out the Whole Point of it all: Lead me from the unreal to the real, / Lead me from darkness to light / Lead me from death to immortality.

Now, light pollution. What could that be? Think of standing in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. Plenty of light there. But try seeing the stars. There won't be any. Except the living dead ones on stage.

I would say that for human light to be functional, it must be a prolongation of the divine light. Or at least it cannot presume to exist independently without taking on a kind of darkness. In other words, knowledge must be illuminated by wisdom. Scientism, or positivism, or pragmatism, for example, are knowledge without light. And for certain souls, they can become so bright that they obscure the very Light from which they emanate.

But the liberal media are the quintessential case of light pollution. Being in and of that world is analogous to standing on the Vegas strip and seeing nothing beyond it. Academia is only slightly better. Or worse. I can't make up my mind. Consider:

"32 Percent of Millennials Believe George W. Bush Killed More People Than Stalin." Whose fault is this? Is it the fault of the light pollution of the media? Or the propagation of darkness by academia?

I reject this false alternative. It's both.

What Did You Do in the Spiritual War?

What if a spiritual war were going on and no one recognized it?

"Modern Western populations," writes Bruce Charlton, "are only semi-human in their mass perceptions and responses -- since they lack the stable centre of religion, and are metaphysically incoherent; they live inside an artificial and distorted world; and their minds are continually filled-with and distracted-by lying nonsense -- all of this in an unprecedented fashion and degree."

Concur. Our adversaries live inside a Matrix -- which has been carefully constructed for them by forces beyond their conscious control.

Thus, "the true agenda of evil is not just beyond their belief, but beyond their comprehension -- lacking God, they cannot recognise nor understand the nature of evil (and are, indeed, inclined to deny its truth and rationality)" (ibid.). As did our anonymous but always illustrative commenter yesterday, when I merely pointed out that the suppression of truth is the essence of evil. He even went so far as to suggest that doing so violates none of God's laws.

No, it's worse than that, for truth is one of God's names; to attack or thwart it is to smite the Creator. It is to pound another nail into the Cross.

We've been toying with the idea of "principles of history," but maybe we should be talking about the principalities of history. Or worse, perhaps history itself is a principality -- you know, a kind of satanic playground. That would explain why the war has been going on for, oh, 50,000 years.

Is there any reason to believe such perfect nonsense? I don't yet have any central thread, only a pile of books on my desk which may lead in the right direction. For example, of the appeasers of the 1930s, Manchester writes that "like all fundamentalists" they "held facts in contempt." But it was more than mere facts; rather, their minds attacked the conclusion to which the facts inevitably led.

The conclusion was known, but had to be rendered un-known. For example, upon reading a damning book called The House that Hitler Built, Neville Chamberlain wrote that "If I accepted the author's conclusions I should despair, but I don't and I won't" (in Manchester). Well, that was easy!

Let's try it out: If I accepted the idea that the Iranians cannot be trusted and that the nuclear agreement isn't worth the paper it is written on, I should despair, but I don't and I won't.

Or, If I accepted the idea that the left wishes to foment racial antagonism and a war on the police, I should despair, but I don't and I won't.

I feel better already!

Our anonymous commenter criticizes us for supporting Trump. If he has any better ideas as to how to stop Hillary and defeat the left, I'd like to hear them. As Prager has said, Trump is like using chemotherapy to fight cancer: yeah, it's going to make you sick and cause a lot of damage, but what choice do you have?

"Historians a thousand years hence," Churchill told parliament, "will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory -- gone with the wind!"

Yes, historians will be baffled. But what about Raccoons? Should we be baffled by America's entirely self-willed decline? I don't see why. Let us consult one of our Vertical Fathers, Don Colacho. "Civilizations are the summer noise of insects between two winters."

Better bundle up.

"The external adversary is less the enemy of civilization than is internal attrition."

Oh, that and demographic flooding. Which is why the left favors open borders, which is just genocide -- and worse, pneumacide -- by other means. The left can't defeat our ideas, but they can stampede over them.

