S.N.A.F.U.

Well, that will be Petey's last prediction for awhile -- or at least the last one I'll take seriously.

Get this: now he's blaming Hurricane Sandy and that bloated Springsteen-loving Jersey retard -- as if we wouldn't be totally f*cked anyway because impressionable independents are even stupider than we thought.

After all that money, does it really come down to a bunch of impressionable idiots watching pictures on TV?

C'mon. When was it ever any different?

Oh well. At least the country will be ungovernable now that Obama has waged the most expensive campaign of character assassination in world history.

Yeah, he got his revenge against us, we'll give him that. Well done, assoul. Finally you've earned your Peace Prize and can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Yasser Arafat without feeling a little embarrassed. Welcome to the club. You've made your bones.

But it's going to be a bit like Michael Corleone staring out over Lake Tahoe after whacking everyone who stood in his way. One of those... something victories. What's the word, Jeeves? Yes, pyrrhic.

One consolation is that a Romney victory would have hardly augured a pleasant four years. Rather, journalists would have suddenly remembered their vocation, and their latent Bush Derangement virus would have again become florid.

Homelessness would have suddenly been rediscovered. Al Qaeda would again be on the move. The dramatic increase in Black poverty would be a scandal. Snatching defeat from victory in Iraq. Nuclear mullahfolkers. An unsustainable level of government debt would provoke shock, shock.

To say nothing of the new War on Women, the rampant racism, the Mormon Theocracy, our outraged frenemies in Old Europe.... Pulitzers all around!

I'm with Taranto, but then I'm always with Taranto. In any event, if the Cosmos sees fit to grant our modern-day Lincoln a second term, he asks, "how bad could it be?"

"Obama has spent the past four years explaining away his failings by essentially arguing he is the best of all possible presidents -- that he has done as well as any man could given the 'mess' he 'inherited' from his predecessor."

Yes, but "things are about to get a lot worse because of decisions taken but deferred during the Obama years." If he thought the Bushmess was bad, wait until he gets a load of the Obamamess.

The mess "includes not only high unemployment and slow growth but impending policy changes that threaten to make those problems worse. On Jan. 1, unless Congress acts, the Bush tax cuts expire" -- or in Obama's more accurate words, we're about to be hit with "massive, job-killing tax increases."

And ObamaCare was of course written so deceptively "that most of its provisions would not take effect until the next presidential term," not the least of which being "an additional massive, job-killing tax increase (on investment income), also scheduled to take effect Jan. 1."

The state-run media will have its laziness cut out for it this time, but it would be a mistake to underestimate their determination to lie and deceive. With this presidential campaign they crossed a rubiconjob from merely shaping and imposing their narrative to outright fabrication and brazen denial of reality.

The election proved that a lot of semiconscious Americans still take the MSMistry of Truth seriously.

As a result, I would say that we'll really have to reach bottom in a completely undeniable way before things can turn around -- like a guy who finally stops chewing tobacco after they remove his jaw.

Look at California, which is totally run by Democrats who betray absolutely no ability to see that yawning fiscal abyss up ahead or to take their foot off the gas. For them, a red inklight means gun it!

But if things cannot go on, they will not go on. It's just a matter of when, which cannot be predicted by any linear model. Rather, it's going to be like chaos theory, and occur with no hiatus, allofasudden: a fold catastrophe.

Of course, no one knows the hour, but Petey still thinks it will be on or about 12.12.12.

I didn't want this post to be about the election, but what can you do? I don't want pretend it's not on my mind, and try to write around it. It takes a moment to gather yourself after you've been kicked in the nuts. But I promise that tomorrow everything around here will be back to abnormal. And this is the last time I'll forget to gird myself with the Cup of Righteousness.

Strange Things are Afoot: Malicious Software in the Human Brainframe

So, I think we've established that the body -- AKA Brother Ass -- is Not Guilty by reason of mental incompetence. Rather, the body (to the extent that it is naughty) is just shoved around by the malware that makes its way into the human mainframe:

"Malware, short for malicious software, is software used or created to disrupt computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private computer systems." It "is a general term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software."

You mean like mind parasites?

Yes, it "includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, adware, and other malicious programs." "Sometimes known as a computer contaminant," it "is not the same as defective software, which is software that has a legitimate purpose but contains harmful bugs that were not corrected before release."

