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[weartwhat]

Understanding involves three trials, all of which must be, and can only be, embraced together. The first and guiding trial is to know the One, the whole, what is, Substance, God perhaps, Being. The secondary and orienting trial is to acquire the knack of the many, the parts, the infinite attributes and modes, the monads, the world in all its scattered and disparate details. The third, bridging trial is to think the mind, to place it fittingly in Being and in the world, indeed also to think the mind even as it embraces these three trials together. I call the first trial guiding because of its singularity, but also because of its distance. The North star is a reliable guide precisely because it is so far from us. If we were to use the tree in the great field as we use the North star, we should become lost. The great tree could lead us only to itself – but once we have met there and gathered around it, it would point for each of us a different way. It may be that fruitless disagreement always indicates such an arrival, and the need to recover the sense of a more distant guide. If we understand this, we will not give ourselves direction by fixing ourselves upon another great tree in another field. The One shows us where to do go and is reliable precisely because we cannot reach it. Or, to the extent that we do reach it, it ceases to send us anywhere else. I call the second trial, orienting in the sense that I cannot follow the North star if the great tree stands in my way. The great tree tells me how must follow the North star: namely, I must find a way that accommodates the great tree’s being there. Thus the world, the many, is also a teacher, though its instruction always comes in the form of providing resistance or tension. It does not tell us where to go, but it sets up the constraints on how to get there. Gaining the knack for beings means becoming playful but also careful with them. It means finding resistance interesting rather than enraging, orienting rather than confounding. Things teach us about themselves by being just what they are under our touch, but this never tells us how to relate to them. For this we need guidance. I call the third trial bridging because it is that in which the One and the many are united, even while they remain separate. Mind is what allows the One and the many to be what each is, but also to be in relation to the other without collapsing into the other. As bodies we are among the many, but as minds or mind we stand somewhere between the many and the One. Minds are not things among things; we meet them only by joining them, sharing in them. But in sharing in mind, our distinction, grounded in our bodies, is not obliterated. Mind is neither one nor many – it stands between and bridges these. Mind is also that which holds itself, and so joins itself to the One and the many and can recognize this joining. By placing itself, the mind also situates us as individual people in the world, it shows us our place. Understanding, which I have said hangs on each of these three trials together, often leans towards one or two of the three and thus neglects the others. The present state of understanding pervasive in modern science and philosophical materialism looks to the many alone. This is the basic conviction of empiricism which has grown into what we today call naturalism – that knowledge is to be drawn, experimentally, from the many. The One is abandoned as a guiding principle and the mind is tacked on afterwards and generally treated as just another thing among things. That there is mind, is just another phenomenon, to be explained or explained away. The fact that mind is a condition of phenomena, and thus of understanding is not taken to be a problem in understanding it. Even as the basis of understanding, what is required to understand the mind is nothing more than is required to understand anything else. It is hoped – nay, assumed – that things, including minds, can teach us of themselves all on their own. As a result, mind remains something bizarrely ad hoc. Why mind should be a latent potency of the many, when arranged just so, is inexplicable. It is a brute fact, with no necessity, and thus of little essential importance. Indeed, it must be inessential and unimportant, that necessity of which comes from the conviction that understanding depend only on the many, that mind does not require independent, or metaphysically transformative treatment. Metaphysics from this perspective requires only that we say what the many ultimately are, and how they are constructed from one another. And it says the many alone are sufficient to tell us this. This assumption which is now predominant is a radical break from the tradition of metaphysics. In essence it is the abandonment of metaphysics, but also the settling of all metaphysical questions, which traps us with all the accompanying misunderstandings this settling involves. What is needed is a return to metaphysics which thinks the One, the many and mind together.

Anonymous Rex

[weartwhat]

is the existence of a god a question of truth and falsity? perhaps, but it is not clear to me it should be treated this way, that it even could be treated this. it is clearly not a scientific or empirical question. an argument made for or against god on the basis of experience falls flat - this is not the level at which the question might be decided. instead, i think we have something like a choice among axioms. on what basis is such a choice made? well, on the basis of what we want our system of axioms to do. and what, in this case do we want them to do? we want them to support us in living well. one might reply: "it is not just a matter of living well, it is a matter of getting things right" but what is the standard of rightness in this case? is it the actual factual existence of god? if such a fact does exist, what is its relevance here? we need some sort of epistemic access to it - and this is something i think we simply don't, and could not have. that is, unless christ returns and starts up with all the miracles again... yet, would even this decide the matter? it would alter our situation, certainly, but it would not make any decisions for us about how to understand it. "some people can perform miracles" we might say - "but does this tell us there is a god?" would it be right to believe in god, just because someone who is able to perform miracles tells us it is only by the grace of this god that she is able? in my mind, it still depends ENTIRELY on the god to which she attributes her powers. if this god is worthy of belief, perhaps she has a case. even in this case then, the question does not seem to be a factual question. the fact, if it exists, is irrelevant. getting it right, on epistemic grounds, is a coin toss. in which case one doesn't really KNOW it anyways, since one lacks grounds sufficient for knowledge when believing on the basis of a coin toss. if it is not a factual question, then, is it properly a question of truth and falsity? it seems rather a decision. we make god real, or not. the space is undetermined. which decision would we rather live by?

