A Summary of The Great and Secret Show 68

The Great and Secret Show offers us

• a familiar, haunting but unreachable paradise
• a splendid example of a shaman in training
• a familiar story of clumsy fatherhood
• a moving example of a devoted son
• a paradigm of the unspeakable evil of chaos
• a brilliant apology for certain madness and suicides
• a masterful story of the tendency of good and evil to be evenly matched
• a chilling, bare, exceptionally rare victory for Romeo and Juliet
• a long list of spiritual rules provided only by example and never by sermonizing
• a profound inside look at human manipulation through fear
• an example of a masterful, minimalist liar
• a grueling story about the death of a powerful and devoted secret society
• a profound tale in which the wrongdoer's redemption does not stop the evil at all

This is not an insignificant set of accomplishments from a curse-filled, foul-mouthed fantasy horror novel about sex, Hollywood and Armageddon.

There are two things here that I want to emphasize. The first has to do with the logical and argumentative power of the lessons that have been distilled and described in postings 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65 and 67. These lessons make sense and fit into our actual three dimensional world quite shrewdly.

Thus the story is consistent with the requirements for a usable inference by narration as shown in posting number 39:

D. Testing narrative inferences involves asking a series of questions.

     1.   Is the narrative coherent?

     2.   Is the narrative plausible?

     3.  Are characterizations consistent?

     4.  Does the narrative have resonance?”

I think we can offer an emphatic positive answer to these four questions.

Thus, logically, we can have confidence in the architecture and qualitative existence of the sea of Quiddity and the Isle of Ephemeris. We can place confidence in the notion that Quiddity must be preserved and that there is a threat to it coming from chaos. The forces of chaos (the Iad Uroboros) seek total destruction in order to achieve monotony and therefore singularity and therefore peace for themselves.

This blog is going to look at three different belief systems with respect to Quiddity:

The Christian Right

The Libertarians

The Postwar Liberals

The question will be: do these belief systems preserve Quiddity? And there is another question at the end of the comparison: do these systems present themselves with methodological similarities?

Subsequent to that analysis, this blog will look at the strength of the sales pitches coming from these belief systems. The great analyst who will assist in that discussion will be none other than the sixth Duke of La Rochefoucauld, a member of the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV of France. As the Encyclopedia Britannica said of this great writer in 1911, “In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clarity, fullness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival.”