Forgotten Causes, 07 Countermeasures, is now posted.
Who would fight a war across the uncountable distances and meaningless emptiness of space? The damn nothingness is so damn big and so damn empty that everything men dream about doing, every cause they dream about fighting for, or against, means not a damn thing; not a damn thing at all; not hatred, not revenge, not anything.
Should I give the order to open fire?
A reader with the twice saintly name of Andrew Philips writes:
Liberalism is a dead end. The humanist “enlightenment” was a bad idea. Humanist anything is a bad idea, for man is not the measure of all things. Man is not even the measure of himself. Maximizing freedom for its own sake has given us clown-world. What matters is the Good, and laws that promote the Good. Letting each man define the Good for himself is modernist nonsense. We should repent of it.
My comment: Amen. As a once-staunch defensor infidei, so to speak, of the Enlightenment values of humanism and all that laicist humbug, I would like to say a eulogy over its corpse, and consign the undead spirit into the soil.
But a wiser man than I, who, like me, in his youth was lured by the siren-song, and woke only later, has already done so. I repeat the eulogy in full, without comment. It was written in 1944, and published in 1967, posthumously.
Here is Candice Owns again:
Full @TuckerCarlson Interview w/ @RealCandaceO Reacting To The Derek Chauvin Trial Verdict & Calling Out The Left's Use Of The Mob To Get What They Want
Candace Owens: "This was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial." pic.twitter.com/kDvu14OVFK
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) April 21, 2021
My comment: The Pederasts of the MSM celebrate their victory over civilization.
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My opinion, in this case, is better expressed by another:
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A mistrial occurs when 1) a jury is unable to reach a verdict and there must be a new trial with a new jury; 2) there is a serious procedural error or misconduct that would result in an unfair trial, and the judge adjourns the case without a decision on the merits and awards a new trial. See, e.g. Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594 (1994).
In this case, serious error included a failure to sequester jury, leaving the jurors open to influence and intimidation, including, apparently, mob agitation by a sitting federal Congresswoman.
Noteworthy is that jury deliberation covered three days of evidence in a day, without asking the judge for instructions. Unlikely that any adequate deliberation took place is such a hasty time frame.
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Forgotten Causes, 06 Targeting Elements, is now posted.
Negotiations broke down, and ended up in gunfire.
One good thing about being an amnesiac, is that I could not tell if this kind of thing was a habit with me. But somehow I think it is.
Although not given any screen credit this story was based on a treatment of mine — I was the guy who came up with the gimmick and the basic plot.
]If you squint quickly, you will see the name of a buddy of mine from my college days, Kurt Inderbitzen, as one of the Executive Producers. He called me up out of the blue one day and asked if I could come up with an original idea for a time travel story. I said I could come up with twenty, and promptly did. This was the one he picked.
Any fans of my storytelling might well enjoy this yarn.
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Longtime reader Stephen J asks what is the proper philosophical term for the Substance of God?
The short answer is that I do not know what the schoolmen call this: my reading in philosophy is weak when it comes to Aquinas, despite that, now that I am a Christian, he has more clarity and truth than that I find in any other philosopher.
Answering, then, only for myself, let me offer that God is pure being and perfect being, which means He has no accidental nor contingent properties, nor any potential to degrade nor change. His other aspects, such as His eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience are deduced from his essential being.
God’s substance is Being itself. He is the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused First Cause.
When He tells Moses His name is “I am who am” He is speaking literally.
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This week’s offering for the discriminating ear, lilting lyricism of country musical comedy, perhaps with a political twitch.
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A longtime reader with the latinate yet indecipherable name of Nostreculsus (and with the truly awesome icon of a chinaman who eats with sticks once seen on Mulberry Street, but no longer) writes and asks:
At the grave risk of revealing my appalling ignorance and the ignorance of my fellow moderns, I confess that I was lost on reading the very first sentence. Namely, I don’t understand what is this “substance” of which you speak.
Naturally, I tried looking up the word. Wikipedia writes “Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory positing that objects are constituted each by a substance and properties borne by the substance but distinct from it” and goes on from there to describe theories of one, two or many substances.
Physics nowadays dispenses entirely with the concept, unless it is expressed by another word. Is “substance” the same as the state of a system and “properties” another word for observables?
The answer is no. “Substance” as the term in used in ontology, is not “the state of a system” as that phrase is used in that branch of natural philosophy called physics, nor is the term “properties” in ontology another word for “observables” in physics. The concepts are quite different.
And you venture no risk. A call to define one’s terms is always in order.
The term “substance” in philosophy is a term of art. It hardly a matter of ignorance, and certainly not an appalling ignorance, not to know a technical term from a field in which one is not trained. Please voice no qualms for asking a question: I love questions.
The Wikipedia definition is correct as it stands, if worded elliptically.
The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’, or in Latin substantia, which literally means ‘foundation’ or ‘what stands beneath.’ The branch of philosophy examining claims about substances is called ‘ontology.’
A ‘substance’ is the foundation or fundamental being of reality. It is the thing that cannot be reduced to a simpler thing.
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Reductionist materialism, also called eliminative materialism, is the proposition that no substance other than matter can or could exist.
The basic argument, first proposed, if memory serves, by Descartes, is that the universe is composed of two substances, mind and matter, which are separate, but connected at the pineal gland. Other philosophers, from this basis, argued that the separation was absolute, and kept in apparent harmony by monads or divine providence, not of their own nature. In later days it was argued that without a substance in common, the two could not interact, nor be kept in harmony. Therefore there can be only one substance.
The materialist holds that this one substance is matter. The idealist come to an opposite conclusion, but that is a discussion for another day.
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This question was prompted by a private conversation, but the question is so interesting (at least, to me) that I wanted to throw it open to my other beloved readers to hear their counsel on the matter.
Do or do not the choices of Oedipus “matter” in OEDIPUS REX?
The question is worth asking because we are apt to conflate two separate and distinct concepts under this heading.
Because the word “matter” is a transitive verb, and we tend to use it as an intransitive. Matters for what? Matters to whom? Matters why?
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A comedy skit along the same lines as Robert Heinlein’s ‘By His Bootstraps’. Sort of. Enjoy.
Warning to humor gourmets: the joke is not sophisticated here, nor is the acting top notch. This is lunchmeat rather than blue-ribbon beef bourguignon.
Forgotten Causes, 05 Cooperation Required, is now posted.
Good cop, bad cop routine. You know the drill. Having a gun pointed at my head always puts me in a bad mood.
But I have to admit, the dark-haired beauty asked a good question: what was the point in dying for a forgotten cause?
I have always grown pouty and grumpy like an old man, even when I was young, hearing the idea that more information and more detailed information, about the future, or about anything, somehow detracts or diminishes from the freedom of the will.
Bosh and rubbish, say I.
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