The nature of Abstract & Material Realities assesses claims like TENS & r/K selection theory
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Image based on Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, Hemisphaerium Coeli Boreale, a celestial chart dated 1730 & probably designed around 1720. This version published by Johann Baptist Homann in 1742.
Crossing streams a little here. This isn't an arts of the West post, although the pattern is applicable to modern artistic inversion. The metaphysics book has us thinking about the specific mechanisms of ontological relationships in a more thorough way. Art posting is focused on the slow metastatic history of that cultural inversion process. There's a natural synergy – “art” exists as a concept abstractly but manifests ultimate reality materially. Its essential nature - what we define as logos plus techne or skilled craft and truth - straddles ontological divisions. And this brings immaterial relationships into view.
This post thinks practically about how we experience abstract and material realities. How the nature of these ontological relationships gives us a key to make productive judgments based on what can and cannot be. Practical is essential is there is to be any material value in all this abstract thought. By the fruits... Plus working through applicability stress tests the framework by exposing overlooked leaps and assumptions. So after some relevant considerations what can or can’t be real categorically, we'll move into some examples of how abstract/material relations quickly clarify truth and falsehood. Being socialized into a beast script means vertical logos isn't intuitive to the modern mind. But most can get it once they see it, and when they do, they can carve through a lot of House of Lies illusion.
Frederic Edwin Churck, A Country Home, 1854, Seattle Art Museum; The Peter Hemmel von Andlau Workshop, The Trinity with the Virgin, Saints John the Evangelist, Stephen and Lawrence and a Donor, 1479, J. Paul Getty Museum
R/K selection theory is an abstract societal model that overlaps some of our earlier posts conceptually. Opposite is the modern art narrative – in this case triggered by a Hudson River School exhibition catalog we found preparing posts for a closed site. If space permits, we may look as the Trinity as well. It's come up in circles the Band frequents but is also just a great example of something that becomes ontologically clear and unambiguous when you step out of Flatland. Not to endorse the theology - the specific parameters are based in faith. But to explain what the conceptual possibility isn't mysterious outside of Flatland.
This is a strange group of examples with different truth values - largely real, largely fake, and unresolvable - from wildly different areas. The reason is maximum applicability. The House of Lies seems daunting when first perceived. It's so comprehensive and integrated, with every lie interwoven with countless others. But all the entanglements rest on a relatively simple foundational inversion. The incoherent post-Enlightenment materialist dogma that pretends absolute Truth is accessible qua absolute Truth to temporal, subjective human minds but also that there is nothing beyond the material. What we call Flatland for the willful disregard of obvious and logically necessary ontological distinctions. And since the problem is an underlying misconception of reality reverberating through all the countless aspects of the House of Lies, it makes sense to apply the solution to wildly disparate manifestations.
[Note - evolution, r/K selection, and the House of Lies were as far as we got. It turned out to be way more interesting and insightful than we expected. The general stuff is still relevant but the art narrative and the Trinity will have to wait for next time.]
About truth - both in the logos part of art as logos + techne, and in reality in general. Obviously ultimate reality is beyond representational apprehension. Beyond logic or empirical observation or comprehensibility of any kind. But as the meta-infinite, non-definitionally constinctive basis for all that is, it is the objectivity - or Objectivity - necessary for objective truth of any form.
Gustave Doré & Kalki, Color modification of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari Gazing into the Empyrean Light, 1867
If interested in where these claims come from, here are the links to part 1 and part 2 of the draft preview of the metaphysics book. If not interested in further explanation in the metaphysics book chapter, the tl,dr is that the very existence of truth as what is in a stable reality depends on there being a "what is" as the basis of it all. God qua God for reasons explained over many posts. “Ultimate reality” is the categorical term. “God” simply recognizes characteristics known by faith.
Whatever the nomenclature, something that manifests or expresses truths is bridging the Ontological Hierarchy. It is reflecting what IS in a way that reduces its ultimate incommensurability into an accommodation appropriate to the level of reality.
We noted that the impetus for this post is coming from a Hudson River School catalog put out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1988. [Note - we don't actually get to this. But it's worth leaving this part of the original intro here because it leads into the larger truth discussion that we do develop.] We'll look at it more closely later in the next post, but it's relevant to explain why artistic inversion is a topic with generally ontologically relevance. There's a larger pattern to how the fake truth claims claim their authority. Authority in this case meaning objective truth value or credibility, not only social office or position.
The catalog and the link. To be clear, we are not criticizing the Met for putting this online. We think it is admirable that museums make so much content available. We couldn't do what we do if they didn't. And the narrative in it is universal in beast art world - nothing particular to this book.
Also to be clear, we are not interested in the "logic" offered up in support of the narrative – the whole thing is historical, epistemological, and ontological inversion. The arguments and claims are by nature illogical. There’s no logic there to learn from. It's an example that for whatever reason catalyzed a post.
What's relevant is that the the narrative is a narrative. It claims to be objectively neutral - just the way things went. But it's a fake one, based on changing the meaning of terms, misrepresenting events and causalities, financial coercion and atavistic subversion, and silencing opposition through institutional control. It's a string of things that are manipulated and untrue that don't organically follow sequentially, but are presented as if representing a true story. And it's convincing to the extent that it is because it looks like a logical sequence superficially. A chain of things that tell a story. We're hardwired to be susceptible to that because it's how a temporal, causally-driven, perceptually-stable reality works.
Narrative representation works the same way - fiction and non-fiction chain things to tell a story. Representation represents reality, so it shares essential qualities.
But there's a key difference between reality and representation. One is causal and objectively true. The other can lie. If there was a jot of a tittle of anything of value in modernist “literature” it would be how the gibberish reminds us that a text is a creation. There is nothing intrinsic in it that has be truthful or remotely useful in any way. The problem is that truthful and false narratives have superficially similar formats, modernist turds aside. The difference is that the false narrative is a chain of things that are or may not be true and since it’s false, there is no actual logical causal connections between them. The similarity and difference is easy to see graphically.
Consider that both true and false narratives are abstractions. But we know abstract reality through logic and logic is internally absolutely truthful. Understanding how the relationship between abstraction and verity - how to tell if an abstraction is abstractly real - has value for efficiently navigating the House of Lies.
Practical ontology is what the metaphysics book calls applying what is real to lived experience. The Ontological Hierarchy has never been about posturing as an internet guru with the real real story. It’s a heuristic [click for a summary]. A set of fundamental logical and empirical relationships between what we can know and how we can know it. The value is in the practicality. It allows us to quickly and decisively assess whether claims are possible before getting into the weeds with the specifics.
The current Ontological Hierarchy. What makes it effective is recognizing that ontological difference corresponds to epistemological process. Again – it isn’t our terminology or diagramming that matters. It’s the basic fact that we know different levels of reality – or whatever we want to call them - differently. The knowledge is different in its essential nature. The point here is just to quickly sketch out the basic difference between Abstract and Material Reality – a post is different from the book and doesn’t need to be as exhaustive or formal. Then into the practicality.
Abstract and Material Reality exist objectively with distinct properties in a constinctive relationship within the larger Apprehensible Reality [constinction refers to the hierarchical coexistence of distinction within a common frame of reference. For more, see the linked chapters, especially axiom 4]. Below the upper limit of discernment in the graphic. But within those terms, both simply are. True/ false judgements do not apply intrinsically. Reality is real. That which would be false is unreal. It doesn’t exist.
