How to Execute a Proper Graveyard Spiral

Continuing with the death spiral theme, what if the instruments on your console consist of the NY Times, Bezos Post, CNN, NBC, and the rest of the matrix media? This isn’t just a potentially fatal situation collectively, but individually, since a person with faulty information cannot exercise prudence. 

For prudence involves judgment -- i.e., practical wisdom -- and judgment comes down to whether something Is or Is Not. Poor judgment means acting on the belief that what is isn’t, or what isn’t is.  

For example, think of all the parents who are making fatal judgments about the sex of their child, in the belief that it can be changed through drugs and mutilation. 

Why do they believe such a patent falsehood? Partly because they are relying on instruments that are systematically feeding them misinformation. They don’t know they are being gaslit, and that attempting to change one’s sex is the most effective means of which we know to cause a person to attempt suicide.

Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers (https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/sex-reassignment-doesnt-work-here-the-evidence).

If there’s another variable that is as predictive of suicide, I’d like to know what it is. Whatever it is, I’m sure it is another form mental illness, or in other words, the same thing in a different guise.

I don’t really want to continue down this path, but my instruments are leaving me no choice.

For example, with regard to Twitter, we’re all finding out what everyone outside the Matrix already knew, that in recent years it had became one of the most effective means for the Regime to keep those millions of NPCs -- AKA Biden voters -- herded into the ideological Matrix. 

Now that I’m on a roll, I want to say that the younger generation is even more vulnerable to this widespread pneumectomy, since they spend such an inordinate amount of time passively staring into the mirror of what they’ve already been programmed to believe by the State-Big Tech Industrial Complex. 

Here we see an alternative mechanism of the death spiral, in that this generation is not only “instrument trained,” they know of no reality that isn’t spoon-fed them through their handheld instruments. Rather, their problem is that they need to look out the fucking window because that’s a mountain up ahead.  

Another deadly trend that comes to mind is the widespread rejection of some of our most reliable instruments such as IQ testing, SAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc. Now our elite pilots want to fly the plane based on such instruments as skin color, genitalia, and sexual peculiarity. The end result is an elite class of morons and/or crazies from Karine Jean-Pierre to Sam Brinton to Barack Obama. 

So, being instrument-trained is of no assistance if your instruments are inaccurate, especially if you have no idea they’re inaccurate. The news may be fake but the instruments are real, as are the consequences of using them to guide your plane. One way or another you will eventually crash, unless chance intervenes.

I rate that last statement of mine only partially true, because there is clearly another factor that can help pull us out of the nosedive, this being….

Here we once again confront the problem of religious terms and the preconceptions of what they entail. But we’re talking about things such as “grace,” “providence,” “destiny,” or holy happenstance, each of which going to a kind of vertical conspiracy to prevent us from ending up where we’re headed if we persist in relying on our own charts and instruments.

Another problem here -- similar to the problems of history and individuality --  is that there is no General Rule, only anecdotes. Every reader will have his own story of how he was miraculously prevented from going down that path, making that choice, hitting that wall, going over that cliff, derailing that train, etc. And not just one time, but many. 

In short, there was some nonlocal energy or influence or presence or telos exerting an unseen influence on our flight. 

And the reason why it happens more than once is that for most of us it takes awhile to both recognize and cooperate with this invisible instrument. Once we do cooperate, then fewer dramatic midcourse corrections are necessary. Once we set the course toward our transcendent end, there will still be deviations along the way, but we can’t be permanently dragged off course.

In short, we're all on a graveyard spiral, only some of us are pointing up.

We'll end with an aphorism: 

One who does not observe the stars is lost in history.

The Progressive Death Spiral

In yesterday’s post we alluded to the causes of a death spiral in aviation, which results from the pilot instinctively responding to it with actions that amplify it.  

I asked my fine feathered friend how one exits the loop, and he said you have to ignore sensory information and “trust the instruments,” which generally involves doing the opposite of what the brain is telling you to do.

Now, I don’t have an inordinate interest in aviation, but I do want my pilot to have more than a passing interest. But we all have an interest in how the progressive brain responds to crises by making them worse -- which then justifies the next round of progressive “solutions.” It’s a brilliant scam, nor will it end until we hit the ground. It’s gotten to the point that we can actually make out the contours of the terrain below, but it doesn’t matter. The ship of state is not about to pull out now.

So many aphorisms:

Modern man resolves his problems with solutions worse than the problems.

The reformers of current society persist in decorating the cabins of a sinking ship.

With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.

Liberal ideas are congenial. Their consequences are disastrous. 

The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.

The leftist emulates the devout who continue venerating the relic after the miracle has been proved to be a hoax.

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

He is called a liberal who does not understand that he has sacrificed freedom until it is too late to save him.

Note that the progressive -- the tenured pilot -- is never adequately trained in instrument flying, so he systematically ignores the very data that would counter the death spiral. 

For example, there are instruments that inform us about crime, inflation, budget deficits, illegal border crossings, adolescent mental illness, post-vaccine excessive deaths, the Biden crime family influence-peddling scheme, a failed educational establishment at every level, etc.  

