Tag: universe

Speculative Reflection

Always in a process of situating discourses to their occasions, I am Often recognizing discrepancies between what I think and what I come across.

Right there alone is enough to notice that there are two ways of understanding things. These two ways can be said to concern reflection.

Colloquially speaking, we are always talking about reflecting upon ones situation. And this is good; we want to encourage people to displace themselves. To step outside of themselves. Never minding the philosophies which would place us in an essentially relative universe founded only in subjective views and opinions,  an anthropology of philosophy talks about what we are able to do as foundational. Less the contents of our various fantasies and imaginations projected upon a true reality which forever recedes, Indeed consciousness, however we would come to terms with it, apparently is able to hold a conception whereby subjectivity is essential in the manner I just described.

Hence, what I’m saying is that we are able to believe, we are able to be convinced that subjectivity evidences a human containment, and that this containment moves to grant us an extended relativity. We are able to do this. But it is not that merely because the content which is generated from that ability seems so true that it is indeed true (however we would want to deny this truth by placing us selves in a relative situation eternally), no. It is more that the ability can be noticed, That the confines in which we place ourselves to find our subjective identity is indeed merely an ability — Once this contradiction of our immediate experience sets in to confront our apparent knowledge, it is then that we might have an ability to reflect upon the actual truth of our situation, and indeed become available to understand the truth of the universe it’s self. When we can begin to come to terms with how human beings, indeed, how I indeed a rise in consciousness, again regardless of how we define consciousness – for, a default to linguistic definition merely is a retreat from what is true of our ability – then we can begin to encounter actual true objects which exist in the universe as such. And this is regardless of the subject limitation.

The true reflection is thus an absence of subjectivity: it is the presence of what is other as other, of encountering difference as different. For, if we are able to conceive of a subjectivity which encompasses all that we may encounter, then this must be merely an ability rather than an essence, since an essence is at all times merely a conception of arbitrary causation. If this is merely an ability, then we likewise have an ability to understand what it is to get outside of that subjectivity, to leave it alone, to find it in nothingness. We do not have to be bound to a fixed strata of knowledge.

For, is this not with the great philosophies of the past 200 years have asserted? That, on one hand, subjectivity is founded upon nothingness, but due to this nothingness subjectivity is always founded in a knowledge-power Whereby subjectivity is the definition of being-repressed?

If we give up that power, then what do we have? We have nothingness on one hand, which is utter contradiction, utterly an abyss when faced that derives for us the epitome of existential anxiety; but then the other side is even more scary: We Find that what we call perception and subjectivity is indeed a constituent aspect of the universe itself, of indeed objects in themselves. Grass gives us itself. Trees give us information about itself in itself, the actual objectivity of the tree. Planets as well, consciousness as well, books, discourse, atoms, opinions, leaves, air, Krishna, molecules, bacteria, concepts,Gods, God Goddess, spirits, devils, Angels, psycho killers, priests and goblins, witches, magic and scientists.

We find that all of these things arise in themselves, truly existing, in the universe, the constituency of the universe, all this despite our subjective intentions.

This is what reflection is.

Yes, it is in ability of consciousness or subjectivity or individuality or persona or mind to consider its own situation, as well as to consider itself by virtue of that which it considers within its domain of concept, intelligence, and perception.

So it is not by contrast that we are not able to ever come upon anything else. But on the contrary, it is due to this limit that we are able to come across true things of the universe. Things in-themselves. And for themselves. Avoiding any and every encounter with subjectivity.

When this is realized, then we begin to have an ability to form valid and effective relationships. For we are no longer expecting and demanding things to conform with our own ideas of self, psychology, and intention.

xx

THE MASSES AS OBJECT

WHEN MARGINALIZED RATIONALITIES REAR ITS UGLY HEAD: THE MASSES AS HYPEROBJECTS

https://thepostsecularblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/when-marginalized-rationalities-rear-its-ugly-head-the-masses-as-hyperobjects/
— Read on thepostsecularblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/when-marginalized-rationalities-rear-its-ugly-head-the-masses-as-hyperobjects/

great post!!

Yet/and… read on…

I am not sure that we need to use the term “hyper objects”. I think that term functions and works to miss the significance of objects in-themselves. if I were to use the term “hyper objects” in the context that I am understanding it, at least through this link post: It’s as though I am approaching a great significance, and as I get closer to it then all of a sudden I need to turn away and completely ignore and miss what the significance actually was and create my own subjective interpretation of what I actually never encountered. The speculative term “hyper object” is an evangelistic manner of retaining subjects under its theological dominion.