Epistemology comes in because of human representational filtering. We do not apprehend reality qua reality. We know it through layers of representation. But representation introduces the possibility of error or deception. Epistemology – how we can know – is inherently representational and brings true-false into the picture.
Truth is simply what is. That which is real. Or in terms of representational filtering, representational alignment with what is. It's why the idea of subjective truth is self-contradictory. Truth is the apprehension of the objective. A grasp of the truth is subjective, that which is or is not grasped is not. “The rock is far away” is a claim about the nature of material reality that may or may not be true. A mathematical equation may contain an error. It is a claim about the nature of Abstract Reality that may or may not be true. The location of a rock and the accuracy of an equation are both truth claims but are different in essential nature. They are ontologically different apprehensions. If truth is alignment with what objectively is, and what is has different ontological levels, then truth must take on level-sensitive form.
Basic epistemology - the green font on the Ontological Hierarchy diagram. We know Material Reality through empirical observation. Be precise - to know means to possess truthful information. Information that corresponds to what is real. Material truth is material existence or facticity and material facts are defined by observability on some level. Is it or its impact perceptible to the senses? If so, it is materially real. And a statement about it is true to the extent that it accurately describes/reflects this reality.
The Matterhorn materially exists. It can be seen and touched. An avalanche can be heard. If some calamity erased it from existence tomorrow, it still would have been materially real to that point and always real in a past tense. That which is materially real at a point in time always will have been real at that time. It only gets complicated when trying to explain its essence with inadequate representational and perceptual tools.
Sight isn't the only form of material sensory perception. A breeze materially exists - is sensorially perceptible despite being invisible, as light materially exists despite being intangible.
Note - we are not claiming something must be perceived to be materially real. That's inversion. Taking our limited subjective impression of a larger objective reality as constitutive of it. A logically absurd reversal of ontological priority order that also starts the immoral path of be your own god auto-idolatry. We are saying it has to be perceptible. Either by sense or sense-extending instrument, though that adds complication.
We know Abstract Reality through logic. There is a whole host of abstract representations that are fictional. What logic can do is assess abstractions through necessary conclusions given a frame of reference. Logical truth is internal consistency. In math, the equal sign requires consistency in operations done to the two sides. In symbolic logic, parametric constraints are constant through infinite iterations. Abstract truth is logical consistency.
This is not a claim that the two forms of truth contradict. That which is true is that which is real, and all apprehensible reality expresses the ultimate foundation. The point is that if the ontological nature of Abstract and Material Reality are different, the ontological nature of their manifest truth will be as well. Different doesn’t assume contradictory. That’s inversion and a neon sign of satanry. Different is… different. Use a semiotic analogy...
1 + 2 = 3
one plus two equals three
Different form, same truth. The same applies to reality.
That which is true is that which is real
↓
That which is real varies ontologically
↓
That which is true varies ontologically
But it is consistent in the big picture.
We like negative numbers as an easy to grasp example of the Abstract/Material Reality difference. Math is a form of symbolic logic - absolutely, consistently, precisely internally true or false. Something that must exist logically - demonstrably consistently true - but can't exist materially illustrates the distinction between the two [the distinction aspect of the constinct relations]. Logically, -5 has to exist. It is necessarily real according to the requirements of abstract truth. Nothing prevents [4 - 9] from existing as a symbolic logic problem. And the answer is absolutely precisely -5 every time. Likewise any other operation equalling -5. Pure logical consistency. Obviously -5 can’t exist materially. That’s the whole point of the example. But note that we don’t say it’s “false”. Non-existent != false. -5 is abstractly real and materially non-existent. It only becomes materially false if someone claims they can perceive it empirically. We recognize the distinction with the term “natural numbers
False logic claims get put into practice all the time. Some may even prosper in the short run. Source: the modern West. Entropic Material Reality has the wiggle room of imprecision and burning future seed corn does actually throw some heat for a while. But the illusory success is invariably in spite of the false claims. And in the long run, reality always will out.
Thomas Cole, Tower by Moonlight, around 1838, Marsh - Billings - Rockefeller National Historical Park, Woodstock, VT.
So two measures of the same larger truth. Not surprising - Abstract & Material Reality are constinctive. We are separating them for the sake of discussion but in our full apprehensible reality, they mutually self-define. Abstract rules govern material processes and material processes manifest abstract rules. That’s constinction. The distinction and continuity are coexistent. The differences – observability and logical consistency – coexist in a higher order frame of reference we’re calling the apprehensibly true. Apprehensible Reality covers what we can access directly.
It’s what makes the lack of rigorous empirical verification and revision in modern Science! so blatant. It removes the material truth from the process. The only way to assess if abstract narratives are true is to see if they manifest consistently in observable form. Without this, those strings of logically unrelated events that may or may not be true can proliferate. And the only reason not to bolster your claim with lots of empirical proof is if falsehood is the desired state.
Recognizing that truth expresses in an ontologically appropriate way makes category errors jump out. The big one is when a set of abstract claims are presented as materially true without any verification or feedback. An abstract representation [predictive truth claim] is only apprehensibly truthful when it is observably materially true. To claim otherwise is to self-reveal as a deceiver. The Flatlander gets mired in debating the logic. The living man sees that an abstract formulation is orthogonal to material truth and needs proof of observable manifestation to accept it as such. Or in the case of an ideology, an observable alignment with objective patterns of human nature.
Two types of abstract representation. Those that are true - as in logically consistent and abstractly real. And those that aren't. The second is easy to account for. It's an artifact of human creativity and representational filtering. Abstract truth simply is, but the way we represent it can lie. Representation introducing deception to human being-in-the-world is nothing new to readers. But there's also the problem related to the ongoing cull mentioned above. It is possible for an abstract representation to be internally logically consistent and not be applicable to material reality (source: post-Enlightenment cosmology].
Lin Ching-Che, Will Eventually Bear Sweet Fruit, 2015, watercolor,
Consider the underlying pattern. The House of Lies relies on confusion between different orders or levels as well as kinds of abstraction. A simple analogy with Material Reality makes it less confusing. Material Reality is easy because it’s the world of matter and energy we're used to perceiving directly. And although truth manifests differently materially and abstractly, both are ontologically real and share qualities as such. Material Reality is divisible into two unequal groups – things that are naturally occurring and things that are manmade.
Obviously the distinction isn't absolute. All matter is ultimately naturally-occurring from a human perspective. It’s relative, it's but not hard to conceptually differentiate a boulder and a house. Or a manicured tree and a pole. It follow that
if
If Material Reality includes things we construct from matter and energy (the stuff of Material Reality)
then
Abstract Reality includes things that we construct from imaginative creative processes (the stuff of abstract representation).
Tbe analogy isn't perfect. Abstract realities don't have an ontic material facticity that makes it easy to detect their reality. But it is good enough to point to a distinction is between two categories of abstraction. Call the first one Objective Abstract Reality or real Abstract Reality – extant abstract relations that consistently manifest. Things like quantity and logic, the laws of physics, etc. Representation comes in when we learn about them inductively through their manifestation. When we measure, discover, symbolize and otherwise conceptualize. But they exist regardless. Codifying the acceleration of an object doesn't change the material rate of movement. It just describes it representationally.