Now, some on the right believe the left knows all about the instruments, but not only doesn’t care about them, but actually wants to crash the plane — the old Cloward-Piven strategy. 

Whatever the case may be, it is rarely helpful to attack motives, as the left always does with us. But at the same time, it is rarely helpful to address their arguments, because a leftist cannot be “informed” with fact and logic, rather, must be deprogrammed, converted, and often exorcised.  

That we win every argument scarcely matters, for there is a religious component -- to be precise, an ideology that partakes of religious categories and impulses -- that cannot be confronted head on, as all readers know by now. 

Anyway, *coincidentally*, yesterday I read a passage by Lonergan that perfectly encapsulates our present civilizational nosedive:

For the flight from understanding blocks the insights that concrete situations demand. There follow unintelligent policies and inept courses of action. The situation deteriorates to demand still further insights, and as they are blocked, policies become more unintelligent and action more inept. What is worse, the deteriorating situation seems to provide the uncritical, biased mind with the factual evidence in which the bias is claimed to be verified (emphasis mine).

There you have it: the Obama-Brandon death spiral, a feedback mechanism of  ever-increasing amplification of stupidity into an ever-tightening spiral of deadly…. PROGRESS! 

Yes, anyone can see the progress, if only you ignore all the idiot lights flashing on the console.  

Now, what I did not know until reading this Reader is that Lonergan’s whole project was aimed at pulling us out of the death spiral of civilizational decline. But what if the plane has already broken into pieces before it has hit the ground? 

If that’s the case, there is no putting the pieces back together. Rather, each of us is just clinging to a fragment of the plane and hoping to remain airborne. Or maybe attempting to rebuild the plane in mid-descent, reminiscent of the Apollo 13 astronauts who had to improvise their way out of certain death while on board the craft.

It also reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire, for which elites tried to blame Christians. The more things change…. 

The question is, “How can human intelligence hope to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains?” 

Best I can do is keep you updated as I make my way through the book.

The Progressive Death Spiral

In yesterday’s post we alluded to the causes of a death spiral in aviation, which results from the pilot instinctively responding to it with actions that amplify it.  

I asked my fine feathered friend how one exits the loop, and he said you have to ignore sensory information and “trust the instruments,” which generally involves doing the opposite of what the brain is telling you to do.

Now, I don’t have an inordinate interest in aviation, but I do want my pilot to have more than a passing interest. But we all have an interest in how the progressive brain responds to crises by making them worse -- which then justifies the next round of progressive “solutions.” It’s a brilliant scam, nor will it end until we hit the ground. It’s gotten to the point that we can actually make out the contours of the terrain below, but it doesn’t matter. The ship of state is not about to pull out now.

So many aphorisms:

Modern man resolves his problems with solutions worse than the problems.

The reformers of current society persist in decorating the cabins of a sinking ship.

With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.

Liberal ideas are congenial. Their consequences are disastrous. 

The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.

The leftist emulates the devout who continue venerating the relic after the miracle has been proved to be a hoax.

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

He is called a liberal who does not understand that he has sacrificed freedom until it is too late to save him.

Note that the progressive -- the tenured pilot -- is never adequately trained in instrument flying, so he systematically ignores the very data that would counter the death spiral. 

For example, there are instruments that inform us about crime, inflation, budget deficits, illegal border crossings, adolescent mental illness, post-vaccine excessive deaths, the Biden crime family influence-peddling scheme, a failed educational establishment at every level, etc.  

Now, some on the right believe the left knows all about the instruments, but not only doesn’t care about them, but actually wants to crash the plane — the old Cloward-Piven strategy. 

Whatever the case may be, it is rarely helpful to attack motives, as the left always does with us. But at the same time, it is rarely helpful to address their arguments, because a leftist cannot be “informed” with fact and logic, rather, must be deprogrammed, converted, and often exorcised.  

That we win every argument scarcely matters, for there is a religious component -- to be precise, an ideology that partakes of religious categories and impulses -- that cannot be confronted head on, as all readers know by now. 

Anyway, *coincidentally*, yesterday I read a passage by Lonergan that perfectly encapsulates our present civilizational nosedive:

For the flight from understanding blocks the insights that concrete situations demand. There follow unintelligent policies and inept courses of action. The situation deteriorates to demand still further insights, and as they are blocked, policies become more unintelligent and action more inept. What is worse, the deteriorating situation seems to provide the uncritical, biased mind with the factual evidence in which the bias is claimed to be verified (emphasis mine).

There you have it: the Obama-Brandon death spiral, a feedback mechanism of  ever-increasing amplification of stupidity into an ever-tightening spiral of deadly…. PROGRESS! 

Yes, anyone can see the progress, if only you ignore all the idiot lights flashing on the console.  

Now, what I did not know until reading this Reader is that Lonergan’s whole project was aimed at pulling us out of the death spiral of civilizational decline. But what if the plane has already broken into pieces before it has hit the ground? 

