Belief in The Arbitrary vs Belief in God

Shadows. Just as the light behind them illuminates their presence, so the light of knowledge behind oneself illuminates one's unknowing. The shadows are because things are - they are the product of the Arbitrary, which All Things made; All Things being All Things, being all of existence - the comprehensible and incomprehensible (to man, for none is incomprehensible to God), the known and the unknown (again, to man) alike; God made - indirectly - all things known and comprehensible to man, and thus, likewise, this ability to reason the unknown and the incomprehensible., for man is in his finite test, but The Arbitrary made God, and All Things with Him - indeed, only in this sense can we, but with respect, establish "Him" as non-capitalized, as non-Supreme, although he is Supreme in All Things Good, which is Superior to All Things; a paradox - the particular as higher than the universal - that allows Him to be forever capitalized, even in this context, which I shall write forever henceforth.

Shadows are of two kinds: those the product of one's insufficiency in knowledge, i.e., the product of his light's angle being too narrow, and those the product of H/himself, because H/he, as All, is a product of The Arbitrary. Of the former, man, but not God, is subject, for God's omniscience is as sure as man's existence, and man's ignorance is as sure as his inability to explain it; of the latter, Both are subject, for Both are products of The Arbitrary, surely as All Things are.

But, and by paradox, the lone shadow is not a shadow for God, but an awaiting opportunity. For the shadows to man's sides are what give his own shadow darkness - like a terrible crowd they rile up its strangeness and make it the most fearsome of all to man. God has only light to His sides, and shadow - the unknown, is known, and merely awaits to be uncovered, to be experienced. As He progresses - as He moves His light toward the darkness, He knows, inexplicably, exactly what the ground will look like; but how much better a picture seen that one imagined! and each spot is more beautiful than the last. This is the heaven in which God dwells - not a place, but a state of mind - forever becoming yet forever glorious, as God is and knows Himself.

Infinity isn't - it is only an idea - surely as Things are. For Things are defined by their presence in the background of non-presence, and if there is non-presence there is no infinity - only The Arbitrary. That there is no infinity, but a (relatively) large sum of Things, allows Their Entirety to be known. But does not one thought give rise to another? After All is known, is there not a new thing made? This is the shadow of the self, dark only to the ignorant. Thus, though there is no infinity, and never can there be, there is an infinity to be had - forever out of reach.

That the ignorant knows anything in the face of ignorance is by the grace of God - the light of truth, known, but inexplicable to its mortal owner in the face of the absurd, is God's gift.

The lower figure, beneath "velum", depicts se - oneself - an notum, his knowledge. The spearheaded shape is Everything. Blocking his knowledge are the dark "umbra ignotum" - the shadows of ignorance, while in the middle, not purely dark, but of grays, is the shadow of the self, defined by his imperfection - the difference between what he desires in proper values and how he acts regardless.

Never mind the picture piece above velum. It was inspired at a different time when I held different views. I do not endorse the existence of damnation, nor Christ's example as the sole means to perfection.

A depiction of God's knowledge is the same figure, with "known" lines across the entirety of The Arbitrary, save a single line - the shadow of the self, which, though forever unexperienced, is known by virtue of the absence of shadows of ignorance, causing His further progression to, paradoxically, transcend The Arbitrary, by virtue of His being able to make what has never before been made.

The shadow of the self is the produce of agency: the unknown "what next will you do?" However, it becomes known as soon as you know all other variables - then you have but to do it.

Is it not action to pursue that thing which you know to choose? Not so - man's will allows the option of other things. That God does not choose them is what makes him God. It is understandable, furthermore, that God's "line" may include a variety of different actions, as one's only necessary property is that producing the greatest benefit in the face of the alternatives. Suppose I choose ice skating over an ice cream cone in the winter time - with a goal of warmth and physical activity, I have succeeded, but it is no less right to have a goal of being cold and satisfied.

To believe in The Arbitrary as a cruel mistress is to live in fear. Not only do they live wrongly in fear of the non-mighty, they most often fear what they cannot explain. The Church of Matter teaches that a giant body of forever imperceivable material dictates everything. Where is this material? What does it do? How could we study it to determine what the material will do next?

As soon as we see things for what they are - perceptions, specifically forms (a brick wall, a house, a book, etc.) - the question remains: what will these forms do next? In large part, we are ignorant of this - it is one of our shadows. But the question remains: why are we not fully ignorant?

Let's assume that the atheist is right - perceptions come from nothing and exist on the will of none. Consider: how would we know what they do? It could be that one tests a physical "law" - say, actions have an equal and opposite reaction - and find that his experiment yields his expected result. But as any Humean knows, that it was done once before, or twice or a hundred, this is no evidence that it will happen again. If, at the core of this belief, we admit that The Arbitrary is Arbitrary, perhaps physical laws change in cycles. No one has more evidence than one who supposes that at precisely midnight, the physical laws will change - planets will go backwards, the Earth will stop spinning, the skies will fall and the floor will lift up, etc. It is not falsifiable, but then, it isn't falsifiable to suggest that at precisely midnight the laws will stay the same! Either way, not one could conclude it.

This brings to mind the most important question of all: how do we know what we know? Let's assume I'm right instead - that all things are thoughts. That forms are produced by the labor of us and God, and that The Arbitrary was only, to begin with, the happenstance of the existence of egos - in this context, a conscious, mindful entity - God and us and whoever else - which occupy no space.

Consider what you feel with a look at the color yellow. Do you "objectively" observe it, with only the conclusion: "this is yellow?" Most do not. Yellow applies itself as symbolic of many traits, including reason, pleasure and optimism, or jealousy, envy and betrayal. Nothing about the color yellow means any of those things, and with other colors there are similar correspondences to virtues and character traits unrelated to the color itself. One could claim that these are the product of a complex interaction with other colored things, to which I ask: why are the animals, too, so affected? Poisonous creatures are well known to color themselves brightly, standing as a ward. And children also - purple stands out as the color of magic, and is the favorite color of 75% of children.

Another example, consider how the look of a person - their facial expression, position and hand movements - allows you to predict what they're thinking to some degree. Certain sorts of smiles mean different things, subtle brow movements indicate others - many have suggested that the bulk of communication is body language. Not only do each of us recognize the meaning of that language, but we each practice ourselves. Certain looks mean things independent of their "objective" description.

Not to be too empirical here, which breaks strongly from the purpose of this blog, these are aspects of what psychologist Carl Jung refers to as a "collective unconscious." As he states:

“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

As a roundabout way to my point, I provide these examples and this idea as a solution to the problem of induction if all things are forms or formers. If yellow means more than yellow, perhaps everything means more than that thing which is objectively presented. Why would this be? If God imposes his thoughts into our minds such that we see them, we're getting a form, but also, perhaps, his meaning behind the form, as the form was thought. We do not understand His thinking process in its entirety - else we could make sure forms ourselves, but perhaps we catch the residue in our unconscious mind. Just as it bears God's signature, such that we know it is that of God, as distinguished from that of others (this being a speculative theory), it also bears His content, and we gain insight therefrom insofar as we can understand it.

Object permanence can be explained this way - our unconscious mind picks up the thought of this object, which includes, aside from its form, that the form is to "last." All things we know regarding the future are unknown at their core at the reasoning level - it stands to reason that other things we know are at a level we cannot yet explain consciously.

One's belief in The Arbitrary, where things elucidate nothing more than their cold, "objective" description, is necessarily a belief in the unknown, at its core. It is a belief in the fear of unknowing. It is the paradox of statement unsupported within oneself.

I've so quoted before, but Kant notes:
"Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ... let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition."

It seems that as we explain what has befallen humanity in a language more suitable and with concepts more suitable to our intuition, and so our understanding, we indeed get farther assuming that cognition precedes objects, which conform to it. Do not take my word, go about and decide for yourself if everything you see has no attached meaning. Decide if your material explains, could ever explain, that and the problem of induction. Conclude if the explanation that things are forms rightly answers the questions, I invite you.

A Plea to Religious Persons

What I refer to as religious persons in this plea: those who believe in a God, which is or has a mind, who is rational, and who strives for our progression. Buddhists and other non-theistic religious people, and non-religious people, are all welcome to read what's written below, but this is not a plea to you.

Who denies the need for a creation of things? That is, where do things come from? The atheistic response has commonly been that the physical world sprung forth from nothing, and did so arbitrarily. The arbitrary existence is a thing that does not exist with the ability to create existence. Not satisfactory.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, suppose they believe that something has "always" existed - the universe, space, time… whatever it may be, it has existed since the beginning by arbitrary decree. My response: what is space? what is the universe? It is commonly held by many people - religious and irreligious alike - that space constitutes "material" independent of what we see. That is, while we perceive things, they are also things outside our perception. But this is an impossibility - a statement that A is not A, a statement that A - one's perception of a guitar, which is all they can ever know - is also B - a "material" guitar independent of your perception! Indeed, since each of us perceives only perceptions of a guitar, and each perception is different, the "material" guitar being perceivable by no one, the materialist claims that A, your perception of a guitar, is also B, a material guitar, is also C, his perception of a guitar, &c. As soon as one claims they are different things - the perception different from the material guitar - this separate B is entirely superfluous. There is not and could never be evidence of it.

Now suppose the alternative - all things are ideas: forms in your mind. Each of us perceives on his own wavelength, which is bombarded by his own ideas, and other ideas: the guitar not of one's creation, and an imagined guitar that is. This is a plausible explanation because it reduces things to minimal terms. The visualized idea of a guitar is in no way different from the perception of a guitar - each of its properties is no different from those same properties imagined, with the proper strength of mind. It stands to reason that we should accept the guitar for what it is: a compilation of forms.

Of the forms we see, few our own making. Everything we don't make must come from someone else - a being powerful enough to create vivid ideas and impose them in others' minds. He has created a world for us where progress is the name of the game, and our empowerment and growth is the consistent result.

My purpose in this was to suggest that each of us argue for God. The intellectual debate sways everyone's mind, and when the religious cop out, it looks bad. Atheists are ready in a moment to claim God has no evidence, then they turn around and believe in an imperceivable matter than makes up the entire universe, which is inexplicably different from the perceptions of it. It isn't even a coherent position. The simple explanation - the Occam's razor explanation - is that only what is perceived exists. As all we perceive are ideas, and ourselves, these are the only existent things. We know by the nature of an idea - a form - that it must be thought - formed - that there is a creator.

