“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Same person, inscribed simultaneously in a square and in a circle. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
What better metaphor? We belong to the real world. And, simultaneously, to a world of our own making.
A ‘virtual’ world. In the sense that our world is crafted according to our ‘virtue’. Defined by our virtue… Our collective virtue, of course. Nobody has ever managed to make an entire world for themselves… The world we live in, we inhabit as quests, is the consequence of our cultured efforts. A collective endeavor in both space and time.
OK, and where’s the link between redemption by divine grace and this schizophrenic world of yours?
The virtual world we’ve made, innocently until people have started to guess what God had in mind for us, can be measured across two dimensions. Freedom and faith.
You don’t make any sense…
Freedom of will is what allows us to choose. Faith is what keeps us together.
To make sense, freedom and faith need reality. There’s no such thing as absolute freedom and faith needs to be anchored in… you guessed right, hard core reality!
So here we have it. Individual human beings collaborating in good faith and making good use of the amount of liberty made possible by the reality present in each consecutive moment.
Or
Herded people driven by blind faith ignoring the very concept of liberty. (Can you even consider these people as being human?)
Since both the above situations are fictional extremes, the truth is – as usual – somewhere in the middle.
Individual human people trying to make a living in whatever circumstances they have happened to open their eyes. Since nothing is perfect in any given situation, people have to make do with whatever they have at their disposal. One of the tools they use to keep going, to remain true to themselves, is the famous fallacy.
Id, Ego, SuperEgo. Freud. Consciousness is the ulterior level of self-awareness. Added by humans through languaged interaction. Humberto Maturana. AI is a function. A human developed computer application. Built by cramming information available over the internet into computer circuits sophisticated enough to defy human understanding. Social Media
Some 70 000 years ago, people – human people, that is – have learned to articulate. To communicate in a symbolic manner. The next step up from coordinating their moves while hunting. Acting like a pack was inherited from their primate ancestors. Active communication, speaking with the intent to teach, was a human addition.
Not without consequences. They were already accomplished hunter-gatherers and skillful tool makers. Some researchers have unearthed evidence that they were also artists. They were painting on cave-walls some 20000 years before the modern humans, the Sapiens, had started to displace them. They were our uncles, the Neanderthals. But it was us, the Sapiens, who have survived. To tell the story…
Us being able to speak, to language our interactions, has had tremendous consequences. The most important one, even if rarely mentioned, is the ‘shape’ of our consciences. And the depth of our consciousness.
Some 10000 ago, people have invented agriculture. Planting crops and raising animals. Already conscious, they had figured out the ups of the whole thing. Unfortunately – their rationality was just as bounded as our still is – they didn’t knew what was coming… According to some researchers – and to my first hand observations – being able to grow your own food doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll live longer. Or better… But society, as a whole, was able to leap forward!
It took our homo ancestors some 2 and a half million years to evolve from primates to cave-painting humans. In another 50 000 years, our already speaking ancestors have invented agriculture. And built things like Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.
You don’t need to speak in order to coordinate your actions while hunting. Wolfs do it ‘silently’. But you need a different kind of coordination, a deeper one, if you want to build things. ‘You’, in this case, is ‘you, the people’. When building things, the builders need coordinated thinking. Coordinated action is not enough. Hence religion. Reflexive self-awareness, developed in contrast to but in cooperation with the individuals comprising the community becomes a shared consciousness. A collection of cooperating individuals generate an entire space. Open-up a brand new ‘volume’. One full of human made opportunity and governed by culture. Nota bene, competition is nothing but yet another form of cooperation. Of a deeper nature!
Some 500 years ago, our fore-fathers have invented Science. While philosophy was a coordinated effort to make sense of things, science had been invented to coordinate knowledge with reality. While philosophy had sprouted naturally, as a consequence of how people used, and continue, to be, science had been born, intentionally, out of necessity. Philosophy and religion have happened naturally, depending heavily on the particulars of when and where they happened to appear. Science was invented as a consequence of where the people involved had ‘opened their eyes’. As a consequence of the circumstances produced by the previous efforts.
Nowadays, in the technologically built circumstances we have prepared for ourselves, we are currently cramming already gathered knowledge – too much of which being nothing more than mere crap – through computer circuits so complicated that we no longer understand. Hoping that the elusive AI we expect to be born as the result of our efforts will ….