If that’s the case, there is no putting the pieces back together. Rather, each of us is just clinging to a fragment of the plane and hoping to remain airborne. Or maybe attempting to rebuild the plane in mid-descent, reminiscent of the Apollo 13 astronauts who had to improvise their way out of certain death while on board the craft.

It also reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire, for which elites tried to blame Christians. The more things change…. 

The question is, “How can human intelligence hope to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains?” 

Best I can do is keep you updated as I make my way through the book.

The Lazy Man's Way to Cutting Through All This Hideous BS

Is there any chance of man returning to the the unified cosmos he once inhabited? Not this or that man, but mankind? And how may I be of assistance?

Well, for starters, unity is much easier if you don’t know about other civilizations, religions, and cultures. Then again, a nonlocal source not only says this has been the case since Babel, but the source wants it to be this way -- linguistically diverse and scattered over the face of the earth. 

But forever? I don’t think so. Rather, for a reason, which must be the higher and deeper unity rendered possible by diversity. 

Diversity for its own sake is not only stupid, it is progressive and therefore diabolical. Indeed, it’s in the name, which is related to “scatter.” But if the devil scatters then Christ is the “gatherer,” the very principle of re-unification (and pre-unification, i.e., Alpha and Omega) -- one might say from the scourge of identity politics to the gift of true identity in Christ. That's the promise, anyway.

Hmm. It seems the cosmos is a journey from unity to diversity back to unity at a higher level. 

Leaving the cosmos out of it for the moment, this certainly describes the human journey, or at least its telos. It’s why there’s such a thing as “development” to begin with, for development is always in the direction of a deeper and more comprehensive integration.

These preliminary thoughts were provoked by Lonergan, who literally spent his whole life trying to understand. And at the same time, trying to understand understanding, which he thought would lead back to unity. In other words, beneath all the diversity is a kind of meta-understanding not situated in the objects but in the subject who understands them. 

To learn thoroughly is a vast undertaking that calls for relentless perseverance…. in which one’s living is more or less constantly absorbed in the effort to understand.

For Lonergan it was a vocation. I enjoy the same lifestyle, only for me it's an avocation. Still, an all-consuming one. It’s not my only hobby, but it’s in the top three, along with music and baseball. 

With all that, did Lonergan succeed? And if didn't, what makes me think I can? 

Several things: first, there’s a shortcut, otherwise the way would be inaccessible to anyone who isn’t a genius such as Lonergan. Indeed, sometimes genius itself can have a kind of scattering effect, in that trying to know everything can obscure knowledge of the one thing needful.   

I suppose it’s why my most frequently cited accomplices are Davila and Schuon, since they cut through layers of ice and fog with extreme simplicity. Pieper is the same way, and Polanyi also conveys the most with the least. Hayek too, if only his English were better. And Jesus was pretty concise, and even then his words are always ordered to the Word himself. "My yoke is easy" and all that.

Is it just because I am a lazy man? Yes, but then again, I spend a lot of time at this. I’ll bet I devote more time to my avocation than most people do to their vocation, which makes me both lazy and odd. Or maybe even somewhat normal, if Schuon is correct. For

To be normal is to be homogeneous, and to be homogeneous is to have a center. A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether uniform, at least concordant -- that is to say, sufficiently concordant to convey that decisive center which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God.

Well, woo hoo, because oddly enough this makes me just odd enough, since I definitely have those persistent tendencies toward Celestial Central:

The tendency toward the Absolute, for which we are made, is difficult to realize in the heterogeneous [read: scattered] soul -- a soul lacking a center, precisely, and by that fact contrary to its reason for being. Such a soul is a priori a “house divided against itself,” thus destined to collapse, eschatologically speaking.

Well well, who's the oddball now? Take that, normies, worldlings, and achievers!  

Somewhere in this chapter Schuon gets into the potential problems of genius alluded to above. Here:

a genius is all too often a man without a center, in whom this lack is replaced by a creative hypertrophy.

Here he’s mainly referring to those artistic types who eventually become caricatures of themselves. Absent orientation to the Center, their mere talent betrays itself. More generally,

what is blameworthy in the exteriorized and worldly genius is not necessarily his production, but the fact that he sets his center outside himself, in a work which in a certain manner deprives him of his real core or puts itself in place of it.

Understood. It seems facile and boorish for a lazy blogger to criticize a genius such as Lonergan, but he does spend an awful lot of time in the weeds and trees of jungles of every particular science, and even then apologizes for being such a dilettante. 

Well, not this Raccoon. I'm sorry, but I will never apologize! Philosophy is both simpler and higher than science, and God is higher than both. And simplicity itself. Literally.  

Besides, this is a civilizational emergency. We're in a progressive graveyard spiral and there's no guarantee we'll pull out of it. Just last night a pilot friend described to me how this works, in that everything the pilot does to deal with the situation only makes the situation worse, in a negative loop. Besides, who's actually piloting the plane? Does the media really not want to know who it is? Or like us, do they know?

