"Nothing upsets the unbeliever as much as defenses of Christianity based on intellectual skepticism and internal experience." -- Don Colacho Aphorism 2961
"The Gospels and the Communist Manifesto are on the wane; the world’s future lies in the power of Coca-Cola and pornography." -- Don Colacho Aphorism 2983
"Historical events stop being interesting the more accustomed their
participants become to judging everything in purely secular categories. Without the intervention of gods everything becomes boring." -- Don Colacho Aphorism 2953
"Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question." -- Don Colacho Aphorism 2919
"Modern man lost his soul and is no longer anything but the sum total of his behaviors." -- Don Colacho Aphorism 2904
See Link:
http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Law Redux
"Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach." --Heb. 10:1.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Power and Law: Might and Right
We speak of power, which comes to us from the Latin "potentia", which is also the source of our word, potential. Power is potential from this perspective. Power is related to decision. There are many options, many potentials, but the one with power decides what is to be.
We also encounter these terms in physics, where power is not potential. Potential energy, the rock on the cliff face, has the possibility of falling and translating its potential in kinetic energy. The rock has potential energy, but of its own power, it has no capacity to fall. Someone has to choose to roll it off the cliff. Power in physics, on the other hand, is the ratio of work over time (work, of course, being the exertion of force over a distance). It relates to the rate of energy consumption. When the rock falls, it falls due to the power of gravity.
It is interesting that one reads a good deal of political philosophy, especially the Anglo-English drek, which gives no thought to the concept of political power. I suspect because we find physical power so widely accepted, we fail to see anything different about political power. It is the same word after all, so why be suspicious. But let's consider the loaded gun pointed in the face. The trigger is pulled. Death results. It's not the same when the jury comes back with a verdict of death, is it? There are appeals, requests for new trials, habeas corpus proceedings. But let's say the highest court comes down affirming death. The convict awaits execution, meets with the priest, smokes his last cigarette (unless he is in an American prison), the electric chair is charged, but then at the last moment, the Governor's Office calls and commutes the sentence. That is power, political power, quite a different thing from physical power. The Governor makes a decision, makes a call, the life is spared.
But we can think about this situation also. What if the Warden gets the call and proceeds with the execution anyways? Perhaps he or she does not tell the others the truth. Perhaps the Warden reveals that the call was from the Governor, commuting the sentence, but orders the execution to proceed anyway. If the guards comply with the Warden, then the Warden has the power. If the guards refuse, then the Governor has the power.
We have to ask where the sense of should arises from? Should the guard follow the Warden's command or should they follow the Governors? How would history have shifted if the soldiers had pointed their guns in the other direction? Note there is no should for the bullet proceeding out of the barrel of a gun. Political power requires authority and obedience. It is not enough to issue a command, there must something (although there is nothing in fact) behind the command, something that compels another to follow it. A governor, a warden, these are just people in roles, and the roles are simply defined by the players. There is not even a real director. The roles can be changed or exchanged, not at will, but through collective transformation. There is no solidity in the whole thing, beyond reverence for custom and tradition.
Charisma is the word that is related to this quality of leadership and authority. People say charismatic leader, meaning that one follows out of a sense of personal loyalty versus under the acknowledgment of a social defined duty. We can ask, what is charisma, where does it come from? We can note there is no comparable concept in physics, unless we look to the magnetic field. How does a person generate a magnetic field? Whatever we wish to say about government and politics, can we have any doubt that, at least in its most primitive form, politics has always been founded on this capacity of charisma.
Political scientists speak about legitimacy. But what is legitimacy? I presume a government is legitimate if a functionary of the government, issuing an order that they are authorized to give, issues the order and it is obeyed without question. If orders are issued and ignored or secretly thwarted, then there is clearly a lack of confidence in the functionary. Likewise, if any and all orders issuing from a government are ignored or thwarted, the government suffers from a lack of legitimacy.