The other category is entirely representational. Call it Unreal Abstraction or Abstract Unreality - something that "exists" abstractly as a representation - like a story does - but may be untrue. Untrue as in lacking internal logical consistency or as in not applying to anything materially real.
Man-made or false abstractions are immaterial things we construct out of logical (and pseudo-logical) processes. It's where the possibility of deception comes in since a correctly induced theorem and a surreal fantasy exist as immaterial representational creations. But do both conform to the ontological category of Abstract Reality? No. Only the first representation aligns with the atemporal logical consistency that defines what is real - or true - in abstract terms. A fiction doesn't so this. It is an ideational chimera that exists purely as a representational product of human cognition without reference to anything atemporally consistent or materially present.
Clarify. All apprehension of abstract - or any - reality is representationally filtered. This is where the Material reality analogy breaks down.
And that means differentiating between abstract truths and falsehoods. Real and unreal things that can't be seen. We know Abstract Reality - the real and the true being synonymous here - by logic. So representations of Abstract Reality conform to the requirements of logic and Abstract Unreality do not. It's actually pretty elegant. Logic is absolutely consistent and unchanging. Including temporally consistent. A false creation appears at a point in time and is likely soon forgotten. One is abstractly real, the other a fictional image.
Objective Abstract Realities simply are. Laws of physics, rule and number, natural order, etc. exist regardless of our discovery or quantification We can refer to them as naturally occurring like the Material Reality analogy because we don't create them. We just notice them.
The internal consistency that indicates the truth value of math and logic relationships is what lets them correlate to objective Abstract Reality. And the objectivity of Abstract Reality is why they are truthful.
But we aren't just dealing with the purity of abstract truth. Inductive reasoning, pattern recognition, logical problem solving and all the other Material manifestations Abstract Reality brings us to their interaction. They're constinctive, and together define our potential for knowledge of apprehensible reality. This is where a lot of "well-meaning" Flatlanders go wrong. Reality isn't ontologically flat. The constinctive relationship between empirical observation and logic is hierarchical. They are coexistent and different. Their individual truth claims alone are not sufficient. Both must be accounted for together. Because actual human being-in-the-world is defined by the two together.
It is insufficient for something to be logically consistent if it isn't materially real. Just as an observed object doesn't confirm a rule without logical consistency.
Truth, as apprehensible to us, is a mutual accommodation of abstract consistency and material observability
The biggest difference between them other than ontic essence - one is matter and energy, the other isn't - is the effect of time.
Abstract Reality is sequenced, but is otherwise unaffected by the passing of time. Its relations are absolutely precise and unchanging - even to true infinity.
Material Reality is temporal - constantly changing, entropic, and at some future point, no longer existent in its current form.
Mutual accommodation for Apprehensible Truth has to bridge this temporal divide.
It's obvious once the necessary parameters are clear. Apprehensible truth is consistency within material limits. The difference between "I'll love you forever" as claiming literal eternal commitment and claiming commitment for life. If assessing the truth after the claimant passes, no one is going to call him a liar for not being immortal. They will ask if he held true to it while they were alive. While it was a temporal possibility. If it seems we're being pedantic, it's because confusing this simple distinction is a House of Lies tentpole.
Mac Mardoc, Love Forever, Then Now and Forever, acrylic, 2022
A lovely meditation on human forever against the turning of the seasons and the times of day. From an " Acrylic Painting for Beginners" YouTube instructional video that turned up on an image search of all places.
We intuitively understand the difference between infinite Abstract extendibility and Material applicability - another reason why turds that obfuscate the two are loathsome deceivers.
Applicability recalls the Tolkien posts, where we drew on his connection between fantastic fiction and real truths. He was referring to literature, but the underlying idea of applicability holds. An abstract representation that is truthful to the extent that it reflects the materially real. So the applicability of Abstract truth is observable consistency within the ontological limits of Material manifestation. F=ma may not hold if there are no forces and masses. But until then...
Abstract Unreality has no need for observable material applicability or internal logical consistency. Representational systems and the imaginations they serve are endlessly creative.
Fictions and misconceptions take many forms.
The graphic up above differentiated between untrue as in lacking internal logical consistency and not applying to anything materially real. The former can be elaborate internally consistent nonsense.
Like a cosmological model being “out by a factor of 20" and fixing it by just adding 20 times more stuff in imaginary unverifiable dark stuffs… Or by 21 or 22. What's precision when talking math?
Pauline Baynes, Lantern Waste, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
A good fictional narrative falls here. It's internally consistent but does not accurately depict our apprehensible reality.
Whether or not it communicates more general truths is the difference between applicability and something like the dark twins above.
Abstraction can be partially true - as in drawn from some observable trait, but extrapolated or misapplied into nonsense. Like Post-Enlightenment ideologies like Marxism that isolate some observations about human behavior and turn them into a hopelessly reductive teleological materialism. Apprehensible truth requires genetic inputs into human capacity and temperament to be taken into consideration. Without this, the rest fades into unreality.
Pablo Picasso, Woman with a Mandolin, 1910, MOMA
Sort of like Cubism. You can see there's something there, but it's so distorted and ugly that the entire point of art is inverted.
Didactic or message fiction falls here. There may be validity in the point, but the representation is too reductive to register as truthful in a meaningful way.
It can also be abject fabrication. People make up nonsense all the time for various reasons. To trick the FTS-2 into doing something they wouldn't do otherwise. Projecting some inward pathology or trauma onto the world. Trying to avoid accountability when caught red handed. And so on. It is worth noting that as a pattern, inverting reality for personal gain is ultimately satanic.
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue on White, 1968, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Epochal genius Kelly spent much of the 60s on a series of blue and white patches of color in different shapes and sizes. It's easy to mock an artist like this. But he's likely an unself-aware clod dancing for the beast like a capering monkey. If not him, some other posturing lowlife would take the money. someone always will. It's the existence of a multi-billion dollar global cultural industry built around nothing that boggles the mind. But the lying poseur said it was "significant"...
The similar form is where the confusion comes in [click for a post on the importance and structure of form / content relations]. Abstract Reality and Unreality are opposite in terms of content to an ontology of truth level. But the form is the same. Both present as inductive reductions to abstraction. But one is logically, consistently materially applicable, and the other can’t even get the things it claims to induce from right. Abstract claims must bear predicted fruit or be materially false. Reality and unreality.
Of course, the late beast system is proof reality is irrelevant if people want to pretend otherwise. At least for a while. The House of Lies is built of Abstract Unreality claiming to be the Abstract Realities they look like. All the nonsense ideology accepted as dogma despite contradicting material evidence. Whole areas of cultural prestige like the liberal arts fiction that poetry has the same truth claims as geometry. Autonomous Art! pretending to be Abstract Reality despite that being logically and empirically impossible. Perhaps seeing the difference makes the thicket a little easier to navigate. It helps us.
Enough general stuff. We wanted to belabor the point a little to make sure it's clear, but overdoing it is counterproductive. Turn to some more concrete examples, at least metaphorically speaking. These are abstractions, after all.
Start with r/K selection theory - or at least a specific application of it. The theory is not really controversial - defined by Infogalactic: in ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The idea is that there are two general approaches to the reproduction-environment relation.
