At Last: Metaphysics

Metaphysics

HISTORICAL IRONY, ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY, SIN
and The Theory of Logical Types.

See the connection. Understand reality. Enlightenment now.



Irony: (succinctly) Going East to arrive at the West.
When that which is set to do one thing results in the exact opposite.

I have come late to the use of this word, leaving it for lit-phil types to pad out a peculiarity in discourse into a harmless, but useless analytical conceit. Being uncommitted to concern themselves in discourse with either knowledge or being, per se, sd libbing as they go along with gestures toward each but not pausing for questions, the lit-phil’s philosophize. Somebody else does the actual thinking.

No more. I now can speak of the Irony of Ironies (HOW COULD HE DO THIS TO AMERICA? – punishment for their sin: WHEN SINFUL PEOPLE , even while sounding a bit ironic to myself for having scorned its importance. The phil-lit crowd was onto something, intuitively.

In the process of analyzing uses of signs (psychosemiotics) I had of course taken note of: self-contradictions (“this is not a sentence”), reversals (“smart…very smart” – applied to a dumb act), auto-credits (“Do I look like a liar to you?”) and the like, understanding that there would be formal similarities with things called ‘ironic’, but without the sense that these latter would form a distinct category of sign-uses ‘beyond grammar” calling for independent recognition. This opinion is reversed now, however, and the above formula – when that which is set to do one thing does the exact opposite – is a working definition to approach the topic. It is vague, of course, almost pre-textual (Plutoish), yet nevertheless quite explicit in contexts. (Ironic: when instruments -- oxygen canisters – used to supply the conditions for life explode, killing their users)

Examples cascade here from many contexts. In words, deeds, events, historical narratives. Things start out in one way, then exactly reverse direction.

Elaboration: TWO MAJOR HISTORICAL IRONIES

--IN AMERICA TODAY – 9.23.2005

Irony: df. “A method of expression in which the intended meaning of the words used is the direct opposite of their usual sense (the irony of calling a stupid plan ‘clever’ – of Bush’s “Heckava job, Brownie” in re FEMA’s head Brown after the New Orleans disaster..) … usually humorous, or subtly sarcastic

---or: combination of circumstances or a result that is the opposite of what is or might be expected or considered appropriate (an irony that the firehouse burned)
(…that the LA chief Law enforcer was Rolo Tomasi; that Mark Felt was put in charge of tracking down Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal.) (That Linda Tripp should be saying “The Truth matters”)

--that it was a CIA hire that shot down the Baptist missionary plane in Peru, 2001 (part of the drug war in Columbia – liberal Baptists were suspected of bringing it in.)


Psychoanalytic explanations: the conscious intention pursued in a course of action is inwardly opposed by an unconscious, inner drive, which breaks through --- as, with humor. The person “is of two minds” about what they are doing, but one is repressed, kept out of sight ---BUT RECOGNIZED AS HAVING BEEN THERE WHEN IT DOES EMERGE: laughing at oneself = sign of healthiness. The recognition comes from the same place as the conscious component of the unconscious sense of guilt. (--at some level, knowing one is guilty of violating the interests of ultimate concern: nothing “in” consciousness as a content signaling this, except what one can observe oneself reacting to with ‘repression”: ‘rather not consider it – makes me uncomfortable”; avoidance, denial of self-application while seeing it “everywhere” in others; frequency of ‘threats’ encountered from a source connected to the idea.


**********/

America today:

Price of oil = $68 barrel --- subtext of the Iraq war: to secure a plentiful supply. THIS WAS UNSPOKEN, OPPOSED BY ADMITTED GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS AS ITS DESIRE. Now: the Shiite’s are grabbing Basra facilities for Iran; the North is running over with freedom fighters (“insurgents”) –

Looks like no oil coming from there at all – unless down the line.

The “sin” interpretation: the sin of greed worked against the US to defeat its project. (“God” was not it its side, but, as alive in them as a watching, judging, punishing agency (Freud’s ‘superego’: what ‘we’ like to think we are, ideally) contributed to: errors up and down the line (bad planning, ‘friendly fire’, ‘mistakes’, accidents… all showing WE WERE NOT A TOTALITY COMPLETING ITSELF, BUT PUNISHING ITSELF: BEING DRIVEN BY THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESS.

1. IRONY OF OIL-GREED SQUARED: The double hit of Katrina in New Orleans, and Rita on Houston area has virtually wiped out oil supply from the Gulf.

CALL THIS THE OIL IRONY ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. IF: the storms were an act of God in punishment for the Iraq war (MAJOR ARGUMENT THEME OF THE SEMESTER)

-“The skies ringing with history” – Eric Francis – Mars retrograde in Taurus: 1973 (OPEC OIL CRISIS)—2005 (---OIL CRISIS). (Katrina: Struck with such ferocity one said “It was as if she had something to prove – referring to comparison with 1969 hurricane Camille)


2. ST. RITA is the Patron saint of “the impossible cases”: specifically, the abused.
--Her life was spent overcoming it by great works of suffering – wanting to share in Christ’s passion -- and charity. Mentioned also: her “clarity”: that of one who knows and takes all the abuse life can throw
--AND REMAINS FORGIVING, OBEDIENT, DUTIFUL, PERFECTED


Irony 2: RITA be the name of this most powerful destructive force in the Gulf. She and God getting revenge for her human side – against the abusers in America.