A political system creates a network by which human beings can cooperate and accomplish collective objectives without thinking or deliberation. Clearly, the leadership decides on the objectives, with or without deliberation or reflection, but the bureaucrats carry out the orders (perhaps with resistance) and the subjects bear the brunt of the operations of state (taxes, imprisonment, conscription, etc.). Given that all complex political systems are hierarchical, the few decide on behalf of the many, and the many carry out the instructions. Further, many more are the passive objects of administration. Pseudo-Dionysius, in describing the Divine Bureaucracy, assigns three layers (each composed of three layers). On one level, you need deciders, implementers, and subjects.
The system works well if there is a sense of identification between the ruling class and the subjects. If the subjects believe that the rulers have their best interests at heart, they will follow without resistance. On the other hand, if the subjects believe that their rulers are corrupt or acting against their interests, grumblings, unrest, and even insurrection may rise up. We have only to consider the Whiskey Rebellion in American History to see this principle at work. Because political systems are always hierarchical, there is always the need for coercion to make the system function. The ruling class must have carrots as well as sticks to insure compliance.
Because elites, being elites, inevitably resort to enriching themselves at the expense of the people, and the people, being the people, inevitably begin to bear resentments against the elites, there is an inherent level of paranoia and mutual suspicion in the system, between all levels of the political system. At the same time, more or less publicly, there is a public proclamation of mutual agreement and sympathy, some of which may be legitimately felt and expressed. However, in the core of their being, every elite knows and realizes that the day may come when they may be perceived as "fungible", and if their exit is on bad terms, the results may be bloody. In fact, the more repression the elite deals out to keep the masses in fear, the more likely that the inevitable transfer of power will prove ugly.
But in so much as there is human cooperation, there is the reality of power, and the power belongs to the deciders within the measure of their discretion. One way that power is expressed is in the positive enactment of laws. As Carl Schmitt pointed out, legitimacy precedes legality.
One view of the nature of justice is that power is justly exercised when it conforms to positive law, and unjust when it ignores the law. This understanding may be fine and well, but we must be led to understand that power always enacts the law (or the constitution) in the first instance, power always executes or applies the law, and power always decides whether its application conforms with the written requirements. Paper rights may in theory protect against tyranny, but paper rights inevitably leave the fox guarding the hen house. The rule of law may exist in the practical sense of a consistency in legal outcomes, but it results not from the articulation of vague general principles, but from respect and reverence of government functionaries for the traditions and customs of the Republic. The progressive "expansion of rights" is, in effect, the progressive destruction of the constitutional order.
The so-called "expansion of rights" argues for the abrogation of long-standing practices in favor of the creation of new practices. The rationale is generally some abstract general principle, but in actual fact, an abstract general principle that was understood one way, e.g. as consistent with an existing form of practices, is now re-conceptualized to forbid existing practice. Rather than, as claimed, the rule of law restricting the operation of power, in actual fact, these revolutions effectuate the rule of power over the rule of law. On the other hand, this may be how it should be, or rather, how it always is in practice. Expansion of rights tracks the expansion of centralized power and control over subjects.
If we leave our analysis at the level of the world, then we can see that might always makes right, because might in the ultimate analysis defines right. If we stay at the level of agnosticism or atheism, then we must come to realize that the only ultimate reality is power, which in turn defines truth, justice and morality. The question of whether creation science or evolution is taught in school, for the consistent naturalist, must ultimately come down to which faction possesses control over the national government. The question of what should be taught serves only as a litmus test over which faction one belongs to. After all, truth can only be understood as a function of which system of ideas obtains hegemony over the noetic territory.