In a very real sense, it’s as though existentialism of the Sartean kind (revolting from the abyss) is in fact less a rational ontological truth, and more A functioning of religious theological dogma for the purposes of Establishing and maintaining a transcendental subject of offense (ubiquitous politics).

Nevertheless, This post link is a perfect extrapolation of the theme that Zizek mentions somewhat frequently here and there: The significance of modern critical theory and philosophy is that while it thinks it’s self as a player in social activism, it’s discourse has nothing to do with “the people”. The masses, or the people, cannot be appropriated by philosophy nor critical theory; rather, the appropriation links back to its own assertion of power, as though it is getting at something new; as I say in places and as Cedric Nathaniel will argue in his book, the world that is encompassed by modernity and postmodernity cannot even reach “the mass of people” except through denying that “the people” as a universal object actually exists in itself. This situation that philosophy/critical theory has gotten itself into is ultimately correlational unto itself. The issue thus is not how to get out of correlational existence, but how we deal with this fact.

This post is a perfect example of the motion that I just described: As soon as the people attempt to act for themselves, the agent of critical theory (and the general congregation/constituency of the theoretical religious body) have to impose and discount it, make it marketable, discount the people themselves because the people acting in themselves and for them selves actually exhibit a manner of existence which does not accord with the theological mandates of critical philosophical theory of the One Reality: The People exhibit no excess, no margin for profit. The irony of this contradictory activity is eternal, and is why we must locate such idealized activity within the envelope of transcendental law, A code of laws “given from God”.

I am excited that this post mentions GrahamHarman In what I see as an appropriate use of his philosophy in something that is not architecture — because this is the first post, even though he’s referencing an article from 2009 or something, that I’ve seen anyways, that is beginning to understand or somehow reflect upon the world as though it is filled with objects, and as well seems to be beginning to comprehend it self in the context of universal objects as opposed to a common humanity of inter-relating subjectivities. But but of course, this is not to say that there are not interrelating subjectivities, but only that The universe of interrelating subjectivities is not the only universe that can be known, and that indeed interrelating subjectivities are objects, or, is an object in itself.

The caveat to this, though, is that I fear that such theoreticians will still be involved in the attempt to reduce this kind of alterity, this disparity, to another common manner to link power to its absolute ideological object, and completely miss the significance that they almost came upon.

But in the meantime, like I said, at least people are beginning to notice them selves in the context of universal objects.

*

We are just beginning to see, to actually be able to view, what human beings do. We are just beginning. This is the long game…

….But all that is for other posts.

Considering Truth and Reality. Where Science, Religion and Superstition meet; The Communicative Move.

Everyone has an idea of what is true and real. In fact, most do not see any difference between these ideas. Against this we have the notion of superstition, in the historical mythological sense. Superstition is the justification of faith, and together they form a basis by which the activities to solve the problems of reality are justified.
When superstition is excluded in the consideration of what is true, that is, when it is taken as a ‘false’ by which ‘truth’ is situated, meaning if it is included then it is so by a negation, here we have not only reality, but the evidence of faith.

There is a different route before us. Let us take the example from what we can call Biblical mythology.

*

It would seem we have at least two possibilities; the universe of Adam and Eve that does not adhere to our modern scientific version of laws that have governed the workings of the universe since its beginning, and the the universe (of them) that has operated the same since their time to our time.

It seems it has to be one or the other. A beginning of the universe that actually began with two God created people must have existed, as humans like us, in a universe that was completely foreign to our understanding, that is, by contrast, if we live in our present world of scientific type methodology of real things, where evolutionary theory describes the actual universe for all times.

The former universe, one could say, had ‘miracles’, a universe where a serpent at times could talk and be motivated by ‘more than instinctual’ animal processes. This universe also has staves that could turn into snakes (Moses), a certain finite number of creatures that Noah could gather, and ‘works’ of Jesus, where a person that was dead could actually come back to life physically, and probably a myrad of other miraculous possibilities spoken about by other cultures. A universe where extra-universal energies (God?) still were involved directly with the universe.

Now, see though, I am not being facetious. I am not even thinking about ‘what if’.

The other universe is one where the humanity we know now, the capacity and ability we count as human today, including that part which extends into science, is The universe that has always been, running by the same Laws, the same limitations, one of which says that serpents could never speak to humans let alone convey a complex thought in speaking, or staves that could become snakes, or if such things could happen, then it was a mistaken apprehension of the events.

