Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Eternal truths

If you’re ever in doubt that there are eternal truths, you need only return to the eternal truths of mathematics. They were true before Pythagoras discovered them. They will be true after the last human being is swallowed up in the sun. When I learn these truths, the part of me that knows them becomes immortal.

But this isn’t the kind of immorality we want. We want to go on enjoying sensory pleasures forever. We want to go on producing and consuming forever. We want to go on managing our investments forever. The imperfect part of the mind, the part concerned with the flesh and the things of the flesh, is what we want to be immortal. To find immortality for the part of the mind unworthy of it, we must have recourse to superstition.

Insofar as I succeed in transforming my mind into the mind of God, my mind partakes of His immortality. The emptying of the soul from all selfish concerns, what Paul calls kenosis (Philippians 2:7), leaves it with only those elements of the soul worthy of immortality. The parts of the soul that are enslaved to the flesh and the desires of the flesh deserve to die. I should allow them to die as soon as possible. But instead I waste the entire day in deliberately contrived schemes whose sole aim is to procure bodily pleasure. Then at night I find myself filled with the fear and dread of death.

Monday, December 1, 2014

How can I escape the cycle of meaningless activity?

In the evening I look for meaningless entertainment. The next day I must do meaningless work to pay for it. If I could only resist the temptation to consume what doesn’t help me flourish intellectually, I would no longer need to produce what doesn’t help me flourish intellectually. How can I escape the cycle of meaningless activity, and begin a life of disciplined contemplation and study?

In America we’re trained from birth to fulfill the demands of consumers, and ruthlessly ignore the demands of intellect. Our teachers imagine they’re doing us a favor by training us for an economically useful role. This, after all, is what allows us to have our own arbitrary demands fulfilled, so we too can secure our place in the great cycle of mindless production and consumption.

Of course production is necessary to fulfill the needs of the flesh. The problem is, I exaggerate those needs. So I’m left with no time and energy to fulfill the needs of the mind. I busily preen and pamper a body hardly different from that of apes, and ignore the one thing that sets me apart from them.