Sharpen up your pig stickers brothers.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Here Comes the New Man, Same as the Old Man
So: if one wants to make sure that God's not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead, one must somehow go after and eradicate the psycho-pneumatic matrix out of which God emerges. One must sow the divine ground with salt, so to speak (which apparently doesn't work, btw), so nothing grows and nothing grows (except the state) .
For Marx and his contemporary heirheads, God can be nothing more than a human projection. Therefore, our task is to withdraw the projection -- to break off negOtiations and summon our I-AMbassador from the divine embassy -- and thereby re-become that which we have dribbled away via projection. In short, the best way to kill a god is to become one.
Ironically, both religion and anti-religion posit a new kind of man, a novel cosmic development. For example, in Ephesians, Paul advises us to take off the old man and put on the new.
Indeed, remaining in the old man's shoes is identified with mental futility, while shedding the old coot is both cause and effect of vertical renewal.
Just so, the (hello,) NewMan of the left isn't just devoid of religious delusions, but "has taken God back into his being. The 'non-man,' who has illusions, becomes fully human by absorbing the 'superman'" (who is like totally gay, btw).
Hence the breathtaking arrogance of the left, which they truly cannot help. After all, when one is the center of the universe, it's a little difficult to hide one's light under a bushel.
An essay by the brolific Doctor Zero, The [lower case r] republican virtue of humility, touches on this theme. You might say that the new man of the left barters away his abstract freedom in exchange for something a little more concrete -- either power, cash, or other valuable prizes.
Doing so is "only natural," whereas placing ultimate value in something as nebulous as "negative liberty" is only supernatural. Thus, under our Constitution you cannot choose to be a slave, but you can get around this by choosing to have masters.
Back to Voegelin. He writes (quoting Bottomore) that "The struggle against religion is therefore a struggle against that world of which religion is the spiritual aroma."
This is why leftist culture is every bit as iconoclastic as the Taliban thugs (but I repeat myself) who blew up those magnificent Buddhist statutes. The left does the same thing, but since we live in a verbal culture, they naturally carry it out with linguistic TNT, but the end result is just as barbarous.
Again, fascism involves the violent rejection of transcendence; although I suppose we should qualify that, since Islamofascism -- or most any other kind of "religious fascism" -- involves a violent rejection of immanence.
In any event, for the liberal fascist, "once the world beyond truth has disappeared," it is necessary "to establish the truth of this world" (Bottomore, in Voegelin). Never mind that truth is always transcendent. That's none of your damn business. Just grab your hoodie and get with the pogrom, okay?
For once the center of power has shifted from God to man, from transcendent to immanent, "it seeks not to refute but to annihilate" (ibid.).
And this is where the real action -- or acting out, rather -- begins, for "Here speaks the will to murder of the gnostic magician.... critique is no longer rational debate. Sentence has been passed; the execution follows" (ibid.).
The new man of the left, because he has taken what is beyond back into himself, "experiences himself as existing outside of institutional bonds and obligations." No shit. That's just how we roll in Chicago. What, you got a problem with multiculturalism?
As in the French Revolution, things can get out of hand pretty quickly, as the will to murder lashes out in all directions Willy-Hilly, and the fickle finger of fatwa falls on whom it will: George Zimmerman. Koch Brothers. Bain Capital. Stay-at-home moms. The Catholic Church. Fox News. Talk Radio. Millionaires and billionaires. Clarence Thomas. There's no logic to it except for the underlying will to murder.
Which no one is permitted to name or acknowledge, hence the institutional amnesia of the media-academic complex, which restricts consciousness to the momentary in time and the immanent in space.
In other worlds (Voegelin's), "the being of the world and ego is restricted to the knowledge of the immediate or existent." It is not just "radically anti-philosophical" but "a work of magic."
On the grave of the murdered God the golem is celebrating a ghastly ritual.... The goal has been attained.... This is the closing act of the order of being when gnostic magicians lay hands on it. --Voegelin
posted by Gagdad Bob
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