*******/





then go to the psychoanalytic explanation: the unc. Build -up of a counter-position in those who take a consciously one-sided approach too far (Jung) (Freud: a content is split-off (repressed), becomes a vortex-emotional current draining energy from daily life (this is the neurosis), then emerging in consciousness as the exact opposite of what was repressed.) THINGS DRIVEN BY WILFUL SINFULNESS TURN INTO THEIR OPPOSITE BECAUSE THEY GO AGAINST THE PART OF THE PSYCHIC TOTALITY THAT OPPOSES THEM -- THIS POTENTIATES THE REVERSAL, AND EXPLAINS WHY A PERSON WILL DO SELF-DEFEATING THINGS. (“Sin” is the quasi-qualitative organism feed-back from what Freud called ‘the unconscious sense of guilt’ – the inner agency that sends the brain the message “you are going to get it for this” in those who have conscience. – What accuses us when we do something we know better than to do.)

****/
Preaching: addressing the group as a totality from the standpoint of its completing ideal (assumption: the one preaching not only knows what that is but has participated in its inner essence until it is his/her functional default position: their conscious functions are aligned with the unconscious ones. Then they can “speak with power”, which doesn’t have to be loud or forceful – but when provoked easily passes over into these.)

Defining: SIN (of a nation: America) Philosophical (metaphysics): That which defeats the completion of its totality

Psychological: Conscious choice of that which goes in a direction opposite to that required by (the ideal of) its completing totality (--its national super-ego: the star it was born under) THOSE WHO PUSHED BUSH INTO THE WHITE HOUSE BECAUSE OF HIS/THEIR AGENDA, NOT AMERICAS (which you do not represent the ideal of merely by controlling use of its name for mass communication – suffices for ‘democracy of the mob swayed by “Good News God” – aka “FRIENDLY FIRE GOD”)

In Sign-use (psychosemiotically): Absolutizing the Relaltive ..
Taking use of the word “God” in the mass consciousness (as a mere token for what America is “under” – with no text specified or SPECIFIABLE! – left open for ‘vote’? (Scalia) -- I don’t think so..

****/

Logical sin in sign-use”
Including the predicate token under the quantifier defining its extension (class of objects determined by its application).

Formally: substituting “F” for “x” in “F(x)”, where “F(x)” is the schema of a subject-predicate sentence asserting “x is F” (actual instance: “GWB is the 43rd president of the United States” when “GWB” = x and “is the 43rd President of the United States” is F). The British philosopher Bertrand Russell first diagnosed this sin of formal logic, and prescribed strict rules for stratifying the subject and predicate terms in deductive (scientific) discourse to avoid self-contradiction in mathematical logic. His 1908 article “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Logical Types” set forth rules for stratification of predicates of subjects (and predicates of predicates as subjects, etc.) to accomplish this. Formal psychosemiotics includes The stratification of tokens according to type-levels of experienced content (neuro-psychological (dreams), phenomenal (appearances), 3D spatial (bodies), moral (actions), existential (egos), semiotic (sign-uses), theological (completion of totalities): level 1 – 7, respectively) builds on this to safeguard the system against self-contradiction. The sin of taking a predicate as subject of itself in actual discourse usually goes unnoticed, or passed off as paradoxes due to human weakness, like the Cretan who asserted all Cretans are liars (ha ha – nobody stops to consider this might have been an actual campaign speech, and what it would have meant if he had got elected for his honesty).

The sin associated with this occurs most often by “suppressing the particular” –e.g., leaving out “43rd”) “THE ( ) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS THE ( ) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES”.
This gives a tautological proposition, as the sense of “is” shifts from predication to identity to accommodate the grammar of an actual assertion. –
THUS – can be inserted into communication to INVOKE THE FORCE OF THE LOGICALLY UNDENIABLE (OPPOSITE IS a SELF-CONTRADICTION), thus yielding a false “Double Undeniable” ( “What? – 1. you don’t know logic? -- F = F” ? been to Oxford? ; plus 2. you don’t know George W. Bush is the president of the U.S.?”)

THIS SIN OCCURS WHEN “GOD” HAS BEEN REDUCED TO A TOKEN, STRIPPED OF TEXTUAL MEANING – THEN IS RE-INSERTED INTO PUBLIC POLITICIZED DISCOURSE TO “VOTE ON” BY THOSE WHO COMMAND THEIR PRIVATE TEXTUAL MAJORITY.

*****/

This move in sign use – to omit the particular, assert the universal as an identity, is the logical form of absolutizing the relative (identifying the Universal with one of its own particulars). If the super-ego ideal is betrayed by one who continues to use its token for the completing totality, a dynamic is engendered that leads ineluctably to the universal becoming identified with the particular – or, when the particular is a person processing the use of signs, to them identifying themselves with the universal. Ghengis Khan made it happen.

*****/

ASTROLOGY

How did it happen that America got its Bush after 200+ years as a nation, as the cycles of the Zodiac completed their 2000+ years since Pisces? – Can any metaphysical significance to be attached to these coincidences?

I offer the flood of historical ironies, conjunct the psychodynamics of the group-process (including sins of sign-use), trined the global planetary heavens ringing with history (in Eric Frances’ words) as argument. Of course, taken as a mere triad, they prove nothing. The argument assumes a missing 4th.