This is not complicated logic. Reduce things to their basic form. The self - the consciousness - does it exist in space? No. It is not an idea. Is time a substance? No. It is not an idea. Time is the vehicle for action making, as space - the realm of ideas - only changes when a new thought is produced. Space and time require the self - not the other way around. The self - the consciousness - is not bound by any confines - it is the a priori, the most prior thing. It exists - and unlike ideas, which can be unthought and so unmade, unlike ideas, which exist in space and are produced by action, the self is confined by nothing. It exists in an atemporal state - an eternal state.

These ideas are not new, and they're not mine. The philosophers of greatest contribution to the intellectual sphere - Kant, Descartes, Plato and Socrates - the logic of these men is not changed by new discoveries in science; science answers to philosophy - It is the historical parent, and always gets the last word. Hume's problem of induction renders an explanation of the universe through the scientific method impossible, for science is no establisher of axioms. If nothing is certain, nothing is probable - as a 99% chance of a 99% chance of a 99% chance… is infinitesimal. No matter how many times you perform a lab experiment, it will never reveal an answer independent of an axiom.

In his paper, The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (to which I do not ascribe), reality theorist (and America's smartest man) Christopher Langan puts it this way:

"The problem of induction is very real; it is manifest in Heisenberg uncertainty and the cosmic horizon problem, finite limitations of scientific tools of microscopic and macroscopic observation, and is why no general theory of reality can ever be reliably constructed by the standard empirical methods of science. Unfortunately, many scientists have either dismissed this problem or quietly given up on the search for a truly general theory, in neither case serving the long-term interests of science. In fact, the problem of induction merely implies that a global theory of reality can only be established by the rational methods of mathematics, specifically including those of logic."

God is not scientific, and never can be - as we discussed, he does not exist in space (and neither do we - our consciousnesses). But it is logical to establish that things are forms and that forms must be formed - a better explanation than, certainly, the imperceivable and superfluous "material." There is no strict deduction in these regards - only that which is simplest and best fits the evidence. As enlightenment philosopher Kant notes:

"Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ... let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition."

He who contends that God cannot be as he is not perceived by he specifically must then deny the existence of any other mind. By this reasoning, one should believe only in himself - that he is surrounded by mere ideas with, somehow, no origin, or else "matter." Either way, he concludes that the humans he sees are no different from trees with legs, for isn't it simpler to assume that they don't have minds than that they do?

Note the important difference between God and matter - God is not perceived by us, but is perceived by himself - he is perceivable as a self-conscious being, just like each of us. Matter is not, and cannot, be perceived by anyone - it is imperceivable. The Church of Matter is worse than hypocrites, totally oblivious to their own problems, then constantly on the attack that destroys them. Crowd idiocy, the lot of it.

God exists because he is perceived, but we know his existence by his products. Ideas need a thinker, forms need a former - plain and simple. I think other minds are known to us by the signature they bear in mindshare. People often speak of the beauty of God's creation - the beauty that makes them know it's God. Likewise, an idea by another will have a distinctly different flavor - a uniqueness that lets us sense the existence of a mind. As they communicate, they impose their thoughts in our minds in a subtle way.

Accepting that a consciousness produces, each on its own wavelength, God's power is deducing minds from these productions, finding one's wavelength and imposing his thoughts. The thoughts are such on each person that a world is formed. Communication of this world to each solidifies that God's mind is like ours - he tests based on progression and elucidates truths. Other minds do this also, but picking up on the wavelength of those productions reveals - on a level not conceived - the infinite - that these minds are different, as thought they bore a different "signature." One can produce thoughts on to another wavelength, as does God, but each produces from his own wavelength, God included.

I've constructed, and without too many words, an explanation for the universe that stands on simple tenets and is reasoned. Let the Materialists claim there are holes - theirs is the explanation with the greatest hole of all - imperceivable nonsense. That goes for the religious and irreligious materialists, who join together in one church where the audacious are almost always heathens.

These are the sorts of constructions that people need to explain in defense of religion. We need to be on the attack against the vicious doctrine of the Materialists - the doctrine that all must succumb to the imperceivable reality. They give no explanation for their ethics - they are ethical only insofar as their hypocritical stupor remains, and what when it leaves? It is a dangerous philosophy - a dangerous church - that stands on necessarily false tenets. The Aztecs were vicious in their sacrificing to false gods. Atheism demands the sacrifice to a tabula rasa of arbitrarily determined things and events, so they often claim - for if it isn't purposed, surely it's a blank slate! Follow your philosophy to its conclusion, atheist, or quit - your material grants you no oughts, you have no evidence of other minds. You either believe that you're stuck as the only man in a dreamworld - the faithless Occam's razor - or you have serious comprehension problems.

My plea to you, the religious man or woman, is to exploit these obvious contradictions. Make people think about what they say - hold them by a thread over the lone self in his dream world, then ask if they're ready to accept an imperfect explanation of the universe. Ask if they're ready to quit the nonsense of what they deem is "proof" and what isn't. Ask if they're willing to accept logic - the problem of induction, the chooser of philosophy as king and with science as its subject. Ask if they're ready to explain what they believe, rather than what they don't. Ask if they're ready to internalize the complicatedness of the problems surrounding the issue of what all this stuff *is*, if they're willing to accept that perhaps, perhaps, God is not to be isolated in a vacuum, but pondered into the big picture.

Poetry

SOCRATES: Gleaming metal, frozen expression

Never to settle, devoid of concession

His armor encompasses the knowing -

It's a knight we're showing -

To each his own, but to each the known.

Evil nixed, focus fixed

Gaze acquired, falchion fired

A weapon of the knowing -

It's a knight we're showing -

To each his own, but to each the known.

OVESON: Tell me a tale of the knight of the knowing.

SOCRATES: I will tell you:

DRAGON!, fierce a thing

Open wing and seven fires

Never an eye loosed but on the knight of the knowing

It's a gun show with a knife in a fire fight.

But the knight is fearless.

Raise ye your weapons high!

Sing the song of tales of sorrow!

Bring the horrors of the earth upon the knight of the knowing

And the fires of Hell!

The knight is fearless.

Scathe his armor with claws of steel

Breathe his breath ye fiery beast!

The DRAGON of lies who yearns for his passion!

The DRAGON who manifests himself in every man

Save the knight

For the knight is fearless.

OVESON: Tell me, who is this knight?

KIERKEGAARD: Is it he who stands for the weak?

Is it he who feeds the needy?

Is it he who rises to his peak

When the crowd about gets seedy?

It is he who drinks the bitter cup

When prompted by the good?

Is it he who links his pathway up

When the gods bless his food?

The former are the side effects

The latter is the knight's strength

For it's so that not any pride erects

When the crowd cheers him at length

The knight needn't any promise

That people love him true

For in his heart is an honest:

You've already paid your dues.

The former are the side effects

Of the knight of the knowing's strength

For it's so that not ay pride erects

When the crowd is there to thank.

OVESON: Continue.

SOCRATES: Frozen metal, gleaming expression

Never to concede, devoid of settling

The knowing encompasses his armor -

We're showing a knight -

To each the known and to each his own.

Burning fire meets metal cold

Winter's frost makes fire old

Sharpened steel meets DRAGON's neck

Knowing's foe meets fate of death

Never shall one fruitful oppose

That which never doesn't know.

OVESON: Who knows?

SOCRATES: The knight.

OVESON: Tell me, who is this knight?

KIERKEGAARD: Knights are secrets none can tell

Sure as man is gone to hell

In the event he loses his secrets

Such that he might find his regrets

Regrets of stories lost and told

Stories and truths that were once too old

Old and too dear made dull by the word

A swift blow to faith's herd

It must never be heard.

The crowd is mockery.

The Feeling of Consent and the Feeling of Loss

What does consent feel like? Is it a tangible expression that tells everyone exactly what they want? No. Far from it. Consent is something largely undefined.

When one says the agree to something, they don't explain exactly what it is they agree to. Most signatures are made with a large amount of fine print that nobody reads. The point is not to gain some level of understanding or transmit it to someone else - the point is to feel like you've consented to something.

A primal instinct is not sufficient to account for what it is that people love about consenting to something. That is, there is no animal in the kingdom that actually displays a similar trait, nor a trait that could be stretched to a similar cause, with any reasonable explicating. Something herds one to the ability to feel in control of their environment. Certainly that's a regular thing to hear, but in context it's something radically different from what one could easily explain. There are many things meant by "control of one's environment."

Consider seals for example. Floating on a brick of ice without very much movement over the wide sea of killer whales … such a thing has no control over what happens to it, or very little. The same goes for father black widows.

These are not the sorts of control we're discussing here. Control means choosing what you want and getting feedback. It's being able to say "yes" or "no" and have that impact what goes on around you. It doesn't matter how things change, as much as just that they change. If you scream and yell and nothing happens, if you muster your might and end up stuck where you are, there's a wretched feeling of being at the mercy of what comes next that you can't handle; you need influence.

The thoughts occurred to me today when my sister partook of the flu shot this afternoon. Crying and screaming at the thought of the needle she yelled: "wait! wait! give me one more minute!" … the doctors did not. They gave her the shot. Was it painful to her? No. When it was said and done, was there a reason to feel hurt? Yes. And she did. The problem was not that the flu shot was administered, but that it was administered when she specifically asked that it not be. It was the pain of a situation that was entirely under the control of something other than herself. Nobody likes that.

The feeling of loss plays into this nicely. When one begins a game and assumes the rules, they partake on an adventure for the purpose of getting a reward. The game has enormous effort involved, multiple decisions are made one after the other… and what if you lose? If you win, sure, you have an advantage you conceived - even if just the "moral victory"… but if you lose you've gained nothing. It was as though you'd never played. It is a feeling of non-consent when you put yourself in an environment and then nothing changes when you envelope yourself in it.