Anyway,  no one has the time to read thousands upon thousands of pages of of philosophy from a single obscure genius, let alone master all the sciences. Maybe a lazy man is just what we need, so long as he is lazy in the right ways about the right things.   

The Lazy Man's Way to Cutting Through All This Hideous BS

Is there any chance of man returning to the the unified cosmos he once inhabited? Not this or that man, but mankind? And how may I be of assistance?

Well, for starters, unity is much easier if you don’t know about other civilizations, religions, and cultures. Then again, a nonlocal source not only says this has been the case since Babel, but the source wants it to be this way -- linguistically diverse and scattered over the face of the earth. 

But forever? I don’t think so. Rather, for a reason, which must be the higher and deeper unity rendered possible by diversity. 

Diversity for its own sake is not only stupid, it is progressive and therefore diabolical. Indeed, it’s in the name, which is related to “scatter.” But if the devil scatters then Christ is the “gatherer,” the very principle of re-unification (and pre-unification, i.e., Alpha and Omega) -- one might say from the scourge of identity politics to the gift of true identity in Christ. That's the promise, anyway.

Hmm. It seems the cosmos is a journey from unity to diversity back to unity at a higher level. 

Leaving the cosmos out of it for the moment, this certainly describes the human journey, or at least its telos. It’s why there’s such a thing as “development” to begin with, for development is always in the direction of a deeper and more comprehensive integration.

These preliminary thoughts were provoked by Lonergan, who literally spent his whole life trying to understand. And at the same time, trying to understand understanding, which he thought would lead back to unity. In other words, beneath all the diversity is a kind of meta-understanding not situated in the objects but in the subject who understands them. 

To learn thoroughly is a vast undertaking that calls for relentless perseverance…. in which one’s living is more or less constantly absorbed in the effort to understand.

For Lonergan it was a vocation. I enjoy the same lifestyle, only for me it's an avocation. Still, an all-consuming one. It’s not my only hobby, but it’s in the top three, along with music and baseball. 

With all that, did Lonergan succeed? And if didn't, what makes me think I can? 

Several things: first, there’s a shortcut, otherwise the way would be inaccessible to anyone who isn’t a genius such as Lonergan. Indeed, sometimes genius itself can have a kind of scattering effect, in that trying to know everything can obscure knowledge of the one thing needful.   

I suppose it’s why my most frequently cited accomplices are Davila and Schuon, since they cut through layers of ice and fog with extreme simplicity. Pieper is the same way, and Polanyi also conveys the most with the least. Hayek too, if only his English were better. And Jesus was pretty concise, and even then his words are always ordered to the Word himself. "My yoke is easy" and all that.

Is it just because I am a lazy man? Yes, but then again, I spend a lot of time at this. I’ll bet I devote more time to my avocation than most people do to their vocation, which makes me both lazy and odd. Or maybe even somewhat normal, if Schuon is correct. For

To be normal is to be homogeneous, and to be homogeneous is to have a center. A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether uniform, at least concordant -- that is to say, sufficiently concordant to convey that decisive center which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God.

Well, woo hoo, because oddly enough this makes me just odd enough, since I definitely have those persistent tendencies toward Celestial Central:

The tendency toward the Absolute, for which we are made, is difficult to realize in the heterogeneous [read: scattered] soul -- a soul lacking a center, precisely, and by that fact contrary to its reason for being. Such a soul is a priori a “house divided against itself,” thus destined to collapse, eschatologically speaking.

Well well, who's the oddball now? Take that, normies, worldlings, and achievers!  

Somewhere in this chapter Schuon gets into the potential problems of genius alluded to above. Here:

a genius is all too often a man without a center, in whom this lack is replaced by a creative hypertrophy.

Here he’s mainly referring to those artistic types who eventually become caricatures of themselves. Absent orientation to the Center, their mere talent betrays itself. More generally,

what is blameworthy in the exteriorized and worldly genius is not necessarily his production, but the fact that he sets his center outside himself, in a work which in a certain manner deprives him of his real core or puts itself in place of it.

Understood. It seems facile and boorish for a lazy blogger to criticize a genius such as Lonergan, but he does spend an awful lot of time in the weeds and trees of jungles of every particular science, and even then apologizes for being such a dilettante. 

Well, not this Raccoon. I'm sorry, but I will never apologize! Philosophy is both simpler and higher than science, and God is higher than both. And simplicity itself. Literally.  

Besides, this is a civilizational emergency. We're in a progressive graveyard spiral and there's no guarantee we'll pull out of it. Just last night a pilot friend described to me how this works, in that everything the pilot does to deal with the situation only makes the situation worse, in a negative loop. Besides, who's actually piloting the plane? Does the media really not want to know who it is? Or like us, do they know?

Anyway,  no one has the time to read thousands upon thousands of pages of of philosophy from a single obscure genius, let alone master all the sciences. Maybe a lazy man is just what we need, so long as he is lazy in the right ways about the right things.   

Appearances, Reality, and the Disappearance of Reality

There are really only two options: consciousness is reducible to what is “below” it -- in which case there is no such thing as above or below -- or its ground and principle is anchored in something higher than man. Here again, only the latter preserves any conceivable notion of hierarchy, which is to say, vertical degrees of reality.

