If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts have their own menu page above.
Other links: The Band on Gab; The Band on Oneway
This is a very speculative post that follows some fundamental patterns in our understanding of reality. The look into fake nationalism and American Progress! will resume next time.
Sometimes large patterns appear that need further thought. One danger in thinking broadly is mistaking similarities for meaningful connections - a variation on the common correlation/causation error akin to seeing faces in the clouds. The Band is a good vehicle for laying out ideas in different formats, so it makes sense to arrange some pieces here and see how they hang together. It's more a process of sharing a series of impressions than a tightly structured argument, but at the most general level, impressions are what we have to work with.
Leonid Afremov, Trip to the Dream, palette knife oil painting on canvas
The thing about impressions is that they are uncertain, so you have to be careful about taking them for "reality". But they are good for indicating the lay of the land and where to look more closely.
Start with setting a frame of reference. The Band frequently emphasizes the compatibility between Christian and empirical epistemologies - click for the post. The basic graphical representation is reproduced here.
The graphic is a simple depiction of the alignment between epistemological modes - how we create knowledge - and ontological categories - levels of reality.
The left column is empirical observation extended by logic.
This is how to build reliable knowledge from a finite human perspective and was the basis of what was called the "Scientific Method" - a process of making cumulative verifiable hypotheses now used as cover by Science!.
The right column is called faith because it refers to knowledge claims about things that are beyond empirical verification. This refers to universals and absolutes - eternal truths, divinity, ultimate reality - all things that are by nature external to material certainty.
Although thought pictures can be revealing, they are abstractions - allegories, really - figural representations of patterns that are not what what they represent. Conceptual analogies chosen to highlight some specific trait(s). Something like "Christian epistemology" is a discursive construct, and discursive constructs are only as good as their alignment with reality.
Test big picture ideas - are they logically consistent? Do they correspond with empirical observation?
Useful thought pictures are empirically credible and direct us where to look more closely.
Postmodern allegories are just
James Ferguson, Apparent motion of the Sun, Mercury, and Venus from the earth, engraved by Andrew Bell for Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st ed., 1771, vol. 1, fig. 2, pl. XL opposite pg. 449.
Abstracts that do not conform to reality must be rethought, rather than being tortured and twisted in the manner of the Ptolemaic hemicycles.
Obviously, broad general patterns miss huge amounts of detail - this is an inevitable consequence of shifting range - but they do need to be consistent at that general level. If what the Band calls the Finite world - the limited knowledge of the universe that is empirically knowable - is compatible with the Christian concept of the Fallen world, they will correspond on a fundamental level. They will at least correspond more closely than the fake Enlightenment faith in in secular transcendence does with either of them. The question:
If Christian and empirical epistemologies
are structurally compatible, what does a
Fallen world look like?
Beyond the obvious facts like everything untended collapsing, self-interest as the primary human motivator, and all life ending in death.
Our simple epistemology/ontology graphic up above shows that the Christian notion of the Fallen world aligns with what we referred to as an empirical or "Finite" world. Finite world is a term that the Band is using for convenience and for its similarity to Fallen visually and phonetically. It is not a claim about the fundamental nature of the universe - whether it can be conceived as finite as humans understand spatio-temporal limits - but about our ability to perceive that true nature, whatever it might be.
Limits of discernment is just a concise way of acknowledging how limited the range of our perception is. Much of our history of progress has been figuring out ways to stretch this. Instruments extend sensory range, while logic allows us to draw conclusions about things beyond even their scope.
But the increased powers of observation have not brought clarity.
And mathematics have become ever more complex to try and accommodate what appears to be an increasingly vast and incomprehensible universe, likewise without final resolution
One consequence of this is a gap between what we can express symbolically through math or pictures, and the experiential conditions of human existence. We can represent or describe the idea of emergent spacetime, but it is impossible for us to conceptualize in terms of the apparent Newtonian world of experience that we inhabit.
