The Invisible, Uncreated world of Being, Makes More Sense than the Material World of Becoming

Plato, Kant, Thomas, Augustine, and Jesus all posited a (post) hellenic worldview whereby behind everything in the physical world, there existed ideas, the non-material, the noumenal, God. Something Other, something not like what we see. From our life experience and our own human being/existence, we know that Being must exist.

Plato posited that there was a realm of the Forms whereby every essence existed in a non-material state. This means that when I use the word "is", the concept is a universal one that people can actually understand. The fact that no one can define "Being" is proof that we use in every language concepts that are beyond our explanation.

Crazily enough one deity is rumored to have said "I am who I am" - interpretted by many as "I am Being", and that for every human being, it is possible to say of this deity "in Him we live and move and breathe and have our being".

If Being (invisible world) is the whiteboard, Becoming (visible material world) is the writing on it. Without Being, Nietzsche rightly said, we can only speak in verbs. There are no nouns. You are not essentially anything, you are an accidental cluster of atoms constantly in flux until you die.... oh, and by the way. You weren't caused.... figure that out.

Accepting that all of existence and your own personal life does not follow logic (because logic necessitates causation which would require an existant non-material 'spiritual' entity to have created time and matter), accepting such a worldview would mean that everything is meaningless, there is no truth, there can be no true emotion between people. There can only be chemistry and biology and physics, and again remember none of those sciences can follow any pattern as this would imply logic or meaning. That is one alternative. It's as I've said objectively illogical (as it would be since logic doesn't exist). It's rather like a paranoid person who says all the world is conspiring against them, and then another person trying to explain to them that this is not true. The more the rational person explains, the more the paranoid person believes they are vindicated. (I stole that one from Chesterton).

For the rest of humanity, that isn't ready to kiss away Love, Meaning, Human Rights, and Reason, there exists another possibility in the invisible world. That's personally why I'd rather be a Platonist, or an Idealist, or an Aristotelian, or a Thomist, or a Jew, or a Deist, or a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Morman, or a worshipper of the Flying Spagetti Monster (provided he was immaterial) than be a materialist.

For the philosopher, Materialism is a joke, the phrase "the material world is the only reality" disproves materialism (language implies reason, which implies non-material principles, more "invisible" reality). Similarly a "God's eye view" of the world that claims God doesn't exist is impossible, as it would be a universal statement in a universe without universal truth! (oft repeated but true nonetheless).

Thus one can say "I don't think the (realm of the Forms/God/Noumenal/Ideal) exists" but the statement must be understood as an illogical claim, based on either emotion or unjustified opinion.

Humanities: 1 , Material Sciences: 0

A Parable For You

Imagine a place called "normal". In this strange village everyone would wake up earlier than they desired, to prepare to journey to places they didn't want to go. For each prospective journey they would all dress in clothes they didn't actually find comfortable or functional, but rather they would select vestments from a spectrum of rigid conformity known as "Fashion". Then imagine they paid to translocate themselves in a manner horrifically destructive to their own environment so that they could go to work in a place they didn't want to, for longer than they wanted, with no one that they liked. Their twenty-somethings would go to the 'school' where they would pay to be forced to do things they didn't want to do, and occassionally learn, if only, by accident. Their overlords would yell at them but were no longer able to hit them, and so only psychologically degraded them. The establishment that had instituted these 'schools', "the kirk", was hated and derided in them. There had been a great rebellion against it called 'the enlightenment' and so at the basis of all they were forced to go through, there was no underlying purpose anymore.

Basically, I hate the way the world functions. ... I miss the Middle Ages & Renaissance... then you could go to cities and have a lively urban environment, or you could choose to be a rural farmer. You could get one coherent education which was actually based on LEARNING rather than getting a piece of paper or doing homework (an American invention I hear). I would've lived in an italian city-state given another shot. Been like the people in the merchant of Venice, forcibly baptizing Jews, and living the high life.

Although I'm sure I'd find things to hate about that era too. ...

C.S. Lewis said that we always thing the light is on the other side of the hill or just around the corner, just not where we are, and so we live in the Shadowlands.



Rant over.

G.I. Joe Review

I was taught in American history that G.I. Joe was started to help the army recruit me into the general infantry and to make daily tasks of military life at the lowest rank seem action-filled.

This movie was basically driven by 3 factors:

American-style Violence
I'd like to refilm the movie shot by shot and just show all the civilians (and 1 polar bear) die. The cars that are choreographed to spin and blow up, and the babies and families inside dying for a vaguely liberal cause that just seeks to re-establish the order of America as military power #1. Imagine a popular action film where France was the dominant military power in the world at the end. It would be seen as a horror-movie. Any non-Anglospheric country is a bad guy if it isn't humorous and stereotypical or in bowed subservience to the altar of Washington.

For a country in a war (Iraq) where over 1000 times the amount of native civilians were killed as a result of the formal cause (september 11th, 2001), you could see how this movie functions as an apologia. By making America the perpetual good-guys you can kill Parisian civilians in graphically entertaining ways and it doesn't matter because it's all for the 'greater good' which is American perseverance.

I think the greater good would've been non-violence. If the Americans never bought the weapons that the movie was centred around, none of this would happen. If everyone on earth, or at least a large portion of people just refused to fight unless it was just, there would be no international arms trade to villanize on screen. (Ironically America is the world's largest international arms dealer which is conveniently left out).

The Bad guy of G.I. Joe was an arms dealer who sells weapons to both sides, AMERICA sells weapons to both sides, HELLO! Iran-Iraq war anyone? ring any bells?

Cleavage

I'll put it this way, I searched Sienna Miller on Google and I couldn't find a picture clean enough to post on here.

Since when did supermodels with abnormally large bust-sizes join the army, and since when does the army allow women to have shoulder length, perfectly styled hair?

Technology

This of course is the West's favourite new god, from the iPod to GPS to "nanomyte war heads" Steve Jobs is the Muhammad of the 21st century. The whole film had strange super-technology that deified the humans who use it. It empowered them in a pseudo-Nietzschean Overman-esque way that makes people think materialism is fun and exciting and that man is the measure of all things. Cancer in the film was destroyed by the technology and the G.I. Joes had super-human / evolved human powers and were pretty much invulnerable. Life is frail, and the thing 21st century man still fears most is death. But unlike the other generations he is failing to think about it at all. Technology is the new god that can save him from whatever fears he places in it's trust. This is not only untrue, it's idolatrous.

Such was the film which will probably be followed by numerous sequels.

I'm still waiting for a movie about St. Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle or "Virtue Heroes" who captivate the audience with their Prudence, Temperance, Wisdom and Fortitude.