Anonymous Rex

[weartwhat]

last thought for tonight: if the cosmic insult against humanity is our insignificance, the corresponding self-indulgent compliment which we produce to respond to it seems to be our special significance. this is what we want to avoid: having delusions of our own grandeur, which elevate us above other beings in ways that are dangerous and harmful. religious ritual can be seen as essentially this - an exercise of self-gratification - by those who watch and judge from the outside. but there is something between self-denial and self-indulgence. if there is a god, they lead us quietly to this between. if there are good religious rituals, they carry us likewise to this between. perhaps there are ways to find this between without god - all the better if there are. my point is only that if god can be thought in a way which helps us to find and sustain ourselves in this between, this is god which might be worth living towards. and this is all i mean by belief.

Anonymous Rex

[weartwhat]

lets start here, not because i really know anything about Freud but because this is starting place - i can see my way into the maze from here: Freud raises three insults to humanity - the most interesting one is the first (which is connected, in some important ways to the second, though this is really just a part of the first). the first insult against humanity he calls the cosmological offence. historically, this offence occurs with Copernicus. the insult, of course, only gradual realized, is that we are not at the centre of the universe; that we are radically insignificant in the order of things... what is it for a culture to truly realize this? it is a kind of humbling, on a global scale which is hard to wrap one's head around Nietzsche had some interesting things to say here: on the one hand he saw that we had done away with something - namely, our perception of our own cosmic significance. god, dead, and we killed him. the death of god, or even the murder of god, brings the point closer to home - who could murder god but those who created Him? but could we really live without this thing which now seemed like a childish belief of the past, in light of the earth no longer being at the centre of the universe; in light of our evolutionary place among the rest of the animals - what could replace it? what does it mean to live without it? you might eschew these questions, they are boring, insignificant. living without god is easy you might say. and i don't wish to deny this. however i do worry what happens when we leave others to think god, to think the cosmic significance of man and manipulate it for political gain i wonder if it is politically completely untenable, because unsustainable, to try to live without god, because the absence of god, the absence of purpose, is just an unsustainable position. because of our desire for meaning, our desire to avoid cosmic insults, we are susceptible to manipulation. think about nazism, think about qanon, think about putin. each of these fills a vacancy left by the god we have killed but have we really killed god? maybe you think we haven't killed god enough, and that's the real problem. a sustainable atheistic purposeless cosmos is something we must instill in our children - we must convert others to this view. so called militant atheism. i think militant atheism is at least politically consistent, in a way liberalism isn't. liberalism would never try to stomp god out - and indeed militant atheists only really seem to go so far as to ARGUE against it - as if this could keep god dead and buried but even these arguments against god get old fast. they don't convince anyone. so this is the beginning of my thought - maybe we need god, even though there is no evidence for god; maybe we need god as a political necessity, because only a real god is the sort of thing that could compete with a false one. the non-existent god of the militant atheists does not seem to be a match for a false god either. a sustainable political movement, which is good at its heart has to be competitive; and my suggestions is that to be competitive it needs a god at its centre - a real god, instead of a false one, or a non-existent one. but you will say: there IS no REAL god which could compete with the false gods which continually arise - to fall for a REAL god is to fall for a false one, and to become as dangerously deluded as the followers of any false god. but doesn't this depend on how we think god? is it clear that all gods are equally dispensable, or might some be better than others? the grounds for the defence of god, i think are not empirical, they are ethical, political. god is an idea which enables a certain kind of social order, the possibility of conceiving or perhaps only anticipating a shared purpose - shared not only among humans but all of creation. where god goes wrong is when this concept of shared purpose is corrupted, used to elevate some humans over others, or humans over nature. but these are bad concepts of god. however, to dispense with them we need not dispense with god altogether - there are arguments to be made about how god must be, how god ought to be. what i think a new leftist movement needs, is to believe in god (or perhaps gods?) again, but a better god than the right has been able to conceive. we have ceded god to the right and this seems like a huge mistake. we have won the culture war, but at the cost of all but giving over god. the thinkers and activists and people who really care should never cede god, they have a duty to rebuild god in a new form. think about the effect this has: what is our unifying sense of purpose? it is something like welfare, minimizing suffering in a basically bad world - this vision does not feed the soul. it is a worldview of cosmic damage control. and now think about what the right has: maybe the best example of a sort of hinge point on the right is someone like Jordan Peterson. he feeds something in people that the left does not know how to feed, that we think we should actually starve. this is my thought: we need to feed it too, but we need to feed it better. we need to feed it something truly good - starvation of purpose, and cosmic damage control will never be a sustainable political view. it will leave a vaccuum into which Jordan Peterson's and worse will continually arise to feed the starved masses. there are plenty of gods we shouldn't believe in - but it seems to me short sighted and unimaginative to assume these exhaust the list. what god would an extraordinarily advanced alien civilization believe in? what sort of god would it have to be to support rather than hinder their advancement? a science fiction book which worked this out could easily be the most valuable work of theology to come out in decades

Anonymous Rex

[weartwhat]

i made this blog, because i want to know who i am. i am aware of the potential absurdity of such a wish - is there surely someone "who i am", which is now hidden from me, which i might discover by spending time alone and writing things anonymously on the internet? this is not sure at all. instead, perhaps a better way of putting it is this: i want to know what it is i really want to say. and the only way i can see to work this out is if no one knows who i am. i am not convinced that a normal person would even need to be anonymous to be honest in the way i would like to be honest - but i am not a normal person, i am a deeply traumatized person. being honest with people about certain kinds of things is something i find extraordinarily and irrationally terrifying. terrifying because my brain tells me i am risking ostracization, alienation, death or something worse. what i want to know is what would i say if all of the questions about what other people will think of me were removed? if my life is utterly disconnected from my words, so that what i say does not impact any of my relationships, what will my words be? i truly don't know. i am here to find out.

Anonymous Rex