The word "nomos" in ancient Greek means both law (and tradition, custom, mores) and musical tune--the Greeks understood that pattern was the underlying structure of the cosmos.
Paradoxically, the Incarnation is--while seemingly messy like all biological life--is perhaps the ultimate expression of the deepest ineluctable pattern of Being.
The Classical Greeks adorned their temples with images of their gods. Holes were drilled into the hands and feet of the statues of the gods, which were then fastened with pegs into place on the proscenium of the temple.
Pontius Pilate presided over the greatest epiphany of all time when he sentenced Yeshua to be nailed by his hands and feet to a cross.
The execution of Yeshua was crafted to maximise his humiliation and agony. Fatefully, his death fused the human form of Greek gods with a thousand years of mysterious Hebrew poetry prophesying the coming of a Holy One, a Son of God, the creator and Lord of the Universe.
The Romans intended to mock Yeshua as he died hanging from a cross in a parody of the way Greek and Roman gods were affixed to temples.
Unwittingly, they chose the very form of execution whose pattern actually proclaimed his death to be a cosmic revelation of the God-man - he is revealed at the precise location where Heaven and Earth meet: on the vertical and horizontal axes of the nexus of space and time.
The holes in the hands and feet of the Greek gods is the best snippet I've heard in a while, thanks for that one. Very insightful comment all around, too.
Yes, and amen. So much out there that is exciting (including 20-year waves) that I may be blowing out my adrenals, or whatever gland is embodied to create happy but still too-much expectational mind play. Excess of light is to be disciplined to discernment and time given to do so in my case. Per your prior piece, I have returned to wakefulness precisely at 3 am sensing that I need mind to shut up and listen because I was awakened at 3am.
At some point the primary challenge shifts from pursuit and explication of Truth to the everyday challenge of remembering what is True, and acting, even thinking in accordance.
Thank you for placing a crumb or two of the cookies on the lower shelf for me. I was alerted to Levin’s work by a single phrase of Jonathon Pageau’s ‘Pay Attention’. But after reading the X post from Levin I was left in puzzled and curious ignorance, not having the wherewithal to understand his thesis.
Some key phrases you used were enlightening:
Platonic realm of patterns
Definition of real is usefulness
Return to logos: the cruciform shape of the cosmos
I take from this that science is ‘proving’ Mind?
Thank you for your clarifying thoughts. I’d appreciate any further summation you have on this.
This piece gets into an area of thought that I now consider my neighborhood too. I am not a rationalist, a materialist, a scientist, nor am I a theologian or a spiritual puritan. In fact I don't have much use for epistemological or phenomenological philosophy at all. What I do believe in, which seems to be what you're describing here, is beautiful intuitions and the acceptance that our physical world is not the only world. There are forces at work that we don't understand, and if believing in those forces is useful, then you might as well just call them true. I don't really care what is literally and technically and provably "true," I care what works to build happy lives and stable, fruitful civilizations.
Believing in Greek gods, for instance, can go ahead and be called true if it leads you to live a better life in order to avoid their wrath and be grateful for their bounties. Believing a gun might be loaded is literally false most of the time but leads to a better life through more safety.
And this is also why I believe that Christianity is an objectively good decision to make, even if you can't feel Jesus in your bones. It seems to be the only moral framework that we've ever found that is
- individually practicable
- practical (like an actual recipe for good living)
- and infinitely scalable across any time and place.
The reason to believe in Christian ideals and to live a Christian-ish life is because it simply works. There's something in it that is so plainly useful, it's like magic. It's like a spell you can cast on your own life to make it beautiful.
In short, I believe in stories. May the best story, which resonates with people most deeply across time, win. Because that's ultimately what changes human behavior at scale - not rational argument.
Excellent piece James. The downfall of postmodernism (and modernism) is disenchantment and a large and invisible burden of creating ultimate truth for oneself. This usually ends up lazy and unfulfilling, like glomming onto an identity politic, or a politic itself, or a cause, or an incomplete set of moral ideas. But postmodernism is good when espousing a practical ability to sift, like you say, and choose stories already robust enough to carry meagre individual minds or collective minds higher, letting Truth settle what is eternal by experience and practicality.