The r-selected (reproduction) spew lots of largely neglected offspring.
The K-selected (carrying capacity) expend more resources on fewer offspring.
The summary criticism we've seen is all practical applicability - it's too simplistic for species behavior. Official consensus seems to be that it is a real pattern and interesting as such, but not able to comprehensively account for species-environment-reproductive strategy interactions [click for more]. It's a continuum, so it doesn't really designate with quantitative precision. Some species show r-selected and K-selected traits depending on their circumstances. We would describe it as a general objective abstract correlative relationship with limited applicability to Biology the Discipline. But what about some other venue?
R/K became political allegory in the 2010s, moving it to a new domain. We are uninterested in any "controversy" - emotionalism is irrelevant to truth claims. Only weather and how the abstract formulation applies materially. It is true? Is is correlative? Is it useful?
The application comes from an anonymous internet intellectual known as the Anonymous Conservative. The image on the left is a good overview. The Band knows little about him other than the r/K theory from his website, and that he functions as a non-globalist news aggregator [click for a link to his blog - the r/K stuff in on the front page]. His name and activity place him on the right in the traditional spectrum, or dissident right in the current House of Lies. Beyond that, we are only interested in the theory.
The basic premise is that the "liberal" / "conservative" divide in the US can be understood through applied r/K selection theory.
We have a few problems with the terminology to deal with at the start. First, the standard liberal-conservative, left-right binary as used today is nonsensical. They're terms as sports teams. Labels that stay the same as the policies keep changing in a contrived game that distracts from reality. The analogy points to the problem - they are only meaningful as relational positions in a fake puppet show, not as coherent reflections of reality.
The "K-selected" archetypes flirt with boomertastic self-parody. A meme template come to life, Mr. globalism, no-fault divorce & profligate spender (literally the opposite of K-selected behavior), and a pied piping globalist puppet & alleged serial killer.
Had we not known about his theory before visiting the site, this tool shed would have been a big red flag.
But reality is representationally filtered. Look beyond the terms at whether the reality they poorly describe does fit the model. Put aside the retard laser pointer establishment political squid ink and think about the two patterns of behavior. Do they apply to House of Lies and the observable conditions of its occupants? On a glance, there is overlap with the FTS-1 and 2 split we noted in the functionally two species posts [click for link]. Definitely worth more consideration.
The next problem is really an issue with the "evolutionary" field of anything biological. Without digressing into the inversions of beast Science! - standard post-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection (TENS) is nonsense.
In another interesting Abstract-Material Reality interaction, it's mathematically-temporally impossible for the necessary components of TENS to coexist. Day's elegant proof is the kind that serves as a litmus test. To those that can follow the argument and can understand emotional investment is irrelevant to logical coherence, it's instantly obvious. Those that can't are too innumerate and / or incontinent to waste time on.
"But I had breakfast" to use a joke that recently made the rounds.
Apprehensible truth can be described as Abstract patterns manifesting Materially - This means it confirms to the truth standard of both within the ontological limits of the manifestation. Observability and consistency. Observable consistency. For as long as the material conditions hold. This is an important formation because it refers to truth as we experience it as thinking beings-in-the-world. That's the constinction - material perception is the stuff of abstract thought and abstract thought is how we understand perceptions.
Materially, species observably exist and are definable via observable genetic configuration. The abstract claim is that favorable genetic mutations change the configuration, and a new species emerges when that mutation becomes normative. And the other insta-vanishes, but that's another matter. The theory isn't a pure logic claim that can be evaluated on internal consistency alone. It claims that the abstraction is also true in material terms. That it consistently accounts for the observable phenomena.
It's the consistency part that poses the problem. The same scientific discourse that takes TENS as dogma has equally foundational estimates of the age of ancient flora and fauna. And math is real. The amount of genetic difference between species over the amount of time can't balance across the equal sign. Not trait selection within a genetic profile like resistance or fitness. A new, classifiably genetically distinct species.
We aren't referring to a fragment of fossilized bone as synecdoche for an entire fantasy world. Anyone interested in eye-opening deep dives should look into the material evidence this tower of imaginative fiction called palaeontology sits on. Pay particular attention to what mathematically would have to be an incalculable number of transitional states.
Understanding how appreciable Truth works makes it easy to see why this inexorable refutation baffles the narrative-huffing Flatlanders who built their auto-idolatry around it. Break it down.
Modified constinction diagram from the book chapter. It depicts the interrelation of abstract and material realities in human consciousness. Langan would call it infocognition, but whatever the name, pure abstraction or pure phenomenology are impossible for us. It's a blend.
We've often noted that this is what makes the Scientific Method such a potent epistemological tool. It takes the thought-perception interaction and systematizes it into standardized, coherent information. But all this depends on the two working together. The abstract logic has to be perfectly consistent and the material perception honest. Get both, and apprehensible truth - consistency within material constraint - follows. But blow one or the other and the outcome is basically useless.
The kernel of Day’s critique is a pure logic problem more than an interactive application one. It is based on numbers purportedly derived through empirical-logical scientific processes, meaning generated by the same materialist epistemology TENS presumes. Accepting the discursive frame of reference as given means accepting its apprehensible - internal and applicable - consistencies as the standard for judging the truth of its claimed manifestations. This makes logical inconsistency terminal.
Simplify the basic reasoning for ontological clarity.
Logic has absolutely precise truth value within a frame of reference. Across the equal sign. Pure logical relations are infinitely extendable - unaffected by scale or other specifics. Once qualities or numbers are set, the logical relation necessarily determines the other terms. Logically.
If the numbers generated by genetic, geological, and other scientists are entered into the necessary relations, the results are unequal. Logically inconsistent. The definition of [not true] in Abstract Reality. And not apprehensibly true as a result.
The problem is purely abstract. It doesn't indicate what material claim is false. It indicates that they can't all be true. The only response is to scramble for reasons to change timeframes. But if the timeframes were so instantly mutable, what is the grounds for accepting them as fact? It's one of those things that is either obvious or inexplicable. Ceilings and floors are real. More in a second.
Without the abstract consistency / truth value, the apprehensible truth constinction collapses. No consistent abstract relation manifesting in observable material reality. There's just empirical observation and whatever the observer wants to make up to "explain". Which works until another foundational myth contradicts it on the logical grounds that the whole game claims to stand on.
It's a familiar pattern. Another just so story presented as material fact to credulous youth and reinforced with exaggerated shock whenever questioned. Imprinting is required to make apprehensibly false faith fly past without question. FTS-2 being what it is, once the substructure has been uploaded, it becomes reflex assumption. It doesn't have to be defended. That's why truthy nonsense is accepted without question if it reassures the false faith. Likewise the weird defensive rage when it's questioned.
The truthiness is everywhere when you look for it. Staying with TENS, note how doubts arising from the lack of observed examples are hand waved away with things like "it takes a really long time". But the abstract part of apprehensible truth - truth as apprehensible to us - is internally consistent. Within material limits, but consistent right up to that point. Even really long time frames are quantifiable and therefore subject to the internal consistency of mathematical operations. And if a process has to occur a certain number of times within that long time frame, a periodicity is established. And if that periodicity isn't materially observable, the theory isn't consistently applicable. It isn't apprehensibly real. It doesn't account for the observed existence and genetic differentiation of species. And all the downstream implications don't follow.