Also see that I feel that in being human, I should explore the world with all my capacities, barring no thought, considering all that might be able to come under my view. Granted, this view involves a certain morality so far as to what I may enact, but so far as the possibility of truth in the world, I must be at least willing to consider it in its possibility, including the possibility that may offend my idea of what is real and true. To me, this is a God given capacity and ability, that It gave me (us) to use to its fullest. In other words, I should, within this capacity and ability, be at least willing to try to set aside what I know is correct; the truth lay then with all that is known. The transition from real discourse to true communication occurs as we move to the experience itself.

Under this maxim for being in the world, this is why I can say or have said I do not have faith, but my faith is in doubt. For, if I do not have faith, then the faith that I do have is defacto, by definition, doubt. But inso much as somehow I have a commitment or an imperative of my being that does not allow me to have faith, by virtue of this situation, I am having faith in a meaning from which I derive that statement ‘I do not have faith’ in order to be able to say it and mean it, and thereby this condition admits, my condition, my faith is in doubt. I become subject to a peculiar situation whereby the position I advocate betrays itself, and I am left nowhere by what I may say, except that somehow I have said it, because the faith that I do have, the faith that allows me to speak and mean with conviction, is in question by the very fact that I may say and mean ‘my faith is in doubt’.

So it is that the possibility that there was a singular and momentous human being who was the Son of God, sent into this world for the forgiveness of sins, that those who believe in him may not die, but have everlasting life, this actual person-God 2000 years ago as the Bible tells – I do not have faith in this, which I to say I do not believe it, but yet I do believe, have faith in the idea, that it is just as possible as the truth I know, by which I have faith in doubt. This is ironic, the situation of irony: to have faith in doubt.

*

The possible situations of the universe as I presented above, both rely upon an implicit idea of progress. The former, where a serpent actually talks to Eve, suggests a universe that has been moving away from God, a universe that began with a God and where God used to interact, where miraculous things could and indeed did happen as they are told about, but that the universe is or has been moving in a manner where such strange occurrence, one could say at least, become less and less, leading ultimately to our time, wherein any and all miraculous events are immediately usurped and explained by our modern understanding, thus stripping them from the truly miraculous and leaving them, at most, merely strange or mysterious.

The latter universe extends its reaches to the ‘beginning’ and proclaims that humans a long time ago were not as intelligent as we are now. Even though they had the capacity innate in the (our) developed brain, its processes, as an adapted mechanism of natural selection of acquired traits, needed time in trial and error in dealing with the true universe to find out what is actually real and true. Early man was superstitious, and believed in all sorts of spirits and demons, gods and deities, supermen and fantastic creatures, and was prone to believing false ideas such as a geocentric universe, four basic elements, and the body’s functioning through chakras and humors. Eve talking to a serpent is explained as analogy or as ignorance, as a real human event hidden in symbolism or clouded by superstition. This universe is of a progress toward true knowledge, of humans learning and understanding their true place and the true structure of the universe.

I am unable to have faith in either one of these universes, to believe , which is to say, will myself, choose, to have one or the other be true; ‘evidence’ merely begs the question of and announces simultaneously to what ‘faith’ is being attested. I can only consider their possibility in regards to possibility. In fact, so much as what is true, is that they are both possible given the condition of knowledge that I inhabit; and this is to say, they are both true, and this truth requires, as an act of will, no faith. But my faith is in doubt. That which I come upon as true has given these sensible conclusions. What is real as to the world in which I live, while tending toward the latter, ‘scientific’ universe, comes to be in question because of what is true. This question then brings what can be called ‘commitment’ (see my posts “Tangent 3.9: Love”, and “Concerning Commitment…”) and develops along lines that can be called faith. Which universe do I choose?

*

As I invite the reader to truth, I can confront your faith.

The point, I suppose, that I am getting at so far as Eve and the serpent is that I am incapable of coming to a Big Story of the history of humanity. Or, I would have to say that it is ‘in between’.