"Those who live in the twilight of history imagine the day is being born when night is approaching."

The Obama era, dawn of a new day!

D'oh!

"Modern history is the dialogue of two men, one who believes in God, another who believes he is god."

I disagree. Dialogue with Obama is impossible.

"Falsifying the past is how the left has sought to elaborate the future."

Which is why if we don't somehow take back the educational system -- now a wholly owned and operated franchise of the Dark Aeon -- a deepening metastasis of the left's grim utopia is inevitable.

Out of time here. And tomorrow must be sacrificed to the serpent of Continuing Education, so no post. BTW, I was surprised to learn that as many as 24% of psychiatrists are Republican. Among woolly-headed and thoroughly feminized psychologists the figure is surely lower. But if you're out there, please show yourself. I am occasionally asked for a referral to a sane therapist.

Patterns of Cosmic Stupidity

You know how Hillary and Obama don't want us to refer to "Islamic terror," because if we do, then normal, peace-loving Muslims will want to chop off our heads?

Well, some things never change. Back in 1937, outgoing prime minister Stanley Baldwin joined his successor, Neville Chamberlain, in expressing the sentiment to members of parliament "that if they felt they must deplore totalitarianism and aggression, they must not name names."

"It was important," implored Baldwin, "to avoid 'the danger of referring directly to Germany at a time when we are trying to get on terms with that country'" (Manchester).

Consider this an open thread, since I don't have much time this morning -- in fact, for the rest of the week. It's October, and it's an even-numbered year, which means I have until the end of the month to complete my 36 hours of discontinuing education. Something has to give, and you're looking at it.

TRIGGER WARNING: some readers have expressed the view that my deployment of any salty language diminishes the blog. TURN BACK NOW.

Recall that we were just about to dive headlong into Principles of History, if there are any. The above example may or may not reveal a principle, but it certainly suggests a pattern.

But why should naming evil cause good people to want to turn evil? That doesn't make any sense. And why should evil people care if someone calls them evil? Evil people don't care what others think, except insofar as they can manipulate them.

Another parallel: Obama and Clinton say that naming the evil is a great recruiting tool for the evildoers. Therefore, appeasing them should lessen their appeal and thin their ranks.

Okay. How'd that work out? "Time increased Hitler's momentum.... Now that England had shown the white feather, recruits swelled in the ranks of the Nazi parties in Austria, Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, western Poland, and the Free City of Danzig." Hmm, exactly the opposite of what the Theory of Appeasement would predict.

Besides, if going after enemies creates more of them, why does the left never stop attacking our deplorable asses??

You know how the Palestinian cause -- not to mention Bernie Sanders and liberal fascism in general -- is so popular on college campuses and among Hollywood and media eliterates? Well, by the mid-1930s, "Nazism had become fashionable in London's West End. Ladies wore brackets with swastika charms; young men combed their hair to slant across their foreheads.... The Fuhrer still had many admirers in Parliament and a lofty one (King Edward VIII) in Buckingham Palace."

Each generation must learn anew the same lessons. Especially this one: "History is mankind's painfully purchased experience, now available for free, or merely the price of attention and reflection" (Thomas Sowell).

Oh, and one more -- a memo to the Kaeperdicks among us: "There is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield" (Churchill).

Principles of History

Are there any? Supposedly not. As far as I know, that idea is rejected by contemporary historians as an outmoded relic of history. In other words, historians used to think history meant something. Now we know it means nothing -- that any patterns we see are superimposed, that it never repeats itself, and that it has no intrinsic direction.

Even if true, how could one know that?

But more to the point, I really don't feel like blogging this morning. Last night, before going to bed, the idea of writing about this subject popped into my head. Must have been a side effect of what I was saying the other day about my never-to-be-written book, Ground and Principle. In short, what is the ground of history? And does it reveal any abstract principles that are always present?

But this morning my mind is on strike. I think it has to do with the Dodgers playing at 1:00 on a Monday afternoon. What the heck? Since when doesn't Los Angeles get a prime-time TV slot?