Modernism and post modernism become useful again, in a higher arc, when allowed to exist in the mind and pursuit of the Logos. Christ standing victorious through all times and philosophies, completing and fulfilling all things.
Lovely article. May your work continue to thrive bro.
The parts of this that I understand scientifically confirm what I have been shown holistically from my psychedelics experimentation. Everything is just different waves of energy stacked on top of each other in increasingly complex ways and it is all connected via the primordial substrate that I guess we are still calling the platonic realm . If it is true that the human brain is the most complicated machine in the universe, it's difficult for me to conclude that our sentience was simply an accident and it would seem evolution is inherently driven to produce beings capable of becoming nodes of consciousness through which the Absolute can perceive itself. The implications of all this are pretty mind boggling.
This is also my experience with them from years back. When on them, I remember being 100% sure that everything was made of mind, and it was so obvious that I couldn't imagine anyone thinking otherwise.
Some say it's like having their blinders removed but for me it's more like remembering. The first time I broke through the ego illusion I felt like I was 5 years old again and everything in the world was wonderful and I was like, oh yeah, all that other bullshit is made up, I am here to make art, spread love and be happy. It's equally fascinating to me how quickly the fear programming reasserts itself once you sober up. If eating a mushroom can change my entire perception of reality that severely, there is so much more to consciousness than the average person could begin to comprehend. I want science to catch up to this for the benefit of all mankind, but I don't need them to prove anything more to me about the Absolutebor my place within it. I have already felt the unity of everything and after you have done so there is just no going back.
Interesting. I feel far too stupid to grasp Levin's work here, but are there any books or articles you recommend for lay-readers? Maybe something by Pierce?
Interesting article James. I'm just finishing writing what I hope will be a major book in this domain. It arrived at similar ideas to Levin independently but has also identified a major revolution taking place across science, finally piecing it together so we can see what it's pointing at. I too was once an atheist. And although I'm not a Christian I am a theist. I think you'll love my book (which I guess aims more at the Romanticism label)
The delicious irony is that science may be wandering back toward an ancient religious instinct: stop arguing endlessly about whether the invisible is “real” and look at the fruit it produces. If a metaphysic keeps generating better questions, better predictions, and a more intelligible world, perhaps reality is quietly answering while the ontology seminar is still clearing its throat.
Speaking as an artist, I think the prospect of getting UN-lost in the cosmos is indeed Romantic. (I just read that Walker Percy book last week, so I see what you did there.)
Meta=to transcend AND go beyond. Physics=the physical. Metaphysics is arguably the only real science that ever existed. If it was just philosophy then it would be called philosophy. The objective truth of reality is metaphysical, made from the silence itself which is both physical (parsing each heart beat and breath) and metaphysical (omnipresent and universal). Silence is the only force in all of creation and existence that even nonexistence itself must answer to (it doesn't exist, it must be silent). Silence is so profound it doesn't even need existence to exist, GODS can't even do that. They need to exist...
Nihilism is not inherently antagonistic to being. It is however, antagonistic in those who are unable to metabolize it, becoming passive nihilists. The distinction I think you were looking for is the passive notion, but I suspect that you probably reject them both.
As far as the notion of human beings being servants of the capital (T)ruth, I find that to be repeating the very problem modernism was trying to solve, which was a monopolistic epistemological perspective. Where Nietzsche blew that apart was in saying that truth serves vitality rather than the other way around. There could be a synthesis here in seeing what is vitalizing or good for flourishing over time. It still doesn’t really answer the perspectival question of vitalizing for who. I could see this take root in people that are overcoming the negative aspects of individualism and leaning more into a sort of Logos Vitalism. Then, it still has the problem of taking the will to power away from the physiology and placing it under the taste of what you could call “durable reasons.” There are many reasons and logic that have been extremely historically durable and useful. They are still just tools, not something that should automatically be binding through time.
The word "nomos" in ancient Greek means both law (and tradition, custom, mores) and musical tune--the Greeks understood that pattern was the underlying structure of the cosmos.