It is this in between-ness that is the problem between us, between individuals, maybe. Because, in a way, what the story the Bible presents I can say to be true, but the meaning I have of this truth seems not the same as what you mean when you say it is true or false. In part, I would say my Story is both stories, the former and the latter. What this would mean is that taken separately their veracity must be taken in faith, an ‘either/or’. Taken together would show something to the effect that the historical move away from God is the move toward God, that in one way, God is knowledge of truth, and in another way God is false knowledge; this totality then would deny that there was ever a ‘true’ history designated by either the Bible’s Big Story or the Science/evolution Big Story, but that the apparent contrary movements reveal no movement, or a movement that exists only in the ever-present moment, and that on one hand, the promise of Jesus can come ‘in the blink of an eye’, at the end of time, or on the other hand, in the ‘thoughtful’ realization of the oppressively limiting power that ‘scientific’ knowledge has over the individual in reality right now. Since the Subject of both stories is the single human being’s relationship with the world, and how that Subject really has nothing to do with the world, but has everything to do with him or herself as a Subject of worldly things, the true issue cannot be so much what one believes is true, not so much what their faith ‘witnesses’; rather, the issue has more to do with what it is to be the Subject of God.

**

***

Now, the notion presented in the foregoing essay might seem to many quite…ridiculous. We are quite comfortable with what our scientific reasonings say; basically, we got it down. Our explanation of reality is true; evolution is the right fit, even though we still are working on the details. Fundamentalist Christians have their Biblical creation truth. Then there is the debate that crosses these two truths that attempts to pull ideas from either side and argue which one is more true, and this occurs at all levels, between all sorts of ‘fundamental’ ideas, their arenas of discourse.

This essay poses the issue upon the more religious horizon. But this is not merely an isolated ‘what if’; it is a sound reasoning based in the same ability that I would say is stuck in its own faith.

Science is also offering it own reconciliation of the problem of such faith; here is a link to an essay that describes this same motion put into the rhetoric of science:

http://darkecologies.com/2014/02/22/lee-semolina-time-physics-and-climate-change/

Likewise Quentin Meillassoux, for one, offers his more scholarly reduction in his discussions referring to analytical appropriations of historical philosophical authors and their ideas.

The issue I address through this ‘coincidence’ of reality, has to do with how it is possible that such a reduction is being made. Reality has it that there is an historical context that is informing our ability to know of things, and the conclusions and assertions of truth, put forth usually as theory and or hypothesis, are likewise informed due to these previous delineations of ideas. Such it is that we have the individual who exists because and due to the information that was before him or her, mediated by a sort of transcendent consciousness of free will, determining by this contingency of essential forces what the present is as well as what the future has to deal with in ideas of the world.

When we move from superstition, which is of faith, which includes what is otherwise metaphysical, conventional science, to what could be called true science, we find our place in the statement, “I doubt this causal formulation”.

The Impossible; Part 5. Existence and the Story of Death to Life.

Whew! Those Impossible essays really get thick. So perhaps a rejoining to a more approachable speaking. But hold on! The ride is just getting fun.

I have been interacting through comments and replies with Dave, who writes the blog called “Big Story Guide”. Our conversation is quite wonderful, so, just as I used our conversation for the basis an earlier essay post ( See: Aphilosophy, Convention, Faith and God), I do the same here, and because this latest reply grew to such lengths (even though I think I have posted replies even longer than this one).

The reader can see our extended conversation under the comments of “Issues and Existence”. And please feel free to visit Dave’s blog “Big Story Guide”: http://bigstoryguide.wordpress.com/2-the-death-to-life-project/

*

We last saw our heros continuing enquiry into each other’s ideas. Dave is curious for a rendition of Lance’s ‘Big Story’, and Lance has been attempting to discover from Dave the significance for the Christian and the non-Christian in the claim of Christ Jesus. Dave (in italics)…

Your notion of “the qualitative motion of history” suggests a bigger story than The Bible tells – a story within which The Bible should be interpreted. So, when you say, “Teaching, method, apprehending or comprehending terms through a particular scheme, is the issue at the heart of the Gospels,” it seems as if you are sort of taking an aerial view of a mansion of reality/truth. You can see Christians entering through one door (scheme) on one side of the mansion while you see Hindus and others entering by other doors (schemes) on other sides of the building
.

The quality of history reflects an essential motion, where as history itself changes with the times. I think the Bible presents a certain correspondence with these ideas, one ironic, one conventional.

“If that is the case, what is the more faithful rendition of our story, told from that larger view?”

You have captured one of the more insightful philosophical rebuttals to some of the existentialist authors here, one that contributed, I feel, to the discarding post-modernist critiques to a particular era, and the movement beyond it. The larger view is entirely existential, that we are humans doing human things, that has no more meaning than the meaning we have of it at the time, that there is no knowing a true history, that anything anyone can say has to do only with present discursive situations. The question would be then, how could they know of this? The rebuttal is something like the accusation that the so-called existentialist (but Laruelle with his non-philosophy likewise) authors set themselves as a sort of ‘omniscient’ or ‘removed’ viewer, as if their view is not likewise conditioned by the existential situation.

