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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

On the Theological Nature of Human Guilt

Guilt is the breaking of an acceptance bond, bio-physically and bio-psychologically.  This is true both internally (self-consciously) and externally (as a correlative anticipation of the responses by the "other").  "Acceptance" is not some form of absolute and unqualified tolerance for a state of self in relation to an ego ideal, nor to the authority of an other to pass judgment on 'what is acceptable' (although it has many primitively derived contents from those sources).  Acceptance implies a certain level of respect (whether super- or sub-ordinate to the object) for the object which depends upon my recognition of its worth (external and objectifiable or internal and subjective), or respectability in one's self for interacting with the object in way associated with caring for it.

In saying this it is noted the insufficiency of the phenomenological term "the other". In fact the essence of other is "anti-self"  which means, as "anti" properly implies, as that which can adjoin the initial identity in the scene of our contemplation.  It is for utilitarian purposes, in psychology, "taken to be" the "subjective self" central to so many discussions.  It is implied that another PERSON has a self, and therefore is somehow the other pole of any affects of an adjoining personal self that processes affects of object-relational kinds.  They may be internalized (internally identified) "objects" which are the instances of the expression of an authoritative "other object"


It is also the awareness (ethico-cognitive) of the transgression of a sense of moral coherence in the person which doesn't necessarily find itself merely informed from an external source of standard-bearing behavior of others.  It reflects instead a common domain of innately existing standards which seems to originate from a "higher commons" which CANNOT BE internalized per se, but rather MAKE UP a core element of being a person at all, of any kind, anywhere,  in any universe.  It is guilt as the debilitation of an innate faculty for developing proper expression of oneself as an inherently full member of an already exitsing, or transcendentally existing community of standards which establishes the standards of a given community.  It is inborn in the manifestations of that being's sovereign expressions of personhood in its fundamental exultation (in each instance of which, existentially and concretely, hence the urge to say "exultations" with an 's').  It has an inner feeling, as sense of well-being AS SUCH.  It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is that a being can so directly experience itself, and not merely in some sense of an "interpreted noumenon".  j

This "close" of direct access that a self has to itself is a parallel to sacredness itself, because its immanence is directly a correlate to an immanence in connection between one's own being and a parent being, which was a sort of "being in itself" that gave one's own being birth into itself.... into being, but as a novel  part of the whole structure, novel RELATIVE TWO the "parent" beings, who are themselves nevertheless REMANIFESTED AS THEMSELVES in these yet novel beings which are their progeny.  And yet, really, this is a reflection of a COMMON SIBLINGHOOD with one's own progeny, with respect to a  YET HIGHER Higher Commons.. This is where the sciences of the human personality must eventually integrate itself with the trancendentally immanent concerns of theology.

The key thing is that this is structurally present within the "being".  It is not BEING AS OBJECT, nor is it BEING AS SUBJECT, but it is BEING IN RELATION, and that is to say in relation TO ITSELF through internally generated proxies.  The first being, "THE ONE" is ineffably related to itself since it is all being, ALL OF being, per definitionem.  But the further reaches of its own reality are remanifested in its own "close" as it remanifests itself into orderly fragments of its own unity, which are themselves similarly singular, both as singularities "in themSELVES" with an emphasis in our minds on their PLURALITY, but also as EACH IN ITSELF as an epitome of the Originating Unity which is parental TO THEM ALL, and in a way EVEN UNTO ITSELF.  In THIS way they are each also such beings IN THEM SELVES, but in this case also with their plurality reminded to us, but not as central to the idea of their identities.  It is not that they have a common parentage, but that they are children AT ALL with all that implies metaphysically.  

What it implies critically is that they are IN RELATION, and as the Jr. Member (not pluralized, but unitized) of that relation....   YET, by what THAT RELATION IN ITS ESSENCE entails is having IDENTITY in the essence of the ORIGINAL SELF REALITY, having that defined nature, which is NATURE AS SUCH as well.  It is that existential and concrete form of the universal, as found in what is of universal magnitude (all of the total universe).  It is therefore SELF AS SUCH, in its original unity.  BUT IT IS NOT PEFECT..........EVER

God is not perfect, in other words, and nor are God's Children.

And in this context we begin to see a broader, and more qualitatively overflowing sense of what feelings of bonds may form in such beings as an inherent expression of their psychological natures when they manifest in certain forms to each other (in our universe for example, in these bodies elementally and perse, as the human form of these bodies, etc).  This is the notion of GODHEAD as a plurality.  This is also the idea of all manifest reality as a PHENOMENALITY.  Phenomena are precedent to any given phenomenon, and are primarily PLURAL. This is interesting in that it is an inherently non-Platonic intuition on the one hand, in that the "indefinite dyad" is not a unified form BY ITS NATURE, but yet has a pre-eminanance of equal footing to ANY unified form, at least in relation to its own subjects (self-instantiations, child remanifestations of itself).  It is THE FUNDAMENTAL FRACTAD, which could be found to be, mathematically, the fractal which refers to an entity that is most fundamentally representative of any forms in existence wherein the whole and parts relate at all.  It is the "Standard Bearer" of the entire Community of Beings, which is no light company to keep in bearing standards!!