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? If so, that's a lot to digest.

First of all, how does the malware get into the hominid wetware? Where does it come from? If we stipulate that God didn't create it, then how does it get here?

And by "here" we are of course referring to Genesis 3, which is perpetually speaking to us from There to Here in vertical phase space, i.e., from Celestial Central to our 4D outpost at the edge of the subjective horizon.

Again, the real trouble can't come from the body, which only has a few simple needs and impulses that are easily satisfied. Indeed, since the body as such doesn't exist within the infinite subject, it doesn't even know about tomorrow (as is true of any animal).

However, it is incorrect to say that human beings "have" a body -- or even "have" a mind. Such thinking betrays an ontological (and ultimately Gnostic) dualism that just isn't there.

Rather, human beings are always a "bodymind." You can't even say that "we" are "embodied," because you've again separated the subject from its matrix in a way that we never encounter in the real world.

I think also that we need to widen out our conception of what it means to be embodied.

Language, for example, is an extension of the body. When we speak, we are simply using a thingy inside our necks to vibrate the air around us in order to tickle a bunch of little hairs within the listener's inner ear. In this context, it's a miracle that anyone understands a thing I'm saying (even leaving aside distortions resulting from the malware).

The question was raised in yesterday's comments as to whether our fallen condition is necessary or contingent. Was it inevitable that the humans would mess things up so badly? If so, how come God didn't foresee it?

There seems to be a genuine orthoparadox at work here, similar to the idea that we are created in the image of God, and yet, in need of redemption. The former would seem to obviate the need for the latter, but there you go. We all need a vertical lifeline.

Similarly, we are told that the creation -- man included -- is "good." Why then the mischief and mayhem?

Commenter Gandalin is on the bright track, noting that there must be some sort of "fall" woven into the very idea of creation, since it implies an existence separate from the Creator:

"And yet, in another sense... the material Creation is the apex and pinnacle and purpose of all of the 'higher' levels that progressively (or perhaps discontinuously) lead to Malkuth" (the latter term referring to the crystallized and coagulated material ghetto unhappyted by us I-ambodied malkutents).

But if I understand rightly, we actually inhabit the entirety of the Sephirot, at least implicitly or in potential (which is sort of the Whole Point). The Sephirot essentially maps the possibilities of Spirit, from top to bottom, Keter to Malkut.

Antother subtle point: the Sephirot may be thought of as a kind of manifestation of the unmanifest God. Behind it -- and totally infused by it -- is the Ain Sof, which I believe literally means No End. It is uncontainable, unimaginable, beyond all categories. It is utterly transcendent, for which reason it is also immanent in everything.

In other words, since it cannot be contained, it is present in every where and every thing. It is the mOther of all, the womb with all views and the mamamatrix of all Neovelty.

Wo! Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K!

Yes, you might call this ainsoferable mystery 'O' for short.

It just so happens that I am reading a book that hardy-har-harmonizes with these thoughts, Foundations of Christian Faith, by Karl Rahner. It's extremely challenging, so I cannot give a general raccoomendation -- like a combination of Heidegger and the Philokalia. If this is the Foundation, the mansion must be something else.

In discussing this "foundation," Rahner does just that: he drills all the way to the bottom, in the effort to establish the cosmic and ontological principles that make such a weird thing as Christianity possible. In other words, Christianity, if it is to make sense to human beings, must be in conformity with "the way things are," including all of the things that are prior to Christianity as such -- things like embodiment, for example, or having a language, or being a person.

For example, this word "God." Note that the apostles didn't first have to establish the existence of this entity, and then go about describing Him. Rather, they go straight to the description, and waste no time establishing the principle of God.

But as I said, Rahner digs deeper. Which is clearly necessary in our day and age, when so many people doubt the very existence of God. You can't just tell someone what God is like, if they have already rejected his existence. So we moderns have a lot more spadework in terms of building the foundation.

In practical terms, this means that it is much more difficult to be a believer today than it was 1,500 or 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. It's not even clear what sort of conscious "decision" was necessary to be a believer back then, since there were no unbelievers.

There is a kind of reverse analogy to contemporary times, since no one today has to make a conscious decision to accept science. Rather, you have to make a conscious decision to reject it, and even then you have to be more than a little crazy to do so.