Consider Time - it is often called the 4th Dimension because, according to spatial relativity, time and space are intrinsically connected. Mathematically, this differs from hypothetical 4-dimensional Euclidian space, which is simply adding another co-ordinate axis to a 3D graph. Minkowski spacetime does differentiate between the natures of space and time, but combines them in ways that account for observable problems like time dilation that Euclidean space alone cannot.
Static representation of Minkowski space with the time "axis" defining converging past and future conically. Unlike Euclidean space, the interval between two points is not purely a measure of "distance" but describes a spatial relatively that is consistent with Einstein.
This relationship is very different from the one we observe experientially, where space refers to solids and voids without constraint on amplitude or direction and time is a unidirectional flow.
Time cannot be observed directly, but is a linear, non-spatial sequence that, from our perspective, moves in one direction.
Time travel is "theoretically" possible in the sense that a hypothetical speed in excess to that of light could reverse temporal direction, but this is so far removed from the world of experience it's irrelevant.
In the empirical world that we inhabit, with its apparent basis in Newtonian physics, time is a one-way sequence.
Mathematically, time appears intrinsically linked to space. Observationally, it seems more like an measure of spatial change. That both can be true is indicative of the limits of discernment that we are talking about. But this lack of clarity goes deeper. Mathematical modelling is an allegorical process, and, as such, is descriptive rather than prescriptive in origin but able to project abstract hypotheticals well beyond what can be confirmed empirically.
Allegory is most commonly defined as a literary trope or rhetorical device that uses metaphors, symbols, figural language, etc. to refer to meanings beyond the literal. In the visual arts, it uses pictures to refer to more abstract concepts. The word itself comes from ancient Greek for "speaking other" - using something to signify something else. But this understanding of allegory is limited to one semiotic system - allegorical elements signify as 'not literal' because they deviate from the conventional understanding of a word or symbol in a language or tradition.
Actually, when you think about it, any language or symbolic system is allegorical/"figurative" by nature because they are all inherently translative. They are literally not the same thing as what they represent.
Remember our semiotic posts? Those different theories of signs were ways of describing this allegorical or translative process. Each tries to account for the difference between the representation and the thing(s) represented.
Nietzsche observed this almost a century and a half ago, though his inference that this abolished truth is more consistent with the syphilitic raving aspect of his intellect than the canonical philosopher one.
Transposing empirically different things into a common symbolic register lets us identify logical commonalities across domains. It lets us codify, communicate, and store information and ideas. Since different semiotic systems have different characteristics, the nature of this information and ideas depends on or dictates the system we use.
Quantification is descriptive, in that it describes things with a common, internally transparent and translatable semiotic system of absolute precision and incredible versatility. It can even project hypothetical and future operations with a truth-value that is only limited by the quality of the inputs.
But it isn't the same thing as the actual thing that it is describing. It is an abstraction that expresses reveals certain kinds of relationships between superficially different things, but like any abstraction, clarity in one area blocks out and obscures obscuring differences in others.
For example:
Sumerian numbers. The earliest mathematical tools were most likely numbers - precise information about the number of certain things. It's worth going way back because it is at the simplest level that the descriptive nature of quantification is most clear.
Old Sumerian clay tablet, probably from Early Dynastic IIIa Shuruppak, Schoyen Collection, MS 3047
The oldest known mathematical text and only pre-Babylonian example of a geometric progression gives the areas of 6 rectangles in the ratio 1:60.
The development of operations allowed math to project and extrapolate beyond the count and measure of things. These multiplications give accurate dimensions for figures that may not actually exist. The information is consistent with our experience of reality without being the same thing as it.
Simple operations lead to entities that are mathematically significant but non-existent in the material world. Math moves from the world as we experience it into into relationships that are logical but not directly knowable through empirical means.
This is a move from perceptual to conceptual.
Minkowski space and Relativity are complex mathematical allegories for anomalous observations with refined modern equipment.
Here, instruments and math are extending the limits of discernment, although in an abstract way. We are no longer in the world of direct experience, but are dealing with things that can be indirectly verified by empirical evidence.