Ok, so what does this change? For you, I suppose it changes a number of things. One, each time a consent is offered, you can examine the feeling inside you. Does it click? Does it make sense? Do you wish it were something different? These are the questions that can highlight fear based on non-consent, that is, based entirely on non-consent, and then you can work to deal with it. Whatever coping mechanism suits you for that specific type of feeling that drives more feelings that you might suppose, which it hides underneath, you can utilize at this time. Some things are much harder to remove from within oneself than is worth the effort - and feeling out of control is probably not a feeling you should enjoy anyway - but you can certainly deal with it if you know what it is.

Being a good sport means accepting it. When you play a game and somebody loses and feels down in their own little world, the other players become disinclined for future games. Nobody wants to make someone else feel down - it's not the purpose. In a good game with good players, people are trying to stretch themselves and learn things by accomplishing foreseeable goals (see the post below). If you can't be a part of that without demanding the fabricated reward, then you aren't meant to be gaming with other people who take that reward seriously.

There's something beautiful about the way this instinct arises within us. Nothing screams freedom more than struggling to the death to change a scenario simply because you need to have influence over what's around you. Freedom to at least some degree is literally the alternative to death, because what's life without choices? If you're not going to make choices, you'd like it even less to know you aren't making choices, than to be stone cold unconscious, or be somewhere anywhere else in the afterlife. It displays man's determination to retain agency above every other value. It is the infinite reward that supersedes even happiness, as though happiness is never joy until fathered by the freedom to exercise it - to retain it in one's mind and acknowledge it as the product of your own choices.

God makes way for our agency in all things. It's crucial that man retain his agency - indeed, it is the most crucial thing, as evidenced by the fact that God chooses to let man be free to do whatever he wants. Without that freedom there is no progression, and without progression their is no new happiness. This is defined by stepping to a new vantage point one couldn't have seen from the last. If you progress, you're taking a step into a direction you've never known before - a point I'll continue to reiterate - and so you find a whole new realm of joy you could have never conceived. Freedom, not happiness, is the only path to that view.

On Gaming

I was discussing the motivation behind winning a game with a friend of mine who plays the incredibly intricate Warhammer 40,000 - a highly intricate game with pieces that move on the tabletop and attack one another in a raging war for victory. Unlike the typical response, he first mentioned the drive for an alpha male to succumb to the powers of a higher alpha - that is, people's desire to lose. If one's purpose is to strengthen oneself, he can only do this by challenging himself to be strengthened.

This strikes me as the purpose of winning games, more or less, though it is not a primal instinct.

The end of games are not easily defined, but much more so when compared to the end victory for life. In Warhammer 40,000, the victory comes with slaughtering the opponents in as quickly a time as possible - but that's just it: is it more of a win to beat them faster? More of a win to beat them with a challenging game? More of a win to subdue them instantaneously and make clear from the start that you were always better? No man can say. But what is defined is an objective: hold 3 points on the table from your opponent; hold the line against his soldiers and destroy as many units as possible; kill the enemy commander for an extra victory point, &c. There's a lot of sense to making this victory condition because it provides that challenge to some extent, provided one doesn't get too wrapped up in their superiority complex.

Life has no defined end. At least, not one that we can see. When progression goes on in the human body it takes place because of some event one would have never predicted; when growth goes on in the mind it takes place because of some incredible insight that one had never before realized. This is the theme of many recent blog posts - but I'll reiterate here due to its incredible significance. When one activates his drive to focus on a seeable end, as in a game, it gives him an easy opportunity to stretch himself and his thinking in the world of strategy (if it's a strategy game), or whatever other skill the game requires. It provides one with a drive they couldn't have otherwise had.

There's something unique about gaming in this respect. Unlike football, where heads clash together and the purpose of man is to show his strength - the man on the field being in control of himself only - strategy games - as it would be, perhaps, for the football coach - are incredibly intricate for the purpose of stretching one's mind. This is made possible by providing one with the satisfaction of a win, produced out of nothing, along with a provision of good sense in order to stand one's ground and accomplish it. The good sport is able to accept a loss and learn while still trying to obtain the victory. Competitive play provides that output of needing to win, and thereby stretch your mind, but many players play "for fun", which provides a different level of creativity - they do their best to imagine the realism of the situation, they create a plot and a story and develop their game into a mind game of a fantasy world they inhabit - something like a complex daydream. By so doing, they provide a new sort of advantage from gaming.

Checkmate

The most crucial piece in chess is the one without value. All others ascribe to a points system: queen 9, rook 5, bishop 3, knight 3, pawn 1.. these are useful for determining under what circumstances a trade with the opponent is likely to leave one on top. For the king, however, no such points can be determined. It is the piece that gives the other pieces their value.

The game is lost when the king is both in check, and has nowhere to move.

The concept of checkmate applies nicely to the understanding of when one is utterly wrong on something. If it so be that one's thought is necessarily stopped while he tries to move, each step of the way he is stopped - his argument must be wrong. The same applies to one's understanding of knowledge. If one is to make an argument and then determine that it leads to thoughtlessness, this is the killer of truth.

Suppose, for example, one denies their own existence, as Descartes once attempted to do. He doubts himself, then determines that he had made a doubt in order to do so. His argument is necessarily contradictory. If he wishes to maintain that he does not exist, he must conclude the he cannot think - thoughtlessness. Because he does think, it is wrong that he does not exist. He thinks, therefore he is.

Other arguments include one's desire to digress with regard to the existence of soul. If one concludes that the soul does not exist, he is in contradiction with the idea that his agency could pull through a wonder that caused his existence to have meaning. If the existence has no meaning, there would be no thoughts to select of infinite possibility, and one of those thoughts would not be happiness. Thus, he is concluded to thoughtlessness, insofar as no thought could ever be of value, when his statement assumes that his thought contains it so.

Another regards one's deduction of the soul. Suppose one determines the soul does exist necessarily, by deduction. One could argue that it does not because there is no evidence for it - but as soon as he does so, he concludes that evidence has weight. This is not true unless the soul exists as a means for evaluating that weight. That no soul could exist in a non-evaluative state, this concludes that either the soul or another evaluator exists, and the soul is the only evaluator. Put differently, if the soul does not exist, there is no valuation of what does or could, including thoughts, thus leading to thoughtlessness of a different form.

Forms of thoughtlessness include inability to think, but also, as the above examples demonstrate, concluding no value to thinking: a performative contradiction as one assumes the value of their own statement. No value to thinking is essentially an oxymoron - valueless thought cannot exist because each thought paves the way to some end, which must have value in order to be so. There is no valueless end, and so no valueless thought - it is the nature of thought to have and end, and thus value.

Some can conclude that the soul does not exist because it is infinite, and there is no infinite thing, but in this they are mistaken. An absolute whose artwork is the soul - the self - is not an infinite thing, but an absolute. It is something whose conception is approached as an asymptote, but it in not an infinite thing, nor could it be. This is what differentiates the self from other objective truths: it maintains itself to be never infinite on pain of thoughtlessness. But thoughtlessness is also concluded via these means to any absolute that is stated as infinite; for an absolute infinity is never approachable in the absence of infinity as determined by the finitude of the soul which approaches it.

There are further considerations with regard to what makes the soul valuable. If the soul were not, it would not be - value is ascribed to things according to the soul, the artwork in physical space of the non-physical self, which is the determiner of all value. If none were to conclude that the soul is of equal worth to value itself, in the physical realm, then they would all be wrong by virtue of the soul's infallibility. That is, they could not make up for the fact that their own souls value their statements. And how is it that there can be no other evaluator? I will tell you: because the soul is defined as such.

The soul, though the artwork of the self, is not the self, but defined by its evaluation of physical value in conjunction with existing in the physical world. That is to say, the soul cannot be removed in the presence of necessary value, for such value implies its existence. That the soul maintains itself as artwork simply implies that the non-physical self is the A Priori evaluator, which is true, though it does not maintain itself in physical space, which is the work of the soul. That is, the soul is defined by the self's ability to judge physical value in the physical realm; else the soul could not find the workings of God to be appreciable, and so would damn itself to oblivion or worse in the struggle to find the truth. There is no alternative; it's checkmate.

I cannot stress enough the meaning of the soul's definition. It is an artwork, but must not be labeled as such with regard to its purpose. Its purpose is to serve as the self in a physical sense; and it does this under the ownership - the A Priori possession - of the non-physical self which rules over it.

Consider one who posed that free will was not, because the soul is not. First, how does the soul establish free will? This is simple: it provides unbound ends by virtue of existing under the artwork of the non-physical absolute - the self, which allows it to strive for other absolute ends. Thus the soul need exist for free will, but one whose contention strikes against this freeness is instantly degraded; for how else could one pose a question with regard to an indefinite end? That he seeks to rebuke a concept outside the realm of the physical maintains as necessary his ability to strive for perfect ends, which he could not do without a soul, and which defines his being unbound; being free. There is no alternative-- the refutation is in check and has nowhere else to move.

Other arguments that suffer this fate include the notorious God is dead. How could he be if from one's thought one can deduce his existence? That is, how can it be with the knowledge of absolutes, including God, whose meaning is located in their very existence as such? That is to say, if God exists as an absolute, and he does, then who can deny Him? For do they not deny that thing which they cannot conceive, and as such vow their inability to deny it, and, further, note their own ability to pursue unthinkable ends, perfect ends, in a physical sphere provided to them, by that which we label God? Yes to all questions; their refutation is null - the proof is in the pudding.

Consider further one's denial of the will's freeness. Is it not so that one's actions are defined in value by that which they pursue? If all is determined, what point is there to discussion? Indeed, thoughts would have no value. If all was determined, there should be no questioning, for it all would be for not. Which is not to say it necessarily concludes that one could not think, but that one would not think, and as they do, for the value provided, this determinism, too, leads to the thoughtlessness of the former examples.

The Eyes are the Gateway to the Soul

The soul, being a physical thing, is the mode by which people can differentiate a person from a machine; a body-host from a body. Body-hosts are tools under the use of a soul of a mind - the soul being the self's artwork. Other bodies include machines, tables, chairs, &c. - anything perceivable, not with a host. This is the major distinguishing factor.

The artwork of the self is immediately recognizable - it is the self as it appears. It is not the self itself - this thing is an absolute, never fully attainable or obtainable - a perfect form. It is merely an embodiment of the self as it appears in space. It is unchanging through time, except as the body-host changes in time to meet different countenances. The countenance is the means by which one can most distinctly determine another's character. Other qualities are felt by the soul, but not those which change it, The body may lose skin to a burn, and the soul will feel the burn, but will not lose a part of itself.