Conversely, no longer can faith be "taken for granted" and "supported by a homogeneous religious milieu common to everyone" (Rahner). Look at the Islamists, who want to shove all this novelty back into the tiny bottle that existed in 800 AD. That's pathetic, and unworthy of any God deserving of worship.

Rahner wants to show that it is possible to live a Christian existence with "intellectual honesty," but again, an honesty that penetrates all the way down, deeper than both science and typical churchianity. This requires no less than an integration of everything, and you have to admit that there is a helluva lot more to integrate today than there was 2,000 -- or even 100 -- years ago.

But ironically, as we shall see, even the fact of so much new stuff to integrate speaks of the Hidden God alluded to above, who is again the source of novelty, and why things never get boring around here. Not only is God the cure for boredom, He is its radical antithesis. If nothing else, He is the highest form of entertainment.

Remember, we're not just talking about scientific developments, but "all the various non-scientific manifestations of the life of the spirit in art, in poetry, and in society..."

Rahner describes a kind of "anonymous" and preconceptual knowledge of God that is present in, and available to, anyone, theist and atheist alike. It is frankly why we -- and all cultures -- have the word "God," and why the word can never be eliminated from the human vocabulary.

Even if all people were self-described "atheists," we would still have this word, since the very existence of human beings is unthinkable without it. To put it another way, the moment we have persons, we are going to have the concept of God.

Why is this?

That's a big subject. To be continued...

Madness!

We were discussing the Two Natures or tendencies that seem to coexist in man, one lower, the other higher.

Here again, we all realize -- any normal person does, anyway -- that we have these two trends, and you have to engage in an awful lot of self-obfuscation, or auto-pullwoolery, to deny their existence. Frankly, you have to be as adept at self-deception as is our current future ex-president tomorrow, and not a moment too soon!

But the bottom lyin' for any full-blown secular maniac is that the higher and lower cannot exist, despite the fact that they so obviously do -- which leads to all sorts of confusion, ending in the intellectual and spiritual deadzone of diversity, multiculturalism, moral relativism, etc.

One problem with the modern mind is that it wants to search for explanations that cease to be explanations once they leave the human plane.

This is a Very Large Subject, but we all know, for example, that there are decent people and cruel people. Simple as. But if you analyze those terms too far, it's analogous to dissecting a body to find out where the life is: it results in the destruction of what one is looking for. In a different context, Alan Watts said it's like chasing a fugitive while banging a drum.

Which is why such vehicles as mythology, literature, and film are so much more effective at explicating this quintessentially human territory than is naive science. The same is obviously true of scripture and revelation. I have explained this to my son, so his brain won't get spoiled by trying to understand religious wisdom in a less than human way.

For example, the other day he was asking about the story of the Flood, and I explained that it isn't just a mundane weather report, but is supposed to tell human beings something very important about themselves -- in this case, that we are, or can be, so rotten that even God has grave second thoughts about whether to continue the ghastly experiment.

"The Bible's picture of human nature," writes Leon Kass, "is, to say the least, sobering." No political correctness here, no punches pulled, no liberal appeal to sociological "root causes" of the widespread depravity.

Rather, "The tales of the primordial family underline the dangers of freedom and reason, speech and desire, pride and shame, jealousy and anger." The narratives "make us suspicious not only about politics and the arts, but even about man's interest in the divine." Truly, it seems there is nothing that can't be ruined by human involvement.

Nevertheless, these "first stories of human life" accurately depict "the explosive tensions lurking in any human family, both between husband and wife and (especially) between siblings." For example, I have a relative who is one of those diversity tools at a fourth-tier cow college. Not surprisingly, we haven't spoken in years, not least because intra-vertical communication becomes tense at such extremes.

Kass makes the interesting point that not a lot happens between the accounts of the prototypical humans -- Adam, Even, Abel, Cain -- and the Flood, mostly a lot of begetting. But this begetting, in Kass's interpretation (which is too long to provide in full here), results in kind of indiscriminate blending of divine and human qualities, and with it, a gradual loss of contact with the "divine within."

Thus, we may understand God's otherwise cryptic comment in 6:3, to the effect that His spirit shall not judge from within man. In other words, to put it plainly, man gradually loses touch with his divine conscience -- which is obviously a central component of our higher nature -- or at least it is contaminated by various other strands, e.g., rationalization, the lust for glory, self-worship, tenure, etc.