Yet it They have Gravity, IT has Gravitas.  It has their distilled essence, as it were, as its ONLY mode of expression, which is to say, THEY, the Community of Beings IS the fundamental mode of expression which is also the ONLY mode of expression of this SUI GENERIS Being, which is therefore the ONLY mode of BEING.   And therefore, SO ARE THEY. 

So the relation of beings, is just as important as any beings.  This is manifested "eachly" in their own beings-as-suchness which means that RELATION is fundamental to BEING ITSELF.

In such relations of acceptance, therefore, moral being is the personal interaction of such Beings which implies a commonality of interest of a profound sort...  a commonality of WELL BEING.  And that is not to say some "subjective idea of being well" that we use in colloquial parlance of the word "well being", such as your health care provider understands (or supposedly does).  It is the WellNESS of Being-as-SUCH.  By implication, it is Well-Being as SUCH.

That is profound.  If something goes wrong here, then ALL OF EXISTENCE IS AT STAKE.  This is why the individuated psyche is able to manifest a sense of such a thing in the first place.  It is not a distorted form of a primitive instinct in the Darwinian sense, which is provable in the sense which is "merely scientific".  It is a directly experienced reality of the deepest order, of both experience and of reality simultaneously!!  It is not subject to "debate" IN RES, IN SUBSTANTIA.  It is the MOST SUBSTANTIATED PHENOMENON, so no discussion of "proof" is going to outweigh it by any contrivance of local and relative standards.  Otherwise you wouldI have alienated "other realities" rather than Commonly Related Parts which are of a Fractally Related Whole. 

So if something does go wrong here, it is WRONG AS SUCH.  And so in this case morality is revealed directly and deductively as a faculty of awareness of a being of its fundamental ontological status of well-being in a community of beings which are each parts of being as such.  These could never be reducible into forms of matter which are dichotemized from them.  This is not to say that dichotomies don't exist either.  In fact it is to stress that they exist.  For the first dichotomy that has ever existed is one wedged into these relations, such that one has become ALIENATED from its "fellows".  It has been DIS-FELLOWSHIPED, or in a possible case.... "UN"FELLOWSHIPED (because unfellowshipable, as it were). Not being a fellow being is the essence of being disgraced, which is internally recognized as guilt when it is a fall from grace recognized instantly and internally without need for community reinforcement.  What is SHAME is something conditionally related to a particular community in ways that are not of themselves essentially moral EXCEPT in that they participate in the forms of moral expression.  It is where we derive a sense of the outward and ceremonial of rites, rather than the inward and substantive SACRED.  In its most sacred form, these forms of expression are called "Sacraments" and are not necessarily tokens of experience of the Sacred but are also instances of its being felt by itself, concretely, as the Sacred Remanifested.

Guilt comes from this disenfranchisement, but it is fundamentally ALIEN, because there is no cause for alienation in the original reality.  In fact, it is the ESSENCE of community AS SUCH.  In each person the whole community is reflected, and in the community each person is reflected "as a whole" in the institutions of it, for example, if it is a TRUE and HEALTHY community.  So this "dis"enfranchisement is really, at root, an "UN"enfranchisement, with NO OPTION TO BE "given" a franchise!  That has to be the most VILE and EVIL state possible.  It would be by its nature irresolvably and irrevocably out of relation except as a "worst possible" relation.  Indeed, is is THE ONLY BAD RELATION, and it is already the WORST possible form of itself.  ALL its forms of expression are destructive of the normal processing of bonds of relation of the already existing and enfranchised Beings.

Evil is inherently alien to our universe.  It is automatically Eldritch.  And if there is any being deserving of "guilt" feelings, as "bad" it is this being, yet it is precisely THIS being which CANNOT FEEL SUCH A FEELING.  In fact, given that it entails a "fall from grace" it implies having HAD Grace, and this is something such an evil being never had.  It is in fact true of ANY truly evil being.

It is when a Good and True Being has been under the negative influence of "the anti-Being-as-such", that evil takes its course.  Evil as such, outside of interaction with the Good, CANNOT BECOME A DISCOURSE until that event occurs.  It is outside the Realm of Reality or "Irreal" until precisely that moment of first contact when the first victim-aggressor relation is obtained in the history of all universes. That is "major" if you will.  Much more major than any minor world that breaks apart when an "ego" gets a psychological equivalent of a hemmoraging bruise.  Even a psychopathic personality is capable of ruminating about such relations in his local environment which "ought to" faciliate certain behaviors and social interactoins.  The ego of such a being is "very well adjusted".