[I write like a bird.
When I land, I leave a drop of yuck, a condensate of the sublimated waters of Scholasticism and the burnt embers of Modernism.
When I fly, I leave a gaseous trail.
I cannot help it, because I am the harbinger of meaning.
Do not hold me to tightly. I do not want to be crushed.
Do not hold me too loosely. Otherwise I will fly away.]
[Or maybe I should blame Schoonenberg because he anticipated the yawning gap that was about to separate postmodernism from modernism. Every paragraph sets out an idea then withdraws it, clarifies it, nuances it, or balances it. Each idea comes from tradition, has been refined by countless controversies, and may be stated with precision.
At the same time, the entire tradition (symbolic order) has been vaporized, sublimated into a single term: “superstition”. Its intellectual presence has been replaced by longings for some utopian dream world as constituted by the Social Sciences.
In sum, my flights of neoscholastic and postmodern speculation come from the fact that Schoonenberg was both scholastic and modern. Neither symbolic order remains alive. Neither remains truly dead. The chasm between 1964 and 2012 can only be bridged through speculative flight, on the wings of the spirit of the Fourth Age of Understanding.]
[“Postmodernism” may be defined as “Modernism Crashing On the Shoals of Actuality”. “Modernism” may be defined as “Scholasticism Dying On the Shores of Speculative Possibilities”. Pyrrhic victories usher in new eras.
How many papers have been published on venial and mortal sin during the past 25 years? Only 10 years after Man and Sin came out in Dutch (1962), Menninger was publishing Whatever became of Sin? Yet here, in this blog, Schoonenberg’s words on this apparently arcane topic have become disturbingly relevant.]
Summary of text [comment] page 29
[At this point, seems that I am using Schoonenberg’s text to launch into flights of neoscholastic and postmodern speculation.
Of course, I blame Schoonenberg.
He should have anticipated the success of Postmodernism 50 years after the publication of his text.]
[For Chavez, that object was resentment: “your are poor because the rich stole your money”. With this Great Leader, the world of Venezuela divided into thinkblame_the_rich and (the projected) thinksteal_from_the_poor.
If you had any money, you were threatened into silence by the projected label. When poverty enveloped Venezuela due to market distortions, all political resistance received the projected label. But where is this mythical evil person who has stolen all the wealth from poor Venezuela? “Whoever it is” must live in the USA, or maybe Iran. How about Japan? China? Any place but Venezuela.
“Concupiscence” is no longer defined in relation to thinkdivine but in relation to thinkblame_the_rich.
Hugo Chavez, as the personification of thinkblame_the_rich, could not, by definition, harbor thoughts of thinksteal_from_the_poor.
The golden calf is not only immune from concupiscence, but anyone who accuses ‘him’ is, by definition, guilty of concupiscence. By definition, golden calf cannot commit “mortal sins”.
So I will not add that Chavez held billions of pesos in foreign bank accounts at the time of his death. I do not want to stand accused …
… even though I am a sinner.
Such are the cryptotheological formulations of the Public Cult.]
Summary of text [comment] page 29
St. Thomas Aquinas claimed that angels and the first couple (Adam and Eve) were unable to commit mortal sins because they were granted immunity from concupiscence.
[Now, I will expand on the vignettes that closed the previous two blogs and ask:
How does this apply to the leaders of modern Public Cults?
Are the leaders of Public Cults unable to commit “mortal” sins? Or has the word “mortal” shifted to “thinkanti-object” for the Public Cult? Hmmm. It is funny how the words change but the pattern of “venial and mortal sin” remains intact.
Rene Girard was correct. Mythology is told by the winners. For the Mythology of a Public Cult, the winners are the founders. The winners are the ones who fashion themselves as instruments in the service of the organization. I will label these minions of thinkpro-object the “golden calves” (artistically recalling and playing upon the incident in Exodus that delayed the coming of the tablets of the Law).
Modern cult leaders, such as the late Hugo Chavez, are equivalent to angels. They herald a new era; announcing that a thinkgroup has grasped sovereign power to become thinkpro-object. They are as foundational as Adam and Eve. They animate spirits bearing torches of darkness (or more precisely, of false accusations).
Does that also mean that the Dear Leader is immune from concupiscence?
The answer is “yes”, in a world where “concupiscence” has been redefined. The sovereign thinkgroup, thinkpro-object proclaims a new system of differences. Even the long discarded but still pertinent word, “concupiscence”, can mutate in an evolving symbolic order. “Concupiscence” now refers to the accused. It can never point to the Dear Leader.
In the closure of the world to thinkdivine, sovereign thinkpro-object brings all society into organization through some object. The Dear Leader embodies that object.]
[We might imagine that the word “property” taps into the archaic attribute of “holding onto some things and letting others go”.