Paradoxically, the Incarnation is--while seemingly messy like all biological life--is perhaps the ultimate expression of the deepest ineluctable pattern of Being.
The Classical Greeks adorned their temples with images of their gods. Holes were drilled into the hands and feet of the statues of the gods, which were then fastened with pegs into place on the proscenium of the temple.
Pontius Pilate presided over the greatest epiphany of all time when he sentenced Yeshua to be nailed by his hands and feet to a cross.
The execution of Yeshua was crafted to maximise his humiliation and agony. Fatefully, his death fused the human form of Greek gods with a thousand years of mysterious Hebrew poetry prophesying the coming of a Holy One, a Son of God, the creator and Lord of the Universe.
The Romans intended to mock Yeshua as he died hanging from a cross in a parody of the way Greek and Roman gods were affixed to temples.
Unwittingly, they chose the very form of execution whose pattern actually proclaimed his death to be a cosmic revelation of the God-man - he is revealed at the precise location where Heaven and Earth meet: on the vertical and horizontal axes of the nexus of space and time.
The holes in the hands and feet of the Greek gods is the best snippet I've heard in a while, thanks for that one. Very insightful comment all around, too.
Thank you Taylor--it's a brief passage from my novel A Prince Among Men (the real Prince to which the title refers is Jesus Christ).
Yes, and amen. So much out there that is exciting (including 20-year waves) that I may be blowing out my adrenals, or whatever gland is embodied to create happy but still too-much expectational mind play. Excess of light is to be disciplined to discernment and time given to do so in my case. Per your prior piece, I have returned to wakefulness precisely at 3 am sensing that I need mind to shut up and listen because I was awakened at 3am.
At some point the primary challenge shifts from pursuit and explication of Truth to the everyday challenge of remembering what is True, and acting, even thinking in accordance.
Thank you for placing a crumb or two of the cookies on the lower shelf for me. I was alerted to Levin’s work by a single phrase of Jonathon Pageau’s ‘Pay Attention’. But after reading the X post from Levin I was left in puzzled and curious ignorance, not having the wherewithal to understand his thesis.
Some key phrases you used were enlightening:
Platonic realm of patterns
Definition of real is usefulness
Return to logos: the cruciform shape of the cosmos
I take from this that science is ‘proving’ Mind?
Thank you for your clarifying thoughts. I’d appreciate any further summation you have on this.
This piece gets into an area of thought that I now consider my neighborhood too. I am not a rationalist, a materialist, a scientist, nor am I a theologian or a spiritual puritan. In fact I don't have much use for epistemological or phenomenological philosophy at all. What I do believe in, which seems to be what you're describing here, is beautiful intuitions and the acceptance that our physical world is not the only world. There are forces at work that we don't understand, and if believing in those forces is useful, then you might as well just call them true. I don't really care what is literally and technically and provably "true," I care what works to build happy lives and stable, fruitful civilizations.
Believing in Greek gods, for instance, can go ahead and be called true if it leads you to live a better life in order to avoid their wrath and be grateful for their bounties. Believing a gun might be loaded is literally false most of the time but leads to a better life through more safety.
And this is also why I believe that Christianity is an objectively good decision to make, even if you can't feel Jesus in your bones. It seems to be the only moral framework that we've ever found that is
- individually practicable
- practical (like an actual recipe for good living)
- and infinitely scalable across any time and place.
The reason to believe in Christian ideals and to live a Christian-ish life is because it simply works. There's something in it that is so plainly useful, it's like magic. It's like a spell you can cast on your own life to make it beautiful.
In short, I believe in stories. May the best story, which resonates with people most deeply across time, win. Because that's ultimately what changes human behavior at scale - not rational argument.
This comports with Rupert Sheldrake's research.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature
Excellent parallel there, Paul.
Excellent piece James. The downfall of postmodernism (and modernism) is disenchantment and a large and invisible burden of creating ultimate truth for oneself. This usually ends up lazy and unfulfilling, like glomming onto an identity politic, or a politic itself, or a cause, or an incomplete set of moral ideas. But postmodernism is good when espousing a practical ability to sift, like you say, and choose stories already robust enough to carry meagre individual minds or collective minds higher, letting Truth settle what is eternal by experience and practicality.