But I would say that the ‘death to life’ story, as you describe it of the Bible, is no larger than what the above situation grants. To wit: How would it be possible to step out of existence so as to gain such a view? The answer is excruciatingly ironic, for the one who is ‘stepping out’ is the one who says it cannot be done.

One way to speak about it is to say there is no stepping out of existence, that there is no larger story but the story that is reflected in itself by itself, and that this reflection is based in an apparent separation.

Take for example a story book, a novel. Can the characters step out of the story in order to see the story? No, they cannot. They are determined in and by the story to be the story as it goes. It is only the reader who steps out of the story, but he does this by an interesting move. This is the historical significance of the development of the novel-type writing. The reader starts at the beginning and reads to the end. He thereby can summarize the story, talk about its characters, its plot, the development of tension, climax and such; but this telling is not the story, it is a story of a story. The real state of the reader is removed from the story but in such a way that he views the summary and discussion of the story as referring to the story itself. But his telling is not the story; it is not even a summary. It is the story of the story. This real reader misses the story by staying removed from the story, and it is this assumptive state of removal, of distance enacted by the author as well as the reader in reality, that allows the story of the story to be not the story but its summary. This state of being human corresponds with the state of reality, that which marks a quality of history to the reading of history.

Thus another way to speak about it would be to see that to live ‘in the worldly’ way is to live by separation, and with reference to your ‘Death to Life Story’, is the way ‘of death’, not dissimilar to your Big Story.

Would you say that Abraham, being after the Fall, was likewise ‘living death’? I would say no. I would say the he ‘lives’, but did not need Jesus and so was not ‘restored’ to life, but merely ‘lived in God’ but after the Fall. How did he get that way?

The same with Noah before him; …he “was a just man, perfect in his generations, Noah walked with God”. How was this so if all men live in a state of death after Adam? How did Noah “[find] grace in the eyes of The Lord”?

Further, the only thing it says of how Abraham got to know God is “Now the Lord said unto Abraham…”

And what of Moses? Did he do anything to bring God to him or chose to meet God? No. God chose him. And I would add that this is the most offensive aspect of the Bible to the reader of its stories: It could have only happened in the past since if God chose someone today, in the same way as Abraham, Noah, Moses or Jesus, it means that God has not chosen me; but where there is irony, this statement, the meaning of Moses, etc, ‘being chosen’, has no contradictory baring upon my relation with God.

I think that, as a result of your bigger-than-The-Bible-Big-Story, your interaction with the biblical figures Abraham and Jesus becomes pretty highly conceptualized. For example, Abraham experiences “a true ‘before the fall’ covenant, so to speak, with God.”

Are these three people human beings? I would say yes, they are actual human beings who ‘knew’ God. And, in that they did nothing to achieve such a relation with God, that is to say, they did not beckon favor with God, they also did not choose anything about God, at least, not any more than someone else could have; God exactly chose them. In fact, I would say, because they are ‘after the fall’ people, they could not have chosen God; nothing they could do could remove or get beyond their ‘fallen’ condition; only an act of God could do so. In fact, choosing God could only get them as far as their own ‘sinful’ condition was able, which is ‘removed from God’, offended in this state.

This is clearly anachronistic within The Bible’s story, so it would be tremendously helpful to know the bigger big story within which this Abraham event took place. Please, tell me about “the real mistake that began as the Fall.”

Sin can be seen as “the real mistake that began as the Fall.” The mistake of taking an object before God. If this is a signal of human heritage, passed down as a condition or state of being human, then as we are in sin, at some point in the past it would seem there was an original sinner.

In a way, in the story, the ‘fruit’ or ‘apple’ represents the ‘idol’ that comes to stand between Adam and God; it is the worldly object that is seen to be able to make Adam and Eve like God, knowing good and evil: ethics/universe of objects the control of which make humans ‘like God’. The mistake that unfolds in history is the progressive domination of such object, the ‘death’ that ultimately pushes God entirely out of human knowledge and experience. When such ‘worldly saturation’ occurs, then Christ returns to restore life, that is, God.

