. . . into that open air.
Or leave your house at night.
But rage, rage against the pusillanimity of your fright.
Your soul's a pussy that cannot take a dare.
So rage, rage against those who masklessly enjoy the open air.
………………………………..
Addendum (3/7). Is there an etymological connection between 'pussy and 'pusillanimous'? Here is the answer.
Remarkable is the contrast between the face of serenity and the body brutalized.
Ignorance is evil, and the worst ignorance is the ignorance of evil itself: that it is real, and that free will is real, without which evil cannot exist.
Lent is a good time for a plenary news fast, or, if you can't quite manage that, a time to moderate your intake of media dreck. It suffices to be aware of the overall drift of events as the Left pursues its pernicious purposes; there is no necessity of recording every particular outrage. And this for two reasons. First, there is little we can do about it; second, it's a passing scene soon to pass away entirely, and we with it.
Precious peace of mind ought not be sacrificed on the altar of activism. Just keep an eye on what is coming down the pike so as to be ready before it arrives.
When Henry David Thoreau was asked whether he had read the news about the fire at so-and-so's farm, he replied that he didn't need to: he understood the principle of the thing.
Every day should include some time for the cultivation of one's higher nature. Unlike the lower nature, it needs cultivating.
From time to time, however, we should devote special time to be still and listen beyond the human horizon. Modern man, crazed little hustler and self-absorbed chatterbox that he is, needs to enter his depths and listen.
"Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
"Man is a stream whose source is hidden." (Emerson) This beautifully crafted observation sets us a task: Swim upstream to the Source of one's out-bound consciousness where one will draw close to the Divine Principle.
Noli foras ire, in te ipsum reddi; in interiore homine habitat veritas. "The truth dwells in the inner man; don't go outside yourself: return within." (St. Augustine)
One commenter seems not to understand the problem as I set it forth here. So let's take a few steps back. In this entry I explain terminology, make distinctions, and record assumptions.
1) Everything actual is possible, but the converse does not follow and ought not be assumed. Possible items that are possible, but not actual, are called 'merely possible.' Mere possibles are also sometimes referred to as 'unrealized possibles' or 'unrealized possibilities.'
2) Don't confuse the reality of a mere possible with its realization (actualization). A mere possible can be real without being realized just as a proposition can exist without being true. Indeed, if mere possibles are real, then they are precisely not realized; else they would not be mere possibles.
3) Don't confuse the possibility of a mere possible with the possible itself. Mere possibles are presumably many; their possibility (their being-possible) is presumably one and common to them all. Analogy: there are many true propositions, but their truth is presumably one and common to them all.
4) Don't confuse reality with actuality. The reality of mere possibles is obviously not their actuality. Everything actual is real, but the converse does not follow and we ought not assume it.
5) In (1) above I used 'item.' 'Item' is the most noncommittal word in my philosophical lexicon. It is neutral with respect to categorial status, modal status, and ontological status. Are there nonexisting items? My use of 'item' leaves this question open in the way that 'Are there nonexistent existents?' does not. Even though 'item' should remind you of the Latin idem, my use of 'item' is so liberal and latitudinarian that it does not rule out the self-diverse item, which is a bona fide item in some Meinongian systems.
One must be careful in one's terminological choices to neither beg questions nor bury them.
6) My present concern is with real, not epistemic or doxastic, possibility. Roughly, the epistemically/doxastically possible is that which is possible given what I know/believe. The really possible — which divides into the actual and the merely possible — is that which is possible whether or not any knowers/believers exist. The really possible does not depend on our knowledge or ignorance. To go into a bit more detail:
In ordinary English, epistemic uses of 'possible' are rife. I inquire, "Is Jones in his office?" The secretary replies, "It's possible." I am not being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with the laws of logic, or with the laws of nature; there is no question about the logical or nomological possibility of Jones' being in his office. I am being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with what the secretary knows: it is not ruled out by anything she knows. It's possible for all she knows. Of course, if the secretary knows that Jones is in his office, or knows something that (she knows) entails that he is in his office, then Jones' presence in his office will be logically consistent with what she knows; but in that case she will not say that it is possible that he be there. She will say, "He's there." So 'possible' in its epistemic use conveys both consistency with what one knows and ignorance. When I say that such-and-such is epistemically possible, I am saying that it is possible for all I know, but I don't know all about the matter in question. Letting 'S' range over states of affairs and 'P' over persons, we define
D1. S is epistemically possible for P =df (i) S is logically consistent with what P knows; (ii) S is neither known by P nor known to be entailed by anything P knows.
The reason for clause (ii) is that epistemic uses of 'possible' indicate ignorance. 'It's possible that Jones is in his office,' said by the secretary implies that she does not know whether or not he is in his office. If she knew that he was in his office, and said what she said, then she would not be using 'possible' in the epistemic way it is used in ordinary English.