But refinements in our observational technology has raised more problems that haven't been accounted for. At this point, mathematical allegory becomes purely conceptual. We can detect time dilation. But the additional dimensions of something like string theory or quantum foam cannot even be imagined in terms of a Cartesian material universe.
These sorts of theories will never be proven in an empirically recognizable way/
Math explains what is observed with quantitative allegories, but the abstraction of the allegories project beyond the experiential into the conceptual. This is where the gap appears between what is mathematically possible and what is materially possible. It is possible to "reverse" the flow of time with faster than light speeds, but those are cannot be attained in the empirical world as we know it.
We definitely can't have bubbles of Cartesian space transiting wormholes like a colorful subway. This is the gap between the conceptually real allegory and the empirical experience.
Experientially, time is unidirectional. Temporality in that material universe may not appear to flow evenly, but it goes one way. This has enormous implications for our understanding of our finite empirical world and would have spelled the end of the fake absolutes of Enlightenment rationalism had globalists been intellectually honest. Consider:
The Band refers to the fundamental error of the Enlightenment as secular transcendence - the false transposition of absolutes into the finite material world. Material causes had to be invented for things that are not ontologically knowable through material means. The notion of an eternal universe was essential to this - the Christian universe was temporal and the creator is eternal, maintaining the absolute/finite reality distinction. An eternal universe "solves" the need for a creator by bringing the absolute into the material.
Constantino Brumidi, The Apotheosis of Washington, 1865, fresco, United States Capitol Building, Washington
Enlightenment thought was also built on a Satanic inversion, where circumstantial factors are imagined into absolute certainties. In this case the absolute - universally true natural laws - were really just projections of the knee-jerk anti-Christian sentiment of the "thinkers" of the era. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the central theme in Enlightenment ideology is pretending that all the positive cultural aspects of Christianity were naturally occurring.
James Ferguson, Grand Orrery, circa 1780, yew, brass, ivory, steel
Enlightenment thought presumed an eternal universe, because endless time meant that any probability, no matter how small, eventually had to happen somewhere. Things like the spontaneous generation of life in perfectly balanced circumstances is a certainty given truly infinite time and space.
This eternal universe appeared to be explained by Newtonian mathematics and was pictured as a sort of perpetual motion machine.
The problem, as with all misplaced faiths, is empirical. The Enlightenment myth of human perfectibility assumed the technical progress associated with the Scientific Revolution culminated in the apotheosis of human knowledge. The core of the false assumption regarding the universe: better math and instruments upset the Ptolemaic model therefore the universe is eternal! Unfortunately, empirical progress has revealed the opposite - after all, secular transcendence is built on Satanic inversion. There's a pattern:
Look at the history:
The simplest limits are line of sight and length of memory. From this perspective, the skies seem to follow an unvarying pattern that fits the timeless heavens. The mathematicians described this geometrically with nested spheres.
The first enhancements involved measuring and recording. A bigger data set revealed that the regular cyclical movement wasn't as regular as thought. The mathematicians kept up with more complex patterns, until flipping earth and sun made more sense.
The telescope extended the limits of optical discernment and allowed a close look at the spheres. And what we found was more complexity. Math kept up with more complex models.
Even more confusingly, the universe appears to be expanding! This implies an inherent temporality that calls the Enlightenment eternal universe into question, to be charitable. Relativity was the mathematical allegory here.
Radio telescopes revealed distant structures like quasars that are experientially inconceivable. The signal is also billions of years old, meaning it is empirically impossible to know what is going on in deep space now.
The Hubble Space Telescope promised a revolutionary leap in our limits of discernment. Turns out this makes things more unclear. It appears the expansion of the universe is accelerating, sinking oscillating universe models and driving the mathematicians to increasingly wild allegories.
It's consistent - the further we extend our range of discernment - the further we can "see" - the murkier, further, and incomprehensible the scale of the universe becomes. Put another way:
As the telescopes get better, the edge keeps getting further away.
But it is worse. An expanding universe means that the "edge" - whatever that is - really is speeding away from us, meaning that limits of discernment are fundamental to the nature of reality. And what is it expanding into? A speculative mathematical hypothesis? Something external to spacetime cannot be conceptualized in terms of spacetime. More on this in a moment.