Modernism and post modernism become useful again, in a higher arc, when allowed to exist in the mind and pursuit of the Logos. Christ standing victorious through all times and philosophies, completing and fulfilling all things.
Lovely article. May your work continue to thrive bro.
The parts of this that I understand scientifically confirm what I have been shown holistically from my psychedelics experimentation. Everything is just different waves of energy stacked on top of each other in increasingly complex ways and it is all connected via the primordial substrate that I guess we are still calling the platonic realm . If it is true that the human brain is the most complicated machine in the universe, it's difficult for me to conclude that our sentience was simply an accident and it would seem evolution is inherently driven to produce beings capable of becoming nodes of consciousness through which the Absolute can perceive itself. The implications of all this are pretty mind boggling.
This is also my experience with them from years back. When on them, I remember being 100% sure that everything was made of mind, and it was so obvious that I couldn't imagine anyone thinking otherwise.
Some say it's like having their blinders removed but for me it's more like remembering. The first time I broke through the ego illusion I felt like I was 5 years old again and everything in the world was wonderful and I was like, oh yeah, all that other bullshit is made up, I am here to make art, spread love and be happy. It's equally fascinating to me how quickly the fear programming reasserts itself once you sober up. If eating a mushroom can change my entire perception of reality that severely, there is so much more to consciousness than the average person could begin to comprehend. I want science to catch up to this for the benefit of all mankind, but I don't need them to prove anything more to me about the Absolutebor my place within it. I have already felt the unity of everything and after you have done so there is just no going back.
Interesting. I feel far too stupid to grasp Levin's work here, but are there any books or articles you recommend for lay-readers? Maybe something by Pierce?
Interesting article James. I'm just finishing writing what I hope will be a major book in this domain. It arrived at similar ideas to Levin independently but has also identified a major revolution taking place across science, finally piecing it together so we can see what it's pointing at. I too was once an atheist. And although I'm not a Christian I am a theist. I think you'll love my book (which I guess aims more at the Romanticism label)
Just wanted to say thanks - this was probably the clearest explanation of modernism and postmodernism I’ve read. Helpful stuff. Thanks.
The delicious irony is that science may be wandering back toward an ancient religious instinct: stop arguing endlessly about whether the invisible is “real” and look at the fruit it produces. If a metaphysic keeps generating better questions, better predictions, and a more intelligible world, perhaps reality is quietly answering while the ontology seminar is still clearing its throat.
Really appreciate this explanation!
Speaking as an artist, I think the prospect of getting UN-lost in the cosmos is indeed Romantic. (I just read that Walker Percy book last week, so I see what you did there.)
Meta=to transcend AND go beyond. Physics=the physical. Metaphysics is arguably the only real science that ever existed. If it was just philosophy then it would be called philosophy. The objective truth of reality is metaphysical, made from the silence itself which is both physical (parsing each heart beat and breath) and metaphysical (omnipresent and universal). Silence is the only force in all of creation and existence that even nonexistence itself must answer to (it doesn't exist, it must be silent). Silence is so profound it doesn't even need existence to exist, GODS can't even do that. They need to exist...
“Plato and Aristotle were right” covers it pretty well.
True
Nihilism is not inherently antagonistic to being. It is however, antagonistic in those who are unable to metabolize it, becoming passive nihilists. The distinction I think you were looking for is the passive notion, but I suspect that you probably reject them both.
As far as the notion of human beings being servants of the capital (T)ruth, I find that to be repeating the very problem modernism was trying to solve, which was a monopolistic epistemological perspective. Where Nietzsche blew that apart was in saying that truth serves vitality rather than the other way around. There could be a synthesis here in seeing what is vitalizing or good for flourishing over time. It still doesn’t really answer the perspectival question of vitalizing for who. I could see this take root in people that are overcoming the negative aspects of individualism and leaning more into a sort of Logos Vitalism. Then, it still has the problem of taking the will to power away from the physiology and placing it under the taste of what you could call “durable reasons.” There are many reasons and logic that have been extremely historically durable and useful. They are still just tools, not something that should automatically be binding through time.