Francis Berger's Blog, page 60
October 12, 2022
What's the Motivation Behind the "Bombshell"?
Stories about a Pfizer representative bluntly informing a Dutch EU System apparatchik that the drug company had no idea if the peck prevented transmission of the birdemic bug began lighting up the "based" side of the Synlogos aggregator yesterday.
The "based" Synlogos posts declared the story a bombshell, but it has been all shell and no bomb for me.
Anyone paying attention to the pecked individuals around them in the past year is sure to have experienced the mystery of double-, triple-, and quadruple-pecked people supposedly coming down with the birdemic bug despite the two, three or four pecks. Thus, you certainly didn’t require a drug company exec's confirmation to prove the pecks weren’t performing as advertised.
Reminder - the insistence that the peck stopped transmission was, and in some cases still is, the driving force behind the egregious discrimination against the unpecked. It is also the foundation of the evil "none are safe until all are safe" mantra upon which the Ahrimanics wanted to construct a medical apartheid state complete with peck passports and QR codes.
Christians particularly need to remember that church leaders swallowed “none are safe” en masse and enthusiastically encouraged their congregations to get pecked because “love thy neighbor” and “thou shalt not kill”.
As I mentioned above, for me, the news is all shell and no bomb. Moreover, the revelation has not made major headlines. If I am surprised by anything, it is the candid but hushed manner in which the System revealed the lie. I am also curious about the timing and the motivation behind the official confession.
Needless to say, the motivation cannot be good.
Note added: In the video, the Pfizer representative says "Did we know about stopping the immunization before we entered the market? No."
Is it just me, or does she actually say nothing about "transmission" (assuming that immunization and transmission are different things)?
The "based" Synlogos posts declared the story a bombshell, but it has been all shell and no bomb for me.
Anyone paying attention to the pecked individuals around them in the past year is sure to have experienced the mystery of double-, triple-, and quadruple-pecked people supposedly coming down with the birdemic bug despite the two, three or four pecks. Thus, you certainly didn’t require a drug company exec's confirmation to prove the pecks weren’t performing as advertised.
Reminder - the insistence that the peck stopped transmission was, and in some cases still is, the driving force behind the egregious discrimination against the unpecked. It is also the foundation of the evil "none are safe until all are safe" mantra upon which the Ahrimanics wanted to construct a medical apartheid state complete with peck passports and QR codes.
Christians particularly need to remember that church leaders swallowed “none are safe” en masse and enthusiastically encouraged their congregations to get pecked because “love thy neighbor” and “thou shalt not kill”.
As I mentioned above, for me, the news is all shell and no bomb. Moreover, the revelation has not made major headlines. If I am surprised by anything, it is the candid but hushed manner in which the System revealed the lie. I am also curious about the timing and the motivation behind the official confession.
Needless to say, the motivation cannot be good.
Note added: In the video, the Pfizer representative says "Did we know about stopping the immunization before we entered the market? No."
Is it just me, or does she actually say nothing about "transmission" (assuming that immunization and transmission are different things)?
October 11, 2022
October 10, 2022
Berdyaev’s Metahistorical Framework Outlining Man’s Relationship to the Cosmos
Warning: This is one of those longish posts in which I run through a bunch of information from recent reading and study in an effort to explore it and get a handle on it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
In his final major work, The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, Nikolai Berdyaev categorizes the movement of history into two realms– that of Spirit (subjectivity) and of Caesar (objectivity and authority).
The lengths of these historical periods vary and sometimes overlap; nevertheless, the stress Berdyaev places emphasis on particular fractures in history draw attention to shifts in human consciousness that changed how people perceived and understood spirituality and objectivity at different points in time.
These shifts in consciousness are historically rare, definite, and unique, and they change the trajectory of man’s relationship with the cosmos.
Berdyaev’s major assumption about human nature was that people were both social and spiritual beings. Thus, at different points throughout history, people surrendered to and allowed themselves to become enslaved to differing levels of being.
The periods Berdyaev labels focus on a dichotomy of two realms – the realm of Spirit (subjectivity) and the realm of Caesar (objectivity). The latter refers to latent and varying large-scale political organizations such as empires or states. Berdyaev’s framework concentrates on the intersection of the two realms in the development of consciousness.
Berdyaev prophesied that in its later days, the Realm of Caesar would increasingly move toward enslaving totalitarianism but would eventually encounter a peak crisis and dissolve due to a dramatic shift in human consciousness.
During this dramatic shift, people will finally understand that freedom emanates from within (from the internal and the subjective) rather than from without (external authority, institutions and social objectification).
However, getting to this point would entail a period of intense darkness, during which people would experience an era of near-total despiritualization and enslavement to the Realm of Caesar, primarily through the dominance of technology wielded by technocrats.
Berdyaev’s five historical periods illustrate the past and future relationships that human beings have to nature and the cosmos:
First Period – the longest period, encompassing early hunter-gatherer societies, right up to the peak of the Roman Empire. Before the appearance of Christ, human consciousness was largely immersed into and dependent upon its natural surroundings and deeply in touch with its cycles, movements, and patterns. Control over nature was limited and primitive. Man perceived everything as alive, yet his personality remained underformed. He was dependent on the group and nature determined dominated the range of his spiritual consciousness, which was paganistic, polytheistic, and pluralistic.
