The depopulation of the willful universe, dare I say the genocide of the spirits, has cut a deep wound in the tomes of history. The spirits, once cooperative in this fallen world, whether for good or ill, have been reduced to mere metaphors or even psychoses. And all because, it seems, they threatened our power, our authority. Not only has humanity sought power through the insatiable accumulation of knowledge to control and order the natural world, but it has sought power by reducing the sphere of agents competitive in that natural world. The planets no longer have their own force, but are comprised a force "f" determined elsewise beyond will. We've taken our law of science, created for by and through humans, in our finitude, and imbued it with universal authority.
Those beings who cannot be recognized by the court of science are condemned to the abyss, the margins of human consciousness. And so, when they make their presence felt, they do so with the vengeance of the most truly offended sort; as what is more offensive than to have one's very existence scorned? They command human minds to the most indulgent excesses, the most neurotic neuroses. Our frontline soldiers, the psychiatrists (who seem more to tryst with the soul than to iasthai) prescribe weapons tested on mice. They claim these weapons "scientific," somehow more in accordance with the laws of nature than a therapeutic approach. And their plan of action: [drug] [inhibits/increases/reduces] the [production/reuptake/removal] of [neurotransmitter] in the [pre/post] synaptic site. What exactly this means, well that's brain chemistry my dear, so I suggest you keep that stupid smile on your face and run along with the rest of the crowd. We've got just the medicine for those negative nancies among you.
By allowing the scientist this pretension, of causative agency in respect to the soul's health, we're allowed the singularity of rational, human agency. There mustn't be others forces at work, merely the disinterested processes of scientific law. Only human rationality can bend this law to a particular will, and only human rationality can effectively operate agency. Human rationality apprehends the law and is thereby able to adjust its actions in accordance with it. The world itself is left deaf and dumb.
Of course, this understanding of the world stands against any traditional understanding of law. For in order for law to operate there need be, not just orders of conformation, but bodies which must therein conform. As conformation is a process, these bodies require an impetus to conform. We might tautologically suggest that attraction lies in the emptiness of the orders and the fullness of the bodies, such that the bodies desire determination by order and the orders desire fulfillment by body. We are still left the necessity for agency, for how might a body desire determination without consent to that desire, rational or not? That human bodies exhibit such will is confirmed by mental revelation, but that other bodies exhibit such will is a logical necessity of the system we circumscribed above. Whether we assign this will to a unity beyond or to the bodies themselves is a matter of perspective. For in order to reconcile ourselves with the plurality of willing bodies evident in the world, we need recourse to transcendent divinity as such; but, at the existential level, we must admit that such a plurality of will does effect itself in effecting the fulfillment of what we've taken to calling the laws of nature.
To relate this discussion back to its starting point, we're drawn to the aphorism that molecules and communities of molecules, including but not limited to neurotransmitters, are bodies and therefore require some agency to fulfill the orders assigned them by law. And so we attest, in accordance with the Christian tradition of thought and reason, to the possibility of real demonic influence on our psyches. That we fight these demons with what may as well be other demons (which we understand all the lesser) is an insult to both science and reason. That psychiatry cares no longer for the soul, as it does for the well adjusted consumer, the ultimate product, gives us pause. For who is left to be saved once the soul has been suborned to the system? And what love is to be found in a world where there is no will to love, no one to be loved.
22.2.08
Modes of Thought
The modes of thought that give me worried pause in this, the modern world, are frightfully numerous--the museumification of history, the abstraction of social communities, the commercialization of self-identity, the crass materialization of meaning, the ignorance of obedience. I know not the linchpin to turn against these sins. Were I to rank them, I'd do so in ascending order of significance; but one is still left at the causal/correlative dilemma. For how can one be anything but ignorance the true source of authority, the human need for obedience, once meaning has become a by-product of empirically manufactured reality? And how can meaning be anything but so once our most intimate self-reflections double back upon the brands which mark us? Need I mention that no alternative to self-identity against others exists once social communities have been abstracted into webforums, social statistics, and marking research? History can have no purpose in such a world but for nostalgia; for the life of tradition finds no place in a world without touch and feeling.
16.2.08
Probability
A fundamental flaw of the modern worldview is the inability to contemplate the improbable; that is, catastrophe and miracle. Two reasons are at the heart of this paradigm. 1) We've built an elaborate technological superstructure to confine improbability to the extreme margins of our consciousness, and 2) we've turned away from eschatological consciousness. Those who encourage eschatologies or decry the secularization of improbability are pushed to the fringe, accused of heresy and logical impropriety.
