Posted on 12/07/2002 9:46:51 AM PST by beckett
An interesting facet regarding Christianity, is that Scripture is that it isn't occultic. Nothing is hidden. But also it plainly tells us that to those who have not accepted the Son, and not yet received the Holy Spirit, that those things spiritually discerned will appear as foolishness.
Accordingly it might appear to somebody who seeks a relationship with righteousness from their own effort or own works, that hidden meanings exist. Instead, by placing faith in Him, allowing the Holy Spirit to indwell an fill the believer, God Himself as the Holy Spirit guides us in that discernment. Things spiritually discerned are then discerned in truth, not by our will, but by His will.
There is a maturing process which allows one to further discern as one further metabolizes doctrine in the soul ( consciousness and mind) and then applies it in one's walk in the spirit and controlling actions from volition.
I agree with you that some metaphors might be better understood by studying the historical culture. But I would add that the more significant gains are first made by simply following the fundamental tenants of Scripture shared byal denominations of the historic Christian faith.
I agree that some extrabiblical writings might provide insight and guidance here and there, but also they stand one or two steps removed from the Word of God. In searching for truth, the best source I've found has been the Holy Bible, which I understand to be Scripture, and until I've mastered it, consider the other extrabiblical books accordingly, i.e. as extrabiblical.
What a beautiful essay, beckett!
What seems irrational to me is the absolute refusal to take that leap of faith when truthful human existence so requires it. By saying this I only mean to point out that the very circumstances of human existence preclude the massive possession of certain truth. We come into existence "in the middle" of a process whose beginning and ends we never can see for ourselves; we have our personal beginning and end within that process. We clearly see we are not self-created; nor does the constitution of any aspect of the universe depend on us in any way. Nor can we in any way stand outside of the universe so as to gain the necessary perspective to view it "whole," in its entirety.
So if you refuse to take the leap, what you are left with is some species of reductionism: You trust your eyes and the scientific method. But use of the scientific method has revealed to us a world that is not at all as it appears to sense perception. "Knock on wood" and all you hit is wood? I don't think so -- you're knocking on a swirling, pulsating, maelstrom of energy whose finest, virtual particles "pop in" from a "someplace" we haven't got a clue about, then self-annihilate. Why? What purpose is served by this? Ah! the sweet mysteries of life!
Sometimes I wonder whether people run to the reductionisms because it gives them a false sense of security in a world that is otherwise incomprehensible -- thus dangerous and scary. But you can't wrap up the universe, past present and future, like a box of bon-bons.... No theory, no doctrine, no ideology, could possibly contain it all.
In Steve Pinker's case, the motivation may be otherwise. There's something about this man that I sense is positively "satanic" (for lack of a better word). His perfectly handsome looks and smooth, confident demeanor are very seductive....
People like Pinker will feverishly pile up complications on top of complications, rather than accept the sheer and deeply satisfying simplicity of a universe -- in all its life -- created from a Source outside the space-time continuum, to which Source human beings are naturally capable of feeling deeply connected. That people down the ages have felt and thought this way is a species of "empirical evidence" that he refuses to consider. He seems to be saying, "that cannot be correct, for these people are resonating to God, and there cannot be God." (An undemonstrated pre-analytical notion.)
The missing footnote simply indicates he is trying to pass off as fact a bald assertion that has not been demonstrated -- because it is undemonstratable. He builds his theory on a wholly unexamined pre-analytical notion, and apparently hopes we will not notice the sleight of hand.
Thank you again, beckett, for the extraordinary and thought-provoking post.
p.s.: You like Leonard Cohen!!! Wow, that's another crazy coincidence...me too!!! I especially treasure his "Suzanne" and "The Story of Isaac"....
Yep, MHGinTN, it's pretty clear the folks who propound such notions have that end in view before they even start. But because they cannot defend their foundational premise using the standard tools of logic and reason, I think it would be wise to question their conclusions.
FWIW, what all this looks like to me is: Because they refuse to deal with an intractible truth, they find it convenient to drop it into some "rat-hole" of willful amnesia, on the apparent assumption that, once this embarrassing and quite messy fact is excised from consciousness, we are free to "do our own thing" and go on our merry way....
That this preference is neither "merry" nor a humanly (humanely) viable "way" is just another "inconvenient fact" to be dropped down the ol' memory rat-hole....