Berdyaev cites the appearance of Christ as the rupture that shifts human consciousness away from this spiritual pattern. According to Berdyaev, Jesus’s message revealed an unarticulated form of dualism, namely, the Kingdom of God (subjectivity) and the Kingdom of Caesar (objectivity).
The emergence of this radical awareness empowered human personality to develop at an intense spiritual level, separated from the natural and social forces that had dominated human personality up until that point. Put another way, Jesus marked a shift away from the spiritual dominance of the external in favor of the spiritual dominance of the internal.
Nevertheless, Christ’s message of spiritual freedom, everlasting life, and the promise of Heaven eventually ran up against the problem of authority. Toward the end of the first historical period that Berdyaev outlines, social and authoritative forces slowly dilute and confuse the radical simplicity of Jesus’s message. In other words, Christ’s mission of spiritual freedom quickly becomes objectified. People begin seeking Christ in objectified, external forms.
Berdyaev argues that Christ’s original message was intensely personalistic and spiritual (subjective), but it was slowly usurped and used to support and promote authority within the Realm of Caesar (objectivity). Instead of realizing freedom as spiritual beings, man surrenders his freedom to objectifying forces of external, centralized governments and organized religions, which set about “correcting” Jesus’s work, as Dostoevsky illustrates in the Grand Inquisitor chapter of The Brothers Karamazov.
Second Period – This era spans the spread of objectified Christianity from the peak of the Roman empire to the end of the Middle Ages in the 16th century. The emergence of Christianity as an objectified authoritative structure was not an entirely negative development because it helped disrupt the stultifying spiritual patterns of paganism.
Christianity preserved enough of Christ’s original message to allow human beings to spiritually liberate themselves from external, natural forces and the limitless power of society and the state. Nevertheless, Berdyaev describes the period as tainted by the failure of Christ’s original message via its objectification and merging with the authoritative power structures of the Roman state and later monarchical power structures, which were then declared to be invested with authority via God.
Simply put, the second period signified the sanctification of external authority. Though humans were liberated from many external cosmic forces attributed to nature, their personal freedom was severely curtailed by the development of economics and serfdom and the elevation of the “virtues” of obedience, authority, submission, servitude, and a herd mentality.
Third Period – the era of enlightenment, industrialization, humanism, and revolution marked by man’s increasing mechanized control over nature through science. The Realm of Caesar reconfigures itself and shifts away from rural, landowning aristocracy to urban captains of industry. A universalizing streak appears.
Organized Christianity as a temporal power is eclipsed by and merged with the controlling state apparatus. Man enjoys a level of unprecedented freedom over nature and is presented with the opportunity to revisit the inherent meaning of Christ’s original message. Instead of embracing Christ’s message of subjectivity with God, man strikes out his own and tricks himself into believing that he has no need of spirituality or can be spiritually self-sufficient.
This approach meets its ultimate limit in nature. Though he has liberated himself from the dominance of external, natural forces, man’s turning away from God traps him within that dominance. The personal freedom he enjoys is eventually reabsorbed by the Realm of Caesar and its increasing dominance over individuals within society.
Fourth Period – the continuation of the modern era in the 20th century, which Berdyaev describes as the “disruption of cosmic order”. The technological advancements that liberated man from natural forces loop back and ensnare him. Berdyaev experienced the totalitarianism of communism and prophesied that such totalitarian tendencies would become eventually encompass the globe.
External power would work to completely obliterate all traces of internal freedom. Put another way, objectivity would aim to effectively extinguish subjectivity. Lacking the spiritual resources required to repel this onslaught of external, objectified forces, people would sink to an almost slave-like form of consciousness in which they could not think beyond the boundaries imposed by the Realm of Caesar.
Fifth Period – an eschatological revolution that Berdyaev terms “the eighth day of creation”. During this period, Berdyaev predicts man will re-embrace Christ’s original message in a reinvigorated and creative manner, thereby ushering in the decline of the realm of Caesar, the dissolution of state power, and the rise of the Realm of Spirit.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I believe Berdyaev’s metahistorical framework offers some clear insights into the development of human consciousness through time. Moreover, I believe the periods he denotes are largely accurate.
It is easy to determine that we are presently in the final stages of Period Four and – perhaps – on the cusp of Period Five.
Having said that, I must confess that I do not share Berdyaev’s belief concerning the transfiguration of this world – at least not in the sense that he describes it. The spiritual transformation Berdyaev prophesizes will occur at the level of individuals, and, perhaps, at the level of families and small communities, but I cannot conceive of a world in which the Realm of Caesar has been purged and vanquished.
As far as I’m concerned, the creative divine-human activity Berdyaev foresees occurs primarily in Heaven and not in the world for the simple reason that Berdyaev’s realm of subjectivity cannot exist in the world at any large scale. If it could, Jesus’s message and mission would have been accomplished; the world would be transformed.
But perhaps I’m being too pessimistic . . .