It is not as if by contemplate we mean that earlier times could better apprehend improbability, could index it, quantify it, and ultimately steer clear of it. They most assuredly could not. That is the point. They did not have the penetration of discourse necessary to surgically remove improbability from the immediate reality of the present. They could not confidentially say (or feel) that the odds of being struck by lightning were 1-in-83,930, and so feel comfortable meandering about outdoors when Zeus was throwing a fit. The best they could muster were raggedy old maps with sea serpents painted on the margins--there there be dragons indeed.
The space for the improbable was larger and more imposing on our daily consciousness. We were thus more likely, in order to allay the negative improbable, to turn to the positive improbable, and thereby counteract those very real worries and concerns.
In today's world the positive improbable (or at least our consciousness thereof) has been vanquished by science, while the negative improbable carries on. The negative improbable--while reduced in frequency thanks to advances in disciplines such as modern medicine, storm tracking, and open communications--has increased in amplitude--with global epidemics, earth shattering over-heating, and nuclear war (not to mention the always looming prospect of one's own death).
So we resort to the two fallbacks the modern world still leaves to us, fear and therapy. We use fear to eliminate the consciousness of the negative improbable by grandstanding in the threat to destroy it. Though this destruction is an illusion with no future, we cling to it because we lack true consciousness of the positive improbable alone capable of conquering the forces of darkness. Therapy, on the other hand, enjoins us to resign ourselves to our fate, to be found in the empty abyss of the negative improbable. If too difficult, we can merely resign ourselves to a world of addiction to fill the void and dull the imminent anxiety--drugs, consumerism, psychotherapy, dieting, meditation practices. All these things take our minds off the necessity of the always approaching negative improbable and perhaps, as in meditation and psychotherapy, resign ourselves to that end.
Not one of the above approaches is ultimately productive, though we all fall into them from time to time. The only salvation lies in that positive improbable our forebears still had access to. The answer lies in hope, in faith, in patient expectation of that one thing, if thingness could ever be assigned it, capable of overcoming the negative improbable both in our consciousness and in reality. The positive improbable, the paraousia--inconcievable in the modern discourse of technicality and fact--alone stands capable of answering the power of death. Only the antithesis, the logical opposite of the collapsing reality which faces us, unbound by the determination of the system, but nonetheless completing it and destroying it, fulfilling it, ending it, and bringing it to a close; only here does salvation lie.
It is not as if by contemplate we mean that earlier times could better apprehend improbability, could index it, quantify it, and ultimately steer clear of it. They most assuredly could not. That is the point. They did not have the penetration of discourse necessary to surgically remove improbability from the immediate reality of the present. They could not confidentially say (or feel) that the odds of being struck by lightning were 1-in-83,930, and so feel comfortable meandering about outdoors when Zeus was throwing a fit. The best they could muster were raggedy old maps with sea serpents painted on the margins--there there be dragons indeed.
The space for the improbable was larger and more imposing on our daily consciousness. We were thus more likely, in order to allay the negative improbable, to turn to the positive improbable, and thereby counteract those very real worries and concerns.
In today's world the positive improbable (or at least our consciousness thereof) has been vanquished by science, while the negative improbable carries on. The negative improbable--while reduced in frequency thanks to advances in disciplines such as modern medicine, storm tracking, and open communications--has increased in amplitude--with global epidemics, earth shattering over-heating, and nuclear war (not to mention the always looming prospect of one's own death).
So we resort to the two fallbacks the modern world still leaves to us, fear and therapy. We use fear to eliminate the consciousness of the negative improbable by grandstanding in the threat to destroy it. Though this destruction is an illusion with no future, we cling to it because we lack true consciousness of the positive improbable alone capable of conquering the forces of darkness. Therapy, on the other hand, enjoins us to resign ourselves to our fate, to be found in the empty abyss of the negative improbable. If too difficult, we can merely resign ourselves to a world of addiction to fill the void and dull the imminent anxiety--drugs, consumerism, psychotherapy, dieting, meditation practices. All these things take our minds off the necessity of the always approaching negative improbable and perhaps, as in meditation and psychotherapy, resign ourselves to that end.
Not one of the above approaches is ultimately productive, though we all fall into them from time to time. The only salvation lies in that positive improbable our forebears still had access to. The answer lies in hope, in faith, in patient expectation of that one thing, if thingness could ever be assigned it, capable of overcoming the negative improbable both in our consciousness and in reality. The positive improbable, the paraousia--inconcievable in the modern discourse of technicality and fact--alone stands capable of answering the power of death. Only the antithesis, the logical opposite of the collapsing reality which faces us, unbound by the determination of the system, but nonetheless completing it and destroying it, fulfilling it, ending it, and bringing it to a close; only here does salvation lie.
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