There is a similar limit of discernment with extreme smallness as well. As with the view outward, improved instruments have not brought clarity.
Robert Hooke, Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses..., pub. The Royal Society, 1665; title page and microscope
Like the telescope, the microscope extended our range of perception, but each improvement in magnification revealed a more complex picture. .
CERN's Large Hadron Collider and a representation of atoms and quarks.
Leptons and quarks appear to be the smallest entities we can infer, but that is more likely the limit of discernment rather than absolute physical "indivisibility". Put more simply, what is a quark made of? Why is there such a variance in mass? Is it misleading to speak of "mass" as distinct from energy in sub-atomic theoretical entities defined by spin?
We are at the limits of the empirical, while the mathematicians frantically spin allegories to keep up. Is is surprising that their phantasms hold no water?
Consider supersymmetry - a mathematical fantasy that dissolved in the reality of the Large Hadron Collider revealing exactly NONE of the non-Standard Model particles that the fantasists assumed were real. The book title states things that empirically do not exist with a suggestion of progress, while the graphical translation of a mathematical allegory makes it more "scientific".
The good news is that we are NOW on the cusp of rewriting the laws of physics. You can always add dimensions.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, "Worlds within worlds", Fantastic Four 75, June 1968, Marvel Comics
If these fumbling numerologists were less arrogant, the time and money wasted chasing the limits of discernment would just be irritating. But their light streaks, mathematical wizardry, and continually changing allegories perpetuate the evidently false Enlightenment claim of secular transcendence or that Science! can offer absolute knowledge in the material world.
Like seeing the limits of the expanding universe, the likelihood that mathematical descriptions are nearing the foundation of anything is also speeding towards zero.
Notice how the further we push these fuzzy edges, the more our experiential understanding of reality breaks down. Our most powerful telescopes describe a terrifying vision of deep space filled with incomprehensible entities, and if we could even approach the speed of light, space and time behave in ways that contradict experiential reality. At extremely small sizes Newtonian physics gives way to quantum relationships, which is not reassuring.
KUFLEX, Quantum Space, 2015, Interactive Installation, 12th Athens Digital Arts Festival
Solidity turns out to be an illusion. We are literally mostly empty space.
We live in a literal world of illusion.
This is the empirical, experientially limited, Finite world. Not only are any foundations beyond the limits of our discernment, the more we refine our observational tools, the more impossible finding such bases appears. Quantum uncertainties and spacetime interaction are so far removed from our experience of the world that they are allegories of allegories struggling with increasingly bizarre data. And beyond that is unknowable.
We call it the Finite world because it is cut off empirically and ontologically from the absolute.
Consider the limits of discernment. Locally, we experience a world of empirically consistent Newtonian solid body physics. But the further we push, the more this clarity gives way to incomprehensibility. This is the opposite to Enlightenment fake secular transcendence.
The Finite world is knowable empirically in a limited way, but absolute Truths are out of reach. Hence the need for faith.
Then what is the Fallen world?
The Finite world is based on the limited ability of mathematical allegories to capture the nature of ultimate reality, while the Fallen world is expressed in the figural language of Biblical allegory. They both point to things that cannot be perceived directly, but with totally distinct semiotic systems. But remember what we know about allegories - the are only as valuable as the information they communicate.
The cognitively limited atheist types like to point out that the Bible is "unscientific" because they are incapable of grasping the conceptual transferrances that allegory requires. Figural language and numbers look different because as sign systems they are, with utterly incompatible expectations and syntax. But they are sign systems. Of course they are different qua themselves. What matters is what are they signifying.
Confusing the sign for the subject is the disqualifying kind of stupid we see in Postmodernists too. It seems to stem from an inability to understand partial difference.