As a result, it seems that "Only two ways are open: total destruction of the world or the imposition of external law" (Robert Sacks, in Kass). This would also explain why we so detest lawyers, because the vast majority of their thousands upon thousands of laws are aimed only at bad people, and in a way, create bad people, because we start confusing morality with obedience to the exteriorized law.

Think, for example, of how liberals conflate big government and charity, when in reality big government displaces and even eliminates man's charitable impulses; real charity is actually in competition with the state, the latter of which is just the quest for power mesmerauding as charity or "public service."

So God can't help gnosissing that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the day. And God says something similar to Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, in his case, What have I done?

Interesting too that Colonel Nicholson's moral crime fits right into the scheme of what man was up to in those antediluvian days, telling his troops that "One day the war will be over. And I hope that the people that use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built and who built it."

Rrriiiiiiiiight. It's really about the Colonel's own unhinged lust for glory. Indeed, after the bridge is completed and he is dining with Colonel Saito, he reflects on being "nearer the end than the beginning" of his life: "And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything.... I don't know whether that kind of thinking's very healthy; but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time."

No, it's not very healthy at all, as Nicholson discovers too late. In short, his higher impulses -- honor, duty, self-discipline -- were totally contaminated by the lower.

As it all plays out below, Major Clipton famously mutters in astonished disgust, Madness! Madness!

That seems to echo God's sentiment as he surveys the human wreckage below: "The experiment in anarchy -- in living law-less-ly -- has failed miserably, so much so that God despairs of His creation. In an extraordinary remark," the Creator "says that he repents His creation of man and the other animals."

Blah blah yada yada, God ends up finding a righteous, pure, and simple heart in the figure of Noah, so all is not lost. For "blessed are the pure in heart."

I'm just consulting the Catholic catechism for any further insights into this issue, and it says that "Because man is a composite being... there already exists a kind of tension in him; a certain struggle of tendencies between 'spirit' and 'flesh' develops."

However, "it is not a matter of despising and condemning the body," but rather, cultivating certain "permanent dispositions" which result from submission or resistance to "the saving action of the Holy Spirit" (which we have symbolized (o) for the submission and (↓) for the saving action).

Earthers & Lumin Beings

Can we not all agree that man is possessed of no less than two natures?

I guess not. Anyone on the secular atheistic/scientistic side of the spectrum rejects any nature -- i.e., essences -- although never in a coherent way, mind you.

The leftist, for example, will insist that everyone is inherently racist except for blacks (and their white liberal scaretakers); or homosexuality is "fixed" whereas for the rest of us, gender is just a cultural construct.

So, let me get this straight: all sexuality is an arbitrary cultural construct except for homosexuality, which is why members of the latter group are entitled to special rights plus cash and other valuable prizes from the government?

Yes, exactly. You got a problem with that? It's all about voting blocs, not intellectual consistency, moron. To look for intellectual consistency in a leftist is like milking a bull. At best, you're in for a nasty surprise.

The two natures alluded to above are central to all religions, either explicitly or implicitly. Raccoons tend to take things a little too far, and posit two types of humans: children of Light and children of the earth.

This frankly sounds a little too gnostic for most folks. However, we don't say it because it is necessarily true literally, but because it works. We'll drop it as soon as we come up with a better idea.

Children of the earth -- at least in my experience -- tend to stay earthbound. If someone only superficially looks like an earther, as soon as he hears the dOctrine -- presented to him in the right way at the right time -- he will will recognize his Light-nature and soon enough go about shedding the earth-dross.

Can I get a witness?

Conversely, genuine children of the earth respond to the dOctrine either with bovine vacancy -- in other words, they just go on chewing while briefly looking up from the trough -- or a snake-like hissing fit.

In Judaism (or at least Kabbala) the higher and lower natures are called neshamah and nefesh, respectively. Importantly -- critically, even -- the lower soul is not intrinsically corrupt. To the contrary, it is intrinsically innocent -- or as innocent as any other animal.

Rather, it is corrupted by the soul -- which recalls Jesus' wise crack to the effect that Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man; but that which comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.

You could say that our lower nature is like a fish in the sea -- it is plunged into the body and engulfed by the senses. It is that part of us which is of the earth and made of clay.

But there is another part -- obviously -- that always floats on the ocean or sits on the bank of the river, so to speak. Which is why we aren't all wet, and why the Light isn't completely extinguished.

