You wrote: "..I accompanied my 93-year-old mother, a veteran of World War II, to our hometown's Memorial Day parade and ceremonials. Mom served as a U.S. Navy nurse in the South Pacific, on Guam, Saipan, and Kwajelain; and has stayed active with various veterans' organizations all her life. ...."
Hooray for your mother! I'm so glad you two got to spend another Memorial Day together. I want to extend my thanks to her for her selfless service. Where would we be without such heroic men and women of courage.
You wrote: "Anyhoot, back to Gagdad Bob's main point, the vertical direction that points beyond the world of immanent experience (the "horizontal line") to the transcendent source beyond it. Without the "vertical line," questions of truth and meaning are unintelligible, indeed impossible. All the horizontal line can give is direct observations, serially, linearly, over a "flattened" time. I note the scientific method confines itself to the horizontal line. Thus it cannot provide any criterion by which questions of meaning and truth can be asked."
Exactly. Here's more:
"O Death. Death is the Guru without whom we would never dream of embarking on the vertical journey. For why would we?
The problem for human beings is not having a life worth living. Rather, it is having a life worth leaving. Life values itself, as we see in the world of biology. Biology assures us that life is worth living, but not for any reason outside itself. Self-preservation is the Law of nature.
But human beings have been fugitives from this Law ever since they became human. For to say "human" is to say "vertical." We became human when we entered the vertical; or, when the vertical descended into man. Either way, it is the vertical that not only makes a life worth leaving, but makes it possible to do so. ....
"....As our explorers begin their ascent, the mountain is quite steep, far more steep than the line drawn from middle-quadrant to the center point. I'm not sure what that means, but it doesn't matter anyway, for it's just a metaphor of the vertical journey -- which is much more difficult at the outset than it is later on.
Says Virgil, "This mountain is of such sort / that climbing it is hardest at the start; / But as we rise, the slope grows less unkind. ....."
In Dante's case, his whole journey is predicated on his pursuit of the highest good, which, one might say, is located at the furthest extreme of the vertical cosmos. As a result, it exercises the least "gravitational attraction" when we are most distant from it.
Virgil confirms this, letting Dante know that "When the time comes when it appears / To you that the ascent becomes as easy / As going down the current in a skiff, / Then you will have reached your journey's end, / And there you may expect to rest from toil. ....."
Virgil tells him not to despair, but to keep climbing Until we meet some guide who knows the way.
In other words, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Nonlocal operators are always standing by, ready to assist you. For they literally have nothing better to do. ..... ~ Dr. Robert Godwin, Ph.D (aka "Gagdad Bob")
HERE: Friday, April 01, 2011 What Makes a Life Worth Leaving?
What a wonderful insight, dear Matchett-PI!
I can confirm that from where I sit ... I mean, the part about the "nonlocal operators" standing by to help.... (I call them "guardian angels.")
I was especially touched by Gagdad Bob's observation:
For to say "human" is to say "vertical." We became human when we entered the vertical; or, when the vertical descended into man. Either way, it is the vertical that not only makes a life worth leaving, but makes it possible to do so.I so agree — with one qualification that I'll get to in a bit.
We became human when we became self-conscious. That's the first step up onto the vertical. For self-consciousness cannot be accounted for as the sum total of a "horizontal" process: It is not the sum or product of a series of antecedent material causes proceeding on an irreversible linear timeline.
Rather, it signals an entirely different order of Being in Nature.
My qualification would be this: The vertical is not only that which "makes a life worth leaving, but makes it possible to do so"; the vertical is also that which makes a life worth living, in the "here and now."
JMHO, FWIW.
Thank you so very much for this marvelous essay/post, dear brother in Christ Matchett-PI!