Speaking of which, some things are more real than others, but only from the standpoint of a vertical perspective. From a purely horizontal perspective, anything is as real -- or unreal -- as anything else. 

Come to think of it, unreality becomes every bit as real as reality, for who put main charge of determining what’s real? That no one can live this way might be a hint that it is false, but some people can't take a hint, to put it mildly. 

One of man’s most fundamental conceptual bifurcations is appearance <—> reality. This is precisely where any philosophy must begin: just say Appearances and Reality and draw the implications therefrom, and Bʘʘ!, you're a philosopher.

Really? I think so. It just popped into my head, but I’ll bet it holds water, because Petey wouldn’t joke around with a subject so totally lacking in interest. Problem is, everyone thinks they’re unproblematically living in reality, which means their philosophy — such as it is — is implicit and uncritical.

But even -- or especially -- explicit philosophies can be as sunk into appearances as any other. Indeed, one needn’t have much familiarity with philosophy to know why they say it may be defined as error on a grandiose scale. 

Which doesn’t necessarily mean appearances on a grandiose scale, since appearances must be of reality, otherwise they're just dreams, fantasies, delusions, or unhinged fairy tales for the tenured.

The most dangerous of these viral fairy tales do not come spontaneously from below, but from above -- in particular, when they escape academia and merge with the state. Then they become myths that simultaneously legitimize and veil power, i.e., a sinister world of mandatory appearances. Or in other words, Don’t believe in reality, or else.  

There’s not enough time in the world to cite examples, so I’ll just click to the nearest news aggregator and pluck the first one I see.  

Here’s a good one: Newsom Says Republicans to Blame for Imminent Border Chaos. If you think that’s in-your-face, how about this: President Biden to Sign Respect for Marriage Act Flanked by Drag Queen Story Hour Performer. 

That last one contains no fewer than four lies and/or delusions, 1) that Biden is president, 2) that marriage isn’t confined to members of the opposite sex, 3) that pretending otherwise constitutes “respect” for the institution, and 4) that exposing children to mentally ill perverts is a great idea. 

Now, you and I know this is insane, but the insanity is grounded in a denial of any human ability to distinguish between sanity and insanity -- or appearances and reality. Of course, the most effective method to discover the difference is via free speech., And now you know why the party of the insane is so eager to ban it. 

Here’s the difference: we're right, but we want to preserve your freedom to disagree. The left is wrong, and they wish to deny our freedom to disagree. Which again amounts to belief in appearances, or else!

We’ll get back to Lecture 8 in a moment, but I’ve been reading another book called The Lonergan Reader, which has a helpful introduction that situates his overall philosophical, theological, and methodological project, which was partly to answer “the liberal view that all judgments are more or less probable but that nothing is certain.” Even a blogger knows enough to ask, Is that certain? 

“Lonergan saw the twentieth century as marked by an unexpected, bitter, and widespread disillusionment” leading to “the rise of ideologies with their high-minded incoherence,” “totalitarian ambitions,” and “simple-minded opportunism and violence.” 

The Raccoon is tempted to throw up his paws and say “ever thus to deadbeats, especially since Genesis 3,” but it certainly seems there has been an acceleration in the velocity of our fall since World War I. 

Not only have we never recovered from that ontological trainwreck, we are still sorting through its wreckage, even if delusional progressivism has the upper hand, if not a death grip, at the moment. 

I don’t want to end on a pessimistic note, so let’s end on a desperate one:

These meanings and values have yet to be replaced, and the failure to replace them has created a vacuum of meaning and value. The situation is rendered desperate… when its increasing absurdity, unintelligibility, and irrationality come to be regarded not as “mere proof of aberration” but as “evidence in favor of error.”

In a context of civilizational delusion, it is difficult to imagine a more perfect synecdoche than Biden.

Appearances, Reality, and the Disappearance of Reality

There are really only two options: consciousness is reducible to what is “below” it -- in which case there is no such thing as above or below -- or its ground and principle is anchored in something higher than man. Here again, only the latter preserves any conceivable notion of hierarchy, which is to say, vertical degrees of reality.

Speaking of which, some things are more real than others, but only from the standpoint of a vertical perspective. From a purely horizontal perspective, anything is as real -- or unreal -- as anything else. 

Come to think of it, unreality becomes every bit as real as reality, for who put main charge of determining what’s real? That no one can live this way might be a hint that it is false, but some people can't take a hint, to put it mildly. 

One of man’s most fundamental conceptual bifurcations is appearance <—> reality. This is precisely where any philosophy must begin: just say Appearances and Reality and draw the implications therefrom, and Bʘʘ!, you're a philosopher.

Really? I think so. It just popped into my head, but I’ll bet it holds water, because Petey wouldn’t joke around with a subject so totally lacking in interest. Problem is, everyone thinks they’re unproblematically living in reality, which means their philosophy — such as it is — is implicit and uncritical.