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
In his final major work, The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, Nikolai Berdyaev categorizes the movement of history into two realms– that of Spirit (subjectivity) and of Caesar (objectivity and authority).
The lengths of these historical periods vary and sometimes overlap; nevertheless, the stress Berdyaev places emphasis on particular fractures in history draw attention to shifts in human consciousness that changed how people perceived and understood spirituality and objectivity at different points in time.
These shifts in consciousness are historically rare, definite, and unique, and they change the trajectory of man’s relationship with the cosmos.
Berdyaev’s major assumption about human nature was that people were both social and spiritual beings. Thus, at different points throughout history, people surrendered to and allowed themselves to become enslaved to differing levels of being.
The periods Berdyaev labels focus on a dichotomy of two realms – the realm of Spirit (subjectivity) and the realm of Caesar (objectivity). The latter refers to latent and varying large-scale political organizations such as empires or states. Berdyaev’s framework concentrates on the intersection of the two realms in the development of consciousness.
Berdyaev prophesied that in its later days, the Realm of Caesar would increasingly move toward enslaving totalitarianism but would eventually encounter a peak crisis and dissolve due to a dramatic shift in human consciousness.
During this dramatic shift, people will finally understand that freedom emanates from within (from the internal and the subjective) rather than from without (external authority, institutions and social objectification).
However, getting to this point would entail a period of intense darkness, during which people would experience an era of near-total despiritualization and enslavement to the Realm of Caesar, primarily through the dominance of technology wielded by technocrats.
Berdyaev’s five historical periods illustrate the past and future relationships that human beings have to nature and the cosmos:
First Period – the longest period, encompassing early hunter-gatherer societies, right up to the peak of the Roman Empire. Before the appearance of Christ, human consciousness was largely immersed into and dependent upon its natural surroundings and deeply in touch with its cycles, movements, and patterns. Control over nature was limited and primitive. Man perceived everything as alive, yet his personality remained underformed. He was dependent on the group and nature determined dominated the range of his spiritual consciousness, which was paganistic, polytheistic, and pluralistic.
Berdyaev cites the appearance of Christ as the rupture that shifts human consciousness away from this spiritual pattern. According to Berdyaev, Jesus’s message revealed an unarticulated form of dualism, namely, the Kingdom of God (subjectivity) and the Kingdom of Caesar (objectivity).
The emergence of this radical awareness empowered human personality to develop at an intense spiritual level, separated from the natural and social forces that had dominated human personality up until that point. Put another way, Jesus marked a shift away from the spiritual dominance of the external in favor of the spiritual dominance of the internal.
Nevertheless, Christ’s message of spiritual freedom, everlasting life, and the promise of Heaven eventually ran up against the problem of authority. Toward the end of the first historical period that Berdyaev outlines, social and authoritative forces slowly dilute and confuse the radical simplicity of Jesus’s message. In other words, Christ’s mission of spiritual freedom quickly becomes objectified. People begin seeking Christ in objectified, external forms.
Berdyaev argues that Christ’s original message was intensely personalistic and spiritual (subjective), but it was slowly usurped and used to support and promote authority within the Realm of Caesar (objectivity). Instead of realizing freedom as spiritual beings, man surrenders his freedom to objectifying forces of external, centralized governments and organized religions, which set about “correcting” Jesus’s work, as Dostoevsky illustrates in the Grand Inquisitor chapter of The Brothers Karamazov.
Second Period – This era spans the spread of objectified Christianity from the peak of the Roman empire to the end of the Middle Ages in the 16th century. The emergence of Christianity as an objectified authoritative structure was not an entirely negative development because it helped disrupt the stultifying spiritual patterns of paganism.
Christianity preserved enough of Christ’s original message to allow human beings to spiritually liberate themselves from external, natural forces and the limitless power of society and the state. Nevertheless, Berdyaev describes the period as tainted by the failure of Christ’s original message via its objectification and merging with the authoritative power structures of the Roman state and later monarchical power structures, which were then declared to be invested with authority via God.
Simply put, the second period signified the sanctification of external authority. Though humans were liberated from many external cosmic forces attributed to nature, their personal freedom was severely curtailed by the development of economics and serfdom and the elevation of the “virtues” of obedience, authority, submission, servitude, and a herd mentality.
Third Period – the era of enlightenment, industrialization, humanism, and revolution marked by man’s increasing mechanized control over nature through science. The Realm of Caesar reconfigures itself and shifts away from rural, landowning aristocracy to urban captains of industry. A universalizing streak appears.
Organized Christianity as a temporal power is eclipsed by and merged with the controlling state apparatus. Man enjoys a level of unprecedented freedom over nature and is presented with the opportunity to revisit the inherent meaning of Christ’s original message. Instead of embracing Christ’s message of subjectivity with God, man strikes out his own and tricks himself into believing that he has no need of spirituality or can be spiritually self-sufficient.
This approach meets its ultimate limit in nature. Though he has liberated himself from the dominance of external, natural forces, man’s turning away from God traps him within that dominance. The personal freedom he enjoys is eventually reabsorbed by the Realm of Caesar and its increasing dominance over individuals within society.