Let us entertain an alternative notion. What if right precedes might? On one level, this is absurd. Might always precedes what is defined to be right. If we speak of right here, we must be speaking of Right, which is by nature undefinable. If Right could be defined, it would be limited, subject, to worldly might. Let us suppose that Right exists. In this case, might could be judged with reference to an undefinable norm of Righteousness. If might conforms to Right, it is just. If it deviates, to the extent that it does deviate, it is unjust. Further, since all positive laws define Right, which is by nature undefinable, it is clear that might must always deviate from true Right. In other words, life isn't fair.
But what purpose does Right serve? Say might grossly deviates from Right. Right has no power. In order to have power, there must also be Might, an undefinable power, which enforces Right. But how could this Might and this Right, combined, act in the real world, where might is might and defines right. If Might and Right exist in combination, then these principles must be incarnate, however so inchoate, in history. Where might and right coincide with Might and Right, a Nation flourishes. Where might and right deviate from Might and Right, a Nation flounders and falls into ruin. The first is the just realm, the second a tyranny. Here we also encounter Goodness and Truth. The True, the Good, survives. The false and wicked destroys itself. The more wicked the order, the faster it implodes.
What this presupposes is a (super)natural limit on any political order. Worldly might can define the truth for itself, but worldly might withers in the Sun of Justice, which passes judgment and damnation down upon it. I am forced to conclude that the existence of Might and Right provides a more intelligible way of viewing human history, morality, and politics, than merely confining our analysis to the positive fact of a constituted power and a positive law. Moreover, if I am right, then my analysis, even if presently unfashionable, will ultimately prove victorious. On the other hand, if I am wrong (whatever that means to the mighty), my views might still find favor with might, and ultimately prevail. In contrast, my opponents views are either destined to be proved demonstrably wrong, or in the alternative, they can only prevail by virtue of a political struggle, the outcome of which to date is uncertain.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Buddhism and Christianity
The major conceptual distinction (as I understand it) between Madhyamika Prasangika and Classical Theism is that in general, Classical Theism affirms the existence of a Something which we can ultimately say nothing about, and Madhayamika Pransangika affirms the existence of nothing which we ultimately end up saying something about. This distinction can only be resolved, or dissolved, in silence.
The Containment Problem
Let us return to beauty and consider a possibility: Beauty unseen bestows on the world beauty in varying proportion, and the
things of the world which we take as beautiful possess no beauty in themselves. If this were so, then everything in the natural world would be perceived as an admixture in relative proportion of beauty and ugliness, even though beauty was not in fact an actual material ingredient of anything in the world. I would now like to consider the definition of the beautiful. How would we define the beautiful as we find it in the natural world?
We would have to divide the world into the beautiful things and the ugly things. But we if have supposed that everything contains an admixture of the two, this would amount to the drawing of an arbitrary line somewhere on a scale of contrasts (like the definition of a color). We would then define based on the relative difference, the ratio, between what we took as beautiful and what we took as ugly. In so doing, we would treat beauty, which was a gift freely bestowed on all, as a possession, the property of the few. There are two problems with this view. First, another would undoubtedly draw the line differently, resulting in a new definition, a contrary definition from mine. Second of all, one investigating this magical property of the few would be incapable of finding any specific property in the few which gave rise to the beauty. For example, we could construct a physical description of the Mona Lisa, and perhaps program a three dimensional printer to make facsimiles of the Mona Lisa that are indistinguishable to the naked eye. Yet nowhere in our description or the algorithm would be a description of the quality of beauty. One might conclude that the obvious, the beauty of the world, did not exist as it could not be defined or scientifically measured. (You know what I mean, so don't tell me beauty is subjective. The attribution of beauty in a particular context is a judgment call, similar to a strike in baseball. It's not subjective when an Umpire makes a terrible call.)
Another problem is that our approach is static. There are constantly emerging new forms of beauty in the world, and it is unclear whether they would meet our definition based on history. We would then have fights about the application of our definition, even if we could agree on one, which I submit we can't.