And that's why the critique flies completely past the NPCs.
Natural Discipline Knowledge Collection and Storage, from a thesis by John N. Carbone, A Framework for Enhancing Transdisciplinary Research Knowledge, 2010
Disciplines are necessary to keep track of the vast amount of human knowledge. There's too much not to sub-specialize. The problem is hierarchical. Disciplines are subsets of [total knowledge]. They only work if they're based in reality. If true. An exclusively narrow focus can only create real knowledge if the preliminary assumptions are truthful. And since [total knowledge] where the assumptions come from is too big for one person, the specialist has to trust its validity.
Acceptance of disciplinary presumptions is superficially similar to faith, except components of the trusted belief can be verified logically and empirically if one takes the time. Specialized epistemologies can be evaluated. It's the part-whole constinction up above. If the disciplines are on sound footings, they're real refined knowledge machines. Conversely, deep analysis of fiction is fiction. Or, in postmodern terms...
Pseudo-knowledge constructed from ontological inversion. And since the post-Enlightenment secular materialist [total knowledge] assumptions are auto-idolatrous inversion, disciplines become discourse. For reasons we've traced out over years. In this case, the trust in the big picture moves to fully-inverted faith.
Epistemologically, faith is reserved for knowledge that cannot be conclusively empirically or logically demonstrated. However logical consistency requires it be consistent with that which can be seen or proven. False faiths are identifiable by acceptance of beliefs that contradict or are inconsistent with logical or empirical truth. With apprehensible truth.
Materialist disciplines discourse accepts logically-impossible conditions a priori. Epistemologically, on faith - since a commitment to an apprehensibly verifiable ontology would have demonstrated the falsehood of the assumptions. Ipse dixit as world view.
The postmodernists actually were good critical guides to parts of the House of Lies. We wouldn't have been so attentive to representational filtering without them. We use their concept of discourse pretty much straight up, with the caveat that it's a false representation of objective reality and not a replacement for it. And they were right to point out that discourse is a fully integrated, fully immersive false reality. To the extent that glitches don't even register. The false faith is jammed together with every other practical assumption of the modern world Flatland. This means discourse huffers don't register problems on the onto-epistemological level. They can’t even register what onto-epistemological levels are. They can only process debate within their disciplinary borders.
Day's critique exposes logical impossibilities in the larger fake [total knowledge]. It's a contradiction in the onto-epistemological composition of the false faith the specific branches of discourse rest on. Something their entire being-in-the-fake-world conditions them not to consider. It isn't that they can't grasp the math - though they probably can't. It's that what the math is representing is beyond their constipated limits of discernment. If it wasn't, they wouldn't huff discourse.
The Flatland analogy is especially illustrative here. Asking two-dimensional shadows to recognize the third dimension.
Having explored what a preposterous sham secular materialist cosmic origins proved to be, we are not surprised to see the origins of life prove the same. The impossible impasse is not quite the same as infinite regression or origin - this is more [necessary conditions rule each other out]. But the outcome is the same. A cornerstone of the post-Enlightenment secularism that modern society takes as default assumption is demonstrably false.
We could throw in other examples, but why bother. The big pillars of modern secularism are smoke. This cycles back to the litmus test but on a larger scale. Can you see that an ideology founded on lies and nonsense has no other substance than lies and nonsense? And if so, that the assumptions founded on that ideology are also phantasmal diversions to be abandoned forthwith for reality? Those who can see possibility behind uncertainty and read things like the Band. For those who can't, something to ponder...
Back to r/K.
Good thing the digression through the TENS detonation was a good illustration of concept because it really isn't essential to the theory. Not for its legitimacy as a pattern. The AC blog landing page description reads more like trait selection than TENS speciation. And trait selection is readily observable.
In r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Ecology, if you provide a population with free resources, those who will come to dominate the population will exhibit five basic traits, called an r-selected Reproductive Strategy. ...a strategy exactly opposite ... which emerges under conditions of resource scarcity ... is called the K-selected Reproductive Strategy. There, where resources are scarce, competition for resources is everywhere, and some individuals will die due to failure in competition, and the resultant resource denial that this produces.
There is nothing nonsensical in populations exploiting favorable environmental conditions. See antibiotic resistance. He also isn't using it as a biological master key. It's an adaptation. It doesn't have to account for complexities within designated species because it's being applied to wings of a single species. The issue is whether the behavioral patterns represented in r/K selection theory are consistently applicable to observable tendencies in the human population. Be attentive to what is required of Abstract-Material truth claims.
To start, the r/K pattern is real. Real enough for practical applicability.
Links to first graphic, second graphic.
Whether it accounts for all organism behavior in two tidy categories is irrelevant to the fact that the two tendencies are observably naturally reoccurring with predictable outcomes.
Be clear about what is being claimed. When adapting a heuristic or analogy, consider whether its limits or shortcomings are relevant to the point of the adaptation.
The point is that a pattern used to describe differences between species is applicable to differences within a species. So the next consideration is whether such a divide actually exists in modern society. The AC blog lists five traits for each category. This is an essential step in legitimate theorizing. The specific way that the pattern is to be applied is explicitly spelled out. At this point, there are only two relevant questions. Does the application honestly adapt the original theory and does it apply to society. Raising other issues around the biological theory are either deliberate red herrings - bad faith - or a confession of logical deficiency. We have the parameters of a consistent, observable pattern or we don’t.
First the adaptation.
And the list of traits from the AC blog that is used for the human application.
The argument is that these tendencies map onto the rough contemporary divide that he refers to as liberal-conservative. We don't get hung up on the nomenclature. We consider the left-right, liberal-conservative binary to be ontological nonsense. But the behavioral divide is instantly observable whatever you call it. From different angles. So liberal-conservative, with the caveat that it is only being applied to this current ideological-behavioral split and not an endorsement of historical connotations. Bringing us to the punch line (from the AC blog): Liberalism isn't intellectual. It is merely the rabbit's r-selected Reproductive Strategy, intellectualized in humans who exhibit it instinctually.
The issue isn't whether everyone on earth falls into these two camps. That's would be a ridiculous claim. Even the biologists who developed the theory see it as relative tendencies or a continuum. The nature of the general and specific isn't something we should have to explain, but who knows. A general category contains individuals that manifest the categorical determinant but otherwise differ. It's why it is necessary to be attentive to the terms of the theory. And why being aware of the constinctive structire of apprehensible truth is so clarifying.
Constinction is hierarchical. Commonality and difference coexist on different levels. This means that if the topic is what they have in common, blathering about how they are different is - again - bad faith or logical deficiency.
Assuming abstract precision and consistency apply to the entropic material world is an archetypal House of Lies blunder. It's the basis of the secular transcendence we've pointed out from the start. Apprehensible truth highlights both components. And conscious awareness of material conditions means conscious awareness of the differences between members of a set. All the qualities that aren't the defining parameters.
Constinction - like logic in general - is fractal. The infinite iterability of logical structures is why ontological origins require ultimate reality. But that's an issue for the book. For practical purposes we only need to deal with apprehensible nested iterations.
We demonstrated constinction in logic by differentiating a set within the entirety of all numbers. The same applies to the individual elements within the set.
Each number is completely different from all the others. And each perfectly conforms to {x ∣ x ∈ N, x < 5}. Use quantity instead of number if you want to emphasize the material applicability of the count.