Fourth Period – the continuation of the modern era in the 20th century, which Berdyaev describes as the “disruption of cosmic order”. The technological advancements that liberated man from natural forces loop back and ensnare him. Berdyaev experienced the totalitarianism of communism and prophesied that such totalitarian tendencies would become eventually encompass the globe.
External power would work to completely obliterate all traces of internal freedom. Put another way, objectivity would aim to effectively extinguish subjectivity. Lacking the spiritual resources required to repel this onslaught of external, objectified forces, people would sink to an almost slave-like form of consciousness in which they could not think beyond the boundaries imposed by the Realm of Caesar.
Fifth Period – an eschatological revolution that Berdyaev terms “the eighth day of creation”. During this period, Berdyaev predicts man will re-embrace Christ’s original message in a reinvigorated and creative manner, thereby ushering in the decline of the realm of Caesar, the dissolution of state power, and the rise of the Realm of Spirit.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I believe Berdyaev’s metahistorical framework offers some clear insights into the development of human consciousness through time. Moreover, I believe the periods he denotes are largely accurate.
It is easy to determine that we are presently in the final stages of Period Four and – perhaps – on the cusp of Period Five.
Having said that, I must confess that I do not share Berdyaev’s belief concerning the transfiguration of this world – at least not in the sense that he describes it. The spiritual transformation Berdyaev prophesizes will occur at the level of individuals, and, perhaps, at the level of families and small communities, but I cannot conceive of a world in which the Realm of Caesar has been purged and vanquished.
As far as I’m concerned, the creative divine-human activity Berdyaev foresees occurs primarily in Heaven and not in the world for the simple reason that Berdyaev’s realm of subjectivity cannot exist in the world at any large scale. If it could, Jesus’s message and mission would have been accomplished; the world would be transformed.
But perhaps I’m being too pessimistic . . .
October 9, 2022
Meeting of Beings Not Enough; Spirit is Required
Dr. Charlton recently posted a comment he had left on one my post concerning subjects and spiritual truth:
There are no 'objects' (in the usually understood sense) but only Beings (and parts of Beings) on the one hand -- and primordial, unknowable, chaos on the other hand.
(In other words, that which is not a Being, or of-a-Being - is unknowable.)
What we think of as 'objects' are actually 'abstractions' - abstractions which exist in the thinking of Beings.
So we can oppose God-as-a-Being, versus God-as-an-Abstraction that has either been derived from our-selves (who are Beings) - or else an abstraction deriving from other Beings.
God as an Abstraction is wrong, because such a conceptualization does not seek a relationship between Beings; which is what Christians (ought to ) believe. It is confused; because we are first making an abstraction, then trying to relate to that abstraction as if it was a Being...
But an abstraction is not a viable and relatable Being, but only a model of a Being (simplified, distorted, incomplete).
Doing this with God is analogous to trying to have a good/ alive/ ongoing personal relationship with your wife while regarding her primarily as 'a woman'; or with your son while he is being considered as essentially 'a son'.
If we try to relate to (the-Being-of-) God as if he actually, truly was a collection of abstract attributes; then we will Not be able to relate to God as the person, the Being, that God truly is.
Dr. Charlton's response to my post about subjects provides an answer to the question of God, an answer that very few Christians appear capable of considering, let alone accepting.
A large part of the problem seems to reside in the formulation of the question itself. When I encounter traditional/conventional answers to the question of God, I am struck by the general impurity and un-originality of the manner through which the question is framed.
More often than not, the traditional/conventional framing of the question of God is too fastened to scholasticism, abstract philosophy, concept play, and verbal acrobatics.
The Christians who promulgate such answers to the questions of God have -- unintentionally one would hope -- degraded the very idea of God, mostly by saddling God with all sorts of abstract qualities that do not derive from the reality of Spirit but from the "realities" of civilization, culture, society, and doctrine -- that is, the object world.
The basic thrust of this sort of answer to the question of God congeals around the notion that God's existence can be verified and guaranteed by the "reality" of civilization, culture, society, and doctrine. However, on closer inspection, this conception of God as a provable collection of abstract attributes that can be verified via other sets of abstract attributes bears little, if any, spiritual fruit.
The "reality" of such conceptualizations about the reality of God is that they offer no guarantee of God's existence at all. Despite the supposedly overwhelming evidence pointing to the reality of God -- evidence that should convince any rational person to believe -- man remains at liberty to doubt, and he is also at liberty to deny and discard. And at no point in the history of the world have so many doubted, denied, and discarded the existence of God.
Instead of reconsidering their metaphysical assumptions, traditionalists are quick to ascribe this denial of God to man's rebelliousness, sin, and stupidity. The answer to the question of God is there for anyone to understand, but people are just too mutinous, wicked, and dull-witted to accept it.
If anything, man's ability to deny God is evidence of the manner in which God appeals to us. God does not coerce; nor does he impose. On the contrary, he calls to our freedom. He desires to meet us in freedom -- not abstraction. He yearns to meet us in Spirit -- not in necessity.
Traditionalists rarely, if ever stop to consider that their traditional abstract proofs of God's existence -- be they cosmological, theological, ontological, or epistemological -- have become spiritually bankrupt. More than that, they are dispensable -- perhaps even harmful.
