STARTING TOMORROW: Manifestations!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2023

The (unelectable) hopefuls: Long ago and far away, it emerged as a type of alleged philosophical problem.

More precisely, it has been described as a paradox—as the "irresistible force paradox." Historically, the conundrum has taken this form:

What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?

So runs the ancient paradox. The leading authority on the miasma thumbnails it as shown:

Irresistible force paradox

The irresistible force paradox...is a classic paradox formulated as "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" The immovable object and the unstoppable force are both implicitly assumed to be indestructible, or else the question would have a trivial resolution. Furthermore, it is assumed that they are two entities.

[...]

An example of this paradox in eastern thought can be found in the origin of the Chinese word for contradiction. This term originates from a story in the 3rd century BC philosophical book Han Feizi. In the story, a man trying to sell a spear and a shield claimed that his spear could pierce any shield, and then claimed that his shield was unpierceable. Then, asked about what would happen if he were to take his spear to strike his shield, the seller could not answer...

Another ancient and mythological example illustrating this theme can be found in the story of the Teumessian fox, which can never be caught, and the hound Laelaps, which never misses what it hunts. Realizing the paradox, Zeus, Lord of the Sky, turns both creatures into static constellations.

What happens if the uncatchable fox is chased by the unescapable hound? In such ways, the ancients of the western world attempted to explore the geography of reason.

Presumably, the sheer stupidity of this formulation pretty much speaks for itself. Today, though, we face a similar type of conceptual pseudo-problem. We'd thumbnail the problem as shown:

What happens when one unelectable candidate is running against another?

In theory, neither candidate could be elected. But under the rules of the game, one would have to win!

Our current conundrum involves the candidacies of former president Donald J. Trump and current president Joseph R. Biden. 

Assuming each man appears on the ballot next year, we ourselves will be voting for President Biden. But according to very recent rules of thumb, each of these candidates might seem to be unelectable.

What happens when one unelectable candidate is running against another? At present, we're learning some of the answers to this new type of conceptual problem.

Part of what happens is this:

Various attention-seekers and borderline crackpots will also get into the race. In the current circumstance, the two such figures who have already surfaced will almost surely pull more votes away from Candidate Biden.

It's also true that any such circumstance will likely lie near the end of a very long, extremely bumpy, highly embarrassing road. In the current circumstance, as we the people have moved down that road, our moral and intellectual capacities have routinely been tested.

Our capacities have routinely been tested. Routinely, they've been tested and they have failed. 

This very morning, we cringed as we watched Fox & Friends pseudo-journalist Brian Kilmeade pretend to discuss the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Kilmeade is an undisguised partisan propagandist from the red side of the American tribal divide. But the widespread inability to function has been apparent within the liberal and mainstream press corps worlds for the past five decades too.

That said, it seems that Norman O. Brown may have had it right. 

Way back in the 1960s, Professor Brown seemed to think that he could see it coming. In a 1960 Phi Beta Kappa address, he issued this opaque warning:

BROWN (May 1960): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...And so there comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

In liberal circles, Brown was very hot at the time. He's rarely mentioned today.

(Brown died in 2002. To peruse his lengthy obit in the New York Times, you can just click here.)

Norman O. Brown was very hot when he issued that opaque statement. That said, we had no real idea what he meant at the time, and neither did anyone else. 

In real time, no one knew what Professor Brown was talking about. Fifty years later, it seems that he may have had it right!

Within the red world, but also within the blue, our capacities have routinely been tested. and routinely they have failed. Simply put, it seems that our imperfect human brains weren't built for this sort of work. 

As the week proceeds, we'll offer a handful of manifestations, possibly reaching all the way back to the hapless pseudo-journalism of the 1990s.

Previous empires have come and have gone. Anthropologically, it seems to us that we the humans simply weren't built for this task!

Full disclosure: By the end of the week, we may identify the "new mystery" which has to be discovered!