I am offering nothing new. Yet, it seems that very few people have understood what has already been told. The fact that most people want and expect something new shows, in relief, that a new configuration of terms is needed, but I am quite sure that what is impossible again will be put into good use for progress, if only because it has become possible to do so, because people want new things, especially if it is a new thing that hasn’t been new for a long time – or even a short time.
The ridiculousness of a discussion about the impossible, let alone a constructive one, no doubt has reduced my readership to very close to zero, but this is truly ironic because what is truly impossible, as to our discussion so far, resides just this side of it: Most readers are hardly non-readers and so see such a discussion as so useless and nonsensical – so offensive it is, of course it has to be discussing something absolutely impossible, which is ridiculous. They like to stay in the middle, in the moderated state, in the mediated reality; very comfortably, I’m sure. We, by contrast, are not so comfortable with being comfortable; indeed this mediocre is not comfortable, it is aggravating as it is outright lazy. The being comfortable lay in the couch of ignorance – so much is bliss, so they say. Every comfort is quite possible; one can only surmise that this is the reason why what is new and novel plays in such an assertive attitude for identity. I imagine another thousand years might pass until the impossible becomes pertinent again.
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In order for there to be a discussion about the impossible, we must be able to find what is possible. We cannot begin with the impossible. This route then must venture to present what is true, and not merely true in faith. The philosopher must be concerned with establishing a ground, for this is the point of contention: Where or what is the basis of reality and what then results for reality when its ground is found?
What we find, though, is contradiction; the ground is paradox. Not that the paradox is then the indicator of what true, is possible , against what is false, the impossible, but that the paradox, the contradiction, what constitutes the impossible, is the ground. We find irony: It has already been found, but something gets in the way. What invariably happens is then another person feels they have to reiterate it. Each next person, because this person has come upon the point of contention, sees it in others before him or her and then draws upon the previous discussions to explain how those discussions have been incorrectly understood, and what they are really saying. This, or these, discussions thus then mark what can be called a quality of history, a historicity, because the discussion is not really moving toward anything, not gaining a more thorough description or drawing upon causes for correction, but is merely reiterating the point of contention for that particular moment in which it manifests. More precisely, the more thorough description is showing that itself is incorrect, but this explanation is contradictory to reality and so is habitually ignored or justified by a need for more study. In this way the something that gets in the way is exactly history, which is the developing of storyline of cause-effect relations of true objects along a temporal scheme of progress. The something that gets in the way is exactly faith. The point of contention is that which distinguishes what is of faith and what is true, and from this, what is real and not real, and what is possible and impossible. We come upon is the existential bifurcation: the impossible possibility that what is human must be not me, the point where the impossible, ‘I am’ the total world, becomes possible, where the quality of the assertion that is history is exposed.
The irony of this the reiterated discussion is that because it can only reiterate due to the apparent temporal change of meaningful terms, it is then represented in time as an extended or extrapolated progressive explanation. The discussion upon the point of contention is seen or understood as gaining a better ability to more thoroughly describe the issue, and appears to be actually getting to the most comprehensive discription yet – as if a progress is indeed occurring (is it?) This is why for many in their moments in history, certain authors have been heard to say how they are witnessing a ‘crucial’ or ‘significant’ time in history – because the quality of every moment is crucial and significant when the observer is viewing from where their humanity has been brought into question due to their ahistorical expression upon the point of contention. Only from the conventional historical view, from the view that sees proper objects to be discerned, objects that dispense or give up information of themselves to our knowledge when the proper method is enacted upon them, do only certain particular moments becomes significant, as these moments work to serve the cosmology of universal structure of true objects as well as the ontology of temporal progress. Particular objects are punctuated according to the teleology of conventional reality as reality necessitates a particular scheme of meaningful terms, the substance of faith, of intrinsic mythology: the structure and framework, the scaffolding, of true objects, how they got they way, what this all means, where humans fit in – the answers to these questions arise necessarily and correspondently from the issues that prompted them, as they reflect, equate and amount to the reality of the possible universe.
Here we have then a description of how I might say that convention – the proper scheme of meaning that rules the method by which to discover real objects – usurps what meaning might otherwise find or express truth, a virtual coup d’etat for the sake of maintaining and establishing reality, and this is to say, what is true is routinely and consistently routed back into reality through faith. Again: Reality is founded in faith upon a ground of true objects that contain the potential to convey their inherent truth(s) in terms that are not contradictory of meaning. Terms are taken, seen and understood in conventional faith to be presenting meanings that stem from actual or true objects, true material essences, so that what is conveyed by terms is automatically and innately brought into reality, within or along the temporal scheme of progress.
The reiteration, because it is merely presenting the same ‘thing’ in different terms, thus represents a potential for departure from such temporality. Here also is the point of contention. What is presented is always atemporal, it does not exist in time. The problem with this statement, though, is that it appears in time, just in time, to fulfill the teleology implicit of the scheme of meaningful terms that are used to describe the situation of what is presented. The attempt or effort to overcome the ubiquity of the conventional scheme, and to thus present what is presented, never occurs, because the meaning of time itself is innate in the structure of conventional reality (reality), and what is presented is typically taken to be the same as what is represented in the conventional meaning. Yet conventional reality is always represented, and that, in time; reality cannot be but represented. Hence, reality contains all that is possible in faith, and what is then true, apart from faith, is impossible. The question “If the statement is true, why is it reiterated”, is salient.