Stupid Cubs. Just because their streak of futility is of cosmic dimensions, and may finally end, they get the late game. Which throws everything off for Bob. Now I have to hurry up and get my work done before then, which means I should probably get to it right now instead of wasting timelessness blogging.

No, I can't just record the game. That's fine during the regular season, but I can't bring myself to do so for a playoff game.

So here we are, at loggerheads with ourselves. Well, I'm going to force myself to blog, just to show my mind who's in charge.

I just googled "principles of history," and the first thing that comes up is R.G. Collingwood's book of the same title. I've read several of his books, including one called The Idea of History, but not that one.

As to the latter, it says in the introduction that Collingwood began working on it during the late 1930s, when the "revolt against civilization" represented by communism and fascism "had to be resisted at all costs."

That's a good point: fascists and communists certainly had their theories of history, as do Islamists. How do you defend against people who believe that history has ironclad laws assuring your destruction? "Ha ha, the joke's on you, because history means nothing and is going nowhere!"

That's pretty much what we tell the Islamists -- which only means that they are motivated to fight for their principles, whereas the left is too broadminded to have any worth defending.

One of Collingwood's historical principles was the gradual "elimination of force from the relations between people." Woo hoo! Now there's a principle worth defending. Our persistent troll doesn't understand that this is ultimately the principle we are defending in supporting Trump, since Obama and Clinton and the left in general are always about the increase of force between people. Indeed, this goes to the very Principle of America -- its reason for being -- i.e., the principle of ordered liberty.

Last night's question about supreme court appointments was instructive. Trump's was simple, as it should be: that he'll appoint judges who will support and defend the constitution. But Clinton promised to appoint judges who will ignore the constitution and crank out opinions based upon leftist ideology. Her answer was really quite remarkable.

"I want to appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the way the world really works, who have real life experience." Excuse me, but WTF is that supposed to mean? Besides, "understanding the way the world works" is precisely what a liberal cannot do and remain liberal. Liberalism is rooted in a mis- (and sometimes dis-) understanding of both human nature and of the operating principles of spaceship earth.

This actually goes to our subject, because if there are principles of history, it would mean that they transcend perspective. One, er, principle that seems to animate contemporary historians is that history is irreducibly perspectival, which is why we have all these intellectually worthless (if not harmful) disciplines of black history, or queer history, or Chicano history, and all the rest.

I mean, feminists say that math, objectivity, and the scientific method are oppressive tools of white male privilege, so you can imagine what they do to softer subjects. I say: Teach women not to rape history!

When "principles of history" popped into my noggin, the first example I thought of was Churchill, who clearly saw certain patterns and principles at work in the 1930s, but was ignored or vilified by elites who knew better. It is rather remarkable that most everything he said would equally apply to the Islamist threat -- which again goes to the idea that our struggle is against more enduring powers, principalities, and Cosmocrats of the Dark Aeon.

Example.

"If you want to stop war, you gather such an aggregation of force on the side of peace that the aggressor, whoever he may be, will not dare challenge..."

Is that just an opinion, or a principle? For the likes of Obama, it amounts to a lie, hence his reckless project of disarmament and weakening of our military.

Churchill reasoned that "to urge preparation of defense is not to assert the immanence of war. On the contrary, if war was immanent preparations for defense would be too late."

But his opponents -- which was pretty much Everyone -- "repeatedly refused to believe that Hitler was what Hitler was. They had, in short, developed the political equivalent of a mental block." They "believed they were preserving the peace when in fact they were assuring the inevitability of war." And "inevitability" implies a kind of principle at work.

Indeed, Churchill spoke of "the features which constitute the endless repetition of history," of the "long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind."

Unteachable? Here is what the London Times wrote of a speech of Hitler's in 1936, that it was "reasonable, straightforward, and comprehensive. No one who reads it with an impartial mind can doubt" the peaceful intentions of the Fuhrer. Are these same idiots running the NY Times editorial board and the DNC? No, but the same principalities are.