If this post-fall state is inherited by all humans, then as this is indicated by choice or free will, our state determines thus our ability to know God. This ability, founded in the ‘first significant choice’ – since if there was choice before the Fall then its significance was consistent with God’s will, where ‘everything’ would be significant, thus allowing nothing significant to be punctuated as such – thus likewise conveys the beginning of ethics, since that which is consistent with God’s will has no weight against what could be evil since such a motion in that ‘pre-fall’ state is God’s state and not so much a human state. The post Fall state of humanity, wherein choice upon good and evil resides or is established, is the entirely of what we can know, our knowing being limited by the sinful condition of knowing with choice, can be called the universe, because it consists of or is correspondent with what all humans can possibly know. So it is that Kierkegaard, in “Fear and Trembling” (I believe its this book) begins with “the universe is the ethical”.

It’s worth mentioning again that I think the question, “Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical” is an interesting one raised by the Abraham-Isaac story. But, I don’t think it is at the heart of the story. Instead, the issue of humanity’s death and the possibility of resurrection is at the heart of the story.

The question “Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?” is Kierkegaard’s primary concern, as I have said, through all his works. This question means: Is there a way of knowing or otherwise communing with God-as-God, meaning, without the ethical doubt that injects one’s humanity in the way of God’s communication with him? In other words: is there a possibility of a God-man?

One of the things I feel like I’m missing in our conversation is how you might see the teleological suspension of the ethical being necessary to some kind of resurrection.

Resurrection, with regards to the ‘death to life story’ of the Bible, is a teleological suspension of the ethical, a breach of universal ‘right-ness’, an actual communion with God ‘as Life’, as opposed to ‘death’. Such communion or communication would not have a possibility of ‘wrong-ness’ since God is above or beyond ethics: God is God, creator of the universe, creator of choice, indetermined by choice. God is righteousness as opposed to nothing else. Hence Kierkegaard considers Abraham and Jesus.

Your questions regarding Jesus’ experiences with faith strike me as also being an interesting aside. I would find them much more compelling if I believed that Jesus represents a God-in-man issue. But, I believe that Jesus is the God-man who came to address the death of humanity through His death and resurrection.

God can only be ‘in man’ as much as man sees God as distanced, or removed, from man; but the movement is that man made that choice to remove himself from God. Hence the significant questions concerning the state of humanity is: What about you is not God? What is resurrection?

This is essential.. This is essential.

[Jesus’s] experiences with the teachability, and learnability of faith, and His personal experiences with doubt strike me as being pretty speculative (but still interesting) and less essential.

I would think these represent his humanity, and, ironically, they are entirely speculative and less essential – and it is interesting how K speaks about ‘the interesting’ as a quality of various worldly topics.

*

The contradiction between the God-man and the God-in-man presents the impossible situation of reality: Would you know if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was standing right in front of you? How would you know? Would everyone know? How do you know?

Reality imposes its maxim, framed or determined by the impossible: You are not God, and, no one can have a personal audience or communion with God as God. A man, though, may have God ‘in him’, and hope to be communicating directly with God, because this is the condition of man after the Fall: He needs a redeemer, a proxy, a go-between. Faith allows for a traversing of the distance that has been created by the sin of not choosing God, or maybe better put, the sin of being able to choose God now that there is a sufficient distinction by which to make a decision. This is the post-Fall universal condition of humanity. Only those of the past can be such God-chosen people, for if I told you that God indeed has spoken to me, has chosen me, in the same way as Abraham and Moses, you would call B.S. or think I’m insane. Because reality has it that we are all equal, all of the same capacity and existential presence in the world, then if this is the case, that I commune and communicate with God as God, it means that God has chosen me and not you. This is offense. This is the evidence of sin. This is impossible.

Kierkegaard thus considers the possibility of Christ. Is it possible that God sent his Son to be here on earth, a human? If this is possible, what does it mean for humanity? Does this meaning exceptionalize meaning to certain qualifiers, such that there are ‘humans’ and then there are ‘human but also something else’? How does the exception also place me in a certain position with reference to God? Does this meaning, the exception, include all humans, regardless of how they are qualified? What does this mean? Where do I exceptionalize myself as human, but not ‘that’ human? What is God? Who is God? Where am I offended? Where do I sin? What stories do I tell myself to qualify myself in the world? What are these stories? What is blasphemy?

Can I know God as God? Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?

For reality, the answer to these questions being the same, is impossible!
But only through faith.

O.M.G.

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The impossible, Part 3.

