Liberals, Conservatives, and Jesus: part V: Male and Female

Sex and Reproduction

Since I am speaking to adults here, I need not refrain too much for the sake of delicate sensibilities. Reproduction between males and females reinforces this rightism and leftism as a description of the fixed order of existence.  You can plainly see that in reproduction, the genders of male and female are active and passive, the first principle acting upon and passive acquiescing to action.

• Males seek females, females not so much with males
• Males act upon females, females comply
• Males are responsible for motion, not females
• Males, if not satisfied, cannot enter the female
• Males enter females, females do not enter males
• Males, if not satisfied, cannot deliver sperm into the female, and no life can come from the union.
• Sperm, in the same male fashion,  swims aggressively to competes with other cells to reach the ovum, which is stationary.
• When the sperm reaches the ovum, it “drills” itself into the ovum zona pellucida¹. Again, a single sperm enters the ovum, the ovum does not enter the sperm cell.

I ask again, is this only coincidence? With respect to the active principle, males are clearly in that place and females in the passive place.

Rightism and Leftism do not stop there. It goes much deeper.

It’s important not to think of male and female, or “right” and “left” for that matter, as two separate things, but the same thing, as we will see. They are formally distinguished, not substantially.

Plato and Aristotle were primitive liberals and conservatives. Since we are speaking of a time of the infancy of that male/female, right/left paradigm,  they are not yet showing signs of breakdown as in our age. The breakdown is when they start cannibalizing each other and switching traits as the moment sees fit. The left’s failures to fulfill its speculative religious ideals result in atheism and naive realism and the right’s failure of bringing God to earth through finite methods and representations. They switch sides, with the original liberalism ending up believing only what they can see and the original conservatism believing things about God, which come only out of feeling.

Plato’s idealism was the industry born of a world without a revelation from the divine that would put all matters to rest and dis-incentivize autonomous reason to seek and ponder a real foreign one. He is trying to divine what is most important from the activity of the mind alone, consequentially concluding that is it God’s realm that takes first place. Aristotle, the first scientist, is conservative at this time because he is taking what is at hand and objective to determine what is of utmost importance, which to him is also the spiritual realm. They do this because in 400 BC and beyond, no sure demonstration of that spiritual realm existed.

This paradigm is in force today, even long after that demonstration came, as the way the world filters out good from the bad.  It’s in force in politics, philosophy, economics, relationships, science, and religion, every human thought endeavor. If God “out there” (male) or just in the mind (female).  Is the government (Male. Rules, Law) or the private sector (Female, freedom, organic existence) the best driver of an economy? Is reality separate from the individual (male) or all an illusion of the mind (female)? Are the consequences of an action (male) front and center or the intentions behind an action (female)? Is the object (male) of first concern or the subject (female)?

Thus, Plato is Left, and Aristotle is Right, respectively idealists and realists, the female principle and the male principle. Spoken of are Plato and Aristotle as philosophers of politics or metaphysics, but their metaphysics are not discussed as leftism and rightism and certainly not as femaleness and maleness. This is because we have come to understand liberalism and conservatism as only a political paradigm. Again, we define ourselves out of the running for insight from the start through our language. This is a big part of the problem that left and right thinking produces when it is of natural influence.

In modern times Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rabbi, and Kaballism get a little closer:

The principles of creativity and receptivity, acting and being acted upon, energizing and absorbing, aggressiveness and toleration, initiating and completing, of limitless emanation of a transcendental being and measured reflection of the cosmos, are portrayed by the dual motif of masculinity and femininity within our religious experience…Unconditioned, creative, infinite transcendence and self conditioned, receptive finite immanence of God are symbolized by masculinity and femininity. – Solveitchik, from Family Redeemed ²

Self-conditioning, receptivity, and finitude on the one hand and unconditioned, creative, and infinite on the other. Also, active and passive aspects within the religious experience.

But this is again clearly an attempt to see man and God by identifying shared qualities in “higher” and “lower,” by avoiding a narrowing of the shared qualities that we run into problems trying to make it stick. Although I would not use either “higher” or “lower, combining Irenaeus and Soloveitchik’s opinions we do start to get something more like what we think of as rightism and leftism that has been integral to us from the beginning of civilization. The only thing we need to do is make these generalizations more applicable to how we might distinguish between an Imago of left and right together as both the nature of God and as sin. A sin, that is something by which and into which the world’s view of the divine was devastated and also something to which we must authentically return.

