Irony for Greeks

Eironia: An Inquiry into the Ultimate of Life's
Ironies&;#8230;&;#8230;

A syllogistic inquiry into the profoundly subtle simplicity of the
unified source of All, or Universe, as Godhead

Major Premise: All that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist
share the same foundational, albeit sensorily invisible, subatomic
components, to wit: waves of energy &; information;

Minor Premise: All material existence is governed by inchoate &;/or
otherwise limited information which is, therefore, counterintuitive to
both the nature and existence of this invisible essence;

Conclusion: Hence, irony, in its most fundamental meaning as the
quality of featuring more than is revealed, leading to an unexpected
phenomenon or phenomena, best conceptualizes the defining
characteristic of existence as expressed in Nature as a whole, for,
within that concept is subsumed the operative nexus or bridge to that
unseen reality, i.e., Faith, by sufficiently intelligent material
entities, such as Man, in that unseen essential energy and
information.

Is the 'Godhead', then, better understood---viewed, so to say----as a
vastly intelligent pure force or forces, functioning in such a way or
ways, at least in significant part, via means of Sophism [from 'sofia',
wisdom], as to compel the relatively dormant spirits veiled, as it
were, in limited material form to become ultimately self-aware as the
precise limitless 'clones' of the One?

Since the days of Heraclitus, of the Ionian school of fifth century
B.C., the concept of unity in diversity, of the One as Many has both
inspired and confounded men who, as effective 'amnesiac' spirits on a
human, hence material, journey, have chiefly failed to integrate into
their daily lives this Truth, that 'all things are One.' One of the
very first thinkers to hold to the unreliability of our sensory
observations of apparent 'reality', he pointedly maintained that our
senses often play tricks on us, their habitual dependents.

Yet today, such bold insight into the nature of existence itself
remains largely consigned by the great mass of men of all intellectual
faculties to the realm of either theology or speculative theory. As the
deconstructionist point of view relates, no thing can ever hope to
fully understand the very system of which it is an integral part:
hence, the human brain, regardless of its qualities, is hidebound to an
outlook, literally (as opposed to an 'in-look') that defines reality at
its essence in terms of itself and its, at best, limited sensory input
portals.

Indeed, and as but one sweeping example, the science of astronomy,
while informed at its most sophisticated by cutting edge quantum
physics, still, in genuine bewilderment, describes the as yet
physically unobservable Universe in material terms, i.e. so-called
'dark matter.'

Then there was Pythagoras whose mathematical insights yielded further
refinements to such unified field theorizing: as God and man have
similar natures, hence the structure of man and the universe must be
based upon the same principle. All souls, originating with God, return
to it once cleansed via transmigration. Yet, for all his school's
prowess, it could not somehow reconcile a common source for
diversity.

On to Parmenides, a Pythagorean, who held that truth and appearance are
distinct; further, the only valid perception results in an unchanging
state of being-----whether this line of argument can be elevated to
what modern physics has revealed about the fundamental essence
(therefore 'unchanging'----did he mean timeless/spaceless?--- unseen
reality) of everything in the universe is unlikely, as it was based
upon relatively rigid logic, which may simply have coincided with what
we know to be true today. Nevertheless, he contributed to the healthy
impugning of the intellect, describing it as dependent upon apparent
truth and, hence, capable of great error, at least qualitatively.

And, let's not forget sweet Empedocles, the father of elemental
material inventorying. This insight aids Parmenides observations
inasmuch as it at least gives us the model for common and recombinant
building blocks of matter.

Getting closer to the more familiar Plato and Aristotle, they were
greatly influenced by one Anaxagoras and his theories of 'mind' as
non-material (hence, perhaps as pure energy or 'spirit'?). This at
least hinted at the energy state/spirit world versus the material. Now,
just 'whose' or 'what's' mind is problematic, but surely he was not
suggesting that the once-created material brain of any material entity
was the creator of the balance of its material being. No, he must have
intended THE mind of minds, the common feature of all minds being that
they process energy/information waves linguistically and/or otherwise.
Let's just say that he was prescient in terms of the science of physics
which, after all, his countrymen did give a name and nomenclatural
realm to study and leave it there.

Finally, the Atomists, a really radical bunch of thinkers! Go down deep
enough and you find true reality, said they; they certainly validated
old Parmenides truth/appearance dichotomy. The primary qualities are
fixed in the most fundamental unit of reality, said they----to them, it
was the atom, not ,of course, the case, but they were on the right
track; the rest, they said, was based upon perception by other
intelligent material entities.

The Sophists, coming along more or less next, were more concerned with
the sociological implications of all this: how, then, should/can man
live? Since our sensory perceptions are basically untrustworthy,
relativism invades all things social, at least within the human
species.

Socrates took up their literally challenging approach most famously.
Known for his questioning as an artful yet humble form of analysis, he
was a master of 'eironia', the effect of which was to point up the
shallowness, and consequent relative unreliability, of man's
'reasoning' powers. In so doing, he may have posed his greatest threat
to the worldly status quo in teaching his material, observable world,
and ours as well, to ever quest for the essence of reality, the Truth,
as it were, in contradistinction to a necessarily flawed picture of
it.

While likely the humblest----and least justified in his humility----man
of his or any age, he went so far as to question even a 'sacred'
oracular description of him as the wisest of men: 'I know nothing' he
would reply, going on to inevitably conclude that perhaps the great
oracle subtly acknowledged his awareness of his own 'ignorance' as the
essence of wisdom itself.

We know better: old Socrates 'soc(k)ed' it to any dogmatic
world/universe-view, the result of which, if sincerely pursued ,might
best lead the seeker to ultimate Truth, howsoever knowable.

How deviant, then, is the popular 'cultural' notion of
'Sophistication', demeaning a once proud human inquiry into the
essential nature of existence itself by way of au courant [even the use
of this imported phrase is illustrative, albeit only for purposes of
hyperbolic explication] empty synonyms such as 'hip', worldly, savvy,
blah, blah, blah---------------it's enough to cause even an otherwise
robust young thinker to reach for the Hemlock.

If, then, in this time of deconstruction/post-modernism, through what
means can humanity honor its Source and thereby escape the 'case
closed' illusion of dialectic materialism and its pervasive
humanism?

I would propose that the key may indeed be this very Greek (and
probably much older albeit unrecorded) pragmatic insight into the
divine quality of existence itself: that the inevitable awareness of
the divinely pure components within humanity is assured by the very
existence of its limitations of perception and our consequent
understanding of those in-built material barriers as certain catalysts
to our seeking super-rational pathways to complete self-awareness by
way of Eironia's necessary companion force,Faith, the 'evidence of
things unseen.'