Traditionalists fail to realize that their answer to the question of God amounts to little more than to the objectivization of being. By extension, that man's rejection of God may not be a pure rejection of God as a Being, but rather a rejection of the objectification of God's Being.
Man seeks a relationship with God. Tradition provides man with an abstraction with which relationship is impossible.
Traditionalists point to the evidence of God's existence everywhere, but they usually diminish the obvious proof that stares back at them whenever they look in the mirror. God is a being. Man is a being. God exists because man exists. Man exists because God exists. This existence makes relationship possible.
The recognition of God as Being rather than an object is vital; however, a meeting of Beings -- man and God -- is insufficient for the simple reason that being can quickly be objectivized -- that is, rendered into abstract concepts or social necessity or natural necessity or whatever. For the meeting of Beings to "work", it must occur in Spirit, which is based in the subject and in freedom.
The answer to the question of God lies in the internal meeting of Beings in the freedom of spiritual experience. Put another way, man cannot meet God in thoughts about God, in abstract concepts; he can only meet God when he recognizes God as a Being and recognizes himself as a Being.
Once the reality of this "Beingness" has been established, meeting can occur, but it can only occur in Spirit, between Beings as subjects, free from the objectifying influence of the thought-object world.
There are no 'objects' (in the usually understood sense) but only Beings (and parts of Beings) on the one hand -- and primordial, unknowable, chaos on the other hand.
(In other words, that which is not a Being, or of-a-Being - is unknowable.)
What we think of as 'objects' are actually 'abstractions' - abstractions which exist in the thinking of Beings.
So we can oppose God-as-a-Being, versus God-as-an-Abstraction that has either been derived from our-selves (who are Beings) - or else an abstraction deriving from other Beings.
God as an Abstraction is wrong, because such a conceptualization does not seek a relationship between Beings; which is what Christians (ought to ) believe. It is confused; because we are first making an abstraction, then trying to relate to that abstraction as if it was a Being...
But an abstraction is not a viable and relatable Being, but only a model of a Being (simplified, distorted, incomplete).
Doing this with God is analogous to trying to have a good/ alive/ ongoing personal relationship with your wife while regarding her primarily as 'a woman'; or with your son while he is being considered as essentially 'a son'.
If we try to relate to (the-Being-of-) God as if he actually, truly was a collection of abstract attributes; then we will Not be able to relate to God as the person, the Being, that God truly is.
Dr. Charlton's response to my post about subjects provides an answer to the question of God, an answer that very few Christians appear capable of considering, let alone accepting.
A large part of the problem seems to reside in the formulation of the question itself. When I encounter traditional/conventional answers to the question of God, I am struck by the general impurity and un-originality of the manner through which the question is framed.
More often than not, the traditional/conventional framing of the question of God is too fastened to scholasticism, abstract philosophy, concept play, and verbal acrobatics.
The Christians who promulgate such answers to the questions of God have -- unintentionally one would hope -- degraded the very idea of God, mostly by saddling God with all sorts of abstract qualities that do not derive from the reality of Spirit but from the "realities" of civilization, culture, society, and doctrine -- that is, the object world.
The basic thrust of this sort of answer to the question of God congeals around the notion that God's existence can be verified and guaranteed by the "reality" of civilization, culture, society, and doctrine. However, on closer inspection, this conception of God as a provable collection of abstract attributes that can be verified via other sets of abstract attributes bears little, if any, spiritual fruit.
The "reality" of such conceptualizations about the reality of God is that they offer no guarantee of God's existence at all. Despite the supposedly overwhelming evidence pointing to the reality of God -- evidence that should convince any rational person to believe -- man remains at liberty to doubt, and he is also at liberty to deny and discard. And at no point in the history of the world have so many doubted, denied, and discarded the existence of God.
Instead of reconsidering their metaphysical assumptions, traditionalists are quick to ascribe this denial of God to man's rebelliousness, sin, and stupidity. The answer to the question of God is there for anyone to understand, but people are just too mutinous, wicked, and dull-witted to accept it.
If anything, man's ability to deny God is evidence of the manner in which God appeals to us. God does not coerce; nor does he impose. On the contrary, he calls to our freedom. He desires to meet us in freedom -- not abstraction. He yearns to meet us in Spirit -- not in necessity.
Traditionalists rarely, if ever stop to consider that their traditional abstract proofs of God's existence -- be they cosmological, theological, ontological, or epistemological -- have become spiritually bankrupt. More than that, they are dispensable -- perhaps even harmful.
Traditionalists fail to realize that their answer to the question of God amounts to little more than to the objectivization of being. By extension, that man's rejection of God may not be a pure rejection of God as a Being, but rather a rejection of the objectification of God's Being.
Man seeks a relationship with God. Tradition provides man with an abstraction with which relationship is impossible.
Traditionalists point to the evidence of God's existence everywhere, but they usually diminish the obvious proof that stares back at them whenever they look in the mirror. God is a being. Man is a being. God exists because man exists. Man exists because God exists. This existence makes relationship possible.
