Histories

Events have two orders and hence two complexions,

Martin observes

which is to say, the order in which we perceive them and the order in which we construct them to have happened.

Thus we may discover suffering and track it back to evil: in this case, we say, the observation of suffering created the observation of evil. The immanence of evil, conversely, generated the immanence of suffering. Neither order is correct; rather, the preferred narrative depends on whether one is most concerned with how things register or how they immine.

The argument of the mind states that immanence precedes observation. This is a normative statement. Its prescription is regulate your actions and not your observations. Do not try to hide from what you see; rather, act as if you have the power to achieve desirable experience.

This prescription fails in two broad avenues of experience: first, under the pressure of reflection, when the mind turns on itself and seeks to refine its models of reality; second, in the presence of an evil logician whose goal is to sever the practicality of immanence.

Postmodernism has a bad reputation, at least in part, due to the natural suspicion—the surf of Occam’s razor—that these two cases are the same.