When we talk about the impossible we might see a light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is really just the part of the tunnel that has electricity. The point of any discussion that wishes to find a solution, should not be about solutions. So far as reality proper and ideological power goes, as long as there is a solution, nothing changes. So the true revolutionary should not be so much concerned with enacting revolution, but should be more concerned with revealing and elucidating problem, because it is only when there is no solution, that things change. So if we see what is impossible, then we have found the real game: that the effort for the radical occurs to reify the state of reality, so ingenious, self centered and fearful of losing power humanity is. There is no successful freedom beyond the state (see my essays on feminism) in this way, freedom is an illusion, an ideological clone of the ghost in the machine. Freedom occurs through fidelity to the state. Freedom is violence.

Now, doesn’t that sound pretty impossible? But this is exactly the post-modern judgment that opened the doors by which to speak of ideology and social justice. The activities of social justice lay exactly in the discourse of freedom; this is what was realized, that there is no justifying effect in attempting to speak of justifying the individual outside of the state, as some sort of essential subject.

Ironically, to speak of freedom as an effect outside of social justice is impossible. So that is the course we take.

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That by which we may know of what is impossible presents the truth of reality. By this truth, the real argument for determinism is always transferred to the contingent through the contingent; determinism is always a theory. When what is contingent, that is, results found through the interaction of random chance and a choice of free will, is placed or otherwise exists at the root of being human, only problem occurs as oscillation between problem and solution is not seen as a basic motion of existence, and a solution is sought to rectify the motion of human consciousness.

We can say this is the problem: in so much as the universe is determined, such determination is theoretical, and, inso much as there may be theory, the universe is not determined since theory arises in the contingency of the universe: it is theoretical. This is the basis of the argument between determinism and contingency; neither can be argued to the truth it proposes in either placement, they can only argue what is real, and reality involves contingency. We can say also: in so much as the universe is contingent, presently manifested upon necessary causal relations that take their form out of random situations, so much we have free will, and, in as much as we may know of this contingent universe and our freedom within it, the universe has been determined in this way, that we cannot but have a contingent universe.

In other words, we cannot live as human beings and be determined, choice always plays in reality. The idea that we and or the universe is determined, meaning that we have no true choice (see my previous posts), is always set in choice as we live; we make choices throughout the day that if tempered with the idea of determinism perpetually amounts to a choice, or a reminding, that we are determined. The problem of human existence is posed by this determination.

This problem cannot be solved in argument. The discussion that seeks to prove the solvency of contingency or determination always avoids the object of its antagonism; the argument for a determined universe avoids the choices that are made in the arguing, and contingency misses the necessary procurement of terms that are assembled to present its argument, as well as its meaning. The universe is determined, but we must choose, and the choice we make could not be made otherwise – but I have chosen. Though we might find the solution to the polemic here in a universe that is both determined and contingent, and perhaps bring a contextual reduction to a further analysis, this then proposes the reality of the universe as lived experience. Yet, the progress implicated by this move invariably will bring about not only a further polemic of terms, but also will yield a return to the same argument under different terms, as we will see. If there is a human being who suffers no problems, who makes no choice, what we have with him is then a person who has ‘stepped out of time’, or to be more precise, lives in another reality.

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The solution to the real problem of the universe is impossible. Yet, because the solution of the universe is impossible, it can be solved, and because the problem of the universe can and cannot be solved, the means through which the problem has been posed, as well as its solution, must be the problem. It may well be this posing, but it is at least a posing.

This is to say, the scheme of meaningful terms by which the universe is known, as to its problem and solution, is defective. We can say this conclusion is true because the scheme is that which poses the truth of reality, and this scheme says such a conclusion is impossible, this must be true, so the solution is impossible. If what is impossible is temporary, that is only impossible right now but maybe not later, then it is real, and is not impossible, but then the vacillation of problem and solution is possible. But, again, if we can surmise of what is human by the apparency of this sentence, of the quality inherent of its representation, then a removal of the motion may be human, and consequently is not real. The terms of reality themselves must be the problem, unless there is a humanity beyond terms, so the solution cannot be found through the terms. And, if there is a humanity beyond the terms, the problem is how to use terms to speak of this humanity; we must think less upon definition, since the definitions of terms do not encompass such humanity, and think more upon orientation. This is to say we might think more about a poetics, but this term also risks relapse into the scheme we are meaning to point out as faulty.

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We have a definition of the universe that is operative: The universe is that which contains or is otherwise accounting for all that exists. The universe operates by laws. By these laws the universe develops stars, planets, and everything else, including the human creature.

