A Superspreader Testing Center
Some of us have been through many a flu season. Did we ever have ourselves tested? Why get tested for a disease for which you have no symptoms? Fear, and the ever increasing 'wussification' of the populace, drive the excess of pre-emptive assessment. "But if it saves just one life, then all the fear, all the expense, all the masks and lockdowns and hardships for children and their parents, all the limitations of our liberty, all the expansion of centralized control, and all the destruction of small businesses — all of this will have been worth it." That was in effect the 'reasoning' of Andrew Cuomo. Remember him?
Irony. Apparently, social distancing is not required for lemmings who agglomerate to be the first kids on their blocks to get a test they don't need.
Abiding in Adobe
Would that I could abide in adobe
In the ghost town, Bodie
With the shades in the shadow
Of Boot Hill.
(I do not say that this is a good poem. But it amuses me. If it doesn't amuse you, double your money back!)
Die Verkehrte Welt
The world of the leftist is an inverted world in which making things worse is called 'reform.'
Man is a Project
To believe in oneself is to believe beyond the evidence.
Honor thy Mother
Our biological mothers bore us into the world of matter; the mother tongue into the realm of objective spirit. Both deserve respect and honor, the latter more so than the former inasmuch as the spirit is higher than the flesh. What the mother tongue receives from the matricidal Left is neglect and abuse and Orwellian subversion and distortion. Ingratitude and retromingency are marks of the leftist. To the Left's retromingency in point of pissing on the past I now add the retromingency of the Left's pollution of the headwaters of its expressivity.
Let it Go and Move on
Let the past go and move on. Pack as much life as possible into the few years that remain. Squeeze in as much vital thinking and thoughtful vitality as you can. Move up and away from your vices. Consign your hebetude to history. Break useless contacts. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Mill the grist. Press the grapes of experience for the wine of wisdom. A philosopher's harvest years come late. The clock is running. The format is sudden death. The time control is unknown. The Reaper waits, he is patient, his scythe aglisten in the dying rays of the setting sun. There is work to be done, and it can only be done here. Get on with it, noble soul!
Parallel Problems of God and Evil, Mind and Matter
For Bradley Schneider.
…………………………………..
It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are collectively logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both (objectively) true, then they are collectively logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be collectively logically consistent. This is so whether or not anyone, any finite or ectypal intellect, is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be logically consistent. It is presumably otherwise with the intellectus archetypus.
For if such-and-such is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and my inability, or any mortal's inability, to explain how it is possible that it be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case. There is no valid move from ignorance as to how something is possible to its not being possible. Such an inferential move would be tantamount to the ad ignorantiam fallacy. So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are collectively logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.
The logical point I have just made is rock-solid. I now apply it to two disparate subject-matters. The one is the well-known problem of evil faced by theists, the problem of reconciling the belief that God exists with the belief that evil exists. The other is the equally well-known 'problem of mind' that materialists face, namely, the problem of reconciling the existence of the phenomena of mind with the belief that everything concrete is material.
The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on." Or he could simply repeat (something like) what I said above, namely, "True propositions are (collectively) logically consistent; this is so whether or not a mortal man can explain how they are jointly true; I have good grounds for believing both that God exists and that evil exists; I am therefore under no doxastic obligation to surrender my theism."
Atheists and materialists ought not object to this standing pat since they do the same. What materialist about the mind abandons his materialism in the face of the various arguments (from intentionality, from qualia, from the unity of consciousness, from the psychological relevance of logical laws, etc.) that we anti-materialists marshal? Does the materialist give in? Hell no, he stands pat, pointing to his array of arguments and considerations in favor of materialism, and when you try to budge him with the irreconcilability of intentionality and materialism, or qualia and materialism, or the unity of consciousness with materialism, he replies, "This is something we materialists need to work on."
Or he could proffer a structural analog of what I put in the mouth of theist: "True propositions are (collectively) logically consistent; this is so whether or not a mortal man can explain how they are jointly true; I have good grounds for believing both that intrinsic intentionality exists and that everything concrete is material in nature; I am therefore under no doxastic obligation to surrender either my belief that there are genuine intentional states or my materialism about the mental."
Both theist and materialist could take a more extreme tack. They could 'go mysterian.' They could say, "Look, it's just beyond our ken and will remain so. Our cognitive architecture is such as to disallow insight into how apparently contradictory propositions are in reality non-contradictory."
The theist might say that is is not given to us to understand how God and evil are both real; it's a mystery! The materialist about the mind might say that it is not possible for us to understand how intentionality (and the other phenomena of mind) are real given that everything concrete is physical. It's a mystery!
The ultimate extreme would be to 'go dialetheic' and embrace true contradictions. Some argue that the Incarnation is a true contradiction. If so, why couldn't the incarnation of mind in matter be a true contradiction? I myself fight shy of this extreme. I cleave to the law of non-contradiction and embrace solubility skepticism — not warmly but coolly, tentatively and skeptically. And therefore self-consistently.