The recognition of God as Being rather than an object is vital; however, a meeting of Beings -- man and God -- is insufficient for the simple reason that being can quickly be objectivized -- that is, rendered into abstract concepts or social necessity or natural necessity or whatever. For the meeting of Beings to "work", it must occur in Spirit, which is based in the subject and in freedom.
The answer to the question of God lies in the internal meeting of Beings in the freedom of spiritual experience. Put another way, man cannot meet God in thoughts about God, in abstract concepts; he can only meet God when he recognizes God as a Being and recognizes himself as a Being.
Once the reality of this "Beingness" has been established, meeting can occur, but it can only occur in Spirit, between Beings as subjects, free from the objectifying influence of the thought-object world.
October 7, 2022
The Result of Two Years of Unprecedented? Fuhgettaboutit!
As an event, the birdemic is unprecedented. For starters, the vast majority of the planet has never been locked down in unison before. The bulk of the global population has also never been subjected to such an extended and relentless campaign of propaganda and coercion -- not even during war time.
I could go into further detail, but I am sure readers of this blog vividly remember the evil they witnessed and experienced. It is only natural to assume that everyone remembers everything about the birdemic regardless of whether they "believe" in it or not.
After all, the outbreak is in the very recent past. Moreover, it remains a lingering issue in many parts of the world, including the city of my birth where the New York City Department of Education recently fired 850 teachers and teaching aids for the unforgivable sin of being unpecked.
Yet some people don't remember. For example, one of my students professed to have completely forgotten about the bans and restrictions governments around the world imposed on the unpecked. As far as she was concerned, it never happened. And it took her several minutes to recall the discriminatory policies the Hungarian government had forced upon the unpecked segment of the country's population.
A colleague claims the "safe and effective" mantra of the pecks had nothing to do with protecting people from the virus. In his memory, the peck was always "only" about mitigating the severity of the disease.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
The takeaway? It very much appears that for an ever increasing number of people, the birdemic is yesterday's news. As such, it is quickly being disremembered and consigned to oblivion.
Though I am sure that this sort of quick forgetting is the standard modus operandi for many during mortal life, I get the sense that much of this disremembering is disingenuous.
I could be wrong, but I think most people do remember -- they just want to forget that they do.
I could go into further detail, but I am sure readers of this blog vividly remember the evil they witnessed and experienced. It is only natural to assume that everyone remembers everything about the birdemic regardless of whether they "believe" in it or not.
After all, the outbreak is in the very recent past. Moreover, it remains a lingering issue in many parts of the world, including the city of my birth where the New York City Department of Education recently fired 850 teachers and teaching aids for the unforgivable sin of being unpecked.
Yet some people don't remember. For example, one of my students professed to have completely forgotten about the bans and restrictions governments around the world imposed on the unpecked. As far as she was concerned, it never happened. And it took her several minutes to recall the discriminatory policies the Hungarian government had forced upon the unpecked segment of the country's population.
A colleague claims the "safe and effective" mantra of the pecks had nothing to do with protecting people from the virus. In his memory, the peck was always "only" about mitigating the severity of the disease.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
The takeaway? It very much appears that for an ever increasing number of people, the birdemic is yesterday's news. As such, it is quickly being disremembered and consigned to oblivion.
Though I am sure that this sort of quick forgetting is the standard modus operandi for many during mortal life, I get the sense that much of this disremembering is disingenuous.
I could be wrong, but I think most people do remember -- they just want to forget that they do.
October 6, 2022
Only Subjects Experience Spiritual Truth; Spiritual Truth Resides Only in Subjects
Ultimate truth is spiritual. This implies that reality is spiritual. The only way to discover this truth and reality is to experience it for yourself -- personally and directly. This implies that spiritual truth is subjective rather than objective.
Objective truth resides in reason, logic, concepts, abstractions, and ideas. Although knowledge attained through reason is accessible and, to varying degrees, true, it is also structurally flawed.
It's primary flaw rests in its need to control and cram reality into categories of requisite "truths". Controlling and cramming reality into such categories renders truth "objective". Once an objective truth has been established, it can be readily exploited and dominated via reasoning, science, society, or technology.
Objective reasoning inevitably looks for and focuses on "required" truths -- truths that are deemed necessary and indispensable. Consequently, objective reasoning ignores or neglects vast swathes of Creation and cannot fully come to terms with the fundamental spiritual truth of reality.
The spiritual foundations of reality are freedom and love, both of which can only be achieved by a subject, subjectively, at the deepest parts of inner being.
Objective reason detaches itself from what it seeks to know in order to objectify it. Subjective knowing moves in the opposite direction. It does not seek knowledge as an object of thought, but yearns to participate in that which it yearns to know.
Subjective knowing aims to know and understand at the depths of inner being. It seeks to know existentially. Thus, freedom and love can only be experienced subjectively. The truth inherent in freedom and love can only be understood from the inner depths of one's whole being.
Objective knowledge is considered superior because it is impersonal, but an impersonal way of knowing cannot fully grasp the reality of spirit, which is fundamentally personal.
