[Oh, and speaking of Much to Do about Nothing.
Slavoj Zizek recently published a book entitled Less Than Nothing.
So far, I have barely made a dent in it.
The book starts with the ancient Greek philosopher’s views on nothing.
Zizek aims to elucidate a positive nothingness.
A void fills to the brim, even overflows, with nothing.
Oops, that sounds like American mainstream television.
Zizek is more than fun.]
[The few blogs could have been titled, Much To Do About Nothing.
Unfortunately, no one ends up married.]
[Schoonenberg did not explicitly engage the specter of modern nothingness.
Does anybody?
I suspect that the Shiites (the Party of Ali) do. Iranian mystics look at modern Western Progressives and see their Secular Society as less than nothing.
Western Progressive Society is ‘a nothing so negative’ that it appears ‘a positive something’.
Secular Society resembles branches growing without the tree. There are no roots. There is no trunk. There are only branches.
This is the ‘nothing’ that we have created without God.]
[Similarly, the vast nothingness that we see in contemporary American television is supported by the dynamics of ‘I recognize myself according to some … nothingness’.
This ‘nothingness’ consists of characters, such as ‘a helpless victim terrorized by a bad one’. The televised helpless victim inspires sympathy, because the viewer is also a victim (a disempowered person who cannot talk back to the television producers).]
[Take a look at the intelligent, apparently well-educated, modern Progressives.
They imagine that they know something, but ‘their something’ is ‘the nothing that has been done without Christ’.
Are they experts in anti-knowledge?
Consider the tax expert who knows which forms are required in order to qualify for a particular tax break. Every facet of “his” knowledge has been created ‘out of nothing, without Christ’, including the denial of unintended consequences.
Progressive experts go about their business in asserting their moral superiority and specialness. After all, they are certified. They hold university degrees. They are steeped in anti-knowledge.
Perhaps, deep down, they recognize the truth that they participate in.
‘Nothing’ keeps them in business.]
[This, of course, raises the specter of another topic.
If ‘nothing’ is accomplished without Christ, then what are we to make of all our constructions in our non-Christocentric world?
What is the nature of ‘this social nothing that we done without Christ’?]
Summary of text [comment] pages 72 and 73
Schoonenberg concluded by quoting John 15:5.
Every virtue becomes impossible for man living in sin.
Jesus said, “Without the me, you can do nothing.”
[Is this a pattern?
We (humans) turn away from God’s love.
Then, we turn toward God’s love.
Our symbolic orders part ways with God’s Self-Revealing and then return, over and over again, as the civilizational situation deteriorates.
This is precisely what we would expect if our symbolic orders are not anchored in referentiality.]
[The cultural veiling of key theological words in the constantly tumultuous symbolic orders of the civilized West has been going on for a long time.
The 12th century is 900 years ago. Clearly, some people were already trying to liberate the concept of human freedom from the trappings of Original Sin.
Augustine and the Council of Carthage occurred 1800 years ago. Already, some were trying to liberate love from grace.]
[My comedic and rhetorical question is:
Has some Council explicitly condemned ‘a mutual love (agape)’ defined as two parties despising a third (who happens to be a creation of their own projections)? Or is that simply too ridiculous?]