Must stop. Work to do.

Between God and Religion

Another unblogged book sitting on my desk is Schuon's Christianity/Islam -- the only one of his (excluding poetry) I hadn't read. The reason I hadn't read it is in the title, as I am not particularly interested in Islam. But you know what they say: just because you don't take an interest in Islam doesn't mean Islam won't take an interest in you.

As usual, Schuon's perspective is far more universal than any single creed. He may or may not be correct, but one of his central principles is that each legitimate (God-given) revelation is an expression of universal metaphysics tailored to this or that cultural or ethnic group.

Thus the subtitle: Perspectives on Esoteric Ecumenism. For Schuon, the esoteric perspective is the only way to overcome certain inevitable incoherences and absurdities in religion -- not just in a religion, but between religions as well. As such, he is speaking of the "esoteric perspective" that transcends and unifies individual religions.

If such a thing exists. I think it is possible to take an intermediate position on the question. For example, rather than saying that only one religion is correct and all the others wrong; or that all religions are equally correct; or that all religions are equally wrong; we can say that this or that religion is a more or less adequate expression of certain truths embodied in religion as such.

Think of the analogy to music. We could say that "music as such" exists in the abstract. But in order to express musical truth or beauty, you need to "pick a path," so to speak, e.g., classical, jazz, blues, rock, whatever. Bach expressed the divine in one way, John Coltrane in another. We can't say that one or the other was wrong, even if we can affirm that one may have disclosed it more fully or adequately.

The book contains some previously unpublished letters, some of which touch on this question. For example, in one he writes that "A true metaphysician cannot unreservedly identify himself with a religious upaya [teaching or method] and take pleasure in it with a kind of nationalism, but obviously must identify with what is essential -- hence both universal and primordial..."

And yet, at the same time, Schuon always insisted that it was necessary to follow a particular religion -- just as you need a musical idiom to express music.

This is a tricky balance, for it seems as if one is trying to give oneself wholeheartedly to a religion even while holding a part of oneself in reserve, so to speak. He says, for example, that "theology tends to push" dogma "to the point of absurdity," but who could argue? Isn't this the problem of fundamentalism or literalism, which surely must alienate people who are not prepared to disable their God-given intelligence in order to embrace a "saving absurdity," so to speak.

In what Schuon calls the mundane "religious viewpoint" -- which you might say is a kind of worldly expression of the otherworldly -- there are certain "dogmatic elements" that are "unacceptable from the viewpoint of truth as such," even while "no doubt possessing a certain spiritually 'therapeutic' function." This cannot help sounding condescending, which would have once appealed to me very much.

Schuon suggests that "It is in the nature of theology to over-accentuate and exclude, and this is why no theology is intellectually perfect, though there are certainly degrees in this." I can't help agreeing with this, even though I also can't help feeling ambivalent about it.

In another letter, Schuon says he doesn't even like writing from the everyday religious perspective: "I would also just as gladly have preferred to spare myself having to deal with Muslim theology -- Lord knows how grating it can be -- but I had no choice since Sufism is situated parallel to this body of doctrine." More generally, "I am hardly enamored of exoterisms and would have preferred to deal only with pure metaphysics and the perennial religion..."

Regarding those latter two -- pure metaphysics and perennial religion -- Schuon was of the belief that the Vedanta was its most adequate expression. In another letter he writes that "we are of Christian origin, and our point of departure is the Vedanta," while being constrained to live in an essentially godless age.

Vedanta, of course, posits a radical monism. And yet, I don't see why it is intrinsically inconsistent with a trinitarianism that is an even "higher" or "deeper" expression of the same truth.

This is why one of my favorite cosmic pneumanauts is Swami Abhishiktananda, AKA the Catholic monk Henri Le Saux, who managed to reconcile the two in his own divided-but-united being.