For this reason, objective reality does not and cannot really exist. What exists instead is the objectification of reality -- the making of the personal into the impersonal -- the substitution of reality with symbols of reality.
The object then, is not reality, but a representation of reality. The object is not reality because it is not spiritual. It is not free and it cannot love.
Only the subject is reality. The subject is reality because the subject is being and not merely representation of being. The subject is spirit; it is free and it can love.
Those who demand evidence based on the objective reality of the "real world" insist on nothing more than symbols of reality. These objects may point to spiritual truths, but they are not spiritual truths in and of themselves.
Objective truth resides in reason, logic, concepts, abstractions, and ideas. Although knowledge attained through reason is accessible and, to varying degrees, true, it is also structurally flawed.
It's primary flaw rests in its need to control and cram reality into categories of requisite "truths". Controlling and cramming reality into such categories renders truth "objective". Once an objective truth has been established, it can be readily exploited and dominated via reasoning, science, society, or technology.
Objective reasoning inevitably looks for and focuses on "required" truths -- truths that are deemed necessary and indispensable. Consequently, objective reasoning ignores or neglects vast swathes of Creation and cannot fully come to terms with the fundamental spiritual truth of reality.
The spiritual foundations of reality are freedom and love, both of which can only be achieved by a subject, subjectively, at the deepest parts of inner being.
Objective reason detaches itself from what it seeks to know in order to objectify it. Subjective knowing moves in the opposite direction. It does not seek knowledge as an object of thought, but yearns to participate in that which it yearns to know.
Subjective knowing aims to know and understand at the depths of inner being. It seeks to know existentially. Thus, freedom and love can only be experienced subjectively. The truth inherent in freedom and love can only be understood from the inner depths of one's whole being.
Objective knowledge is considered superior because it is impersonal, but an impersonal way of knowing cannot fully grasp the reality of spirit, which is fundamentally personal.
For this reason, objective reality does not and cannot really exist. What exists instead is the objectification of reality -- the making of the personal into the impersonal -- the substitution of reality with symbols of reality.
The object then, is not reality, but a representation of reality. The object is not reality because it is not spiritual. It is not free and it cannot love.
Only the subject is reality. The subject is reality because the subject is being and not merely representation of being. The subject is spirit; it is free and it can love.
Those who demand evidence based on the objective reality of the "real world" insist on nothing more than symbols of reality. These objects may point to spiritual truths, but they are not spiritual truths in and of themselves.
October 4, 2022
An Apocalypse Song From My Youth
I would not say that the four horsemen are exactly trending on the internet these days, but they have been mentioned far more than usual since the pariah world leader of the East declared the equivalent of a holy war on the satanic leaders of the West.
The potential escalation of conquest, war, famine, and death has cast an ominous shadow over the world. I remember experiencing a similar shadow as a youth in the 1980s during the final decade of the Cold War when some political analysts were consistently whispering stern warnings concerning a possible nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Against the backdrop of that simmering Armageddon, Robbie Robertson -- founding member of the 1960s Canadian-American rock band, The Band -- released Showdown in Big Sky, an energetic yet foreboding track that blends Native American, Christian, and apocalyptic imagery to create what, for me, formed a part of the end times soundtrack of my teenage years.
I had not thought about the song for well over two decades, but seeing the four horsemen with increasing frequency over the past week or so raised it from the half-forgotten past and thrust it back into the forefront of my mind.
Enjoy?
The potential escalation of conquest, war, famine, and death has cast an ominous shadow over the world. I remember experiencing a similar shadow as a youth in the 1980s during the final decade of the Cold War when some political analysts were consistently whispering stern warnings concerning a possible nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Against the backdrop of that simmering Armageddon, Robbie Robertson -- founding member of the 1960s Canadian-American rock band, The Band -- released Showdown in Big Sky, an energetic yet foreboding track that blends Native American, Christian, and apocalyptic imagery to create what, for me, formed a part of the end times soundtrack of my teenage years.
I had not thought about the song for well over two decades, but seeing the four horsemen with increasing frequency over the past week or so raised it from the half-forgotten past and thrust it back into the forefront of my mind.
Enjoy?
October 3, 2022
On Knowledge That Relies on a Rational Belief that External Evidence Validates Its Correctness
To know something directly, we must first be aware of our own existence at the interior of being. Without this keen awareness of the interior of our own being, we cannot know anything directly. At best, we can know things indirectly -- objectively.
If we set out to discover the meaning of life objectively, we will fail to discover the meaning of life for the simple reason that everything in the objective depends on the meaning that we grant upon it as subjects.
Put another way, only the subject can reveal the meaning of the object. Without the subject, the object has no real meaning.
Any theory of knowledge which subordinates the subject to the object in terms of meaning dispossesses both the subject and the object of existence.
When the object is placed above the subject, it eclipses the existence at the interior of being. When the interior of being is eclipsed, being essentially disappears and becomes impossible to know.
Instead of knowing directly, we encounter objects of thought. Since these objects of thought do not emanate from or engage with our own existence at the interior of being, we experience them as something external, indirect, and unfamiliar.
When we fail to know directly, we can only know indirectly. This kind of knowledge is objectivized knowledge. The only way we -- as subjects -- can accept objectivized knowledge is to meet this kind of knowledge at its own level.