This is the containment problem. If beauty is a natural property of things in the natural world, then beauty should be definable and the subject of scientific investigation, like electricity. The existence of beauty is both obvious, even to a little child, and a source of immense value to people across cultures and time. To deny the existence of beauty sounds a bit like one's dogma ran over one's karma. We can say that beauty is "subjective"--that most "subjective" of categories--but that leaves the mystery of why people are able to reach collective agreement on relative judgments of beauty such that the term has a stable collective meaning and can be understood across individuals and languages and cultures.
The only way to make the existence of beauty intelligible is to suppose that in fact its not the world that contains beauty, but that the Beautiful contains the world, and in perceiving beauty, we do not in fact witness the property of a thing, but the diffuse radiance of the source of all things.
We would have to divide the world into the beautiful things and the ugly things. But we if have supposed that everything contains an admixture of the two, this would amount to the drawing of an arbitrary line somewhere on a scale of contrasts (like the definition of a color). We would then define based on the relative difference, the ratio, between what we took as beautiful and what we took as ugly. In so doing, we would treat beauty, which was a gift freely bestowed on all, as a possession, the property of the few. There are two problems with this view. First, another would undoubtedly draw the line differently, resulting in a new definition, a contrary definition from mine. Second of all, one investigating this magical property of the few would be incapable of finding any specific property in the few which gave rise to the beauty. For example, we could construct a physical description of the Mona Lisa, and perhaps program a three dimensional printer to make facsimiles of the Mona Lisa that are indistinguishable to the naked eye. Yet nowhere in our description or the algorithm would be a description of the quality of beauty. One might conclude that the obvious, the beauty of the world, did not exist as it could not be defined or scientifically measured. (You know what I mean, so don't tell me beauty is subjective. The attribution of beauty in a particular context is a judgment call, similar to a strike in baseball. It's not subjective when an Umpire makes a terrible call.)
Another problem is that our approach is static. There are constantly emerging new forms of beauty in the world, and it is unclear whether they would meet our definition based on history. We would then have fights about the application of our definition, even if we could agree on one, which I submit we can't.
This is the containment problem. If beauty is a natural property of things in the natural world, then beauty should be definable and the subject of scientific investigation, like electricity. The existence of beauty is both obvious, even to a little child, and a source of immense value to people across cultures and time. To deny the existence of beauty sounds a bit like one's dogma ran over one's karma. We can say that beauty is "subjective"--that most "subjective" of categories--but that leaves the mystery of why people are able to reach collective agreement on relative judgments of beauty such that the term has a stable collective meaning and can be understood across individuals and languages and cultures.
The only way to make the existence of beauty intelligible is to suppose that in fact its not the world that contains beauty, but that the Beautiful contains the world, and in perceiving beauty, we do not in fact witness the property of a thing, but the diffuse radiance of the source of all things.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Pascal on Might and Right
"It is right to follow the right, it is necessary to follow the mighty.
Right without might is helpless, might without right is tyranical.
Right without might is challenged, because there are always evil men about. Might without right is denounced. We must therefore combine right and might, and to that end make right into might or might into right.
Right is open to dispute, might is easily recognized and beyond dispute. Therefore right could not be made mighty because might challenged right, calling it unjust and itself claiming to be just.
Being unable to make right into might, we have made might into right."
Pascal, Pensees
Right without might is helpless, might without right is tyranical.
Right without might is challenged, because there are always evil men about. Might without right is denounced. We must therefore combine right and might, and to that end make right into might or might into right.
Right is open to dispute, might is easily recognized and beyond dispute. Therefore right could not be made mighty because might challenged right, calling it unjust and itself claiming to be just.
Being unable to make right into might, we have made might into right."
Pascal, Pensees
The Son of Justice
From a Wikipedia entry on Joseph de Maistre:
In previous entries, we have discussed matter as the principle of differentiation. Material things are capable of discrete separation and as such, are capable of quantitative measure and definition. Furthermore, quantity always entails the comparison of two things, a measuring stick and the object measured, so identifying how much something is a function of a dyad. Measurement does not reveal the quantity of a thing, it reveals the relationship of a thing to another. That is to say, definition, the identity of material things, depends on difference.