Thanks for your reply, BB, and please forgive me for not responding sooner. For some reason, as I said in my Freepmail to you, I missed this post when it appeared on my Comments page. And what kills me is that I was anticipating your reply and looking for it the week after I asked you to comment!
I agree that reductionism provides a sense of security for the linear thinkers who pay it slavish obeisance. The degree to which a thinker is exclusively linear is the degree to which he or she will swear by reductionism. Apollonian pursuits of all kinds are part of a life-and-death struggle to subdue the Dionysian, chthonian world, to adopt Camille Paglia's terminology from her seminal work Sexual Personae. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Mystery religions owe much to Dionysus, and so become a natural target for the Apollonian reductionists of our day.
Hello, beckett! What an interesting perspective on reductionism. I haven’t read Ms. Paglia’s book; but on the basis of several of her articles and appearances on TV talk shows, I find her a fascinating, iconoclastic thinker with a marvelous sense of humor and a gift for “in-your-face” polemics.
I don’t know whether Ms. Paglia conceives of this Apollonian-Dionysian construct as an “either/or situation.” For if she does, then there’s nothing much to choose between but the modes of “tyrant” or “vandal.” Which in itself would be a species of reductionism.
But if she envisions the Apollonian-Dionysian model as a “tension” in everyman’s normal consciousness, then I think this would be a highly original way of looking at the problem of reductive consciousness. It would have a kind of Nietzschean flavor to it – though Nietzsche himself was pretty much firmly situated on the Dionysian “pole” of the tension, rebelling, as it were, against the Apollonian “pole.”
The reductionist or “linear” thinker, however, would be in the opposite situation. I mentioned I thought reductionism was a way to deal with the uncertainties of life such that one could derive a “false sense of security” in a scary world.
Recently it has come to my attention that the reductionist or “linear” thinker may have another motive that, although perhaps related to the first, has a slightly different nuance to it: It is the urge to simplify reality so that the amount of thinking/decision making necessary to negotiate existence is reduced to the absolute minimum. It is looking for a kind of simple “instruction manual” that says, for instance, “IF X (happens), THEN (do) Y.” The motive is essentially a flight from the complexities attending the “Dionysian pole” of existence such that a man can feel “in control” of his existence by virtue of the high degree of “certainty” that his instruction manual provides.
Unfortunately, that certainty can only come at the expense of “editing reality down” in such a way as to actually constitute a flight from it. Certainly the strategy reduces complexity. But human existence is essentially and unavoidably complex. Any “program” simpler than what the manifold of actual reality requires flattens out, not only the world, but also the human existence of the person who has recourse to it.
To conceive of the Apollonian-Dionysian model as a “tension” in everyman’s existence is, I think, a good way to look at the problem involved in maintaining the balance of consciousness in “open” existence. This problem was of great interest to Eric Voegelin. He worked on it throughout his long career, and his development of it is, as you know, of very great interest to me.
Very late in his career (when he was virtually on his death bed), he articulated the idea that consciousness has a particular structure that basically resolves into the two main modalities of intentionality and luminosity. This structure, to me, appears to be analogous to the Apollonian-Dionysian model: “Apollo” being the intentionalist mode, “Dionysius” the luminous. There is an essential tension between them, symbolized by Plato as the metaxy or “in-between reality.”
Ordinarily, when we think of Dionysius, we associate the god with the dark and chthonic aspects of human existence, e.g., with wild passion; Apollo as the god of reason, e.g., of action that orders the chaos of human existence.
I’m speculating that an analogy exists between the symbols Apollo/Dionysius and intentionality/luminosity. Intentionalist consciousness selects aspects of the external or “objective” world of sense as problems to work on; luminous consciousness is a kind of welling up of insight from within, that is, it is “subjective” – but with the qualification that it turns out of itself towards the “ground of Being” which is simultaneously the “Beyond” of Being. The “manifold of actuality” is conveyed to human consciousness through the luminous mode; the intentionalist mode is necessarily involved in a kind of editing process, for it must select its objects in order to “work on them.”
On that basis, reductive consciousness may well be the product of too great a stress on the intentionalist “pole” of human consciousness. The manifold of reality conveyed to human consciousness via the luminous pole has been effectively eclipsed, to the effect that the balance of consciousness has been lost and, along with it, a true “picture” of the world and one’s place in it -- as part and participant of total reality.