Souls and minds correspond in an important way: each is contingent on the existence of the other. Without the mind, the soul would serve no purpose - it could not exist as a thing cogently interpretable, and so would be an artwork of nothing. Without the soul, the mind could not apply itself to an environment: this is the soul's purpose - in conjunction with its body-host - to apply affects to a physical environment under direction of the free will; free will being a function of a minded soul.

Perception of the physical world is made possible by the soul-body conjunction, each of which is necessary to perceive it. This is because while perception is a non-physical quality, the things perceived must resonate at the same frequency as the perceiver in order to make contact. This perception, then, as an adjective - perceiving - is a perfect form; to transform this to something usable, it must be made an artwork under the brush of a physical tool: God's hands. As they mold for him a tabernacle of clay, he is made into a thing that can obtain God's forms.

Mind in the physical is not a thing obtainable or attainable. It is a thing perfect in form. But mind in the non-physical is a more perfect form still - for not only does it depict a non-material form, but a form which cannot be adjective-ized by a lack of the will's being able to choose it. At least for physical minds, the will can choose those actions it makes; even when those actions are contrary to the bulk of what that actor would consider "sensible" under the direction of that non-physical mind that remains in his possession; possessed by the self non-physical, as with all things possessed. For that mind is wiser still than the mind bound by physical temptation - it is where his heart is, and where the forefront of the tempted mind wishes to be, if the character is good.

Possession takes on a new meaning in the face of the non-physical self. It describes the absolute which people choose to own and which accept to the owner that thing needed in order to exist as such. That is, without this self, no thing could be possessed because no thing would have a higher thing to answer to. A priori applies as much to possession as to thought, and in this case as in that, A priori is the self. None can be owned by a thing more prior, else it be non-existent - for self is the most perfect form. None can be owned by a thing less so, because it answers to the owner of the thing prior to it. That non-physical self is the ruler of the kingdom of its inhabitants: soul, body and mind.

Who can say that he wishes to be something other than what he is? He is the perfect thing. What he does with that perfection is his choice entirely, but the hand he is dealt was perfect from the start. Allow me to explain: there are things one can do to better himself. There are things one can do that do not better himself. But man is only damned when he is his own condemner. His hand is perfect - he has merely to realize it as such. Only by deluding himself is he anything less than saved eternally - ready for Judgement day with eyes wide open, soul pouring to the truth.

The Self and Its Artwork

The soul is the artwork of the self.

The soul is the artwork of God.

The artwork of self is the artwork of God.

The soul is the artwork of God and self.

A soul is made, forged in the fires of creativity and the displacement of weight of knowledge stone, whose quarry runs thick in the waters of matrimony. That is, God's children - these are his souls. We are God's children, He of a Heavenly matrimony.

There's something beautiful about being in the image of God - having our artwork correspond with His - all is plain in the light of Hisself. Whenever there is disarray one need only remember that He is the parent.

How is it that one attains the light of Christ? It is by acknowledging this existence. It is by recognizing oneself as a brain child of a heavenly parenthood. It is by accepting one's responsibility to do as Christ did in regards to that plain and simple truth: that God lives, and loves us, and has a plan for us; and that that plan is the one of happiness.

These are the truths stored most deeply within - they are uncovered in times of hardship but should always remain present, to the wise they are, even in times of plenty. Comforts cannot distract the truly wise from acknowledging their responsibility at all times and in all places. This is what makes one a servant of God, a disciple of Christ-- one who lives by his example.

Nothing is more important than this realization. All must bow to the atoning power of Christ in providing that example we are to follow each time we stray from our destined course, which God has in store for us as His children, and which we need to be to become as our Heavenly parents. They watch over us and protect us, and we must admonish that which is contrary to their purposes; to our own purposes.

Including a Socratic Dialogue in the comments

From hereon, I've decided I should include a discussion in the comments between Anonymous and my own user account in order to better explain certain concepts. The first example of this can be found in "Why the Will is Free." Hopefully this will provide a more readable experience.

Why the Will is Free

Suppose one asked you to make a judgment about another's internal language. What do I mean by this? Consider that each of us first translates anything we hear to something we recognize and understand. By this I mean that we're all connected in a familiar way - the mind processes things it reads and decodes them into the sights we see, the things we hear and taste and touch: perceptions.

Decoding is a complicated process that's poorly understood, but the gist is that a message is sent through some means by God to the individual person, who reads out the message and then interprets it to mean something. This is done by all humans - and by God - as they deduce existence they can perceive from the perfect, fully-real imperceivable forms. Forms like "circle" - a perfect circle - forms like "square" - a perfect square - and so on.. things we all know in concept but could never produce ourselves. This is what makes forms so important: they are the things we all strive towards, even as we can never exactly reach them.

Can God make a perfect circle? No. But he can get a lot closer than we do. This is why we ride on his coattails - to get that head start on the highway to forms. The forms highway is rough and rigid and single-directioned, so without another to pave the way it's quite easy to get lost. Get lost, for example, in the depths of a wall which isn't a form and isn't anything - but you think it might be; akin to banging your head on bricks. Getting lost, for example, in trying to *obtain* the form instead of nearing to it as much as possible - the latter of which is productive while the former drives you mad. One who searches for the thing he can never find is mad, but those who approach it are blessed.

There's something peculiar about language in particular that makes it so important to the general scheme of things - it's an absolute, like a form. That is, the language itself, though used, is never entirely itself understood. That is, each of us acknowledges that we use a language, but how it comes about is a permanent mystery. When one attempts to decode the language of another - suppose, say when he writes a contract: an attempt to determine what it is he and another have in common speech such that a mutual agreement might be carried out; the man admits the freeness of his will by interpreting a thing he cannot interpret - more correctly, by attempting to approach a thing - by acting to obtain a thing - that is unattainable. No machine can do this. No person confined to his environment can do this, because it is an end, a goal of action, distinctly outside the environment.

If things outside the environment can be attained - or approached - this makes the way for one to either approach it or obtain it - the former of which is at least possible and the later of which is not. There are crucial factors to consider in this analysis. Consider that when one "obtains" the form: tree, he never sees a tree to obtain it, because multiple things are "trees" though they all look different. The form "tree" is not only unattainable, but it is not conceptualized in a distinct manner. When one thinks of "tree" they mark in their head the sort of things a tree need be - one with branches, leaves, a trunk.. but nothing so specific like a perfect "circle." It isn't hard to determine from this that some forms are not perfect and some forms are. It could be that tree is the making of God, that he has imbued it in its entirety into many different things, and that our understanding of it is fully incorporated by decoding his messages. But trees are not a perfect form - one's depiction of a tree simply characterizes the many traits, at least some of them, that all trees they know of happen to share. The form "tree" is messaged by God such that we may respond in kind with out desired actions and have He make sense of them. In other words, so that we do not babble nonsense in the face of trees.

There is great importance to the matter that trees are not perfect forms. Some forms are determined by creation and some are determined by non-creation-- absolutes. An absolute is a thing in itself, that is never conceptual, never perceivable and fully real - as real to one person as it is to another. Languages are absolutes, as are people (minds), God, and forms (of no creation). Because "circle" is an absolute form, it derives its strength from being fully real. It is useful as a tool in mathematics and provides a basis by which many strive to nearly replicate. The same is true for other geometrical figures. But "tree" refers to many things, any one of which man can obtain fully and duplicate to his satisfaction. Some forms, then, are the relative truths of a language which establishes those forms as being dependent on the speaker and listener. No two people mean the same thing when they speak of "tree" - but each fully understands his own meaning, while both people mean precisely the same thing when they speak of "circle", but neither understands it precisely.

Other forms of no creation include adjectives of some sorts. Many things, like the color "blue" are not perfect forms, because they are each established under a range of many colors, but each of those colors is fully explicable and creditable. The same goes for "slow", "sleepy", "strange"… any form to which many things apply is a form of creation, while any form that many things attempt to apply to is a perfect form-- an absolute of no creation. Perfect form adjectives include rolling, spinning, weaving, ducking… these are human activities, but each can be applied to mechanical devices. How, then, are these perfect forms? I will tell you: they mark in their significance a piece by which non can attain: the drama of the act. When one "spins", he does so with an explicit purpose, and the same for "roll" or "weave" or "duck" -- there is a point at which his activity ends are unattainable, and so likewise with these forms-- the means.

If a machine were to do it, it's kidding itself.

Ends or these means are neither attainable nor deducible - they are dramatized in a play or movie but never exactly displayed in real life. Who "spins" without a purpose? None. So who is spinning except that by which some purpose was already demonstrated? These adjectives denote the existence of something prior to their occurrence, and because that prior thing is never explicable in terms of the adjective itself, the adjective remains perfect. One can elucidate a meaning from this - but it isn't quite up to par. Something along the lines of: none is suited to write the script; but more accurately, since even God isn't watching, "none is most suited to tell the mistakes." People slip up in the theater at a level which none can predict to occur - likewise, in reverse, people make actions in real life to which none can credit a slip-up; and if it were, none would know the difference. The act plays into the language of at least one absolute, and so it is an absolute itself; the adjective makes no statement, despite having one, and so cannot be replicated.

Thus, "spinning" is an different type of perfect form from "circle" or "square." It is one that all people place onto many different scenarios, but on which each scenario attains a perfect form - necessarily each one different from the next and last. But this is because of not the fallibility of the form's perfection, but the inadequacy of language. God does not create the form "spinning" - it is one that we attribute ourselves. It is not an action we can displace to God in and of itself, because we must have a reason - even if this reason is to spin for spinning's sake. That this reason - the act's end - cannot be elucidated by oneself or others is what denotes the perfection. That each is attuned to an absolute is what inspires the absolute in itself. No two "spinning"s are exactly alike.

Allow me to explain in different terms: suppose one were to spin in order to avoid one from capturing a flag around his waist. This spin would be purposed in a certain fashion - but that fashion becomes a part of the act, as it is its end. Thus the adjective "spinning" embodies the action's end. When each becomes attuned to that desire, what they find is an inexplicability, for the action requires a language that is an absolute itself. Thus, the adjective form is an absolute; by embodying something that cannot be described, but is a part of it.