Realize that what I have just described is ironic: Its meaning betrays itself, for what I have done is presented an impossible situation of reality using real terms in reality, and this then must be impossible, or, for those conventional realists, because I have presented a contradiction, a paradoxical meaning, its meaning must be not true, ridiculous, absurd. But indeed, this is why I say, the truth is impossible, not real. Yet, because it is indeed true, and I have presented it, it is ironic. If irony means anything, it means that conventional reality is real but it is not true, but only true in faith.
What I have also done is created or indicated an essential polemic, an essential duality. As well, I have presented and it will be represented. Now; reality would not be real if it was held or if its establishment was known only by a small number of people. Obviously, what is reality is held as true and real by a huge, overwhelming majority. But is this so? Is it merely a situation of numbers of people who know what is real? I am also indicating that I am of a minority that knows the truth, and that this truth includes reality but is not real. It is here that we can begin to see the true significance of the discussion of the impossible. The indictment itself reveals how history, what is for all purposes conventional history, moves not so much upon true objects in time, or interpretations of such objects, but upon a quality of existence that includes through exclusion, that what is inclusive then presents the truth as what is exclusive represents reality. And, such a representation then bifurcates unto grounds that at once speaks true human agency, as well as the route to inclusion of socially excluded or marginalized persons. Yet these discourses remain, as an existential imperative, polemically exclusionary.
In a way, it could be seen that I am saying that (conventional) reality is not really real, and that I am attempting to convey what is truly real. This also, strangely, ironically, is not the case, but indeed I could be taken to be meaning just that; I am thus able to extrapolate unto social contingency. If this latter case is actually the case, that I am attempting to describe a more real reality, then, by the bare fact that I know of this ‘better’, ‘greater’, or ‘more comprehensive’ reality, it would seem that somehow I have been able to move beyond the ‘limit’ of what is conventionally real. What is real by virtue of a ‘majority rule’, a majority in which I participated to create reality, and still participate, has lost its power. Reality then cannot be a manifestation, an actual ‘substantial’ arena of objects the nature of which have been (necessarily) agreed upon (as imperatives) such that ‘the few’ are in need of therapy or rehabilitation, as people might be discontent, paranoid, neurotic or plain delusional; the result of an ability to know of a reality that is more real than reality is to see that what is real is a manifestation of a particular assertion of power. By this standard and way of speaking, what is impossible from a social perspective with reference to reality, is that other human beings, particularly members of a marginalized group such as ‘race’ or ‘culture’, have or otherwise exist in a different reality altogether. What is more real in this case must then be indicated not merely by the other reality, but by the admitting of another reality. This turn of what is expected to be true in presentation yielding a truth that is represented, one that remains true to the original presentation while representing something else, can be called transformation. And, though I hesitate to say it, could, in some circles, be called the moment of irony, or the ironic turn.
The issue here with the dialectic that represents the critique of human relations (critical race theory is the politicized ‘human’ critical theory) is, since reality can only be represented by conventional terms, and we have admitted that other realities do exist, but that they exist marginally, or now ‘barely exist’, and this with reference to power, exist only where the effective conventional assertion of power has ‘allowed’ these other realities to exist – the relation of the oppressor to the oppressed: How do we go about ‘breaching’ or ‘compromising’ the rhetoric of power (the phrasing of conventional terms, the discourse of reality), what can be called the ‘priority discourse’, in order to bring such excluded realities and humanities into just relation with the universe of human beings? We might call such an endeavor “inter-relative”, or even “trans-relative” discourse, or simply “transitional” discourse, since all conventional realities find truth in negotiations of relativity and have veracity in as much as they are conveyed or related through discourse; this is difference in conventional discourse because convention is ‘already agreed upon’, and transitional discourse thereby involves the negotiation of at least two faiths, at least two conventional realities.
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Of course, conventional reality establishes the real in faith; in so much as there may be more than one (not necessarily ‘more real’) reality, this ‘other’ reality likewise is real by faith, hence the problem of compromising the truth of faith, and hence the truth that exists outside of faith. From the perspective of the admittance, the opening in reality that considers the possibility of what was once impossible (the existence of another reality), the conventional one would look out into the potential that lies beyond reality and conclude that the more real reality will one day take form when the negotiations of faith have settled or come to terms between them. What occurs as result is thus not the more real reality, but exactly, again, reality itself. The problem has not been solved, but only put off into another problem. This then presents the impossible as exactly not real, and brings to the front the issue that is delayed in critical human theory. Politics here is merely a symbol, a vehicle for approaching the impossible; social justice, an ‘end’ that must function within the reckoning of marginalized parties, serves a purpose that it does not recognize in its own purpose if it will achieve its purpose. But in the end, if there is more than social justice, its implementation achieves only social justice, since what moves beyond is entirely not real, but is actually, for reality, absolutely absurd.
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Next up: can it be ?? The Impossible, part 3.
The Veritable Counsel 
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