We can start with something like this, about the psychology of each side:

Liberals are naive novelty seekers, and this manifests as, for instance, a (claimed) love of open borders and diversity, and a penchant for risk and undue optimism in the face of evidence to the contrary. Conservatives are commonsensical guardians, and that manifests as a wariness of untested outsiders and a respect for the tried and true. Neither ideology, if restrained from its worst excesses, is necessarily “bad”; logically, if liberalism or conservatism were really bad and fitness-reducing, they would have been selected out of the human gene pool by now. No, it’s probably fairer to say that in an environment of low level threats and approximate mental, emotional and psychological equality between men, (such as might be seen in an isolated, small hunter-gatherer tribe), liberalism (i.e., “foragerism”) is the more “fit” ideology; whereas in a threatening, unstable environment where human traits, both positive and negative, between people and races are unequally distributed, conservatism (i.e., “farmerism”) is the more “fit” ideology to hold.³

Conservatism and Liberalism as a description of the extremes and the combined results of human psychology have always been something about us that has been a blessing and a curse. When its a right-left of a mere part of the same thing it’s neutral, and a paradigm necessary when we have a lack of knowledge. We use it to take apart a proposition into two basic constituencies to test how they play together fairly. We get into problems when there is  a bias for one or the other.

When we vulnerable after we were stripped of every tool, rule, and vision of what is of ultimate and present importance and dumped into this place hostile to us. Full of dangers and challenges, where exhausting work is necessary, and where the results of our efforts to improve us never improve us so that we achieve what we lost. Shall we stay here, where is proven to be safe (male), or risk venturing out where we might find a better place (female)? Should we use up valuable time and resource making a new tool that may not work (female) or stay with what has proven to work (male)? Will we take our conception of the unseen world (female) as being contained adequately in the things around us (male) or more out of our imaginations (female) than tangibles (female)? Shall our language be very broad and inclusive (female) or very technical (male)? Is it better to look at something new (female) as a threat (male) or as an opportunity (female)? Is a law that is external, codified and written (male) better or is law best seen as the parameters of natural sensibilities (female)? Are we better off looking at spirituality as being informed more through an invention of man (female) or from something else?

There is no right answer, but that is the problem. Conservatism and liberalism are necessary corruptions of a state of spiritual existence split off and at war with each other. They are also biblically defined being at rest and peace with each other, complimenting and helping, not selfish, not competing, not disagreeing, nor struggling and not having delusions that they are either going to become less than they are or become more than they are through their own powers if Power is standing before them.

This conservatism and liberalism in the corrupt version is our world-truth paradigm: the most cherished, most celebrated, most cursed, but most psychologically ingrained and indispensable to the everyday running of the world. It is the broadest conception also the most potentially destructive and also the most propitious manner of thinking, and most illustrative of what it means to be a man in a fallen world without hope or with hope.

The non-sequitur of Right and Left is “we don’t know what will happen but what we want to expect to happen is what will happen.” Its prophetic, but man’s prophecy, not God’s. The only way to fix the non-sequitur is to replace man’s means of knowing the future, and about things of carnal or immediate concern, to someone and something that has an infinite and objective view of space/time and only to a transcendent concern. It would involve replacing our entire left-right paradigm with the left-right paradigm of this Person and its record of fulfillment, who sees/promises and fulfills.

But how is God, the signification for this left/right Imago Dei to be thought of in terms of left and right?

We have already talked about the prophetic-truth paradigm expressed in the first chapter of Genesis. God speaks, and the universe appears according to that speech. God speaking is potentiality. Although certain to God, it is only a possibility from the position of the finite until it comes to pass. Its fulfillment is its concretization. When it is made manifest exactly as God promised, this creates moral evidence of God’s nature. That which is promised is the “left,” because it is idealistic and yet unfulfilled. The fulfillment is the right, the conservative side because it is concerned with how things are instead of how we will something, choose to see something, or want it to be.

Adam (“ground,” used in two forms in Genesis 2:19, hmda and Mda,) is, in the beginning, the pure conservative principle, where Eve is the liberal. The Tree of Life is the eternal state where they are reconciled, free from struggle and death, most importantly with respect to the spirit and the things of ultimacy.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of the corruption of this perfection, of a kind of knowledge in a fallen state that comes not through direct appropriation, but through the symbolic, through mediation, through an imperfect image. Both are prophetic trees, one of the promises of God’s perfect provision, and other of the promise of a world where man is on his own and where there is nothing but difficulty and obscurity, but with a choice to be made between one imperfect kind of knowledge of GOd and another. Man eats only from the prophetic Tree of Life in the perfect state, meaning his belief in the sureness of God’s prophecy. When he eats fro the other tree he eats from the belief in false prophecy or true prophecy through parable, trope, mystery, symbol, appearances, words, ideas.

Eve, the liberal principle, is the one who, in a classic liberal fashion, is motivated by feelings, ideals, possibilities, and about taking of chances and innovating. She is however under the influence of what is established, what is proven. Law, boundaries, what is already known, what is rationally within limits. This is Adam, rightism.

As we read this please note that “good” and “evil” do to correspond to left and right in any order. Left and right are the same broken or corrupt things after the fall, but one side evil and the other relatively good.

She, leftism, is the one who, unrestrained by her rightist husband, accepts the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge because it was  “good for food” and that it was “pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise.”  It satisfies the body, it looks good and it helps in self-aggrandizement through learning. She does not know what will happen, but she accepts this false prophecy of it by the Serpent, who in effect denies God’s prophecy about the perfect life of the right/left: “Ye shall not surely die.” “Dying, ye do not die” (YLT). “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” A half-truth pertaining to the prophetic paradigm which seduced Eve. The same paradigm from which she ate.

God then prohibited the Tree of Life from the previously sinless right and the left, a knowledge that once protected them from the conversion of right/left into something that could cause spiritual death.

The Serpent seized upon a trick of language to convince Eve that it was a lie, namely, that we can take his language as meaning they will die immediately. This is seductive because it means that transgression is a possibility without the immediate consequences of such autonomy, the immediate and the subjective being what is most important to both the left and the right. This is, of course,  proven not true, but after testing God it will be too late to take it back. The left and right we have today still depend upon disinformation through linguistic forms, not content.

Shame is the result of the sin, and Adam is made the responsible party in the left/right relationship because he took the word of his wife at face value. This is a failure of conservatism, to forget what he knows for what he wants to know.

The condition of nakedness is a result of the knowledge that they did not have before. This knowledge is that they have no artificial covering except that made from the elements around them or in them and a covering is now a possibility. That made by God is not artificial, and therefore no need to be covered, and the possibility does not occur to consciousness.

These artificial elements of the world for left/right in the fallen state are fig leaves, leaves which are made by God but fashioned for use by man’s hand. God’s covering, on the other hand, is the same left/right paradigm that he originally protected the left/right from in the beginning, but invisibly and without aforethought. Now it is visible, temporary and relatively superficial. Man’s is fig leaves. The other is God’s prophetic paradigm, messianic prophecy, the “good” of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  The animal skins that replace the fig leaves represent the coming sacrifice of their Redeemer, the fulfiller of the “good” knowledge, and their way back to God.

If you want to call this “allegory” and illegitimate, this would be an example of the initial transgression of which I speak in Eden. We devise an epithet by language to change a manifest truth for the purpose of self-improvement, industry, work, enrichment. It creates a whole religious industry for that, because it is imperfect, is guaranteed to last 2000 years of fruitful fruitlessness. We also do the same by refusing to hold the meaning to a single biblical revelatory one, so that it will be put into service for whatever we wish.

This interpretation is cemented by looking past our puerile exegesis of the rest of Gen 3. We realize that the subject is entirely the fall of the prophetic by man and the coming redemption of it by God. The subject is prophecy and a prophecy.

The curse of Adam is prophetic and particular for him, the “right,” alone. He will be responsible for the outside work in the relationship, most importantly religious work to divine truth from what is now obscure, gleaning only meager things (“by the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.”). He will physically die because he came from the ground. Eve will die the same way because she came out of the “right,” but her prophetic curse is that she will bear children, bring about new life in pain, in subjectivity as the “left” to the “right,” and that she will always struggle in her desire to have what he has and take authority over him.

The Serpent is brought low, to the earth, without any future redemption,  from whence his false prophecy came. But Adam and Eve, the right and left, as well as the serpent will continue to live, meaning that the human race within its new imperfect and painful truth-paradigm will continue along with the philosophical idea that precipitated it.

For Satan being brought to earth, I give you this to further the incorrigible prophetic subject here.

The redemptive plan, in distinction from the left/right and that of Satan, it is a “good” prophetic plan, seen in the protoevangelion, the first explicit messianic prophecy in Gen 3;15.

Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

The strike at the head is fatal. The strike at the foot is not. “It,” who does this striking, is the “seed of the woman,” a curious Hebrew phrase since women are not normally spoken of as having seed, but only the man. It means the seed of the woman is the virgin-born Redeemer to come. He and his faithful are this seed. The enemy of this seed is the seed of the serpent, both Satan and his agents, those under the corrupt faith of leftism and rightism. Messiah in this scene, who is heel–struck, is not killed. The Cross is not fatal because there is a resurrection. This resurrection plucks victory from the apparent defeat from Jesus’ murder, which was also prophesied, but where another prophecy raises him in triumph and causes the destruction to the influence of the serpent’s corrupt left/right paradigm for them.

Redemption of the people of the good seed is for those motivated by Christ and the prophetic revelation of him in their religion alone, the good right and left.

Next…Conservatism, Liberalism, and Christianity

1. http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/fert/fert.html ↩

2. http://jbq.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/362/362_duality.pdf. ↩

3. http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/the- psychology-of-liberals-and-conservatives/ ↩

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