In this we witness the birth of a Second Reality.
Sorry to run on so long, beckett. But you know how much I love this stuff! Thank you so much writing.
I would say she sees it as a "tension in everyman," BB, although for her, everyman in the West may be more inclined to Apollo, and everyman in the East to Dionysus.
"The West insists on the discrete identity of objects. To name is to know; to know is to control. ...The West's greatness arises from this delusional certitude. Far Eastern culture has never striven against nature in this way. Compliance, not confrontation, is its rule. Buddhist meditation seeks the unity and harmony of reality. Twentieth century physics, going straight back to Heracleitus, postulates that all matter is in motion. In other words, there is no thing, only energy. But this perception has not been imaginatively absorbed, for it cancels the West's intellectual and moral assumptions."
Sexual Personae, p. 5, Camille Paglia
My proposal in several recent posts that there may be a "leakage" between the immaterial and the material is connected to the notion that "there is no thing, only energy." Like Paglia, I think we have not yet fully absorbed the implications of our discoveries about QM and the sub-atomic world.
I am fascinated by the analogy you draw between the Apollonian/Dionysian poles and Voegelin's conception of intentionality and luminosity, but that's no real surprise, since I've found so many of the things you have written to be fascinating. It seems that these kinds of dualities run throughout all of philosophy, mythology, religion, and literature. The Western Christian soul is a battlefield of good and evil, the Eastern splayed between the Yin and the Yang. The masculine principle contends with and compliments the feminine, and vice versa. The earth cult of the Old Kingdom in Egypt transforms briefly to the sky cult of Akhenaten, and then falls back again to earth. Over ages, the sky cult gains priority again.
I suppose the evolutionary psychologists might contend that the duality of our sexual evolution bears heavily on our tendency to polarize the world. I think I've read a few who say as much. I really can't venture a guess on the question yet, although, thanks to you, Ive been thinking about tensional "metaxy" quite a bit this past year.
In any case, I must read more Voegelin, though I find him difficult. He seems to have understood the promise and the limitations of the scientific method, which is an important capacity for any 21st century theist to possess if he or she is to be taken seriously.
I admire the way you articulated Voegelin's theory of "open" existence, and from there showed how a Second Reality can emerge from an over-reliance on intentionality. Bit by bit, I am beginning to grasp what you are trying to tell us about him.
I'd be interested to see Physicist's response to your post, formulated exactly as it is. I am not talking about the guy behind his back or anything. I admire him and respect his intellect. But I notice he is particularly linear in his thinking, a piercing laser-beam of linearity. Could he even engage the question of a Second Reality without reducing it? I wonder.
Deep scientific analysis has given us great gains over nature, but science still cannot stop a single thunderbolt. Humility before Nature and Nature's God is and will long remain appropriate.
As for Paglia's book, BB, I recommend it to you, but with some trepidation. She is quite brilliant and a fearless investigator, giving no quarter to doctrinaire feminists who "victimize" their gender. The book is an erudite survey of western art, with the Apollonian/Dionysian theme running throughout. But be warned, Paglia is a sometimes outrageous atheist and defender of pornography, whose overall thesis of Westen culture is not very comforting to the Christian ear.
Thank you so much for your marvelous post, beckett. It looks like Ms. Paglia is onto an important distinction regarding the respective worldviews of East and West. And I think she is right about the West not having absorbed the implications of what it means when we say (as does QM) that all there is, is energy; and that to admit such a thing would pose a threat to many of the reigning certitudes in science and philosophy. Indeed, it appears that quantum theory (of the regnant Copenhagen School at least) is doing everything in its power to remain “agnostic” about the meaning and role of its “observer.” I may only be speculating here, but I suspect that if this issue of the observer were to be resolved, you may find the source of your “leakage” between the immaterial and material worlds.
It seems the way the Copenhagen School wants to resolve the issue of the observer is simply to say that it is a “measurement.” (Freeper friends have proposed alternative terms, such as qumquat and zucchini, that they feel are just as suitable.)
But to me, simple-minded that I am, the idea of there being a measurement is incomprehensible absent a “measurer” -- an observer – especially since the measurement observation itself is said to cause state vector collapse – that is, the realization or instantiation of one of the manifold of possibilities contained in Schroedinger’s symbol, [it's the Greek pho, in CAPs, but my HTML skills do not permit its graphic presentation here] which “measurement” propagates non-locally to points that are conceivably “far, far away.”