Humans began as ignorant of the laws of the universe, how it operates, and due to the capacity inherent of the human structure, brain, body, etc, humans as a species have been involved in an attempt to know how the universe operates. Recently, humans have developed science that tells us that while the universe has been operating by set laws, part of this law is accounted for by random occurrence. Science is still attempting to discover the parameters, the law, by which randomness can occur.

The segue above suggests a definition of human that is operative. Human beings have an ability for free thinking. This ability allows human beings to discover things of the universe, how they operate and function, how they interact, as well as extrapolate possibility of universal things, including relations, themselves, human nature and psychology. Free thinking and action occurs through, or is manifested by, choice, and choice, while based upon a coming upon distinct or sometimes not so distinct options, situations for decision making, these situations nevertheless arise through cause, which when looked into are found to be not so distinct, and are in fact, debatable. Cause, in this way, can be said to arise from randomness, since, at least, we are not able to account at one time for all cause that amounts to a situation, and in one sense those causes that are not accounted for amount of chance, but in another sense, cause that amounts to the chance of a situation being thus situated can be considered random. Yet choice itself, as an ability, is not seen to arise from or within random occurrences, but is understood as basic to a causal chain, and is decision that originates in a primary subject, the individual human being.

We have thus a situation of two situations, and the situation of this situation is one of two situations. The redundancy of this situation will make itself apparent.

The law abiding or containing universe arises in situation from randomness, and the human being makes choices based upon determined causes that arise likewise with random aspects. The random aspect of the universe is understood as a basic feature to be uncovered through science, and the random aspect of being human is addressed similarly through psychology, but the universe is set aside in the act of choice, that is, decision. So we have the universe as it is, having developed along certain lines and junctures of laws constituent or otherwise informed by arbitrary influences and events, and the individual human as it is as an end product of a causal chain of choices, the actual occasions of decision arriving by chance. The confluence of these situations arrives at the point of a common unknown influence (random occurrence).

Yet, the unknown of a universe that is of a different quality than the unknown in which the event of human choice takes place argues that there are different qualities of absent influence. An absence that has a quality is not characterized by itself, rather, that which characterizes an absence is not absence but the choices that establish what influences to define what a particular absence is. The universal absence, which can be said to be the random element of law, is a mathematical formulation, while the random element involved with human decision is a psychic affect; if there is a mathematical formulation that can convey the psychic affect without effecting the psyche, or a psychic affect that can impose math or withdraw a mathematical formulation, then the two categories would not be drawn in this way or be able to convey a sensible meaning in this way for I would say ‘math formulation’ and ‘psychic affect’ would not need to correlated since they would naturally confer the other. This incommensurability argues that the universe and the human being are segregate elements of a larger encompassment, and this is exactly what the imposition of undetermined choice, free will, psychical determination, proposes.

And again, the problem; if the universe is structured with random aspects, then these aspects are in truth universal aspects that are random. Yet this is only known by the agent of free will, thus we should have a problem that begins and ends with choice, that the random aspect of the universe is actually a point of failure of free will. Yet it is quite sensible to thereby argue that this point of failure is the situation of the individual in and of the true universe, or, that human beings are merely ignorant at this point.

It is not difficult to make a correlation between the deduced common random influence and the induced larger encompassment. In effect, the unavoidable contingency of the human being in the universe allows for the determination of both the transcendental and immanent One of sensible reality; the very basis of the ability to choose cannot be separated from its counter partial One. Choice must be set between two elements, the option and the ‘chooser’. As above, this sensibility arrives at two sensibilities that appear segregate. The One Thing called the universe and the One Thing called the human psychic being, and these taken together can imply a third influencing extra-universal element that also counts as a unifying One. But which way do these various ‘Ones’ fall to incorporate the ‘One-and-Only’, irrefutable One?

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Where should we look for this One?

In yoga classes and organic grocery stores that make you feel good and bring up pictures of happy Buddha, blissful Mohammed and smiling Jesus, of all humanity holding hands in a loving chain around the world, everyone exhibiting their art to each other, and call it the Zeniverse?

Or in the styley cool centers where eager Bing-ers looking for the next hip place to eat can think on what might be included in part 4 of this nonsense?

Oh wait; probably none of those people have read this far.

But for those who have, I leave you with a riddle of sorts:

Those who see forward are congregants;
Those who see present are prophets;
Those who see backward are enlightened.

Who is correct?

Waiter ??….