The Band has looked at the idea of the Fall before so a short recap is enough here. It refers to the notion that humanity exists in a degraded state that is represented by the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Note that the Edenic state prefigures death or the appearance of humanity - it isn't something we can ever "get back to" in material reality. Eden is an ideal against which we can define the nature of our fallen reality. Ignore the Utopians and look at it as an allegorical representation of something that can't be seen directly. The Fall defines experiential reality - the human condition - as inherently limited.
Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, c. 1617, oil on panel, 74.3 cm × 114.7 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
Eden is a metaphysical condition - free from death, illness, or suffering and with a clear perception direct knowledge of God. It is a perfect alignment of discernment and reality that is impossible in our finite world.
As a moral allegory, the Fall is the archetypal human expression of Satanic inversion. The vain placement of one's own desire over God's will replaces the path of Edenic clarity with the fog and confusion of material existence.
Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828, oil on canvas, 100.9 x 138.4, cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The fallen world is one that is cut off from experiential truth and filled with lies. It is a a "vale of tears" ruled by the Father of Lies and built of inversion and false promises that always end in death. In other words, it is an illusion, where things are not really what they appear to be.
Biblical allegory is qualitative rather than quantitative - it describes this uncertainty with figural language. Consider these superficially contradictory passages that the Band has frequently drawn on:
Caravaggio, The Inspiration of St. Matthew, 1602, oil on canvas, 292 × 186 cm; The Conversion of St. Paul, 1601, oil on canvas, 230 cm × 175 cm
The first quote tells us that empirical observation is reliable in our immediate environment, while the second - a reference to clear knowledge of God - says knowledge of absolutes is not possible in this world. For this, all we have is allegory.
We call it the Fallen world because it is fallen empirically and ontologically from the absolute.
Consider the limits of discernment. Locally, we experience a world of empirically consistent Newtonian solid body physics. But the further we push, the more this clarity gives way to incomprehensibility. This is the opposite to Enlightenment fake secular transcendence.
See a pattern?
What we called the limits of discernment in the Finite world align with illusory nature of the Fallen one.
Back to Time
We've already seen that the expansion of our universe implies a unidirectional flow of time, or temporality. Whatever preceded the point of origin or currently "exists" outside our expanding spacetime cannot be defined in what we conceive as spatio-temporal terms. The Finite world is temporal. Biblically, life before the Fall was essentially timeless. The expulsion from the Garden was an expulsion into time, represented by aging, death, and the tale of years. The Fallen world is temporal. Neither has any place for secular transcendence - eternals and absolutes belong to faith.
John Faed, Expulsion of Adam and Eve, circa 1880, oil on canvas
If we translate across allegorical registers, we see different ways of expressing an empirical reality that is temporal and illusory.
This is where entropy comes in.
If we think of this spatially, dispursal, decentering, or deconcentrating all work better than disorder or chaos.
Translating this movement towards undifferentiated equilibrium into our experiential world, the decentering and dissolution of entropy does look like decay or falling apart. Complex structures like buildings, societies, and organisms represent "concentrations" of energy and structured matter. Over time, they age and eventually crumble - if the center cannot hold, then the pieces fall into a less differentiated state. Erosion, decay, societal collapse.are "entropic" conceptually in that they represent the deconcentration and diffusion of complex structures into atomized equilibrium.
This means that the Finite universe is
entropic by nature.
In the standard model, the time that we perceive begins with the Big Bang - a description rather than an explanation of the sudden appearance of spacetime from an unknowable extra-temporal source. It describes our universe as the aftermath of burst of primordial creative action, when all that exists appeared in a single state of absolute centralized unity that has expanded outward ever since. This expansion, with it cooling and coalescence into different forms, is an ongoing process of decentering and dispersal.
This is inherently entropic. And since the expansion is defined temporally, it is fair to call the time in the Finite world entropic as well.
To sum up:
The Fallen world isn't allegorized mathematically, but it also begins with temporality and is characterized by decay and dissolution. It is fair to call the time in this world entropic as well, within the parameters of its system of representation.
To sum up:
But life endures.
In an illusory world of entropic temporality, life represents a counter-pressure with the ability to create new life and construct complex systems.Individual organisms begin as generative potential before concentrating energy and growing in complexity.