But even -- or especially -- explicit philosophies can be as sunk into appearances as any other. Indeed, one needn’t have much familiarity with philosophy to know why they say it may be defined as error on a grandiose scale. 

Which doesn’t necessarily mean appearances on a grandiose scale, since appearances must be of reality, otherwise they're just dreams, fantasies, delusions, or unhinged fairy tales for the tenured.

The most dangerous of these viral fairy tales do not come spontaneously from below, but from above -- in particular, when they escape academia and merge with the state. Then they become myths that simultaneously legitimize and veil power, i.e., a sinister world of mandatory appearances. Or in other words, Don’t believe in reality, or else.  

There’s not enough time in the world to cite examples, so I’ll just click to the nearest news aggregator and pluck the first one I see.  

Here’s a good one: Newsom Says Republicans to Blame for Imminent Border Chaos. If you think that’s in-your-face, how about this: President Biden to Sign Respect for Marriage Act Flanked by Drag Queen Story Hour Performer. 

That last one contains no fewer than four lies and/or delusions, 1) that Biden is president, 2) that marriage isn’t confined to members of the opposite sex, 3) that pretending otherwise constitutes “respect” for the institution, and 4) that exposing children to mentally ill perverts is a great idea. 

Now, you and I know this is insane, but the insanity is grounded in a denial of any human ability to distinguish between sanity and insanity -- or appearances and reality. Of course, the most effective method to discover the difference is via free speech., And now you know why the party of the insane is so eager to ban it. 

Here’s the difference: we're right, but we want to preserve your freedom to disagree. The left is wrong, and they wish to deny our freedom to disagree. Which again amounts to belief in appearances, or else!

We’ll get back to Lecture 8 in a moment, but I’ve been reading another book called The Lonergan Reader, which has a helpful introduction that situates his overall philosophical, theological, and methodological project, which was partly to answer “the liberal view that all judgments are more or less probable but that nothing is certain.” Even a blogger knows enough to ask, Is that certain? 

“Lonergan saw the twentieth century as marked by an unexpected, bitter, and widespread disillusionment” leading to “the rise of ideologies with their high-minded incoherence,” “totalitarian ambitions,” and “simple-minded opportunism and violence.” 

The Raccoon is tempted to throw up his paws and say “ever thus to deadbeats, especially since Genesis 3,” but it certainly seems there has been an acceleration in the velocity of our fall since World War I. 

Not only have we never recovered from that ontological trainwreck, we are still sorting through its wreckage, even if delusional progressivism has the upper hand, if not a death grip, at the moment. 

I don’t want to end on a pessimistic note, so let’s end on a desperate one:

These meanings and values have yet to be replaced, and the failure to replace them has created a vacuum of meaning and value. The situation is rendered desperate… when its increasing absurdity, unintelligibility, and irrationality come to be regarded not as “mere proof of aberration” but as “evidence in favor of error.”

In a context of civilizational delusion, it is difficult to imagine a more perfect synecdoche than Biden.

Periphysics and Metachoresis

If that title doesn't drive away readers, nothing will!

Lecture 8 of Being and Understanding is called A Definition of Metaphysics, but don’t tell me, let me guess. Actually, I like Schuon’s succinct definition:

the science of the Absolute and of the true nature of things. 

One question I still wonder about is the degree to which revelation is situated within metaphysics, or vice versa. 

Clearly there are aspects of revelation that cannot be contained within metaphysics, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for reasons having to do with its historical character. For there is no “science of history,” since it obeys no general law reducible to something other than itself. 

As such, one of the scandals of Christianity is its darn particularity. On the upside, this particularity extends to you and I, and is the ground of our individuality and our freedom (and duty) to be who we are.

This particularity goes way back to the beginning, starting with Adam, then Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, Judah, David, Mary, etc. Persons -- to the extent that they are individuals and not progressive sheep -- are radically individual, and there can be no science of the unique. 

There is also the question of God being a person with his own will, meaning that he too must operate outside any general law that would constrain him.  

I’ve suggested before that God must be “constrained” by his own nature, but just yesterday I read an aphorism I hadn’t seen before that disagrees. 

Dávila rejects the implication that “God wills the good because it is good, instead of teaching that the good is good because God wills it.” He suggests that the former erects “a subjugated God,” but isn’t this more of an Islamic idea -- that if God wills evil, it isn’t evil, it’s good? I mean, I get it that we can't always see how it's good, but still...

We’ll have to come back to this later. Meanwhile, I do agree with the following, that 

Christianity is the interpretation of a particular, irrevocable and unique event as the reason for the universe (ibid.).

Moreover, this event is not a consequence but a cause of reason:

reason does not determine the significance of the facts. To the contrary, there is one fact that determines the significance of reason (ibid.).

In Jesus we have the paradox of “a fact that transcends itself,” such that the universe becomes “the sum of necessary postulates to the existence of Christ manifested in the consciousness of the Church” (ibid.). Therefore, metaphysics is a consequence of Christ. This makes more sense to me than the bad-is-good-if-God-says-so thingy.