Or show the same relation with a material object...
What about clothes John wears but doesn't own? Or used to own but sold or donated to charity? {John's Clothes} does not provide enough parametric definition to make these judgments conclusively. We have one category able to encompass various manifestations within its general parameters.
So of course something as categorically generalized as r/K will span a lot of different exemplars. What we care about is whether it not it does. Because a correlation is always a sign to look deeper, and there may be something causal in the biological theory that is also applicable to the application.
[Quick aside. Belaboring the point - material examples of an abstract theory cannot be perfect realizations of it in every way. They're material. Anyone can find some way that an example is different from some aspect or implication of the theory and argue disingenuously it's invalid. Ontological category error cum red herring. The point is how the theory applies to the example and whether the application conveys meaningful knowledge.]
The r/K analogy tells us that the personal/familial behaviors in question - raising young, sexual morality, resourcefulness, initiative - correlate to resource abundance.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, around 1767–8, Wallace Collection, London
There have always been indolent elites - it's a historical pattern that hard work goes out the window with resource abundance. With many notable individual exceptions, for anyone inclined to smart boy.
The problem is when aristocrat tier abundance is the norm.
R selection requires easy abundance because the behaviors are unproductive. This isn't an ideological or moral claim, although there are implications for both. It's a simple observation that any tier of existence requires resources and resources have to be produced by something. Productivity in this sense merely means producing or generating the resources for survival or quality of life through direct effort. The K traits all support the continuance of complex species in environments where sloth or indulgence would lead to starvation or predation. Getting more out of what is easily available at hand. The results are civilizational.
K-selection is productive - it adds resources to the naturally-available base
r-selection is unproductive - it subtracts resources from the naturally-available base
Net resource addition has a very high ceiling before it is exhausted, and comes with the concern and awareness to mitigate impacts. The result for humans is abundant surplus - the increasing margin above subsistence that can be used on infrastructure and culture.
J. M. W. Turner, Dido Building Carthage aka The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire, 1815
Net resource subtraction is limited by what is available. So long as there is something to eat there is no thought for where it comes from or how precarious things are. And when the environmental carrying capacity collapses, there is no way to respond. It actually accounts for that odd phenomenon where socio-cultural losers never raise a finger to improve their dilapidated environments.
Marco Ricci, and Sebastiano Ricci, Landscape with Classical Ruins and Figures, between 1725-1730, Getty Center
The irony is the problem actually is systemic. A system that produces the unccountable abundance that lets r-selection thrive in the first place.
Complex societies take time to learn to function in. K-selected investment of time and resources in their young gives more opportunity to grow and develop. But this creates the resource abundance that can support r-selected behavior in the first place. Leading to low-investment raising of children - including the proliferation of spiteful mutants - that are unable to sustain the socio-cultural complexity.
The pattern isn't new. We're all familiar with this cycle. We'd add that the magnitude of abundant surplus = magnitude of degeneration and collapse. All the more unproductive hapless r-selected to build up. It's why the House of Lies has drifted so far from reality. There's the abundance to do it.
The problem is that unchecked consumption without production is terminal in a finite context. Especially when r-selected reproduction is so fecund. In nature, there are checks - either predation to balance the numbers or population collapse from resource depletion. Otherwise, it's the viral replication pattern or the Idiocracy that gives rise to mouse utopia analogies.
The surpluses needed for any advanced civilization ensures some will live lives of indolence. But the overall balance has to favor production or else the countdown starts.
Forget the precise number and look at the pattern. The same cycle occurs on a smaller scale with the entrepreneurial cycle - work and vision builds ease builds thoughtless indolence.
R/K highlights that the way the masses lean is environmentally determined. Scarcity vs. abundance, struggle vs. ease determines quality [note - there is obviously a metaphysical component to the moral direction, but we're sticking to the material for now. It is a biological analogy. We'll close with the metaphysical]. Now consider...
Even post peak, the poor are obese. Yet in the financialized House of Lies, resource distribution and societal direction have never been further from individual decision making. Ignore stress. Human problems are relative and modern society is intrinsically psychologically damaging. There's never been a time when less active productive responsibility is needed to live. Or live in historically unimagined comfort.
Disconnected abundance totally out of whack with effort to obtain was a main observation in the Dazed and Confused boomer post. It's the same abundance that powers r-selection.
Not everyone within modern society exhibits r-selected traits. This is the big difference between the biological theory and the human application. The theory differentiates between species. The application distinguishes within a species. Meaning humans have variance in response to environment that other animals do not. One might call it an element of self-determination or free will. Not to say that environmental factors don't shape people involuntarily. But that we have the capacity to - and must - take personal responsibility for our conduct and reproductions. Especially in an environment where r-selected indolence and self-indulgence is the norm.
Where this comes close to the Band's functionally two species model is in attitude towards the fake system that distributes the abundance.
The House of Lies. R-selection requires not considering where the checks come from or how precarious they might be. They treat it as natural or given a priori. independent of what anyone does or doesn't do in it. FTS-2 also takes the House of Lies as reality to the point where it lets it think for them. There is a considerable overlap between r-selection as unproductive systemic dependence and FTS-2 as mindless systemic dependence. Both are artifacts of an unstainable societal affluence.
Consider how many r-selected traits are beast narrative fake truisms. Centrally-mandated equalism is a granddaddy r-selected ideology.
Scraped of the internet. Beyond the obvious confirmation of FTS-2's inability to meme, it shows the magical thinking required to huff narrative. The self-pwnage is so multi-layered that we almost didn't use it. But it's unintentionally perfect as an index of the House of Lies.
Industrial productivity did built the surplus abundance to support unproductive fantasizing. And since the surplus was so vast, it took time for the narrative to diverge far enough from reality to burn through it. Now, as the weak flail and hard times loom on the horizon, the huffers have no where to go but the land of make believe. The lies get more preposterous as the house crumbles. Outsourcing thought to glowing screens and spending vast amounts of time on escapism are r-selected behaviors.
Bringing these things together is illuminating. That's the great thing about truth - different facets of it are symbiotic.
1. The beast system distributes the abundance that supports r-selection
R-selection is unproductive. It requires taking more out of the system then is produced. It's even worse than eating the fruits of others' labors. Once the consoomers outstripped the producers - meaning there is no more abundance - the beast just switched to debt and kept on digging.
It's easy to quantify - measure the debt. - when did the population switch from net production to net consumption.
Note how among other things, the World Wars kick off the debt dependency.
And mass borrowing to maintain dwindling r-selected consumption is a downward macro-arc. Essentially a structural Ponzi scheme, with new borrowing to cover old obligations. It's not infinite though. It's where the "economic" arguments for poison fig leaves like open borders come from. Keep the illusion going a little longer.
How can this work?
2. The House of Lies creates the illusion that the situation is natural
This would be the entire secular materialist nonsense narrative as filtered through the race-to-the-bottom retardery and lies of the mainstream. Referencing back to the Dazed and Confused point above where historically unimagined largess is made possible through busywork.
This is why the Progress! illusion was situationally convincing. The Industrial Revolution and its aftermath really did max out production. People really did enjoy the comforts. But it was fake. And when the surpluses and debts are finally all tapped...