He did so "through the medium of love, the axial Christian virtue.... The doctrine of the Trinity, understood in light of the advaita, 'reveals that Being is essentially a koinonia [fellowship] of love.' The inner mystery of non-duality 'flowers in communion and inter-subjectivity, revealing itself and coming to full expression in the spontaneous gift of the self to another.'"

"In 'the very depth' of the Upanishadic experience of identity, the Christian may discover 'a reciprocity and a communion of love which, far from contradicting... the unity and non-duality of being, is its very foundation and raison d'être.'"

Elsewhere he compares the Vedantic trinity of sat-chit-ananda to the Christian Trinity: "Being, sat, opens itself at its very source to give birth eternally to the Son..." (Very Eckhartian there.) It "is essentially 'being-with,' communion..., the free gift of the self and mutual communication of love."

Cit, i.e., consciousness or self-awareness "only comes to be when there is mutual giving and receiving, for the I only awakens to itself in a Thou."

Which I've only said about a billion times.

And ananda, the the ultimate felicity or beatitude, "is fulness and perfect fulfillment, only because it is the fruit of love, for being is love."

Ultimately "consciousness (cit) is identified with being (sat) in the infinite bliss (ananda) of the Spirit, who is... one in the Father and the Son, one in God and man, undivided [Sat-chit-ananda]."

"Thus, for Abhishiktananda, the Trinity 'resolves the antinomy of the One and the Many.'" "Christ's experience actually surpasses the Vedantic experience because it recognizes distinction... on its far side, as it were; for Jesus, God is both Other and not-Other."

Makes sense to me us three anyway.

Random Thoughts on the Timeless Scene

Desk clearing time. There are several books that have been sitting on it for months, apparently because they contain some worthwhile nuggets of joy. Here's one by George Rutler called He Spoke to Us: Discerning God in People and Events. That sounds enticing: God speaks. How do we discern and decode the speech?

By the way, the title of this post is a play on Thomas Sowell's occasional desk-clearing exercises he calls Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene. Expect no continuity, or at least be prepared for sudden discontinuities.

"A Russian proverb holds that when the Lord builds a church, Satan pitches a tent across the street."

Analysis: true.

"Chesterton was entranced by the billboard lights in Times Square advertising soaps and cigarettes and hair tonic: 'What a garden of delights this place would be for anyone who couldn't read.'"

Reading is indeed overrated, at least in the wrong hands.

As we know, America's first war (after independence) was with Muslims. "In March of 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in London with the Dey of Algiers to Britain," and "posed a simple question: Why were the Muslims so hostile to a new country that had done them no injury?"

Obviously Jefferson and Adams were not sophisticated enough to know that it was our fault.

Afterwards they reported to congress in a letter stating that "Islam was founded on the Laws of the Prophet" and "that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to paradise."

However, congress favored a strategy of appeasement -- which was not then a dirty word -- via bribery, or "tribute." Adams approved, suggesting that "We ought not to fight them at all, unless we determine to fight them forever."

What did Churchill say about choosing shame over war, and getting both?

"Tripoli broke its truce, and Jefferson launched the Tripolitan War as soon as he became president." This is of course the "shores of Tripoli" referred to in the Marine Corp Hymn. It was during this crisis that Jefferson obtained a Koran to try to understand what motivated these enemies of liberty. This is the same Koran Obama refers to when he implies that Jefferson thought favorably of Islam because it was in his library.

Ans now you know the rest of the story.

In another essay, Rutler recalls that in Syria, Hitler was hailed as "'Abu Ali,' and the Young Egypt Party called him 'Muhammad Haidar.'" And when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visited Hitler, he "obtained a promise from [him] to liquidate the Jews of Palestine after a Nazi victory."

This is by way of a reminder that we do not contend against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and hosts of wickedness in the high places. The faces change but the forces remain.

No justice no peace. This is true, if we regard justice as the restoration of proper order, because it is harmonious order that results in peace. Which is why leftism can never result in peace, since it tries to impose order from on high in a patently unjust manner. Think of the natural harmony of man and woman in marriage. To undermine this primordial order by judicial fiat is to promote disorder and lack of peace.