Leaves play a role as a created form - but what of a leafed man? Still a creative form. We see that adjectives are absolutes only insofar as they are connected to a purposed action, which demonstrates the will's freeness in its being an absolute.

What can be deduced from all this? For starters, anything deduced is not itself a form. Forms are things that are, each being a real existence, but the most real being attributed to absolute forms including souls, minds, God, forms of perfection and no creation, &c. There are also created forms, products of an absolute language, which can be fully obtained (though not fully attained) as they must have at once been so. Forms which attribute an end by purposed action into their existence are necessarily absolutes, even as language is insufficient to differentiate them from other absolutes; though they are differentiated, simply not in the language used (but in the language unused.). These remarks qualify one's understanding of a God as he is related to man - the message sender whose needs be decoded by man, such that we ride faster on the highway of forms; to obtain our purpose of drawing near to absolutes. This summarizes life's purpose: to follow God as the means to this end.

Something to do with Liberty

Liberty is that odd combination of desire and strength. It meets halfway between the two. None is free to fly in the sky as a bird, but none are so slaved to work without the chance to quit the job. Each has the strength to serve in his own capacity, each has the desire not to have rules enforced upon him, and each is limited in both regards. What defines this thing that people want? That they'll die for?

One explanation is that true liberty is entirely independent of strength" - bit focused solely on what it is one can do with their strength - but this is a relatively unsound definition. After all, people can do as they please with limitations by way of desire of others - they could rob a bank or run away from jail, that none can do these things without a man's involvement to stop them is no different from their feet and heavy bones that prevent them to lift into their air with flight. Surely one could not contend that one is better or more distinct than the other?

One could claim that people desire *more* liberty such that they fight to be *freer* men, although not totally free in any respect. This may be true - but then, why fight a war? Why the revolutions, the chaos, the constant guerrilla bombardment in ways that entirely restrict their ability to do as they please without another man with a gun getting involved - the most heinous enemy of this defined strength - if they truly want the thing they claim? Surely there is another definition, if a man is will to die for "freedom."

I believe it is found in the word of God. That there is no alternative explanation. Consider that men always follow the dictates of their conscience except when prompted to do otherwise. If one hears a voice and believes it to be God - believes that prompting is of the highest order - then surely they are willing to abide by it at any risk. The thieves and comforters which take their ability to follow that prompting do them the harm of a life in non-continuum with that which they know best. If God wills, it is not that thing from which one can easily stray - not without a fight.

Liberty is being able to do what you want without the severe temptation to do otherwise. If man provides you with the comforts that lean you to the choice of not following the will of God, one is felt to be in a place where he is less free. It is natural that man follow his natural promptings - that he accept his character whom peace directs his being to engage, but it is not natural to find oneself in the care of others, entirely dependent on them and bending to their will. This is where the conflict of liberty arises from, and from this point it can only bring a tearing war.

WIthout the desire to let oneself become the martyr, he is not a follower of God. All of God's followers are in that example of Christ - that man who so perfectly stood for his principles. This is God's teacher, this is who they follow - the Libertarians. That is to say, Libertarian in a classic sense - a not necessarily political sense - the Libertarians who desire to leave their choices in peace and respect others to do likewise. The true libertarian is dirty and rugged, chooses his own course - or else he is wise and benevolent, stays on the mountain and chooses his own course - or perhaps he is mild-mannered, dwells in the crowd, but chooses his own course. Libertarians are those who choose their own course and reject the teachings of others as necessarily inferior to that prompting they know, which is of God.

Who can deny that God is the savior of all men? Who can deny that following his path is the way to true happiness? Who can deny that he is the one to strive for, whose promptings override all else, who suspends the ethics of man in favor of the word of right? These are the unanswerable questions of life, for as soon as one answers "I reject", he has damned himself. None can damn themselves, so non can reject. It is plain as day. Damnation is that tool which reveals to oneself the impossible life. One can only approach it if he desires to find it and becomes madly in search of it, where it is never to be found.

Thing said are not things meant. Nor are things desired to mean the things they are.

What do I mean by this? The things desired to mean are the asymptotes to damnation, to perfection - not perfection in a goodness sense, but in a real sense, where one conceives the perfectly real form - damnation being the conception of a form which does not exist nor could it - These things inspire the meaning to stray from its actuality forever. One can wish to mean one thing, and never actually mean it - a process of self-delusion that envelopes one in unending paradox, and so the madness that he could never reach, by wishing to reach it - Then, even then, his madness is not the result of that thing he desired, nor is it without end should he choose, but it is madness all the same, and a terrifying madness at that.

The Libertarian hero wishes for the escape of any such possibility that his standards be loosed. He holds to the principal of his promptings - the acknowledgment of his "gut feeling" that he acts upon, the statements of this reason according to God's will, even if he does not acknowledge it as such, though he does - and this is what rebels him to the actions of those who wish to change him; him being his desires, and the desires he desires. For one who desires nothing but his own security in the ethics he plays make-believe to deduce is not a hero, but a coward, in his own right, and is a man so limited to the structure of his environment that he is never the hero to change it - by which the Libertarian hero, principled to remain such, cannot survive.

Are all heros Libertarian? No, only the bravest. Many are heroes in the eyes of the crowd, when their actions are understood and their intents fully recognized. The Libertarian hero is not understood, and this is what makes him all the more heroic. He walks a dim path lighted only by the Lord God, the only one to acknowledge his greatness, and he accepts what comes as a scenario which the Lord provides - every minute every moment as part of the lesson he must learn. He is never relaxed unless he is acute, his dreams never tire, nor does his sleep vanquish to black - he is never in darkness despite the darkest room, and he is never controlled as he controls the universe himself.

What a joy it is to be such a hero! What a joy it is merely to watch him. Every story every movie is from the perspective of such a hero - unless it is rubbish - and the readers' looking through the eyes of this man makes them become part of a story they could never desire more for - a story of the hero they never dare become, until once they do, and a hero whose intentions are so good and so misunderstood in one accord. The hero who cannot stand the dictates of his own conscience with regard to the joys of others, but who hates them in comparison to the God he loves, despite loving them as much as even himself. This hero is not the hero of reward on Earth - not the king of earth or the prince of heaven, but the king of heaven and the prince of Earth's goodness, at the temporal price of never holding earthly kingship, for none in the crowd, none of the crowd, can ever acknowledge his goodness even as those close to him do. He becomes the leader of a group so fine-tuned to his purpose that he becomes truly a prince of Earth, ready to inherit heaven's kingdom, but he strives for Earth's kingship not one mite, for he could never bear the comforts, the temptations, to stray on that mortal plane from that which cannot be conceived and bears ever greater weight: that which he progresses to on the faith that God provides. He is the perfect man, the humble man, the weak man that becomes stronger than all the strength of earth even as he acknowledges his weaknesses.

Perceptions in the Face of Non-Perceptions

What is a non-perception? God is not that than which no greater can be conceived. He is greater still.

People talk a lot about absolutes in relation to absolute truth; but what's a lot truer is absolutes in relation to relative truth. Consider an absolute: God. Is he definable? No. Not even yourself is definable, nor myself, nor any self. A self by nature is a being without conception, as it is the conceiver.

Absolutes are truths because they are known absolutely. They must be known to know - that defines them as necessities. One cannot doubt the existence of these things, and because he thinks and cannot doubt them, they are. These include: self, God, other people. (Allow me to explain..)

The self is contorted by most computer scientists as being akin to a machine. There's an important reason why this is necessarily false - the machine has errors in situations outside its parameter control. One who programs a mechanical operative quickly understands its limited application: if the input is not listed in the program, the machine fails to operate. This is not so with man - there is seemingly, indeed not, not any limitation to his coordinative power, to his ability to function.

This is why man is an absolute, and also in conceptual. That is, the self of man. For the self must exist, yet can exist in scenarios it cannot conceive, making it inconceivable on whole.

This is the same with God, who must exist such that there can be unknowns and knowns in the face of one another. More simply stated, that we know there to exist things we have not known is to state that there exists another to perceive them - this is others and God. God, most importantly, as he is the creator of these perceptions which he lends us the gift to interpret, but others also as they are absolutes by our own convictions. If God provides us with truths we do not understand, one includes the empathy one has to other people, and so the relative certainty of their existence.

Now I say "relative certainty" - what do I mean by this? Well, certainty exists in two forms:
1. Certainty by way of undoubtable
2. Certainty by way of God

God's certainty is information to man that he expects us to recognize and which we understand as true. Something like - "I will remain in my chair over the course of the next five seconds" is a doubtable thing. But you know it because God has granted you the form of that chair and the form of yourself.

What is a form?

Forms are the things God creates. Everything one sees and feels and hears and touches - these are the forms of God interpreted into your own internal language. Your language recognizes these things as being of various sorts - but each is the function of something you did not create, for you are not yet a creator of forms, except those as related to God's.

Forms are complicated to explain because they are relative truths. One knows a form and knows its antithesis, but only as they relate to him. One can say: "there is the color red on the wall" - but this means nothing to the man who thinks it blue. Any statement made by another is only true insofar as one has already interpreted it to be so. Take another example: West Point is a college school. Any who disagree do so by way of their own language, or by their different outlook on the world. Perhaps one man sees West Point as a prison, another as a military camp, another as a building with no additional properties. In any case, anything one tells another is transferred from one language into another, by necessity, as our internal languages all differ from one another, and so in an inexplicable way they communicate without absolute truth - but that they do so is true absolutely.

Consider another example: your mother wear's high heels. Let's say I took this example as something you said to me. Well my mother wears many types of shoes. In any case that you saw a shoe she wore and I did not, it is impossible for me to verify that she wears this shoe. So instead I say: "well alright, she wears high heels", and then think of a different sort of shoe - because whenever I think of something it is processed in my language. Perhaps the shoe that comes to my mind is a pink stiletto - but he had referred to a heeled boot. Now we are speaking of different things, despite our having come to an understanding. This is because the form "high heels" transfers over many different types of shoe. It is a form, but a property of many different forms. It is contained within the forms of many other shoes that share particular similarities, but the form itself is of God - interpreted by each man differently, but in a way similar enough to permit communication. The communication finds some common ground from its source, but does not complete this ground as they can only near the perfection of that form - the true existence there - instead, they make partial estimations with their imperfect decoding of God's forms. That communication is possible, even in its fallibleness, is evidence that the forms come from one source, rather than in the minds of each of many sources. They are forms decoded by many sources, but originating from one point, such that communication may be permissible to some limitation.