Will what?!? Make more sense? Of what we call ‘reality’? Or makes us even richer? Well, make some of us even richer than they already are…
One caveat here. While humankind, as a whole, has leapt forward each time, individual humans have had a more nuanced experience. Depending more on the circumstances each of them had been born into rather than on their individual efforts. Yes, people who were able to grow their food had been able to build magnificent things. The Egyptian and the Mayan pyramids, for example. The Stonehenge and the Atlit Yam monuments. But if we look closer… only a small number of agricultural societies have been able to generate remarkable things. And only for a limited time… The rest of the agricultural societies had experienced nothing but hard work. Sometimes, too many times, wasted at the whim of authoritarian rulers. In fact, each and every such breakthroughs had been a blessing in disguise. To be experienced by others but those who had borne the brunt of them being introduced. Those toiling the fields had to work harder than the foragers before them. Those sweating in the factories had to work more hours, yearly speaking, than the peasants. Currently, people working remotely – connected to a computer – can hardly escape off-line.
History is full of peasant uprisings and various revolutions. None of which had accomplished anything. We’d better have a talk with our alter-ego. Or pray… We’re headed towards interesting times!
1939, September 1. The III-rd Reich invades Poland. 1939, September 3. France and Britain declares war against Germany. 1940, April 8, Germany invades Norway. 1940, May 10, Germany invades Belgium. 1940, June 14, German soldiers occupy Paris.
The British Army in France 1939 Army and French Air Force personnel outside a dugout named ’10 Downing Street’ on the edge of an airfield, 28 November 1939.
OK. War makes no sense. Starting one, that is. Unless you have to defend yourself, of course!
It was Hitler’s Germany which had started WWII. France and Britain declaring war on Germany was nothing but a formality. But what happened next…
Waiting for 8 months while your opponent was busy elsewhere makes even less sense. Than starting the war in the first place…
Counterfactual history is interesting. Imagining ‘what could have happened if’, we may learn how people think.
We know what happened. We’re not happy with much of it. It would have been a lot better if WWII was never fought. In the first place. For all of us. The next best thing would have been a lot shorter war. France and Britain invading Germany while Hitler and Stalin were dividing Poland among themselves.
I’m not going to enumerate arguments. Neither for nor against. I don’t actually know whether the war would have been shorter or not. Whether the end would have been significantly different. Or in which way different… But I would really like to understand what was going on in Chamberlain’s head! As well as in Daladier’s. The British and French prime-ministers at that time, respectively.
On the other hand… 1936. Hitler had ordered his army to enter the Rhineland region. In breach of the Versailles Treaty. 1938. Hitler had occupied Austria. 1939, March. Hitler invaded what was left of Czechoslovakia, breaching what he had promised in September 1938. During this time, France and Britain did nothing!
Political prisoners and Death Camps can’t exist without “Gun Control”. Some Americans still feel “Gun Control” is a good ideea. To prevent a Schindler’s List in America, we must destroy “Gun Control”!!
“Say the words “gun registration” to many Americans—especially pro-gun Americans, including the 3.5 million plus members of the National Rifle Association—and you are likely to hear about Adolf Hitler, Nazi gun laws, gun confiscation, and the Holocaust. More specifically, you are likely to hear that one of the first things that Hitler did when he seized power was to impose strict gun registration requirements that enabled him to identify gun owners and then to confiscate all guns, effectively disarming his opponents and paving the way for the genocide of the Jewish population.“German firearm laws and hysteria created against Jewish firearm owners played a major role in laying the groundwork for the eradication of German Jewry in the Holocaust,” writes Stephen Halbrook, a pro-gun lawyer. “If the Nazi experience teaches anything,” Halbrook declares, “it teaches that totalitarian governments will attempt to disarm their subjects so as to extinguish any ability to resist crimes against humanity.””
“As the videos begin, Pretti can be seen filming as a federal agent pushes away one woman and shoves another woman to the ground. Pretti moves between the agent and the women, then raises his left arm to shield himself as the agent pepper sprays him. Several agents then take hold of Pretti – who struggles with them – and force him onto his hands and knees. As the agents pin down Pretti, someone shouts what sounds like a warning about the presence of a gun. Video footage then appears to show one of the agents removing a gun from Pretti and stepping away from the group with it. Moments later, an officer with a handgun pointed at Pretti’s back fires four shots at him in quick succession, footage shows. Several more shots can then be heard as another agent appears to fire at Pretti.”
