Dear Fred.
Thanks for your email.
Thanks for your email.
It’s good to know you welcome my input.
Concerning my observation on the insubstantiality of cyberspace, one could say “there is no there there.”
Fifty five years ago, when I was developing my initial criticism of Catholicism, I was struck by the stupidity of church teaching relating to the need for penitent and priest to be physically present in the same space if the sacrament of confession were to be "efficacious."
According to the "light of orthodoxy," if confession is to "work" — if it is to be imbued with “actual grace” — it is necessary that penitents confess their sins in the physical presence of their confessor.
It was perhaps 25 years later that I suddenly realized the genius of this necessity.
Right now, as I write the word “necessity,” I also realize that necessity must be distinguished from “requirement” since “requirement” is imposed by extraneous authority/agency (even if that agency is our "super-ego"), whereas “necessity” is indwelling - embedded in “the nature of things.”
Concerning my observation on the insubstantiality of cyberspace, one could say “there is no there there.”
Fifty five years ago, when I was developing my initial criticism of Catholicism, I was struck by the stupidity of church teaching relating to the need for penitent and priest to be physically present in the same space if the sacrament of confession were to be "efficacious."
According to the "light of orthodoxy," if confession is to "work" — if it is to be imbued with “actual grace” — it is necessary that penitents confess their sins in the physical presence of their confessor.
It was perhaps 25 years later that I suddenly realized the genius of this necessity.
Right now, as I write the word “necessity,” I also realize that necessity must be distinguished from “requirement” since “requirement” is imposed by extraneous authority/agency (even if that agency is our "super-ego"), whereas “necessity” is indwelling - embedded in “the nature of things.”
As I write those words, I have fresh insight into a mystifying comment Rev. J. Edgar Bruns made after dinner one night.
He said “Alan, love is need.”
Nothing else. No other comment.
Just "Love is need."
"The Temptation Of Buddha/Christ And The Fourth Gospel," An Essay Inspired By J. Edgar Bruns
But back to the topic in hand.
Confession can not occur “efficaciously” over the telephone because “ phoning it in” would result in qualitative diminishment of “the lived, incarnate moment” - like holding out a telephone (or even a videophone) from the bank of Niagara Falls and expecting this electronic mediation to communicate Niagara’s majestic presence.
Presence.
"I am who am."
It is remarkable that Judeo-Christianity worships the distillation of unmediated Being... and nearly no one remarks upon it.
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/idolatry-why-first-commandment-forbids.html
Participation in Reality/Being requires… now get this… participation in Reality/Being.
We must commune with the physical reality of things if metaphysicality is to incarnate.
Here on earth, physicality is, by nature, the springboard of metaphysicality.
"God so loved the world that he sent his son (offspring) into it." (This is a slightly altered version of the New Testament verse that is routinely displayed by baseball fans sitting behind home plate.)
The "word" made "flesh."
The enfleshment.
The incarnation.
The carne -- the meat -- of the matter (mater=mother).
As a theological construct, “The Incarnation” -- like all verbal formulae -- is "just" a pointer - indispensable for those who are "lost" or in need of guidance.
As a theological construct, “The Incarnation” -- like all verbal formulae -- is "just" a pointer - indispensable for those who are "lost" or in need of guidance.
But still "just" a pointer.
In this vein, we cannot escape the foundational insight of 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (a cradle Catholic): “ That which we say a thing is, it isn’t.”
Or, to re-frame Wittgenstein in "early Owenese": “Consider the avocado.”
Whatever an avocado is, it is not a collection of phonemes deriving from the Aztec (Nahuatl) word for "testicle." https://www.etymonline.com/word/avocado
All phonemes — all words — are shorthand "pointers" steering us in the direction of the reality they represent.
In this vein, we cannot escape the foundational insight of 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (a cradle Catholic): “ That which we say a thing is, it isn’t.”
Or, to re-frame Wittgenstein in "early Owenese": “Consider the avocado.”
Whatever an avocado is, it is not a collection of phonemes deriving from the Aztec (Nahuatl) word for "testicle." https://www.etymonline.com/word/avocado
All phonemes — all words — are shorthand "pointers" steering us in the direction of the reality they represent.
But unless we leave the verbal shuttlecraft to touch ground and take root in the earthiness of “things,” it is astonishingly easy to mistake the shadow for the substance and thus live our lives in Plato's cave as if those shadows are real.
Reality (at least as we know it) is a collaborative engagement -- an interpenetration -- between "things in themselves" and human perception interacting with those things, thus completing the objective thing through subjective vision.
Apprehension. (... which in the philosophical sense literally means "to get a hold on," to "seize").
Which brings us to Aquinas' central focus on "potential" and "act."
Until perceived, objects have NO specifically human meaning.
Just imagine the universe with conscious life forms progressively disappearing until things no longer have a subject to en-vision/sense them.
The things that had been previously sensed become, literally, non-sensical.
From the vantage of human meaningfulness, the "real" "thing" retreats into pure potential.
From the vantage of no-longer extant sensory consciousness (which of course no longer really exists once sentient beings have been eliminated), what were once real "things" come to have mere potential.
The meaningfulness of things (in any sense that human consciousness can apprehend) "evaporates" because there are no longer sentient humans to imbue it with meaning... to sense the manifest meaning of things which had been latent-dormant prior to human apprehension.
Of course, Vaclav Havel -- a Catholic philosopher as well as a politician (and friend of Frank Zappa) -- said, and I quote, "Consciousness is prior to being." (I think this line appears in Havel's prison memoirs, "Letters To Olga." https://www.vhlf.org/havel-quotes/letters-to-olga/)
Verbiage aside -- and returning to the fleshed-out meaning of things -- I propose a toast!
PS Check out this Zappa video clip.
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