Can I get a wetness? Without being totally drenched?

Completely out of time. I'm tempted to not even post this fragment, but why not? I'll pick up the strand Monday, no pun intended for once.

Veils and Brutes, Whores and Bullies

Amazing what putting one little naughty word into the title does for one's traffic, as indicated by the spike on the right side of the chart:

No wonder our language has become so debased. It works! If only putting a shocking vulgarity in the White House worked so well...

Perry notes that it is possible for Love and Truth to become polarized, but only as a result of a kind of declension, or devolution, from their higher unity. In such a case, Truth devolves to mere reason, while "Love becomes sentiment."

Have you noticed, for example, how sentimental people become when they have rejected religion? Actually, they can become either hard or sentimental, but I've noticed that some of the hardest ones can have a sequestered area of pure mushy sentimentality as a kind of replacement for a more rigorous and demanding religioisity.

Why, for example, does Richard Dawkins get married -- not just once, but repeatedly? Why this spiritual flabbiness amidst the hard and selfish genes?

But really folks, Truth and Love. What would life be without 'em? No, not false and hateful, since those represent deprivations, not negations.

We can't even say it would be like mammal life, because we all know that dogs, for example, have some sort of rich emotional life, with something analogous to "love." I suppose it would be more reptilian in nature -- just existing for the pure, unreflective sensation of it, like Charlie Rangel.

In fact, existence without Truth and Love isn't even existence, really. In a way, it's indistinguishable from non-being, and in any event, not worth the bother.

This is what often strikes me about radical environmentalists, who talk as if human beings are a destructive parasite on an otherwise beautiful and harmonious planet. What nonsense. If there were no humans to enjoy it, the earth might as well be obliterated by an asteroid, for all we care.

This also explains the widespread touchiness of political correctness. It turns out that these brave nihilists have more sacred cows than an ultra-Orthodox Jew with obsessive-compulsive disorder (like my wife's late Uncle Davy).

You can hardly say anything without offending the tender sensibilities of the politically correct. The other day Ann Coulter stepped into a sacred cowpie for calling President Obama a "retard."

But he is a retard, if by retard we mean someone who is intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or morally arrested. The Benghazi scandal alone qualifies him for moral retardation. I mean, if no one is retarded, then no one is advanced.

Which is precisely what the left wants us to believe, but only when it is convenient. Otherwise they regard themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the 99% rabble o' retards.

Leftists also treat women as "sacred objects," but they go about it in a completely wrongheaded way. In fact, there is something deeply sacred about femininity, something worthy of veneration and protection, and which properly evokes chivalry in the male.

But this is quite different from the vulgar leftist belief that there is something special about a woman just because she is a woman -- or, more to the point, a leftist woman who feels that life has treated her unfairly. The left venerates victims, irrespective of whether or not they have any praiseworthy qualities.

Perry observes how "veiling and unveiling" play "such a central role in the contemplation of female beauty." Why, for example, is there a Victoria's Secret, and what is it hiding? We're not complaining, mind you, but a male equivalent of this would not only be absurd, but pathetic. What's the deal with the veiling of feminine beauty?

Perry says that it has to do with "the sacredness of beholding the essence." All cultures are -- or at least were, prior to the 1960s -- aware of this feminine power, and try to deal with it in various ways. However, the balance can be tipped too far in one direction or the other.

For example, "An excessive emphasis on veiling, and on guarding woman from the predatory passions of men, while necessary in a world populated by brutes, can overshadow the deeper function of veiling which... has to do with protecting man from beholding the Divine Essence unworthily" (Perry).

This is precisely the problem we see in much of the Islamic world. But we have the opposite problem in much of the west, represented by the culture of porn. For what is this culture but an unveiling so thorough that there is no mystery left to behold? There is no there there, at least nothing transcending the purely material plane, just surfaces in friction.

For strict atheists and other secular nihilists, this is all there can be, which again makes one wonder why the left is so eager to protect women that a man can be get sued for looking at one the wrong way.

Ironically, this regime is analogous to a "legalistic hijab," a kind of state-enforced veiling that has totally forgotten why the veil is necessary to begin with. To put it more bluntly, you can't really shame a whore any more than you can be mean to a bully, because the first is truth, the second justice.

***

Difference between zombies and liberals? If you give the zombie what he wants, he'll leave you alone: