I’ve broken up the text with a bit of commentary. In each passage I highlight a few phrases that seem most important. Effectively he proves that reason has not been, nor can it provide, the answer.

First on the nature of reason’s mastery of desire (that is, what it would mean to freewill if reason mastered desire through reason):

Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage. But when all that is explained and worked out on paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless to suppose that some laws of nature man will never understand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be SENSELESS in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning can be really calculated–because there will some day be discovered the laws of our so-called free will–so, joking apart, there may one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall choose in accordance with it. If, for instance, some day they calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that particular way, what FREEDOM is left me, especially if I am a learned man and have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we should have to understand that.

Then on to the nature of reason and its limitations:

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives.

So then he turns hard against reason’s mastery for a very particular case:

But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid–simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases. And in particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage–for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important–that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason … and … and … do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy?

Now he proposes a better understanding of human nature based on our disparity between moral compass and life (I just love the line about being an ungrateful biped which seems to fit with our problems arising through failing to give thanks):

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual–from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity.

Let’s get some history:

Put it to the test and cast your eyes upon the history of mankind. What will you see? Is it a grand spectacle? Grand, if you like. Take the Colossus of Rhodes, for instance, that’s worth something. With good reason Mr. Anaevsky testifies of it that some say that it is the work of man’s hands, while others maintain that it has been created by nature herself. Is it many-colored? May be it is many-coloured, too: if one takes the dress uniforms, military and civilian, of all peoples in all ages–that alone is worth something, and if you take the undress uniforms you will never get to the end of it; no historian would be equal to the job. Is it monotonous? May be it’s monotonous too: it’s fighting and fighting; they are fighting now, they fought first and they fought last–you will admit, that it is almost too monotonous. In short, one may say anything about the history of the world–anything that might enter the most disordered imagination.

But what can we NOT say about history (and about human nature itself):

The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat. And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbors simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one.

What does this mean? What are we saying, but that in our ingratitude we ruin ourselves.

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself–as though that were so necessary– that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.

How far will man go to prove that he is not merely the keys of a piano? (Here is the triumph of the stupidity of man.)

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object–that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated–chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

Back to freewill:

You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!

And now from me: So then we are ungrateful, impossibly so. There is no other condition for us but to be an ungrateful biped who, to prove himself that he is not a piano-key will deliberately do something harmful to himself, to others and even the whole world. Reason cannot meet this. Even if reason could be made to meet it, we would simply abandon reason so that we might continue to do it.

I will not sing to pass the time
Nor commend these seasons in rhyme.
For what I seek to celebrate
Is much more than passing fate
But the joy of your life in mine.

I swear my words will only sound,
My harp play, or my drum pound,
To share my heart’s one love
God’s gift and my only dove
As the earth turns silent round.

It might surprise how oft your smile
Does fill the room with graceful style.
And against the night outside my door
You labored in prayer, on the floor
Granting me strength to stand my trial.

You may ask how man finds joy
Without falling to cunning ploy,
No other answer have I
But to gaze with tearful eye
On her whom God would I enjoy.

Each year passes labors long
tween our joyous meetings.
But upon the calendar now sits
a time for kinfolk greetings.
We’ll raise our song to drink
and share in bounty’s eatings!

Do not delay my friends
let us know you’re coming.
Let not the children with
the babysitter be slumming.
All are welcome and wanted
only frowns are unbecoming.

The Serbian Diocese of Western America has hosted the Prologue online for some time, but the menu was not very friendly, particularly for a quick read on mobile devices, so I whipped up a quick javascript to connect to do today’s page.

Here’s the code to paste into the bookmarklet:
javascript: var d = new Date(); day = d.getDate(); longdate = d.toLocaleDateString(); a = longdate.split(' '); month = a[1]; document.location="http://www.westsrbdio.org/prolog/prolog.cgi?day=" + day + "&month=" + month;

This seed seeks remembrance, the fruit of your tree;
That fell to the soil once sprouted, now grown.

North of Angel City, to the land of the hells;
A willing servant by spirit-wind blown.

Speaking for the broken, beaten in dry lands;
A man stood condemned for what he condoned.

Find a wife, add a daughter, and a son; this seed;
Such great fruit summoned the tree that had sown.

While still a bud, he learned words of power;
Calling forth fish by command from sea-foam.

But the calling had grasped him at his core;
Their divine energy animated his bones.

First in sight of the sea and scrubbed hills;
Then in the great valley he spoke under their domes.

Wife called the blind, saw to his two children;
Loved safe in the castle he carved from the stone.

Kept his good house and looked out for his needs;
So in the stead of the damned he might stand alone.

At him empty men spoke spears of cold fire;
Made outlaw unjustly, homeless he roamed.

“I have come not to seek myself but my brothers;
Grace give to the dead, to the living unknown.”

He said, “Fear not, those weak from this hunger;
For together our feasting and singing atone.”

Famine, envy and spite burst forth to do battle;
Thus knowing his fate, the scars he bid welcome.

By heaven’s good gift, each barb turned a blessing;
A lifetime of cuts carved an old face winsome.

He saw the invisible, heard the voice of the mute;
With each hand clasped made friend the lonesome.

Now this seed speaks the last truth you have given;
And repay the debt by writing this tome.

Father sang Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty;
Ever ringing out, long after God took him home.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

From Kurt Vonnegut’s Introduction to Mother Night

This is a comment I offered on a website I frequent called “Front Porch Republic” which seeks to be a meeting place of like-minded folks who largely call themselves conservative or some more or less precise term.

So we have seen an exhausted thread here which represents the exhausted FPR, a mere symptom of the exhausted conservative movement (or at least I am exhausted and so all the light that passes through my eyes is colored so).

By exhausted, I do not mean without vibration; there is still momentum, movement, agitation, excitation, but there is no light from the heat, no illumination of a path forward, no cohesion. And this is as it should be, in fact, it must be.

For conservatism isn’t. It cannot be. You cannot have a coordinating movement of persons from different communities; especially those so fluid as to require a base democratization, a pandering to those who have free association available to them as a weapon, and a distortion of the social contract which can only come about by a man believing he has no debts if he is not paying usury.

It is the truth that Fusionism is a lie and a repulsive lie at that. It was fabricated out of what was believed to be a political necessity, and existential threat to both man and state that was represented by militant, totalitarian communism. But that is only the beginning, for other words used in FPR are also lies. Christianity is one of them.

As fond as I am of the Roman Church, there are those who could articulate with subtly I cannot (and possibly without offense) why my Orthodox brethren and that body remain divided. Certainly each Protestant in this forum has heard at least one sermon in their lifetime on such a topic, even in the most adoring forms of insipid Anglican Romantic cucumber circles.

Moreover, though some of you also work, as I do, in what is called “Higher Education” this too is a lie. My institution’s mission statement, while not presupposing the inferiority of your institution in any explicit way, necessarily stands in opposition to many of the institutions represented here.

I live in a marginally above standard community, economically and aesthetically, which has no center whatsoever. Not only can it not defend itself against the loss of its nature, it whores out what little germination of community can be found to those who would only sleep within the confines of its borders; preferring to work, Church, shop and perform other acts of life far out of its memory.

The only thing I can admit is that I see no hope of anything better except for each to share in correspondence, as was the tradition in a more civilized age, between one another the essential matters of necessary research into the essential and diverse natures of human community and foster it where and as we can as all men hope toward God’s salvation.

We are not, nor should we see ourselves as, prophets of a better age. Even as the golden headed Nebuchadnezzar himself was only a king, his state built by conquering blood, upon brutal slavery and maintained by the subjugation of God’s people.

We are rather poets, who having (I hope) fasted and prayed, scrawl out some meaning in words, some code that can be passed among the faithful whom we neither know nor know of. This will bear the fruit that all poetry does, reflecting the reader upon themselves, convicting the soul.

We are not right, nor righteous. We are fell creatures of this age. But that which we are, we are. This is why the conservative movement went wrong, because it is no movement at all, but a voice crying out, make straight the path! I do not know the way, though I have witnessed what seems to me to be the way in the lives of men and women I might dare call holy or good.

I don’t think to speak of myself, but of those who seem to see clearer than I do–here and elsewhere.

I have no interest in political machinations. In the success or failure of tyrants who would rule in my name as opposed to ruling in the name of my enemies. I would have no enemies, though I am sure this poem of a post will remind a few that they believe I am theirs.

For the totalitarian instinct is in the right, the left and all points between. And a man who refuses to join the glittering unholy army of self-ascribed righteousness is as much a foe as the ones they march to meet on the battlefield. In fact worse, for he appears to be an infection within the ranks themselves and a traitor to the cause.

Damnation to Brutus yes? Cassius still? And Judas yet in the maws of Hell’s coldest fiend. Would you but know the nature of such a condition you would not seek it for a single man, but open your heart to each man you chance upon to meet as we go about our plans to rule a world with rulers who cannot rule even themselves.

I am tempted even now to curse those who would seek to form an ideology, or movement, even within the ephemeral walls of this astral realm off bits and bytes; but rather, knowing their sin is also in my heart tenfold; I ask for God’s providence to guide us both and have mercy on our souls.