Never before conceived is the form itself, for even God works from forms. Nothing is ex nihilo, and likewise all must come from absolutes. If it is a form from the mind of God - being from a mind it must be relative. God too works from a decoding of absolute forms. These are manifested imperfectly - a perfect circle, the form, is not anywhere seen in nature nor is it creditable to God or man - but their essence remains despite the imperfections. This is how things come to be - an interpretation of absolutes. When man creates art or buildings or skyscrapers or ceilings - each works from the raw material of forms, though translated first by God, as man is yet too limited to create forms of the nearness of God's. (nearness to the absolute form; vivid, "real") These absolutes can never be attained, but they can be neared like an asymptote, and God's power allows him to better do so than man.

Consider that all men must have derived from the same source. How do we know this? Well, we all share in common the form "man." This form is an absolute. Despite the relative truth of its interoperation, there remains the similarity of the form in the minds of all people, and communicably so. The "self" means different things to different people, but it shares the notable similarities that are defined by the absolute it branches from. Each can never know himself fully - but he can approach thereto as an asymptote.

Consider that man must be derived from the same source by nature of his communication. Any thing that hears or speaks the "same language" means multiple languages but with something in common. This common source is unidentifiable, but there it remains - the form. Man must have the similarity of being able to interpret this form, which highlights his similarity to other men. Further, by being able to deduce this form, he must read it the same as do other men. He comes from the same source in that he perceives the same form - he comes from an absolute universe of absolutes, as there he is able to draw near and study his external natures.

These are the most important elements of non-perceptions in the face of perceptions: their recognition despite their non-perceivability.They are the perceivers, the conceivers - and who can define the act of perception or conception? But there they remain, as evidenced certainly and deductively by their indomitability in the face of conceiving and perceiving.

What holds in store the secret to man's ambitions? Does he not strive to be like God? And what does this mean? It means, simply, that he strives for nearness to the forms - the absolutes - such that his existence and language may become more absolutely real. This is purpose - progression - though the end is undefined as it is defined by redefinition.

Now how does man know which steps to take to draw near to the forms? The answer is simple: he has logically deduced them and so realizes the end point, despite his inability to conceive it. Further, with a being of more power: God, to lead us in the correct manner, it becomes a fully manageable task that we are destined to pursue. This is why man is incapable of choosing a life of stagnation - of enjoying the comforts of the present and nothing more, while still feeling purposed in himself. The Dionysian man, though as saved by God as the Apollonian, is forever less happy, because he focuses on the happiness of a defined end.

Now what does this mean for the rest of us: what is its application? Well the answer is clear-cut: it shows the way in which man can progress despite his inexplicability to do so. It is the deducible proof that despite the thinking man's despair who wishes to know all things - all things which can never be known - there is a happiness, eternal progression, that can always be strived for in the face of unhappiness or toil. It shows the Dionysian man the escape from his constant drowning in sorrows of living in his make-believe existence of supposed comfort. It adds to the light of Christ within us that leads us to the path of God, which he has strengthened our lives for the purpose of accomplishing. It adds the immense opportunism and optimism to any life willing to seek the comforts of God.

There is immense joy to be had in following a progressive pattern - more joy than is conceivable at any point.

Now, is God infinite? An infinite approach to the asymptote, yes, perhaps - but infinite he is not by virtue of the limited forms. Indeed, there is no infinite being nor could there be, but God is great and mighty to save.

Consider that all things work in-tune with this God in a beautiful way. Our whole world existence is defined by a confusing array of truths we cannot understand and barely have recognition of, but which are fascinatingly understood in a way that cannot be denied. God provides a plan too complex to reason, but too obviously correct to ever be strayed from - for the faithful in heart. Only those who desire stagnation deny his benefits. Indeed, every man who wishes something more is found in God, for his heart is already there as a being who from within his bosom acknowledges that his eternal progress means something more to him than the temporal limitations at his heels.

This is the test of time: does man follow God or himself? Each leads to a happy end, provided hisself doesn't lose track of the goodness and stray to the desiring of a course of evil through the justifying of invalid actions, but God is the highway to a faster salvation - which is not to say a salvation in a promise for saving - any man can choose this - but it is the highway in time for man to accomplish his needed deeds and satisfy the temporal cravings to relax in a series of truths nearly approached and in the presence of God. This is more powerful than anything on Earth, and simultaneously it is the least understood - the shadowed door at the end of the hallway whose nature is never defined but that beams with goodness and rightness from underneath its cracks.

Shadows of Unknowing

There is a lot of talk about the way people know things. There's a branch of philosophy known as epistemology entirely devoted to this study. The question is simple: if there are things we don't know, how are there things we do? That is to say, if any one thing that we know has the possibility to be contradicted by an entirely unknown thing - and this is always possible, given there are unknown things - how is it that anything can be known for certain? And if nothing is known for certain, then could not anything be known probabilistically? I.e., there is no means by which we can have knowledge of any sort if nothing is certain.

But there is a work-around, and that involves a look at people's knowledge in time. Sometimes (the present time(s)) people know things and sometimes they don't - but how does time play into it? Is there a purpose for there being a time that we can all relate to - the present moment - yet be something in which there is an unknown - but still all things known? That is, if all things we see and sense are known within the moment, then perhaps we do know things - just nothing outside that moment, not even one step to the future - This is the conclusion of the works of David Hume.

But there is not a satisfactory explanation of life in this answer. Not only do we seem to know - indeed, know - things about the next moment, and considerably into the future, but we know many things we do not observe, nor ever could have the capability to observe; Things like "I know that human body is connected to a non-physical mind." - This is an impossible-to-observe statement, as non-physical minds, by their nature, cannot be observed. We shouldn't know that anyone besides oneself exists, i.e., we should believe that human bodies are just like machines, and we shouldn't know that anything is more than a freeze-frame. Yet we know more than this - and no one could tell another differently, except by performative contradiction in believing he or she speaks to someone.

Yet there is a fuller answer to this question, and that lies in theology. God is a thing that man knows and cannot observe; perhaps he is the highway to our other knowledges that we cannot explain. It would make sense that if the common man observes the truth: "other minds exist" - but cannot put his finger on an adequate definition - that a God would grant him that knowledge in the absence of a fuller explanation; perhaps because he is insufficient, perhaps because some concepts or properties of that knowledge are entirely outside his understanding. Whatever the case may be, God is a sound solution.

Then what is God, and what could He be? I propose a man - like the rest of us - I know this. God is a human being with the capability to endow knowledge in our minds because he understands them completely. And just as we understand God through our knowledge of Christ's example - as far as how we are supposed to live here on Earth - God does even better understand us, his creations, so as to endow them with sufficient knowledge to carry out His purposes.

The curious feature of such knowledges as "I know other minds", is how easily they should be rejected by a process of logical deduction, and how infrequently they are actually rejected. This is even because there is no way to live without excepting them. They are rooted as firmly in one's mind as anything. There is no knowledge that is logically deduced - but the knowledge of other mind's is indeed a far-out axiom. All axioms remain in this light, but how curious that some are so independent of our understanding. This provides sound evidence for an omniscience that explains things far outside our own control.

There are many ways to rearrange this topic. One is to consider what we don't know about ourselves as a shadow, and to consider the unknowing in other things as other shadows. If two shadows overlap, a darkness that beats everything becomes fully in display. If one there lies, it is a hazy mist that one sees through unclearly, indistinctly, but with and by a knowledge he can't explain that remains, plain as day, undeniable. This is illustrated by the following diagram:

"Notum" - knowledge - remains enshrouded by unknowing from all sides. It exists, but in a quirky and inexplicable fashion. "umbra ignotum" - the knowledge of our ignorance, is the enshrouder in this respect. "Umbra sui" - the shadow of oneself - demonstrates the unknowing one has in himself - because of his weakness or imperfection - "aequalitier peccatum" being his sins. Which is not to say sins in the traditional sense, but in the sense of "implanting in one's mind the things that he is not able to understand about himself, which he must climb to - his failing thereof" (from a divine perspective). This isn't a sense in which one strays and loses faith, but in a sense that one strays by remaining insolent in his task as a self-determiner and self-understander.

This concludes what I find to be the source of knowledge in epistemology. It reverberates in a positive way with the understandings of others and myself. It resonates with the way people speak about the things they know. "Maybe, possibly" - these are half-knowns. Uncertainty abounds in one's thinking, but it remains inexplicably partially certain. It is the source of an absolute whose nature we only strive towards without reaching. It is the God that makes known to us our own understanding.

How do things like this come in line with that which is applicable to our own lives? Well the answer is simple: God is the purpose of our lives in the most important fashion. If not him, then where do we turn? Life is meaningless or entirely purposed depending on his existence. If everything that happens is to be taken as design by an omniscient creator, then all of life is to be examined the way one would study an intricate puzzle - rather than ignored as unfortunate side-effects. There is great truth to the statement that one needs to know something before he loses it, and if that's so, then God is the thing to lose. Ask any Christian what he thinks about his knowledge of God. Suppose he says "I understand him, but only in a way I can explain to myself. And it's quite fuzzy. And… &c." .. is this not the typical response? But how clearly it comes to the man when he abandons his faith! The first thing to go is his sense of purpose.

Many of the things least understood are the most important - and this follows if the lights are dim and the shadows present. We look as far forward as we can to see to the end of the room and await what we have in store, but it becomes less and less seeable as the line runs down. There is no way to remove the shadows except by improving oneself, and how clearly it is that those of greater perfection are able to more clearly understand, accept, know, and explain the God we believe in. There is an important sense in which it remains faith - but only in the sense that everything else is faith, which it is. Should one rebuke his understanding of God in his language, he speaks nothing save contradiction, and even his silence - knowing he is silent - is a contradiction in Himself. He cannot deny that he knows, but as he tries to understand it, the answer must come from outside him. And that is God.