Civility
Civility is no virtue if a cover for cowardice.
Ancient Eyes and Old Souls
The eyes of the elderly are rarely the windows of old souls; in most they bespeak vacancy. Either aging has dirtied the panes or else there was little or no soul behind them to begin with.
History
History may have lessons to teach us, but we don't agree on what they are; so we learn nothing usefully applicable to the present.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Women and Girls
Where would we be without them? Languishing in the sphere of the merely possible. On the other hand, "Pretty girls make graves." (Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums)
Roy Orbison, Pretty Woman. Mercy! See how many of the sidemen you can identify. A great song that blends the the tender & romantic with the thrustingly Dionysian.
Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman. I won't say anything, lest I gush, my romanticism loosened by a delicious blend of tequila and Campari. The polished Blonde on Blonde version. Van Morrison pays tribute here.
Bob Dylan, Girl from the North Country
Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl. This one goes out to Kathy H.
Aretha Franklin, Natural Woman. Written by Carole King. Her version.
Rolling Stone, Honky Tonk Woman
Santana, Black Magic Woman
Eric Clapton, Have You Ever Loved a Woman?
Ray Charles, I Got a Woman, 1954
Peter and Gordon, Woman
Elvis Presley, Santa Lucia
Andrea Bocelli, Ave Maria (Franz Schubert)
And many more . . . .
Was Kyle Rittenhouse a Vigilante?
I have been known to refer to David French as a useful idiot in the sense usually attributed to V. I. Lenin, but I won't repeat that legitimate charge here. I'll just say that French is exasperating in the Trump-hating pseudo-conservative style of David Brooks, George F. Will, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen and the rest of the all-talk-and-no-action bow tie brigade. Here is French in The Atlantic, publication in which is a good tip-off as to one's political stance:
When Kyle Rittenhouse walked the streets of Kenosha in the midst of urban unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake holding a rifle in the “patrol carry” or “low ready” position, similar to the positions used by soldiers walking in towns and villages in war zones, without any meaningful training, he was engaged in remarkably dangerous and provocative conduct. But that dangerous and provocative conduct did not eliminate his right of self-defense, and that self-defense claim is the key issue of his trial, not the wisdom of his vigilante presence.
French fails to note that the police shooting of Blake was justified inasmuch as the black criminal with an impressive rap sheet refused to obey police commands and pulled a knife on the officer. French is undoubtedly aware of the lethality of knives and indeed that their lethality is in some circumstances in excess of that of a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. But let that pass.
Note the phrase "vigilante presence." A vigilante is someone who takes the law into his own hands. But the authorities had abdicated and Kenosha was at the time lawless. Someone who defends life, liberty, and property in a Hobbesian state of nature against armed barbarian arsonists, looters, and potential murderers is arguably not a vigilante. But of course it depends on how one defines 'vigilante.'
If a citizen shoots a home invader who threatens death or grave bodily harm to the home's occupants, no one calls that a vigilante action even though the citizen has taken crime prevention and law enforcement into his own hands. The law makes an entirely reasonable exception in a case like this thereby suspending in such circumstances its monopoly on the use of force in law enforcement and crime prevention. This exception allows for others. When the authorities abdicate, they no longer can claim to have a monopoly on the use of force since they have refused to employ force in the upholding of the law. So it falls to the citizen. When the authorities are in dereliction of duty, their authority evaporates.
It is thus a cheap slander on the part of French to tar Rittenhouse with the pejorative 'vigilante.' Later in the article,
But there is also an immense difference between quiet concealed carry and vigilante open carry . . . .
Two points. French is suggesting that open carry, as such, is a vigilante action. It is not, although it is inadvisable in most circumstances. If that is not what French wanted to imply, then he is a sloppy writer. Second, Rittenhouse was out to deter the thugs and concealing his weapon would not have had that effect!
Can you appreciate why someone would consider French to be a useful idiot? Instead of standing up for the rule of law and condemning both the politicians who want to defund the police, and the leftist prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals, he wastes his energy attacking an idealistic. good-hearted 17- year-old boy who bravely if unwisely stood up against the barbarians. The net effect is to give aid and comfort to those French ought to be opposing. Like Rod Dreher and others, he doesn't understand that he has to take a side here and that it is impossible to float above the fray as if he were a transcendental spectator with no stake in the outcome.
The question to put to French is: Which side are you on?
Civil Liability for Gun Manufacturers?
Of course not! Substack latest.
Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom
Substack latest.
I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late antiquity, Aurelius Augustinus offered a critique of the Stoics in Book XIX, Chapter 4 of The City of God, a critique worthy of being called classical. We will have to examine that critique one of these days. But today I want to draw your attention to some passages from Chapter 10, Section 4 of Louis Lavelle's The Dilemma of Narcissus (Allen & Unwin, 1973, tr. Gairdner):