We have a number of words which express dualities. We speak of good and evil, truth and falsehood, beautiful and ugly. To the extent that these concepts take material instantiation, we are defining things on the basis of difference.
If we take this reasoning to the political level, if we talk about Republicans and Democrats, Black and White, Native and Immigrant, 1% versus the Many, Northern or Southern, Straight or Gay, Liberal and Conservative, Protestant and Catholic, etc., we have to realize that the groups denoted by these labels must be perceived as different communities of belonging in order for this discourse to be meaningful. To transcend all differences based on religion, class, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc. means to subtract all meaning from these identity tags. The translation of this vision into a political space is to imagine a collectivity composed of people who lack any stable sense of identity or belonging, mindless inter-changeable parts, literal nothings. To be among your own people (as you define them) is to be apart from the other. Further, we can suppose that if all contemporary identity tags were rendered meaningless by political and social development, because of the basic human need for belonging, new groups based on new identity tags would emerge (junkies and straight edge, tattoos and the uninked, old and young, English and Spanish).
To put this another way, political identity is based on a distinction between friends and potential enemies. Politics occurs in the space in which groups form alliances and compete against each other, oppose each other, and declare one another enemies. Political struggle inevitably occurs amongst domestic and foreign enemies. If you want to decode someone's political orientation, ask yourself who are their domestic and international enemies--who are they trying to oppose or to legislate against? Eventually, politics breaks down, the contradiction becomes intolerable, and war, the negation of the other, transpires. Further, if we believe in a just order, we may even celebrate warfare if the war is fought to prevent tyranny or the ruthless domination of one group over another. But it is in the nature of warfare that innocents will be killed. Soldiers and civilians may live under a tyrant, but these individuals are not necessarily evil and wicked, and certainly not justly deserving of death even if they die under the banner of a tyrant. As Hemingway stated, "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
The roots of warfare lie in the manifestation of the word. The emergence of the word divides brother against brother, tribe against tribe, nation against nation. The inevitability of tyranny and warfare ensues from human greed and lust for power, one group or one nation insisting on domination over another group. This is the natural result of language conjoined with human wickedness. It can never be legislated away. Eventually, the slaves or the peasants or the workers revolt, or the elite stage a coup, or the foreign invaders see a nation divided and weak. Human history is a story of corruption, greed for wealth and power, and class-based over-reaching, ultimately leading to the shedding of the blood of innocents. Moreover, no state of political justice in the world has ever been achieved without the shedding of blood, whether we look at the civil rights movement, Indian independence, the Civil War, the American Revolution, or the Exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt.
The existence of the soul can be viewed as principally a political question. If humans have no soul, if humans are simply material things, then the only possibility for the species is a form of politics inevitably giving way to war and bloodshed. No true justice is ever achievable, the death of innocents is meaningless, and justice a mockery. The only truth for the worldly order is constituted power and death. On the other hand, if human beings contained within their essence something immaterial, indivisible, and omnipresent, then the human species contains the possibility of achieving a unity and a harmony not based on numerical identity and difference, but above identity and difference. Unity not through the destruction of difference, but unity within our difference. We could call this quality Justice, and we would note that it is this quality which is most clearly revealed in our hearts when we witness the shedding of the blood of innocents. We might go as far as to say Justice becomes incarnate in the innocent man going to his execution. His death is necessary as the price paid for our collective sins. And if we truly seek Justice, we must be prepared to follow him.
"Soirées de St. Pétersbourg ("The Saint Petersburg Dialogues", 1821) is a theodicy in the form of a Platonic dialogue,
in which Maistre argues that evil exists because of its place in the
divine plan, according to which the blood sacrifice of innocents returns
men to God, via the expiation of the sins of the guilty; Maistre saw
this is a law of human history, as indubitable as it is mysterious."