However, the word only belongs to a system of differences. Rousseau depicted the difference this way:
“Private property” is the same as “civilization” and different than … “what?” … “collective ownership and utopia (a stand in for ‘the Lebenswelt that we evolved in’)”?
Rousseau’s difference is precisely the opposite of how “private property” should be differentiated. “Private property” is the same as “freedom” and different than “ownership by elites of the thinkgroup” and “slavery”. There is no “utopia” where a person is “free” and “ownership is collective”.
But there is “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”, where “belonging to the group was more important than any thing that you could hold onto”. Is that the same as “collective ownership”? Is that the same as, “The collective is more important than anything that we can hold onto and call our own.”?
All forms of collectivism appeal for a return to “the Lebenswelt before speech-alone talk” because that is precisely the world that we evolved in. We innately anticipate this Lebenswelt. We feel its presence in our bones. Our genes script proteins that enable cells to construct bodies that tell us that this wonderful Lebenswelt would be there, if only … what? If only we destroyed our current Lebenswelt?
The unspeakable premise is that, if we annihilate our current civilization, “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in” will magically appear.
Unfortunately, that is precisely the world that we can never return to. Whenever the words “collective” or “ideal” are used, there is a thinkgroup that has no appreciation of the primal nature of its appeal.]
Summary of text [comment] page 29
St. Thomas Aquinas claimed that angels and the first couple (Adam and Eve) were unable to commit mortal sins because they were granted immunity from concupiscence.
[Now, I will expand on the vignette that closed the previous blog by asking:
Why do modern Public Cults appeal for a return to the Lebenswelt containing hand (speech) talk, that is, the world where we all belonged, were equal, were in material poverty, and did not know any different?
Jacques Rousseau, in his second discourse, informed us that the key feature of this more ancient than ‘ancient’ world was the lack of private property. Once the habit of private property entered the scene, that monstrosity called “civilization” started.
The resonance between “what Rousseau described as human before civilization” and “the Lebenswelt of hand speech talking cultures” is striking.
What does “private property” mean? It means “that belongs to me”. It also means that “I belong to that”. “That” speaks of a differentiated world, instead of “the undifferentiated world that humans evolved in”.
Can you convey the concept of “property” through pantomime (manual brachial gesture)?
Well, you can grab onto some thing and not let go. But then what happens when you fall asleep or cannot carry it everywhere? You cannot articulate: This is my “property”. You have to act out your desires so convincingly that the thing is there when you wake up. Sure, things were dear, but the people in your band were more dear.
Even though our ancestors held onto some things and let others go, the term “property” was undefined in the Lebenswelt of hand speech talk. Yet, that lack of definition does not mean that “the holding onto some things and letting other things go” was not lived every day. This drama was personal and collective, since, time and time again, everyone in the band had to move to a new location.]
[What does fact that, in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, words could not lie for me, imply?
It implies that the “immunity from concupiscence” attributed to Adam and Eve simply reflects God’s gift of bringing them into “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”.
While this does not seem as fabulous as what Augustine imagined (that their sexual impulses were under the control of reason), this is certainly fabulous enough for Utopians of every stripe.
How so? Utopians want to destroy unconstrained complexity. They imagine that this act of destruction will bring us literally “no where”.
Where is Utopia?
By default, it must be the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, where “everyone belonged, no one knew any better, and words meant exactly what they were supposed to mean”.
This is a world without concupiscence because thinkdivine and thinkgroup were not differentiated.
How fabulous is that?
This explains why, despite immunity, the mythic Adam and Eve were so easily duped by the serpent. The serpent started the first thinkgroup. Of course, it was utopian because it treated, as actuality, the potential in the forbidden fruit. The serpent knew that eating the forbidden fruit would destroy the world. The real promise of the fruit was this:
I will return you to the Lebenswelt that you evolved in …
… a world without sin.]
[In speech alone talk, a person belonging to one thinkgroup may use the same parole (or word-sound) as a person belonging to thinkdivine, but generate a different langue (or word-meaning), because thinkgroup and thinkdivine compose two distinct symbolic orders. That is why I call them “exclusive and interpellating”.
In hand talk, there were two symbolic orders. One was common talk, where the iconicity and indexality of hand talk grounded the meaning of words (that is, words referred to existent things, even though the things may not be present). The other was the Mythos and Logos, founded when iconic, indexal and indicative words referred to a condition where the signified things could not possibly exist.
In hand speech, iconicity and indexality grounded each word for both symbolic orders, eliminating the whole drama of “saying one thing but meaning another” that permeates both thinkgroup and consciencelacking in unconstrained complexity.
In short, there was only one world: the world that “I” belonged to. If I wanted to lie, then I would have to simply lie. Words could not lie for me.
In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, think3(action2(conscience1)) were undifferentiated.]