Note how many options are productive in K-selected terms. That is, add to the net available resources in the ecosystem. Hint: it's a quick count...
But as the House of Lies posts have shown, the whole integrated fake system passes itself off as reality. Each inverted pillar running interference for the others. The House of Lies presents unsustainable unproductive consumption as normal - just a Progress! march of social "improvement". It tells the FTS-2 huffers that the above list of career pathways is what life is and totally sustainable. And that means the whole seed corn burning House of Lies fake reality is an r-selecting environment. The collapsing mouse utopia stage of inverted centralized distribution.
Take that moronic meme and ignore that the first two scenes are out of chronological order. Put it next to the 20th century debt curve. They actually line up as indices of the transition from a K-selecting environment to an r-selected one.
See what happens when abstractions are kept in their proper place and differences between manifestations recognized? Common patterns in different domains deepen overall understanding. It also sheds light on that effort-reward discrepancy we noted in the Dazed and Confused post. The post-War world was an accelerating r-selective shift. Production and debt at first. The idea of taking more as normal took root and took off because there kept being more to take for a while. If you didn't think too hard, material existence seemed consistent with the fake media reality of the coalescing House of Lies.
The post-War boom was the burn-off of real surplus prosperity and transition to debt. For the few decades that it hummed, it really could pass off as reality. So the r/K behavioral distinction between people played out within that system. Within the “discourse” of Progress! and materialism. Go-getting vs. slacking. This peaked with the prosperity. Now that the system is cracking and the illusion laid bare, the real shift is between buying into the system vs. not.
This came up in the second Macro-Arc post. You see the same thing with the controlled "right-wing" spillways that pretend the system is real and actual thinkers who are ignored. Someone like AC or Day, whose r/K idea should be of interest to anyone who sincerely adheres to any ideology on the spectrum. But because it presents problems for the beast, it doesn't even exist in the House of Lies.
Or watching FTS-2s mouth tepid doubts about fake narratives like the !vax or Russia because fake media hinted all is not as it was presented. This after years of repeatedly explaining the whole narrative is web of lies and exactly what is going on in each case. FTS-2 had no functional memory, is immune to logic, and accepts the House of Lies as reality reflexively. Because FTS-2 is existentially dependent on the r-selective abundance the system provides.
Think in terms of self/family reliance. If the system is reliable and sufficiently fair, the self-reliant K-selected focus on production within the system. In some way or another. If the system is an inverted web of lies nearing its sell by date, the self-reliant look outside it. Anti-fragility enters the building. And a break opens between real, fully actualized human beings and superficially aligned huffers who can't conceive of a life without net unproductive r-selected consumption. Or even recognize that the concept of downstream consequences exist...
3. The people most invested in the r-selected world are most incentivized to defend the system
Since r-selection needs to consume more than is produced, it is dependent on whatever provides the surplus by definition. In human terms, there is no available abundance without the system. Whether living in a glittering penthouse because of filling out buy and sell orders or collecting checks to absorb processed calories in front of a screen. The House of Lies is fundamentally r-selected. Embracing its r-selected values necessitates faith in its r-selected system.
This is something that causes problems for calcified huffers that were relatively K-selected under the old regime. Higher up on the degeneration curve when the House of Lies was harder to see. We're all familiar with the defensive incoherence from "right-wing" secular trancendentalists trapped in last century's illusions. Cuckservatives and lolbertarians spring to mind.
All the beast myths attack K-selected self-reliance. Equalism pretends everyone is a fungable cog with no incentive to do better or self-improve. Relativism means rejecting any standard of decorum – self-discipline and responsibility – and the self-respect that comes with it. Freedom of speech is literally impossible in a functioning polity but is useful for attacking moral standards. The very things that create the environment that creates the abundance that makes r-selection possible.
This deserves a sub-title...
3b. This means the boomers are the most ideologically r-selected generation in history.
When it comes to max rewards for minimum effort, no group is as invested in the House of Lies as these parasitic frauds. The circumstances were perfect. The post-War world was an accelerating r-selective shift and they came of age as it took off. Production and debt at first, to add that tether to real outcomes in the formative imprint stage. The idea of taking more then you produce never appeared more normal because there was never more to keep taking. It's the most material existence ever seemed consistent with the fake media reality of the coalescing House of Lies.
What the most for the least looks like statistically...
Consider that odd boomer inability to process new information. It is reasonable that the most existentially r-selected are incapable of imagining other forms of existence?
It also explains why this most locust-like of consoomer cohorts gets so triggered by the idea of forgiving the predatory student loans that they promoted. We suspect that there are subconscious perterbations in the herd that the good times aren't forever. Some sense that the endless r-selected resource abundance isn't. At which point virtue signaling slowly turns to vicious desperation.
Failure of system to maintain a standard of living is the index of the failing system.
The hordes of spiteful mutants that make up today's r-selection are different on the surface but structurally symptoms of the same inversion. The physical repulsiveness is just the mouse utopia aspect of entropic degeneration in a Fallen, self-consuming system cut off from reality. They never knew an abundance system with a real production component, so even intellectual comprehension of things like responsibility and competence are alien to them. But they also get a lot less for their trivial effort, so real aspirations aren't even applicable. They have less ability to choose to make positive impacts if they wanted to and, occupying that which has already been broken, are less civilizationally destructive. They're dreadful, but note that they never appeared in the past. They are iterated consequences of completely abandoning reality and accountability for the r-supportive House of Lies.
Don't be fooled by surface appearances. There is no moral comparison between vandals who shatter a workable system and the detritus who scavenge the ruins.
4. Does FTS-2 describes the cognitive profile of human r-selection?
Is it consistent enough to be a pattern? An apprehensible truth? While material variance is inevitable, the abstract commonality has to be strong enough to be replicable and predictable. K-selection pretty much rules out full narrative huffing at this point in the curve. There are r-selected FTS-1s, but we suspect they're paralyzed by some personal issue. People who know better but are stuck in some kind of rut. We also suspect those people would cope a little better than the FTS-2s if forced to act in a crisis. Low bar, but knowing a problem can exist is better than not. A strong correlation then between K-selection and FTS-1 in the House of Lies. And a full match with healthy FTS-1s.
The next question is if all FTS-2s are r-selected. The answer appears to be yes, since total immersion in a net-unproductive fake reality for short-term profit is definitionally r-selection. There's some blurring at the edges here too. There are still narrative huffers who pursue a K-selected approach within the terms of the system. The defensive civnats, globalists, and other secular transcendentalists. They're some of the system's most vociferous defenders because they seem themselves as morally upright and "making it themselves". We can call them unintentionally r-selected. FTS-2 falls along a continuum of r-selection, but all are r-selected to a degree.
Call it the two sides of House of Lies r-selectivity.
[Note - this is not a problem for our earlier observation that the irrationality of modern life may produce FTS-2 evacuation through trauma. It expands our understanding of the huffer-House of Lies symbiosis. The reward for huffing is r-selective abundence.]
So the functionally two species model correlates with behavioral r/K selection in the House of Lies. To the point where we're can assume further systemic collapse continues the tilt K-ward.
Apprehensible truth is observationally consistent.
Obviously we aren't going to get into art narratives or theological apprehensions now. This is long enough and it made it to the point. That Abstract and Material truth standards are constinctive in our apprehension of reality. and that truth as we apprehend it is the work of the two. If we keep that straight, a lot of obfuscation deception blows away. We can get into the other stuff in another post.
