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.
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| 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. |
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.