To me, observation implies consciousness. And consciouness, though demonstrably real, is immaterial, non-physical. It appears to be a “form” of energy itself.
And form implies structure.
Ms. Paglia, in the quotation you cited, suggests a kind of Apollonian/Dionysian tension exists between the world views of Western and Eastern philosophy – a kind of Platonic metaxy bumped up to global scale, Apollo being the sun-god of the Greeks and Romans, and patron of music and poetry (i.e., of things “rational” and “metrical”); and Dionysius the “chthonian” god (i.e., the god of wine -- of irrational, even orgiastic existence). The West, the “Apollonian pole,” excels at taking things apart and analyzing them; the East, the “Dionysian,” at constructing “wholistic views” of the world.
Bump this back down to the level of individual consciousness and you get Voegelin’s intentionalist and luminous poles; the tension between them constitutes the structure in consciousness that Plato elaborated as metaxy, or “in-between” reality of human conscious existence.
[As an aside, bump this down even further, if only imaginatively, to the quantum level and, by analogy, you may find a fruitful way to attack “the measurement problem” in quantum mechanics. If anyone’s interested in exploring this point further, I highly recommend Evan Harris Walker’s The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life, 2000. In this fascinating book (I’m only about half-way through it), Walker tackles the problem of the observer – as consciousness -- in QM head on. Among other things, Walker “bridges” East and West in this work; for his elaboration of consciousness relies heavily on Zen….]
This “intentionality/luminosity tension” may see like a rather forbidding, difficult concept to understand. Maybe it can be simplified without doing violence to the idea by saying that intentionalist consciousness is the “instrumental” consciousness; the idea closely approximates to what we mean by analytical reason (e.g., problem-solving, logical analysis). This pole of the tension is fairly easy to grasp.
The other pole – luminosity – is more difficult. It is that part of consciousness which “senses from within,” to put it crudely. Even more crudely put, it is the “subjectivity” in confrontation with the “objectivity” of the intentionalist pole. We might say its “contents” consist of “primary” or “pre-analytical” data that concrete consciousness experiences about its position in the world.
Perhaps the earliest insight that the human mind is able to draw from this source is the idea of a discrete, cohesive personal “self” or psyche (or soul) “moving” through space and time. Then, the next insight might be the realization that there is an “outside of us” that directly impinges on our sense of personal being and engages us in processes that are “beyond” there merely personal (e.g., other men, society, the world). One might say the luminous pole symbolizes the deep well of direct human experience that brings the discrete self into potentially meaningful contact with the larger world outside of itself. This would be a basic, if rather crude, description of the field of “luminous consciousness.”
Beckett, your reference to “chthonian forces” in reference to the “Dionysiac” principle in an earlier message is serendipitous for present purposes. “Chthonian” refers to “ground” or “earth,” or even soil. I gather that Voegelin, following Plato, postulates that the luminous dimension of consciousness, once made self-aware, experiences itself as a tension between “ground” and “beyond.” (Do we see a kind of Mandelbrotian “nested pattern” here?) For the idea of “chthonian” encompasses both ground and beyond, as can be seen in the following quotation (from the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971): “Hermes stood in the cycle of the Chthonian gods, the powers that send up fruits and bounteous blessing from below.
In Greek mythology, Hermes is “a deity, the son of Zeus and Maia [(i.e., the “maternal principle,” “mother earth”], represented as the messenger of the gods, the god of science, commerce, eloquence, and many of the arts of life”….
Which among other things means, to a certain way of thinking, that my argument to this point should instantly receive 50 demerits (at least) for “going against reason” (i.e., in the present case resisting giving the rational “intentionalist pole” anything to do until the critical inductive work has been done on the “luminous pole” side). To such an extent, that I do admit, on principle and experience, that the “beyond” that “draws” human conscious thinking is nothing less than the eternal community of being, consisting of: God, man, society, world. And luminous consciousness is the “site and sensorium” of this fundamental recognition of human existential reality.
In all probability, there’s at least one reader out there who will point to the fact that my argument suffers because I have had resort to “myth” – that is, to Greek myth of the Olympian gods in their extended family, divine, semi-divine, or merely human. “Myth” these days signifies “a silly fairy story told my ignoramuses to other ignoramuses, for the purpose of allaying existential fear.” To be absolutely disregarded by the truly modern thinker, because it is “a false picture of reality.”