This involves sidestepping our own existence at the interior of being and projecting ourselves in the object world. In an effort to "know" the object, we become objects ourselves. Instead of the subjective conferring meaning onto the objective, the objective meets the object and confers nothing of meaning to being.
This sort of "knowledge" is often referred to as alienation.
Objective knowledge has its uses, but always at the cost of making things distant, foreign, and external to being.
Subjective knowledge -- more specifically, direct knowing -- brings things close, makes them familiar and internal to being.
Direct knowing relates to existence that which is revealed in the subject. It is the most concrete form of knowledge there is.
Note added: Paraphrased from thoughts expressed by Berdyaev, Kant, and -- believe it or not -- Charles Bukowski.
If we set out to discover the meaning of life objectively, we will fail to discover the meaning of life for the simple reason that everything in the objective depends on the meaning that we grant upon it as subjects.
Put another way, only the subject can reveal the meaning of the object. Without the subject, the object has no real meaning.
Any theory of knowledge which subordinates the subject to the object in terms of meaning dispossesses both the subject and the object of existence.
When the object is placed above the subject, it eclipses the existence at the interior of being. When the interior of being is eclipsed, being essentially disappears and becomes impossible to know.
Instead of knowing directly, we encounter objects of thought. Since these objects of thought do not emanate from or engage with our own existence at the interior of being, we experience them as something external, indirect, and unfamiliar.
When we fail to know directly, we can only know indirectly. This kind of knowledge is objectivized knowledge. The only way we -- as subjects -- can accept objectivized knowledge is to meet this kind of knowledge at its own level.
This involves sidestepping our own existence at the interior of being and projecting ourselves in the object world. In an effort to "know" the object, we become objects ourselves. Instead of the subjective conferring meaning onto the objective, the objective meets the object and confers nothing of meaning to being.
This sort of "knowledge" is often referred to as alienation.
Objective knowledge has its uses, but always at the cost of making things distant, foreign, and external to being.
Subjective knowledge -- more specifically, direct knowing -- brings things close, makes them familiar and internal to being.
Direct knowing relates to existence that which is revealed in the subject. It is the most concrete form of knowledge there is.
Note added: Paraphrased from thoughts expressed by Berdyaev, Kant, and -- believe it or not -- Charles Bukowski.
October 2, 2022
Sometimes Optics is All You Need
A speech by a major world leader was the topic of much analysis and discussion at the beginning of last month. Another speech by another major world leader has been the topic of much analysis and discussion thus far this month. Although I am generally all for analysis and discussion, I also subscribe to the notion that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
With this in mind, let's put aside the content of said speeches for a moment and focus on optics alone . . .
With this in mind, let's put aside the content of said speeches for a moment and focus on optics alone . . .
September 28, 2022
The Sabotage Intensifies; I Gather Walnuts
The intense sabotage campaign that began in 2020 continues unabated. For the time being, I am cannot add any meaningful insights beyond what has already been expressed on other blogs.I suppose I could add that it is vital to understand that the sabotage is not restricted to colossal events such as the recent one deep under the sea. It is pervasive. Systematic. Unrelenting.
Take my corner of the world, for example. Although the absence of pipeline headlines in the Hungarian media was painfully conspicuous this morning, there was this:
If the energy crisis was not enough, Hungary’s second-largest power plant halted all operations. The Mátra Power Plant stopped working on Monday afternoon and since then has not restarted. The problem is worsened because the first block of the largest Paks Power Plant is still under maintenance. The lack of sunshine decreases solar energy production too. Therefore, energy imports in Hungary had soared to around 40 percent.
Isn't funny how everything blows up, catches fire, falls apart, or stops working all at once?
I haven't thought a great deal about this latest Sorathic surge, mostly because I have been squirreling away the little free time I do have into gathering walnuts.
Yes, the end of September is walnut season in Hungary -- those few precious weeks during which the copious walnut trees dotting country's landscape drop their treasures to the ground for gathering.
Walnut trees line the farm fields surrounding my village. Luckily, none of the farmers are all that enthusiastic about collecting the nuts and have no qualms about others gathering them instead. Consequently, people carrying buckets and sacks pop up like solitary mushrooms in the fields and forests all around my village at the end of September. One or two good trees are all you need to haul in twenty or thirty kilograms of shelled walnuts.
My previous walnut foraging forays around the village had produced meager results. I either hit the fields too early, when the walnuts were still in the trees encased in green husks, or too late, when other gatherers had already reaped the bulk of the crop for themselves.
This year I managed to time it rather well. Two hours and three trees were all it took to gather a good thirty kilos of walnuts. If the weather holds, I plan to gather another thirty or so this Friday or Saturday.
After a little drying, the walnuts can be eaten raw, or toasted, or ground and used in a variety of delicious cakes and desserts, including one of my favorites, the Gerbeaud slice, which my wife makes every Christmas and Easter.
With the way things are going, I'm not sure we'll have the electricity needed to make the Gerbeaud slices come Christmas, but it's good to know that we'll at least have some walnuts to munch on.