There is a clearer way to express my meaning. Suppose there were two on an island. Each man had three gallons of water and two pineapples, plus a lot of time on their hands, the two of them. Suppose one suggests to the other "how about you trade me a pineapple and I'll give you a gallon and a half of my water." The other man says - "of course not (suppose); I want this gallon and a half of water you provide far less than I desire my pineapple." So the man bids further - "suppose I grant you 3 gallons of water, the lot of it, then could I perhaps have your pineapple?" And the other refuses. "3 gallons for but a portion?" Still the man is silent. "What makes you so keen to retain your pineapple?" the man finally asks, and the other responds: "Without one for myself and one to admire, my life here on this island is a waste of my time." "What do you mean?" "Well, I'll tell you: First the pineapple keeps my hungry, second the pineapple keeps me filled."

One pineapple yourself, one pineapple your God.

The Purpose of Life

Slaving away the hours of your childhood and teenage years - confined to the oppression of bosses in your midlife, learning to sit back and relax before you die in your old age... where is the purpose? To what end do these things seek? It is undeniable that much time is spent in a way no one would like it to be -- fighting wars, killing innocents, starving in one's own home... but where are we to go to change it all?

Life can be looked at from two distinctly different perspectives: that which searches for a defined end ("happiness", "utility", etc.), or that which seeks an indefinable end - one that we progress to.

How can an end be indefinable? How would you know where to step your feet? I will tell you: God's word. It can be no other way.

That you make steps is the surest evidence of God on Earth. You can't know where you're stepping (see Problem of Induction), yet you step in the right place - or, at least, a relatively "right" one - every time. Furthermore, you know the results of your steps before you step there, with at least some probability.

What is right and wrong, what is good and evil? I will tell you: The former is listening to the commands of God, the latter is listening to the dictates of your own conscience.

What do I mean by this? That the better decision is to choose according to God's will than to choose according to your own. That is to say, while each of us has a good/evil indicator within ourselves, it is nothing compared to that of the Lord's - who is all knowing.

The humble-less man takes into account only what he believes to be right - which is paradoxically not the right thing at all, nor could it ever be. He establishes his own "good" - then determines the right thing to be adhering to this good. But the truly right decision is the good determined by God, which is better than any good.

I do believe that there are many times when the veil will be thin in our lifetimes. That is to say, there will be many times when the Lord God reveals his plan to mankind, or shows them insights according to the future of things. It is crucially important at these times - when inspiration draws near - that one be closely in-tune with the Lord.

The Lord's voice is always present. It is always known. It cannot be rebuked - only ignored.

To say that every man will be saved from the depths of Hell is to acknowledge his ability to listen to the Lord at all times and in all places. That is, we acknowledge his or her knowledge of the Lord's voice in all things. Those who know not the Lord know not one single thing, and so they know the Lord, for the Lord is he who dispels our unknowing in the face of knowledge.

That is to say, in a world without the Lord, an omniscience, there would be no knowing. Thus, the Lord must be.

It is hard to attach these concepts to a structured life. One can say things he should or should not do at a time, but what if the Lord calls him to something else? What is one plans to rake the leaves off another's porch, but the Lord demands, soon as the moment arrives, that he be in Las Vegas? There are too many factors for the Lord to consider over man that man should ever be able to guarantee his actions, when in tune with the Lord, which is not to say he need be, but that he is better off doing so.

What of the man who is told to kill by the Lord?

Do we not remember Abraham?

Abraham dutifully obeyed the Lord's command in the face of extreme trial. When asked to do that thing which most all men would lean back and be repulsed by, Abraham went forth and accomplished the needed task. He valiantly strove to accomplish the Lord's work in the face of what he saw to be the greatest evil, for is not the man to love his own son even more than himself?

It is too quick for one to say that Abraham would not kill Isaac in that opportunity because he knew the Lord would stop his hand. Maybe. Maybe not. But if the Lord asked one to go through with it who had no such knowing before his hand would stopped, could not it have been the soul so great as Abraham, and would he not be right to go through with the act?

There is a fortunate side to this tale - indeed, an infinitely fortunate side to all tales - for all tales are of the Lord God who is all-knowing and omnibenevolent. It is that man is not asked to do that which he cannot bear. The thought of killing another - much less one's son - is a sickening thought. Only to those who would not burn their own minds at the very consideration could the Lord ever call - and only those so valiant to His command would the Lord ever bless with the not-needing to follow through. Thus, no man is killed - no innocent man - by the Lord's hand - and every man knows this. For it is a commandment that we should not. If the Lord is to stop the hand of Abraham in that last hour, we are to stop ourselves in the first, for none of us is so strong as to follow the example of Abraham in our own lives.

Consider what this means for all of us; it is everything. Everything that matters or ever could matter is rooted in the Lord's command. He who knows it not knows nothing save the dictates of his own unknowing conscience - save a voice in his head that he produces himself and teaches him nothing. What is this great lie before men that there is another way? What is the option that satisfies the criterion: do not every disobey, do not ever stray, do always likewise, receive the ultimate reward? It is unthinkable that there would be something else - something cogent and comprehensive, much less admirable!

There is only one way to the Lord's house, and that is by his voice. There is no alternative. There never can be.

But do not cry at the knowledge of your unknowing, of the strength of your weaknesses - for the Lord is knowing of them and considers them even as He directs you. Do not consider that your life may be at stake, for the only life that matters is renewed in the Lord.

Changes, changes

What does one learn from accepting his ignorance? Sometimes, he shouldn't be so opinionated.

Allow me to explain my (former) attraction to left-anarchism: if God can direct people through their hearts, could he not make a society of people who love each other unceasingly? The economic calculation problem is gone in their socialist commune, because God calculates for them, and they obey. God will tell them, and they should be aware of those who do not fit in the commune - more importantly, no one not fit for it would bother to join, believing what everyone else believes about left-anarchy: it's chaos. One could contend that if the society runs smoothly it will then attract the thieves and the murderers, but surely God could save the commune, or at least point out the wicked.

Furthermore - apparent to those who read last post's link by Kropotkin - there's a deep and fulfilling sense of a world without poor. A world where the science of man applies to all men, a world where no one goes hungry, a world where no one is devoid of a chance; surely in such an atmosphere - not to mention one endowed by the Supreme Creator - the hearts of men could change for the better, and the world could live in peace.

Now let me explain why I think that's wrong.

First, one's connection to God through the subjective - though the ultimate provider of truth - is certainly imperfect, and this I've come to more clearly in my recent experience than ever before. Man can try, he can align his long-term path with God, but he remains of the flesh, remains totally imperfect. With imperfection comes error, and with error comes, well, in a lawless society, chaos. This, I believe, is the function of church - to provide a standard for men to live their lives; and I believe, further, I know, that God endows the religious leaders of Earth, who He surely chose by hand - the great ones - with the knowledge to govern the faithful under their direction. But even with this tool - who many, even the religious, choose themselves to ignore (and who can doubt the left-anarchists, of all people, are inclined to disrespect the authority of organized religion?) - we still are of the flesh.

It seems to me that I know what's wrong for politics - I know many things that are wrong - but that I can't necessarily pinpoint what's best. A totalitarian dictatorship is contrary to the will of God - contrary to the free establishment of His churches, and contrary to the use of our God-given agency. Man, under government, must be allowed to choose wrong, and who can doubt that the leaders of government are fallible? Surely we can try, by democracy, to elect those rulers whose countenance and manner appeals to the ethical light within us, but let us never allow them the extreme power of tyranny over our very lives - for what then when they stray? Checks and balances on the authority of mankind - which authority must be restricted in extent to those duties that allow us, protected by law, to lead good, productive lives - is clearly essential for a bright future for the nations of Earth.

The tyrants - the obviously-power-hungry and ruthless dictators - I, perhaps peacefully, oppose. But the authority placed by God and democracy of man, whose power is restricted for allowing freedom in a broad sense, is an authority I humbly respect. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Jill Stein have various outlooks on the best option for our country, but despite my personal preference for perhaps a candidate like Doctor Paul or the Green Party over the seemingly more violent Romney and Obama, all of these leaders share a general respect for the freedom of the country, and under the rule of various men and women like them, we've undoubtedly prospered. Is our nation perfect? By a fair margin, no. Are there people in need of assistance - public or otherwise? Certainly, yes. Is our foreign policy exactly in line with what might strike one as respectful? Definitely not. But we are all of the flesh and sculpted from a coarse clay; sometimes keeping it all together is the best for which one can ask.

So I'd consider myself moderate. Though decidedly from an American politics perspective.

Starting Over

In some sense, the title of this blog has lost its meaning; in some sense, it will take on more meaning than ever before - but hold those thoughts.

What is truth? This is the question all must answer, but because it answers the more relevant question - the only relevant question - what should I do?

Life is complicated and mysterious; no matter where you look, the appraisal of one opinion is coupled by its exact antithesis, and if you don't see it, it's because you haven't found it - that it's there all the same is what brings the mystery. How can one mediate the opinions of all people, the many "facts" that support them, when one hardly has the reasoning to choose what to do with his or her own life? Furthermore, how could one begin to mediate the opinions that people have yet to find?

As I've said here before, logic is to be built in chains - you start from assumptions and work to conclusions; so obvious, so overlooked. But the reason to back the logic you have is forever insufficient - how can you back the conclusion when you can never back the assumption, which, itself, always assumes something else?

You have to work back to an axiom: a certain truth; there only can you start and work forward and know the conclusion. People accept many things as axioms: one's own existence, the existence of others perhaps, existence itself - but they have no reason. Ask them how they know, and they are ultimately silent.

Rain falls. How do you know? Gravity. How do you know? I feel it. How do you know? ...

But can one really, honestly deny that they know? that they know something? and therein lies the paradox; people and animals alike - creatures - have knowledge where they shouldn't. Each creature accepts things he or she can't explain, and knows them to be true; you know, for example, that at this precise moment in time you are at your computer, you are in your body, you are; there is no reason why you know, in any traditional sense of "reason"; you know because you feel it, and you're right, and you feel that you're right, and nothing more can be said; this is what is meant by "truth is subjectivity": you, yourself, are aware of knowledge, but you can't explain it to others, because you can't even explain it to yourself.

You're a free person; this too you know. The choices you make come down to you, and that includes what you believe, even if that means believing something you know - on the deepest level - isn't true.