"Mix sentimentality with legalism, and you have a diabolical recipe for cruelty. In the twentieth century, totalitarian systems separated power from truth. Once power is autonomous, independent of truth, it is unjust by its self-justification."

"There is no freedom without order and no order without virtue."

"What God knows is not necessarily what God wills."

"Indifference is the fanaticism of the faint of heart."

"There is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. The skeptic questions the truth, while the cynic questions the existence of truth itself."

Bill Buckley once said to a Firing Line guest: "I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would insult your intelligence."

Creative Joy and Human Sacrifice

Well, the early appointment canceled, so I have to renege on my promised lack of a post. I'll use the space to fulfill another broken promise, which was to finish with Corbin yesterday. Then we can move on to a new subject tomorrow, or at least beat an old one to death.

Corbin sounds more trinitarian than strictly uni-theistic to me when he writes that "we must never forget that He is the Lover and the Beloved," and that "it is in His essence to be both one and the other, just as He is the Worshiped, the Worshiper, and the eternal dialogue between the two."

Indeed, if God's essence is Lover, Beloved, and the Love between; or Knower-Known-Knowledge; or Worshiper-Worshiped-Eternal Dialogue; then that seems to me more Christian than Islamic -- or at least I've never heard Muslims speak of God as a one-in-threeness, and vice versa.

Here is a major difference: instead of a preexistent Trinity of eternal communion-in-love, Corbin postulates "a Divine Being alone in His unconditioned essence, of which we know only one thing: precisely the sadness of primordial solitude that makes Him yearn to be revealed in beings who manifest Him to Himself insofar as He manifests Himself to them."

First of all: like anybody could know that. But here we confront a major difference: either God joyfully creates in such a way as to allow creatures to participate in his selfless trinitarian love; or because he is sad and lonely.

No, really: creation "is not the bursting into being of an autarchic Omnipotence, but a fundamental sadness: 'I was a hidden Treasure, I yearned to be known. That is why I produced creatures, in order to be known by them.' This phase is represented as the sadness of the divine Names suffering anguish in nonknowledge because no one names them, and it is this sadness that descended in the divine Breath which is Compassion and existentiation..."

Eh, I don't buy it.

The following, however, rings a bell which 'peals to the process theologian in me: that "creation springs" from "the potencies and virtualities latent in His own unrevealed being," such that "the Creation is essentially the revelation of the Divine Being, first to himself, a luminescence occurring within Him."

Yeah, I think God surprises himself. But only eternally. Otherwise, how can we call him "Creator"?

I do not believe God creates because he's sad. On the other hand, I do believe the creation must sometimes -- okay, often -- make him sad. Or maybe angry. But one cannot believe a moral agent -- let alone the ground of moral agency -- can be neutral, for example, with regard to members of the Islamic State who urge western followers to engage in random knife attacks:

"Many people are often squeamish of the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after 'modernization' distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and the striking of the enemy in war.... However, any such squirms and discomforts are never an excuse for abandoning jihad."

News you can use!

Oh, and although the Koran calls for decapitation (Sura 8:12), "jihadists are encouraged to go for major organs, arteries or the neck, but not the skull as their knife blade may break. 'It is advised to not necessarily attempt to fully detach the head, as the absence of technique can cause a person to spend a long time attempting to do so, that is, unless the individual’s circumstances and capabilities allow for such.'"

As we've been suggesting, God appears in the form of our ability to comprehend him. What to make of this grotesque form? It is not as if they are the first to call for human sacrifice as a way to obey and manifest the Almighty.

The imagination "is subject to two possibilities, since it can reveal the Hidden only by continuing to veil it. It is a veil; this veil can become so opaque as to imprison us and catch us in the trap of idolatry" (Corbin).

The imagination is a space where nonlocal realities -- ranging from the upper to lower vertical -- are "materialized." Logically, the only "cure" for the murderous jihadis is Christ crucified, which satisfies the idolatrous impulse to engage in human sacrifice once and for all.