Now, speaking of Christ and metaphysics, if God says false is true, would this make it true? Do we constrain or subjugate God by binding him to Truth? Can’t be. 

Schuon is raising his hand:

The foundation of metaphysical certitude is the coincidence between truth and our being; a coincidence that no ratiocination could invalidate. 

Okay, but what if the foundation of metaphysical certitude is the certitude of the union of truth and being in Christ? In this case, our certitude would have to be a function of being members of his body. And Schuon even suggests something similar:

Christ is the Intellect of microcosms as well as that of the macrocosm. He is then the Intellect in us as well as the Intellect in the Universe and a fortiori in God; in this sense, it can be said that there is no truth nor wisdom that does not come from Christ, and this is evidently independent of all consideration of time and place. Just as "the Light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not," so too the Intellect shines in the darkness of passions and illusions.

Enough lecturing. Can we get back to the lecture? Lonergan defines metaphysics as 

the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments….  It is conceived in terms of the totality of knowing and the totality of the object of knowing.

Which reminds me of the circles within the Circle described in yesterday’s post: metaphysics is the ultimate circle, the last go-round. Unless -- again -- there’s a Person at the top, not an idea or principle. And not just any person, but an open Circle of them, a meta-perichoresis or something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perichoresis):

Periphysics and Metachoresis

If that title doesn't drive away readers, nothing will!

Lecture 8 of Being and Understanding is called A Definition of Metaphysics, but don’t tell me, let me guess. Actually, I like Schuon’s succinct definition:

the science of the Absolute and of the true nature of things. 

One question I still wonder about is the degree to which revelation is situated within metaphysics, or vice versa. 

Clearly there are aspects of revelation that cannot be contained within metaphysics, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for reasons having to do with its historical character. For there is no “science of history,” since it obeys no general law reducible to something other than itself. 

As such, one of the scandals of Christianity is its darn particularity. On the upside, this particularity extends to you and I, and is the ground of our individuality and our freedom (and duty) to be who we are.

This particularity goes way back to the beginning, starting with Adam, then Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, Judah, David, Mary, etc. Persons -- to the extent that they are individuals and not progressive sheep -- are radically individual, and there can be no science of the unique. 

There is also the question of God being a person with his own will, meaning that he too must operate outside any general law that would constrain him.  

I’ve suggested before that God must be “constrained” by his own nature, but just yesterday I read an aphorism I hadn’t seen before that disagrees. 

Dávila rejects the implication that “God wills the good because it is good, instead of teaching that the good is good because God wills it.” He suggests that the former erects “a subjugated God,” but isn’t this more of an Islamic idea -- that if God wills evil, it isn’t evil, it’s good? I mean, I get it that we can't always see how it's good, but still...

We’ll have to come back to this later. Meanwhile, I do agree with the following, that 

Christianity is the interpretation of a particular, irrevocable and unique event as the reason for the universe (ibid.).

Moreover, this event is not a consequence but a cause of reason:

reason does not determine the significance of the facts. To the contrary, there is one fact that determines the significance of reason (ibid.).

In Jesus we have the paradox of “a fact that transcends itself,” such that the universe becomes “the sum of necessary postulates to the existence of Christ manifested in the consciousness of the Church” (ibid.). Therefore, metaphysics is a consequence of Christ. This makes more sense to me than the bad-is-good-if-God-says-so thingy.

Now, speaking of Christ and metaphysics, if God says false is true, would this make it true? Do we constrain or subjugate God by binding him to Truth? Can’t be. 

Schuon is raising his hand:

The foundation of metaphysical certitude is the coincidence between truth and our being; a coincidence that no ratiocination could invalidate. 

Okay, but what if the foundation of metaphysical certitude is the certitude of the union of truth and being in Christ? In this case, our certitude would have to be a function of being members of his body. And Schuon even suggests something similar:

Christ is the Intellect of microcosms as well as that of the macrocosm. He is then the Intellect in us as well as the Intellect in the Universe and a fortiori in God; in this sense, it can be said that there is no truth nor wisdom that does not come from Christ, and this is evidently independent of all consideration of time and place. Just as "the Light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not," so too the Intellect shines in the darkness of passions and illusions.

Enough lecturing. Can we get back to the lecture? Lonergan defines metaphysics as 

the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments….  It is conceived in terms of the totality of knowing and the totality of the object of knowing.

Which reminds me of the circles within the Circle described in yesterday’s post: metaphysics is the ultimate circle, the last go-round. Unless -- again -- there’s a Person at the top, not an idea or principle. And not just any person, but an open Circle of them, a meta-perichoresis or something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perichoresis):

A Couple of Soph-Centered Cosmonauts

Back now to Understanding and Being. Toward the end of Lecture 7 Lonergan says something that reminds me of what was mentioned in the previous post about light that has been traveling for billions of years hitting a bullseye on the retina. What perfect aim!  

Well, truth is light, and it too occasionally hits its target. This one hit me, and it’s entirely possible that it missed everyone else. Or, like a message in a bottle, it just happened to wash up on my driveway. 