But can you believe you know nothing? How could you? For would not this, itself, be something you would know? The very fact that you think about your insufficiency - that you are aware of your thinking - is knowledge.

So you know. You know that you know, and, hopefully, you believe it. Then comes the question: how could you? How could you know what you can't explain - by feeling? How could this feeling be, and how could you know it? And if not by your own creation, and surely you are conscious that you did not create it, then how are they made? Where do they come from? How do you have them?

There is only one answer that satisfies these questions: God.

Only a being that knew everything, whose knowledge was without unknowns, could possibly be the mediator - the determiner and creator - of truth, and likewise the truth that we have. There is no alternative - it is as sure as yourself, and only by denying your own sureness could you deny that He has granted it.

You could say that we have the knowledge and merely can't explain why we have it, that we have it, but don't know why; then I assure you, what you will find, in searching yourself, is that you do know why; as surely as you know anything, you know God, and that He loves you, and that He has a plan for you, and you have but merely to ask. This I have found, this many have found, this you can find.

But allow me to dismiss readily another easily concluded alternative - that the knowledge comes by virtue of "yourself." First, what is you? Allow me to propose: a consciousness. Not a mind, not even a soul, both of which you have, as surely as you think and act, and both of which you are conscious, but surely what you are is conscious - it is your base "act"; it is the only thing you do not "have" and are.

If you are conscious, and are conscious of your knowledge, but not of why you have it, can you not question your knowledge? Can you - the only and ultimate in this alternative - not dismiss it? Can you - the chooser, by virtue of the soul you also know - not know something different? You are a free being, yet funneled into but one knowledge - a knowledge independent of yourself. Your choice is that knowledge or none at all, but you cannot create another.

To reason alone, I have proved not a thing, nor ever can. Only by acknowledging knowledge independent of understanding can one choose to understand, for only by accepting my axiom from the knowledge in themselves - the knowledge I cannot give - can they also know the conclusions of my reason.

Have you ever had a train of thought where you accept certain conclusions but they feel wrong? A feeling that's caused you to reexamine and reconsider until it feels right? This occurs because of the beliefs you hold that lead you to one conclusion or another; the beliefs not always at the front of your mind, but ingrained there by choice.

By choice - have I not contradicted my earlier statement? No, for we are funneled into one knowledge, but not into one belief, and as truth is a point and untruth another, we can choose either.

How then is one to separate those beliefs he knows from the ones he holds and does not know?

Find the axiom. Or, rather, the axioms. Work the argument backward with the reason you have, and study the starting points out in your mind. Do you know them? You will know. If you struggle, God's at the door.

God has rooted the same axioms in each of our minds, it is what makes us human. Fortunately, many of these axioms are in plain sight - arguments can go on with basic assumptions like the existence of people and the existence of things, else where could we go!? Less fortunately, many of them are not. The crowd of reason has chosen to accept only the easiest axioms, and to deny all else.

Examine the question from a reasonable perspective: does God live? Well let's start with some axioms, note that one of them isn't God. ...

Then that's the argument! Said and done!

What's curious is where that argument tends to go, since it does go further, without actual purpose. It's usually something like "God isn't the simplest explanation"; "we should assume only the axioms we have"; "we cannot reason past our axioms." ...It's all superfluous! It's the same statement, that the arguer does not know God, in as many ways as one could possibly say it! That they even assume something else, like an objective reality and universe, in either a blatant contradiction - as there is no reason for these either - or else not, but only by virtue of the fact that they have accepted these, but not God, as axioms!; how fortunate they have none to argue with, as the faithful accept these too; how fortunate there stands no opposition, as the faithful do not oppose; how fortunate to live in a world you create, then marvel at your ability to say nothing at all.

Except it isn't really fortunate. It's miserable.

Do I weep at the unknowing of my brothers and sisters? Constantly. But it is a joyous weep, just as theirs is a miserable pleasure. I see them, I love them, and I need to save them, but I know that they can only save themselves; I know that I can show them the door, but that they must open it; I marvel at my purpose, I love it, but I love the possible conclusions more than I even fathom. It's as though the most beautiful damsel stood in front of me behind a layer of fog; I know she's there, but I can't see her; I know she is beautiful beyond a beauty I can imagine - a thing unthinkable to know; I follow her, knowing, inexplicably, the steps she takes; I imagine her to the best of my ever limited ability, and keep my eyes on a prize that I know is ever greater. How then can I stray?

The faithful's is a lonely road, yet perfectly accompanied. In the face of the crowd, it is madness - neither understood nor accepted; in the face of the faithful, it is God - accepted, but still never understood; but in the face of God, it is true love - acceptance and understanding - and is not His love ever greater? I love God, even as I do not understand Him, by His own grace; He makes Himself personable, He makes Himself the most personable, even as he is the least; I awe at His condescension.

So it is not lonely, but it could be. It, like all, is by choice - a chosen perspective.

Ah, but I slow myself - what's that? All is by choice?

"I choose heaven, yet here I am!" you retort.

Consider: can you choose to be at the grocery store? Try it. Be there. You cannot do it directly - that is, within your repertoire of options, there is no "be at store"; but you can do it indirectly - by taking each necessary step. So it is with heaven.

What necessitates the distinction between direct and indirect choice? Why are some choices mine to make in the moment, and others mine to delay? I will tell you: insufficiency. God has placed you in an arbitrary, for He can give you knowledge, but only as you gain experience, which He cannot give you. The arbitrary is, however, an arbitrary only by choice; one that we choose out of incapability to choose otherwise; it is the existence one is forced to perceive in inaction, and better he perceive, to gain experience, and thus knowledge from God, than not perceive, and remain without capability to progress. But it bends to our will, and we can even escape it - each of us, in either case, to varying degrees. When the boy daydreams in class with his eyes on the ceiling, he perceives not the arbitrary - not that existence in which he is otherwise forced - but the world he chooses; does the arbitrary grant a castle, all his to enjoy - and without a mite of physical labor? Does it grant him fair women, loving swaths of people, or sheer enjoyment without flaw? No. He has transcended it.

The "reasonable" man takes a look at this world - the world of his choice - and rejects it. Perhaps out of pride in his ability to conquer the arbitrary on his own - false pride indeed, as there is no such ability; perhaps out of a lack of pride in himself - his true self - to improve his creations, and he can improve them, for is he not of God Himself?

"Sit down! Shut up! Look at the teacher! Do your work!" Slave your life, your energy, your potential, into the finite. 

WHY, I SAY? THERE IS HEAVEN TO BE HAD - MAKE IT YOURS.

Do I say: reject the finite? Do I say: reject its science? No. For we must acknowledge our present weakness, and our current reliance on it. But to need it is not to love it. Need your science, but love your God, for the former is only a means to the latter.

"Get a job! What on Earth do you do with your time? There's always more money to be had and you've got nothing." Progression is confined to the arbitrary and to the finite. Work for the system and lose your soul; you can trade it for the riches you've never had.

REBEL.

Work in it, sure - but only because you have no other choice. Your goal is to make that other choice, and to bring all people - your family - with you. You need only to foster your love in God and you cannot fail, for He is transcendent.

"Science is the answer, really. Too bad you're not intelligent enough to understand it. Trust all these other people - they lead the crowd, and can lead you too. You are nothing but inferior to the other finite creatures; you have no choice but to drag behind on the coattails of your authority and hope for the best.

THE CROWD IS UNTRUTH.

When the way is unsure, and you need an order, there are only two choices: the order of God, and the order of man: be it your government, your boss, your school, your anyone. Good men give advice, and to them you can listen, and from them grow - for as you are confined, by your weakness, to the arbitrary, you must learn within it - from God, and also from people, your family. But if it is good to follow a command, that can be a command of God alone. No man is as God; no man can be superior; he can only pretend, and by so doing become totally miserable. While those at the bottom suffer a real pain under pressure, there is no greater reason to abolish the hierarchy of man than for the sake of those at the top - the ones living in fantasy. God's reality of choice - true freedom - is to them a fantasy, and the fantasy of true joy in the arbitrary - which will never be found - is their reality, for they are deceived by power, which is misery disguised; what a need we have to save them!

We, the lovers, grant greater material care to the poor and oppressed, for in this respect they have the greater need, but by the same token, we must grant the wealthy (and the oppressors) greater spiritual care, for they, likewise, have the greater need in this respect; each is our brother, our sister, whom we love unconditionally. Which is not to say it is truly "unconditional" love, as a thing must have conditions, but that the sole condition - that they feel, and we feel with them in our collective soul, for we know empathy - is eternally in effect; insofar as we do not feel them, we know it is the product of our insufficiency to feel, and that by acting as though we do we draw closer to what we know - we catch glimpse of the damsel, and oh the Joy!

This is how it is with all things - we know, but we doubt what we know by insufficiency. It is only by eliminating the doubt, or by acting in spite of it, that we progress to God.

It should come as no surprise that, in light of these conclusions, which bring me more joy than words can speak, my political and economic views as referenced on this blog have undergone substantial change. Those more familiar with my new position - left-anarchism - may have noticed its theme in some of the preceding paragraphs.

For those who would like to learn more about this philosophy, which will henceforth be discussed here, I invite you to read the article by Peter Kropotkin linked at the bottom of the article (designed for the youthful - at least in heart and mind).

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"Experience-free" ... what does that mean for an opinion? Originally, it was an acknowledgment of my intellectual standing - I had completed no college, I've (still) been employed to no internships, I haven't written a book or received a degree or won a nifty prize for anything; in the world of the arbitrary - the world of the crowd - these are the things that matter, and I hadn't a thing.

That meaning is gone; I have no desire to gain this sort of "experience," save with exceeding caution.

But then, what is experience, really? It is the path to knowledge - the path that each must take, by themselves, for themselves, such that God can reveal all things and you can know them, even as you doubt them. It is the road we feel and choose that is self-reinforcing, that, when traveling in good courses, breaches the fog; it is the road to a truly beautiful damsel that is not a damsel, but something even greater we cannot imagine; it is the road we walk with a forever-insufficent motivation: a motivation we choose, for the real reward we cannot choose - yet. For it is the road that indirectly chooses it.

In that sense, while it is entirely incorrect to say I'm "experience-free", it's an excellent approximation in comparison to what I have yet to experience. And here I am still giving opinions.

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