Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Judged and the Judger [The End]

Once upon a time, lived a rich and humble servant of God. He was richer than any man in the land, and God delighted in his child, telling the Accuser: "Look upon my servant Job. He is a good and righteous man; he would never hurt a soul." "Of course, Satan replied, he is rich, and the rich act well to ensure that they remain so. This is the world that you have made them."

God considers this and says, "Ok, Accuser, you may blight my righteous servant, only do not touch his body." So Satan makes sure that all his property is stolen, and his servants killed. Then he kills his sons and daughters and whatever else bore life about him. Job cries but does not curse God.

God says "Look at that, you did your worst and Job has remained faithful. Ha!"

Satan says: "Of course he's faithful, he hopes in the future you will grant him more wealth. Let's see what he does when I curse him with boils."

So God says "Ok. Just don't kill him." So Satan blights him with the boils, and Job curses the day he was born, in a poetical sort of way. This amounts to a rejection of God's gift, and in fact, a curse on the act of creation, a curse on God himself, so Satan wins.

Job is caught up in a world in which, like the Protestant Work Ethic, material gain is a sign of God's favor, while scant wealth is a sign of malicious intentions. Job knows that he has done nothing wrong, but his friends, invested in this notion, insist he must have done something to earn God's ire. Why, he's covered in boils and all his stuff is gone. And his children are dead.

Job faces down judge after judge who insists on this system where ethical purity is manifest in material wealth, but Job sticks to his guns himself insisting that he has done nothing to deserve the sort of punishment that God has heaped upon him.

We know as readers that Job is correct. Now the cyclic nature of the structure which is beyond our capacity to reproduce, but is evident in the repetitive discourse of judging and defending, is a very simple expression, of the cyclical-linear form that we have called spiral. It is an example of a recursive text.

The reason it is structured in this cyclic pattern is because it was originally a song, that was meant to be performed in from of an audience, and songs tend to repeat for the sake of a listener. The basic pattern vascillates between judgement and defense, two principle parts, and ends with God agreeing with Job, he is indeed a good man, and blameless, and in the end he gets everything back, regardless of the fact that he cursed God.

Structurally, Job is paradigmatic of the sort of recursive geometry we are advancing in this book. The actual content of the story however is also relevant. We have a story about a man who is living in harmony with his world and his God, and even when he is robbed of everything that makes his life good, he is still faithful to the God who gave him life. Eventually he breaks down, but who can blame him?

This accounts for about one fifteenth of the entire story. The rest is back and forth between him and the community who is judging him on God's behalf.

So we have the first principle of vascillation between judgement and defense. And a cyclic turning with is also linear, as we mentioned in our paradigm archetype $This Sentence is False$.

In Revelation, the recursive geometry is still there, but now instead of identifying with the judged, we are to identify ourselves with the judging. The entire psychology of the story is different here, it is a ballistic finger pointing and a mass negation. The spirituality is itself of abnegation. It moves in turns, first a repudiation of the churches, then a holy vision of heaven, then the opening of the seals, then the seven trumpets and etc...

The issue that we're drawing to the four, rather than decode the numerological code of Revelation, is that the repetition is itself, much like Heidegger's work, written on the name of God.

It is this emanation from a center that defines recursive turning and the repetition is not a defect of the articulation, but a conscious choice to move in accord with the temporality that is evident to a human living in this realm.

YHWH, remember, is the a participle for the word Being, and that being moves through time in a fashion which is both circular and linear. The week is seven days long, and in fact, was also when Revelation was written. The days move forward, but also loop. So when we move in turns like this, as we are writing on the name of God.

The principle of $This Sentence is False$ is partially generative, itself infinite, mechanical, temporal, spatial. It transcends and sustains the dualities. It is unwritable, but can still be referred to.

It suggests a complex geometry, and a rule set which is scale invariant. If it is not God Himself, then it is God's patterning on to human language, the generative mechanism as it is patterned on language.

Jerusalem and Milton both by Blake move in accord with this cyclic linearity. It is (if not god) the pattern of being, and it is here that we will end. In the abnegating space of Revelation, having scribbled our histories on the creative principle itself, returning to that very place we began, in the wide gulf beyond even yawning distance, namely Chaos.

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