It’s in the context of a discussion of the nature of subjects and objects, and the problem of objectivity. It also goes to the old philosophical question of where we begin, with the objects of knowledge or the intellect that knows them? For it seems we’re always doing both:

The point is to complete the circle. One way to complete the circle is to begin from knowing (Lonergan).

Alternatively, one can begin with a metaphysics of the knower, but 

One will be completing the same circle, except that one will be starting from a different point.  

In short, one can begin in the traditional way, with what is external and prior to us — It’s not our fault, it was this way we got here! Besides, it's the woman's fault.

Or, we can begin with what is quite literally first for us -- the knowing subject -- even though it arrives on the cosmic scene long after the objects it potentially knows. Just don’t radically separate the two and create a vicious dualism. Keep the circle spinning:

As long as one completes the circle, the same thing will be said, but it will be said at different points along the line.

And as we’ve said many times, although we can close this or that epistemological circle, any such circle must be situated in the infinitely larger open circle -- AKA spiral -- of ontology.  

In a way, you could say this is Gödel’s whole point, but really, it goes back to Thomas: the rational intellect is not confined to mere reason, but always transcends it.

Which goes to the distinction between what Hayek calls evolutionary (or critical) rationalism, as opposed to the naive constructivist kind that would enclose us in our own manmode prison. Only the former maintains the complementarity between the proper limits and virtual limitlessness of the human mind. So,

In principle, it makes no difference where one chooses to start. What is important is going around the circle….

You first do the circle in a small way, and then you do it in a bigger way. First you get the general idea of the whole way around one level, then you go the whole way around on a higher level. The more significant the developments are, the higher up you move.

This pretty much reflects the whole One Cosmos vision, which I thought was more or less limited to a single cosmonaut, i.e., me. Turns out there are no fewer than two: 

"Insofar as there is any progress,” says Lonergan,

then these circles keep expanding. They move up a pole, as it were, with smaller circles at the bottom and bigger circles at the top.

This is another important point, in that there is an implicit vertical axis around which the circles orbit. But also, whole systems of thought can become detached from the axis and spin off into a void of darkness and tenure. Alternatively, a tiny circle can close upon itself, as in atheistic materialism.   

I will try to keep posts under 1,000 words. I know you have more interesting things to do, although I can’t imagine what they might be.

A Couple of Soph-Centered Cosmonauts

Back now to Understanding and Being. Toward the end of Lecture 7 Lonergan says something that reminds me of what was mentioned in the previous post about light that has been traveling for billions of years hitting a bullseye on the retina. What perfect aim!  

Well, truth is light, and it too occasionally hits its target. This one hit me, and it’s entirely possible that it missed everyone else. Or, like a message in a bottle, it just happened to wash up on my driveway. 

It’s in the context of a discussion of the nature of subjects and objects, and the problem of objectivity. It also goes to the old philosophical question of where we begin, with the objects of knowledge or the intellect that knows them? For it seems we’re always doing both:

The point is to complete the circle. One way to complete the circle is to begin from knowing (Lonergan).

Alternatively, one can begin with a metaphysics of the knower, but 

One will be completing the same circle, except that one will be starting from a different point.  

In short, one can begin in the traditional way, with what is external and prior to us — It’s not our fault, it was this way we got here! Besides, it's the woman's fault.

Or, we can begin with what is quite literally first for us -- the knowing subject -- even though it arrives on the cosmic scene long after the objects it potentially knows. Just don’t radically separate the two and create a vicious dualism. Keep the circle spinning:

As long as one completes the circle, the same thing will be said, but it will be said at different points along the line.

And as we’ve said many times, although we can close this or that epistemological circle, any such circle must be situated in the infinitely larger open circle -- AKA spiral -- of ontology.  

In a way, you could say this is Gödel’s whole point, but really, it goes back to Thomas: the rational intellect is not confined to mere reason, but always transcends it.

Which goes to the distinction between what Hayek calls evolutionary (or critical) rationalism, as opposed to the naive constructivist kind that would enclose us in our own manmode prison. Only the former maintains the complementarity between the proper limits and virtual limitlessness of the human mind. So,

In principle, it makes no difference where one chooses to start. What is important is going around the circle….

You first do the circle in a small way, and then you do it in a bigger way. First you get the general idea of the whole way around one level, then you go the whole way around on a higher level. The more significant the developments are, the higher up you move.

This pretty much reflects the whole One Cosmos vision, which I thought was more or less limited to a single cosmonaut, i.e., me. Turns out there are no fewer than two: 

"Insofar as there is any progress,” says Lonergan,

then these circles keep expanding. They move up a pole, as it were, with smaller circles at the bottom and bigger circles at the top.

This is another important point, in that there is an implicit vertical axis around which the circles orbit. But also, whole systems of thought can become detached from the axis and spin off into a void of darkness and tenure. Alternatively, a tiny circle can close upon itself, as in atheistic materialism.   

I will try to keep posts under 1,000 words. I know you have more interesting things to do, although I can’t imagine what they might be.