Eventually entropy proves inexorable and the lifeform breaks down, dies, and decomposes. But propagation resets the process in fleeting resistance to universal dissolution.
Humans go further, building social and physical structures that carve improved material and psycho-social conditions from an entropic world. It is a group undertaking - families build clans build nations - and requires constant effort. The ancients called time the destroyer Without maintenance, buildings and mores decay.
There are two directions to go from here:
Our best nature seeks to plant trees - long time preferences hedge against the chaos and dissolution of the entropic nature of temporality. It faces the reality of this Fallen Finite world rather than wallowing in self-serving dreams. This is familiar:
REALITY
over
DESIRE
Our worst nature drinks the rent money - short time preferences maximize vulnerability to the chaos and dissolution of the entropic temporality. This is the Satanic inversion.
DESIRE
over
REALITY
Or put temporally,
FLEETING IMPRESSIONS
over
LASTING TRUTH
See the pattern? The self-centeredness of the Satanic inversion expressed temporally is the short time preference associated with vanity and social entropy. It is the abandonment of the defining human characteristic of pushing back against dissolution in favor of fleeting acts of will. It is literally a commitment to the entropic temporality that defines the Fallen Finite world.
Master of the Rebel Angels, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, circa 1340, oil and gold on wood, 64 x 29 cm, Louvre Museum
The Fall of Adam and Eve is itself a repetition of Satan's primordial solipsism - choosing the material illusion of "rule" over acceptance of ontological reality. He is described as the Prince of the entropic, temporal, and illusory existence that they are expelled into. Father of Lies is another fitting epithet.
But look past the literal for the allegorical representation of something beyond our direct grasp. The Prince of this World embodies the same condition of entropic temporality that is a defining characteristic of the Fallen world of experience.
The mathematical allegory - physics - and the scriptural allegory - the Fall of the Rebel Angels - describe the same entropic, temporal, illusory, material state.
Restated for emphasis because this is sort of mind-bending when it sinks in:
If the entropic temporality of the Finite world and Satanic character of the Fallen world are representations of the same reality, this pattern should be consistent elsewhere. Biblical allegory reflects on moral and social conditions, while mathematical ones stick to the material world. Entropy as a thermodynamic concept belongs to a different information category than "Satanic" - one wouldn't characterize nuclear decay as Satanic any more than you'd call moral decline as entropic. But these are allegorical frames of reference that capture one aspect of something we can't see directly. The question isn't whether the signs are different - what do they point at?
Does the concept of entropy translate to the socio-cultural domain?
The Band has already characterized Postmodern globalism as structurally Satanic. Is it fair to call it entropic?
Let's see, no borders, no families, no nations, no genders, no merit - essentially no structure. That's what entropic dissolution looks like in a socio-cultural context.
Dissolving the counter-entropic creative powers of life into an undiferentiated goo of 'do what thou wilt' is a Satanic inversion AND an attack on social and cultural complexity. It literally puts entropy over truth.
The Church of Satan is open about the entropic nature of their dyscivic ideology, although the ontology is incoherent and/or dishonest as one would expect.
The official Satanist position is basically hedonism, but insofar as there is a coherent metaphysics, it is the Luciferian 'be your own God'. They redefine entropy as creative destruction - dissolution and dismantling of society {is entropic} to clear the way for survival of the fittest.
In reality, this is not a desirable state of affairs. In reality,the endpoint of social entropy is atavism...
Barry Windsor-Smith, Conan the Barbarian # 1, October 1970, Marvel Comics
...and they didn't have indoor plumbing in the Hyperborean Age
Allegories conceptualize things that can't be known directly, but they easily lie. As human creations they are only as good as their creator. We can judge allegory by its practical value - how well they correspond to empirical reality. Improvements in instrumentation stretched the limits of discernment and slowly demolished Enlightenment allegories of secular transcencence, though some seem slow to get the message.
What do our Fallen and Finite allegories have to say?
What does a fallen world look like? Look around you.
Edit: Click for part 2; illustration.