But what it might not be is a “false picture of some aspect of human psychology.” Indeed, myths wouldn’t have been “captured” in human imagination and subsequently symbolized if they did not refer to some complex of human conscious existence. If they meant nothing more than “fancy,” we would not be hearing about them in our own day and age, for they would have been “dead to thought” a long, long time ago.
Anyhoot, I don’t know where this leaves our present problem. I do think we need to invite Physicist to our party, and some other people whose viewpoints can be helpful in advancing this inquiry.
Just one last thing: You referred to Eric Voegelin as a “theist.” I’m not exactly sure, beckett; but somehow I think he wouldn’t have liked being “pinned down” like that. In my imagination, more likely he would say: “You can’t describe my position within the matrix of total reality until total reality comes to some kind of ‘stop.’ For as part and participant of the All – that is, of the Community of Being -- the definition of ‘me’ rests on the definition of the All, which cannot become intelligible until the All has found its End. And then, for all I know, there might be no “observer” there to observe it.”
By circumstances of birth, Voegelin was a Lutheran. But if he had an explicit “theology,” he kept it very hidden in his work.
When Voegelin died, he bequeathed to us, not “finished problems”; not doctrine. What he left to us who care to follow him are open questions. He thought that certain questions will always be left “open” to human consciousness. For Truth essentially has the nature of zetesis, or “quest.” As long as history keeps rolling along -- and thus continues to "read new data into the record" -- Truth cannot be a complete human “possession.”
The main problem with the past 200 years of human thought in all knowledge disciplines, it seems to me, is that “luminous consciousness” has been severely repressed as immaterial or extraneous to the problems and concerns of modern man.
Which I gather is why we have seen such a proliferation of "Second Realities" these days.
You don't want to be so simple-minded that a little anthropomorphic language throws you. The measurer / observer entity causing such vector collapse is just something that makes an interaction. (Remember?) In the case of a photon, the observer might be a dust mote floating in the air. The observer can even be two molecules of air just the right distance apart at just the right time, a circumstance which figures in why the sky looks blue on clear days.
The West, the “Apollonian pole,” excels at taking things apart and analyzing them; the East, the “Dionysian,” at constructing “wholistic views” of the world.
"Holistic." Well, QM goes against the stereotypes, which I rather hope were overly stereotypical anyway. Thanks for the ping. Hugs!
It seems to me that our ability to communicate and explore these questions will be hampered if we cannot agree on the distinction between an observer in terms of consciousness versus an observer in terms of quantum mechanics.
Perhaps the phrase conscious observer could be used? That would exclude all physical limitations: space/time coordinates, matter, velocity, uncertainty etc.
Through the leak comes Spirit.
Wow! beckett and bb are at it again and here I've been over on another thread whacking Evolutionists. A very deep bow in your direction, beckett, and thanks for the ping, bb. That leakage of which you speak, beckett, may turn out not to be so remote at all. For about a century, the physicists have puzzled over the necessity for an "operator" (or, to be blunt, consciousness) at the heart of quantum mechanics, and they have attempted every conceivable mental device to overcome and/or sidestep it (they were looking for "hidden variables"). They did not succeed. With John Bell's theoreom and Alain Aspect's experimental coup de grace, they confirmed non-locality, "spooky action at a distance" (Thank you, Albert Einstein). The majority of the physicists are still having a very difficult time of it, being ensconced in the material as they (and we) are. But I think a century should be enough time for us to begin to "get it", hopefully.
I am likely "anticipating" bb to some extent here, whose posts I have yet to read. Poetry ahead, Phaedrus!
Yes, Exactly, bb.
It could, but don the ear muffs -- the Materialists will howl and wail.
It is a serious mistake to think that a metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without. The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion. There is no other way of talking, as every philologist is aware. . . . We can make our speech duller; we cannot make it more literal . . .
Interesting, but there is a tendency, in keeping with the modern "delusion of certitude" to think of the world in logical oppositions. Somehow Milton's Paradise Lost opens it up--at least--to a trio of competition between persons. That would make the Western Christian soul a rebellion of evils against good.
Good discussion here and lots more to say.
It could, but don the ear muffs -- the Materialists will howl and wail.
LOLOL! Then, let's make up a word - maybe something like obsense. LOL!
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