7) I take it to be a datum that there are real mere possibilities. For example, at the moment there is exactly one cat in my study. But there might have been two or there might have been none. The latter two states of affairs are both merely possible and real. They are merely possible because they are not actual. They are really possible because the possibility of these mere possibles is not parasitic upon anyone's knowledge or ignorance. The possibles are 'out there,' part of the 'furniture of the world.' Again, the possibility or being-possible of a mere possible is not to be confused with the merely possible item itself.
8) My writing table is now two inches from the wall. But it might have been now three inches from the wall, where 'now' picks out the same time in both of its most recent occurrences. The table might have been infinitely other distances from the wall as well. How do I know that? This question pertains to the epistemology of modal knowledge and is off-topic. The present topic is the ontology of the merely possible. This meditation assumes, or rather takes as a datum, the reality of the merely possible. Notoriously, however, one man's datum is another man's theory.
9) If there are real mere possibles (individuals, states of affairs . . .), then reality is not exhausted by the actual; it includes both the actual and the merely possible. If it were so exhausted, all would be necessary, and nothing would be contingent. The modal distinctions would remain on the intensional plane, but would find no purchase in fact. We would have the extensional collapse of the modal distinctions. Can I prove that there is no such collapse? No.
10) 'Possible' has several senses. Chief among them are the logical, the metaphysical, and the nomological or physical. The following Euler –not Venn! — diagram shows how they are related:
This is a large topic by itself. I will just say for present purposes that the ontological problem of the merely possible is concerned with mere possibles the possibility of which is metaphysical, where the metaphysically possible is that which is admissible both by the laws of formal logic and by the laws of metaphysics. Here is a candidate law of metaphysics: everything that exists has properties. This is not a formal-logical truth inasmuch as its negation — Something that exists has no properties — is not a formal-logical contradiction.
11) The examples I have given above involving cats and rooms and tables and walls are merely possible state of affairs involving actualia. For example, my torso is now covered with a shirt, but it might not now have been covered with that shirt or any shirt. Torso and shirt are constituents of an actual and of a merely possible state of affairs, respectively. But there are possibilia that do not involve actualia. Let n = the number of actual cats at time t. Could there not have been n + 1 actual cats at time t? Surely that is possible. Deny it and you are saying that it is necessary that the number of actual cats at t be n. Do you want to say that? In this example, the mere possibility does not involve actualia in the way the mere possibility of my cat's sleeping now involve an actual cat. You might tell me that the actual world is such that it might have now contained one more cat than it in fact now contains, and so the actual world is the actual item involved in the possibility. Maybe, maybe not. How about the possibility that nothing at all exist? I have argued in these pages that there is no such possibility as the possibility of there being nothing at all. But if there is this possibility, then it is not one that is grounded in, or presupposes, any actual item.
12) Now to the problem. As I wrote earlier,
. . . the problem of the merely possible is something like this. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional. And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality. But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual? Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:
a. The merely possible is not actual.
b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).
c. Whatever is real is actual.
Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true. Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.
Steven Nemes comments:
I would think that once you've admitted the reality of the merely possible, contrary to your (c) above, you've answered the question. The merely possible represents an irreducible ontological category and that's that. Why not?
The Nemes solution is to reject (c). Accordingly, mere possibles are an irreducible category of beings. This is a version of possibilism, as opposed to actualism, in the metaphysics of modality. One response to Nemes is that the mere admission of the reality of the merely possible does not suffice to establish possibilism. For the actualist too admits the reality of the merely possible but without admitting that mere possibles constitute an irreducible ontological category. The fact that there is a long-standing and ongoing debate between possibilists and actualists shows that one cannot take the reality of the merely possible to settle the question.
Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo. Tex-Mex version of a very old song.
Arizona's own Marty Robbins, La Paloma. Another old song dating back to 1861.
Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably the best of the '60s years for pop compositions.
Emmylou Harris, Hello Stranger. Same title, different song. This one goes out to Mary Kay F-D. Remember the Fall of 1980, Mary Kay?
Get up, rounder/Let a working girl lie down/ You are rounder/And you are all out and down.
Carter Family version from 1939.
Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Bruce Langhorne's guitar.
Joan Baez, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar.
Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time.
Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away. Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.
Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.
Joan Baez, Boots of Spanish Leather. Nanci Griffith also does a good job with this Dylan classic.
Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963. More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.
The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962.
Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961. Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.
Wherein I stand up for navel-gazing and punch back at a totalitarian denier of Transcendence. Substack latest.
If the Left can do it, so can the Right.
"If California can ignore immigration laws and be rewarded with six extra congressmen, Oklahoma can ignore edicts to make girls compete with boys in drag in sports." The man who sent me the link did not source this quotation.
The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes. Let me explain.
Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in kind. (L'esprit de l'escalier.) And then perhaps there is disgust at oneself for having remained passive, for not having stood up to the aggressor and asserted oneself. This may be followed by annoyance with oneself for allowing these memorial affects to arise one more time despite one's assiduous and protracted inner work. Finally, pessimism supervenes concerning the efficacy of attempts at self-improvement and mind control.