But speaking of truth, we did mention metaphysical implications of the r/K divide.
William Hogarth, The Tavern Scene from A Rake's Progress, 1732-1735, oil on canvas, Sir John Soane's Museum
Consider the deontological component of the Ontological Hierarchy. The directed morality part - where Ultimate Truth or what Is manifests in behavior via moral reasoning. Moral behavior is alignment with reality as most broadly conceivable. A place where physical patterns reflect metaphysical ones.
Now consider. The outermost limit of discernment is Creation. The apprehensible reality within which logic and observation ply their epistemological trades. The preconditional necessity for any type of discernment or thought. For human being-in-the-world as we can conceive it. And creation is an act of ordering, defining, and constructing. Logical consistency requires it. So does continuing existence. Our lives, well-being, basic natures are all dependent on ordered, structured apprehensible reality / Creation. It is the entirety of what is that we can access mentally. The measure of logical and empirical truth.
An annotated Ontological Hierarchy diagram makes it clearer. The post-its read from bottom to top.
Tl,dr - we require creation/apprehensible reality to contemplate creation/apprehensible reality.
And since Creation is the discernable extension of Ultimate Reality - where Ultimate Reality becomes discernable - it's the closest we can come to what Is. It is the clearest apprehension we can have of Truth. And since morality is alignment with what is real or True, Creation is a foundational necessity for human moral judgment. It's self-evident - morality requires the conditions morality requires to exist. We are belaboring this because of the implications. Hold the belabored idea and adjust the representational filter. Go from Creation the place (apprehensible reality) to Creation the act (the genesis of apprehensible reality).
We're calling attention to the shift because we don't engage in slippery word games. Creation the place and the act of its genesis are ontologically connected causally. But linguistic definitions call attention to specific aspects of the meaning. They show the connection beneath things that are different. A temporally sequenced, causally constinct, perceptually & experientially stable reality logically requires an ontological foundation or origin. The term "Creation" is a synonym for apprehensible reality that highlights this necessity. The necessity is logically implicit in "apprehensible reality", but that wording doesn't emphasize it. Creation makes the "came into being" part explicit.
Once the "came into being" part is obvious, ignoring it for impossible myths is dishonesty or stupidity. Liar or moron.
The scriptural language is a bonus trigger for said materialist self-fluffers. Apparently auto-fellating in a bubble of snark, stupidity and lies correlates with defensiveness.
So using "Creation" is a constant reminder of the fact that apprehensible reality has ontological origins. Constinctive ones - Creation begets Creation; Creation originates in Creation. The homonym accentuates this syllogism...
if
Creation (place) is a necessary precondition for human morality
and
Creation (place) causally implies Creation (generative act)
then
Creation (generative act) is morally generative as well
Considering basic ontology tells us creating has moral directionality [click for a post working out the basic homology between creation and morality. The context is the formation of the Arts of the West, but the first quarter deals with the ontology of creation]. Once the commonality is established the homologies get more obvious.
Just as creation is a bounded complex structure, so is morality.
Tree of Virtues from the Speculum Virginum, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.72, fol. 26r
This early 13th-century Cistercian manuscript from Himmerode Abbey as an escalating tree of virtues and sub-virtues. The virtues are Abstract Realities - and as such can be cleanly and precisely delineated. The variances and blurry edges come in with Material Reality manifestation.
Art, morality, successful societies - all examples of these distinguishing and ordering processes that define Creation. The fundamental operations of our perceptual and logical being in a stable reality.
We can't belabor this enough. It's the whole point of thinking through the Creation/Creation split. Reality as we can apprehend it on the most fundamental basic ontological level - and every generative outcome that follows - is ordered, structured, positive action. The act of Ordered Structure that generates the Real as prototype of ordered structures in reality.
The opposite of Creation is the opposite of morality by rejecting the basic nature of reality that makes morality possible. Modern globalism is satanic because its entire ethos boils down to the atavistic destruction of necessary organic structures and replacing them with lies and do what thou wilt. Inverting truth away from Creation's distinctions towards indeterminate Sorathic goo.
And since the conditions of morality are the essential structure of apprehensible reality, of Creation, of Being - rejecting it leads to ontological self-erasure.
This is reflected in the lower portion of the Ontological Hierarchy. Turning away from Truth & Logos is a turn from observable and logical reality. It's a reductive spiral around a meaningless bowl of lies. With nothing at the vortex.
It's why evil can't create. Evil self-defines as other than the generative-by-definition Good. That is, definitionally non-generative. Literally un-creative. Without distinctions and reasoned judgments there's no taste beyond animal stimulus, and no capacity to slake these without r-selected abundance. Discrimination goes from good taste to fear of accountability. Art goes from distilling & presenting refined values to mindless poo-flinging "critique". Education goes from a corpus of facts and skills to what you feel. Science can't even come up with new paradigms to replace failed theories. Medicine lies for money. We could go on, but this is sufficient.
For readers interested in the Macro-Arc form of holistic projection, picture the trajectory of any mainstream creative enterprise as the House of Lies has coalesced. Say since 1960. Click for the post sharing the Macro-Arc concept.
The decline in measurable creative traits is real. The article where this excerpt comes from discusses the issue with the usual breezy beast disregard for the serious implications and hand-waving tier solution. This isn't wrong though - scientists blame "our hurried, over-scheduled lives" and "ever increasing amounts of (time) interacting with electronic entertainment devices". The real question is what direction is portended by generative AI and wearable tech?
Note also that creative effort checks the effects of Fallen entropy while it persists. Replace the roof, tend the crops, raise the children, and life continues for as long as material reality permits.
Production is creation in both senses of the word. Productivity is creating. Conversely, being unproductive is not creating. Indolence is sin for sound reasons. Creation is the image of the Creator while wallowing in entropic decline and degeneration is literally Sorathic. It even lines up with age-old observations about man having intellectual and animal natures - the rational and the appetitive or created in the divine image and Fallen.
The thing about resisting entropy is that is takes constant effort and vigilance. There's no let up. Coasting has one direction. And that cycles right back to r/K. Unproductively huffing narrative and consuming product has an objective deontological nature. R-selectivity is intrinsically unproductive, uncreative, and immoral. It's why it can't self-regulate and ultimately collapses. Our hard times, good men... cycle is a manifestation of the impossibility of earthly perfection. Of secular transcendence. Like an inevitable self-corrective when pretending abstract is material goes too far.
R/K selection as applied to human behavior is epistemologically legitimate. It conforms to the real demands of empirical material and logical abstract reality in apprehensible truth. The true test is that it conforms to and enriches what we've observed about ontological necessity and the House of Lies. Narrative huffing is r-selected behavior and this is immoral because it puts personal desire over reality. Satanic inversion. And thinking of the degenerative mouse utopia-ish aspects of r-selection is a mechanism for why the House of Lies invariably collapses. The Lotus Eater analogy is a good one, combining amnesia and indolence. It's the fruit-fly tier memories and glowing screen "thinking" that is necessary to turn K-selected animals r-selected. Literal dysgenics. And inevitably terminal.
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A society with sufficient abundance breeds a populace incapable of maintaining the abundance. What you'd expect from a Fallen finite human nature.
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