In previous entries, we have discussed matter as the principle of differentiation. Material things are capable of discrete separation and as such, are capable of quantitative measure and definition. Furthermore, quantity always entails the comparison of two things, a measuring stick and the object measured, so identifying how much something is a function of a dyad. Measurement does not reveal the quantity of a thing, it reveals the relationship of a thing to another. That is to say, definition, the identity of material things, depends on difference.
We have a number of words which express dualities. We speak of good and evil, truth and falsehood, beautiful and ugly. To the extent that these concepts take material instantiation, we are defining things on the basis of difference.
If we take this reasoning to the political level, if we talk about Republicans and Democrats, Black and White, Native and Immigrant, 1% versus the Many, Northern or Southern, Straight or Gay, Liberal and Conservative, Protestant and Catholic, etc., we have to realize that the groups denoted by these labels must be perceived as different communities of belonging in order for this discourse to be meaningful. To transcend all differences based on religion, class, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc. means to subtract all meaning from these identity tags. The translation of this vision into a political space is to imagine a collectivity composed of people who lack any stable sense of identity or belonging, mindless inter-changeable parts, literal nothings. To be among your own people (as you define them) is to be apart from the other. Further, we can suppose that if all contemporary identity tags were rendered meaningless by political and social development, because of the basic human need for belonging, new groups based on new identity tags would emerge (junkies and straight edge, tattoos and the uninked, old and young, English and Spanish).
To put this another way, political identity is based on a distinction between friends and potential enemies. Politics occurs in the space in which groups form alliances and compete against each other, oppose each other, and declare one another enemies. Political struggle inevitably occurs amongst domestic and foreign enemies. If you want to decode someone's political orientation, ask yourself who are their domestic and international enemies--who are they trying to oppose or to legislate against? Eventually, politics breaks down, the contradiction becomes intolerable, and war, the negation of the other, transpires. Further, if we believe in a just order, we may even celebrate warfare if the war is fought to prevent tyranny or the ruthless domination of one group over another. But it is in the nature of warfare that innocents will be killed. Soldiers and civilians may live under a tyrant, but these individuals are not necessarily evil and wicked, and certainly not justly deserving of death even if they die under the banner of a tyrant. As Hemingway stated, "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
The roots of warfare lie in the manifestation of the word. The emergence of the word divides brother against brother, tribe against tribe, nation against nation. The inevitability of tyranny and warfare ensues from human greed and lust for power, one group or one nation insisting on domination over another group. This is the natural result of language conjoined with human wickedness. It can never be legislated away. Eventually, the slaves or the peasants or the workers revolt, or the elite stage a coup, or the foreign invaders see a nation divided and weak. Human history is a story of corruption, greed for wealth and power, and class-based over-reaching, ultimately leading to the shedding of the blood of innocents. Moreover, no state of political justice in the world has ever been achieved without the shedding of blood, whether we look at the civil rights movement, Indian independence, the Civil War, the American Revolution, or the Exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt.
The existence of the soul can be viewed as principally a political question. If humans have no soul, if humans are simply material things, then the only possibility for the species is a form of politics inevitably giving way to war and bloodshed. No true justice is ever achievable, the death of innocents is meaningless, and justice a mockery. The only truth for the worldly order is constituted power and death. On the other hand, if human beings contained within their essence something immaterial, indivisible, and omnipresent, then the human species contains the possibility of achieving a unity and a harmony not based on numerical identity and difference, but above identity and difference. Unity not through the destruction of difference, but unity within our difference. We could call this quality Justice, and we would note that it is this quality which is most clearly revealed in our hearts when we witness the shedding of the blood of innocents. We might go as far as to say Justice becomes incarnate in the innocent man going to his execution. His death is necessary as the price paid for our collective sins. And if we truly seek Justice, we must be prepared to follow him.
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