Well, welcome to the human predicament. Buck up, never give up. We are not here to slack off and have a good time. This world is preparatory and propadeutic if not penal. That is the right way to think of it. Live and strive. Leben und streben! Streben bis zum Sterben! There is no guarantee that the "long, twilight struggle" will open out into light. For there are two twilights, one that leads to dawn, the other to dusk. But we live better if we believe in the advent of the first.
Judge your success not by how far you have to go, but how far you've come.
Inquire and aspire. What Plato has Socrates say about inquiry (intellectual self-improvement) in response to Meno's Paradox is adaptable to aspiration (moral self-improvement).
And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of inquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. (Plato, Meno, 81a-81e)
Resist not the folly of the fool who is his own undoing.
Apply this maxim to the leftist whose race- and sex-delusionality increases daily. If you encourage by not resisting the acceleration of his madness, you may hasten the day when common sense reasserts itself.
A striking one or two sentence formulation taken from a wider context is not an aphorism, strictly speaking. But I'm in a loose and liberal mood. So I present for your consideration and delectation the following sentence from Paul Ludwig Landsberg (1901-1944). It is from his essay "The Moral Problem of Suicide," translated from the French by Cynthia Rowland and bound together with "The Experience of Death" in a volume entitled The Experience of Death (Arno Press, New York, 1977). The sentence occurs on p. 69.
Temptation is an experience of the difference between the vertigo of power and the decision of duty.
It is important to present calm, rational arguments for the few people left who can be reached in this way.
Why do I use 'man'? To exclude women? No, to exclude leftists, both men and women. I believe in equality when it comes to the exclusion of the destructive.
In the '70s, when it first really got going, gender-inclusive language seemed to many a very good thing indeed. It showed a welcoming attitude to the distaff contingent, a salutary openness, a gracious concession to those females who felt excluded by (what in fact are) gender-neutral uses of 'man' and 'he,' not to mention a praiseworthy recognition of the excellence of many women in many hitherto male-dominated fields. Gentlemen are considerate of the feelings of others even when said feelings are unsupported by reason. And surely it is true that some women are superior to some men in almost every field. And surely people should be evaluated as individuals on their merits.
It all started out with good intentions, and many conservatives went along with it, oblivious to the unforeseen consequences. But now, a half-century later, we see where it has led.
And so if I use the sex-neutral 'man' and 'he' and cognates, it is not because I am a knuckle-dragger, one who hails from the valley of Neander, but because I am a man of intelligence, discernment, and high culture, a member of the Coalition of the Reasonable, who is doing his tiny bit to resist and if possible reverse the subversion of our glorious alma mater, our fostering mother, the English language. I am resisting politicization, tribalism, and the weaponization of language. Can I ramp up my charge to the allegation that the Left is committing matricide against our dear mother? I'll essay this later.
For I say unto you my brothers and sisters, the subversion of language is propadeutic to the subversion of thought. The latter, I fear, is what our enemies intend, the thoughtless being the easier to rule and control.
How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness! The strangeness of the ordinary. Sameness is a structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. There is synchronic and diachronic sameness. I will be discussing the latter.
How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.
But this answer is open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or rather my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all. Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware — not mediately via inference — that they are the same. Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.
What is the nature of this immediate awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference or by literally seeing (with the eyes) the numerical sameness of yesterday's tree and today's tree? And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?
A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change. Change is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change.
Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters if and only if it has incompatible properties at different times. Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my kitchen counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana, has objectively changed in respect of color.
But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.
I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana. I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for. Sameness is like existence: neither are empirically detectable features of things.
Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.
How then do I know it? I don't for a second doubt that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same girl. I am strongly inclined to say that I know that it is the same tree, etc. The question, however, is how I know it. How is it possible that I know such a thing given that transtemporal identity is not empirically detectable? My inability to explain how it is possible would seem to some to cast doubt on my claim that I do know that it is the same tree, etc. Others will demur and say that what is actual is possible whether or not one can explain how it is possible. One simply waxes dogmatic in the face of critical raisonnement.
If I cannot know diachronic identity empirically, do I impose the concept of such identity on what I literally see so as to enforce the numerical identity of the two trees, the two bananas, the two girls? Do I really want to say that identity is a transcendental concept to which nothing in the sensory manifold corresponds, a concept that I impose on the manifold?
God is a necessary being. That means: given that God exists, it is metaphysically impossible that he not exist. My opening sentence does not imply that God exists. It merely reports on God's modal status. Let us assume both that God exists and that all truth depends on God.
How might this relation of dependence be formulated? I find the following formulation perfectly intelligible: if, per impossibile, God did not exist, truth would not exist either. In fact, Aquinas says essentially this somewhere in De Veritate. (It is near the beginning but I can't find the passage.)
The italicized sentence is an example of a per impossibile counterfactual. Here is a second:
If, per impossibile, there were no minds, there would be no mere possibilia.
What say you, Dr. Novak?