What happened next? The Roaring 20s, Prohibition – and the advent of the Mob, the Great Depression, WWII. In the rest of the world? The Great Depression, Fascism, WWII.
Could America have made a difference? As an ‘insider’ rather than as a peeping Tom?
“The United States never joined the League. Most historians hold that the League operated much less effectively without U.S. participation than it would have otherwise. However, even while rejecting membership, the Republican Presidents of the period, and their foreign policy architects, agreed with many of its goals. To the extent that Congress allowed, the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations associated the United States with League efforts on several issues. Constant suspicion in Congress, however, that steady U.S. cooperation with the League would lead to de facto membership prevented a close relationship between Washington and Geneva. Additionally, growing disillusionment with the Treaty of Versailles diminished support for the League in the United States and the international community. Wilson’s insistence that the Covenant be linked to the Treaty was a blunder; over time, the Treaty was discredited as unenforceable, short-sighted, or too extreme in its provisions, and the League’s failure either to enforce or revise it only reinforced U.S. congressional opposition to working with the League under any circumstances. However, the coming of World War II once again demonstrated the need for an effective international organization to mediate disputes, and the United States public and the Roosevelt administration supported and became founding members of the new United Nations.”
‘Intelligent design’ didn’t make much sense. For me. Until now!
Trying to make sense of what’s going on, I’ve suddenly understood how useful it is. The concept! How many things can be explained using the ‘intelligent design’ paradigm…
January 14, 2026. NASA is cutting short, for medical reasons, a scientific mission. And brings back 4 astronauts from the International Space Station. Meaning that NASA, a human ‘agency’, is able to fly people up and down into the sky. At will. And that it cares, for whatever reason, about the well being of those involved. Meanwhile, in both Bucharest and Kyiv people have to make do without enough heat. In the middle of winter. Why?
Can any of this be explained without making use of ‘intelligent design’?
But wait! It gets even better… OK, NASA was well designed in the first place. Operates in a civilized country and is manned by some of the most capable inhabitants of that country. People in Kyiv are suffering the consequences of a ‘well designed’ conflict. People in Bucharest experiment the consequences of their own short-sightedness. For 35 years the centralized heating system has been neglected. Underfunded and ineptly maintained. A patent lack of ‘intelligent design’, right?
All these three examples, as well as many others, fit perfectly. Things too complicated to happen without outside intervention. Things so different from what is considered to be ‘normal’ that a ‘deus in machina’ is needed as the only possible explanation.
Riding and driving. Similar and, yet, so different.
Riding used to be about transporting yourself. On the back of a horse, mostly. Now using a bike, but the principle is the same. Driving used to be about transporting cargo. Or other people…
The key words here being “used to”. Nowadays most driving and riding is about transporting single persons. Usually for ‘work related goals’. That despite the fact that almost all merchandise ‘spends time’ inside ‘wheeled transportation devices’.
On the other hand, both driving and riding are about balancing goal, means and sheer luck.
Goals may not be always chosen by the drivers. Yet getting there is determined by the ability of the drivers to ‘do their thing’. Furthermore, during the voyage, the drivers have also to keep an eye open for the ‘well being’ of their ride. You know… make sure the horses get enough to drink, fill the tank from time to time, checking the lube oil… things like that. Finally, but not least importantly, the drivers must cope with everything life throws at them.
Which brings us to the point of the day. Most people don’t get to decide much. Not as autonomously as they do it ‘behind the wheel’. A vast majority of the jobs open for the ‘average guys’ are highly ‘procedured’. Most people have to follow strict sets of instructions, after they reach their working places. Then make ends meet in rather ‘meager economic conditions’ after they get back home. Driving back and forth between those two places define the freest periods of their days.
The way things are going now, global warming and self-driving cars, we must find fresh ways to let our autonomy roam free.
At some point, there were way more driven/ridden horses than wild ones. Currently, there are substantial numbers of cows, chicken, pigs and so on raised by humans and almost no wild brethren of the above mentioned animals. Same with quite a number of plants.
Are we even aware of the whole situation?
Why? Because so few of us are still needed when it comes to ‘raising food’?
I’m afraid we’re very soon going to face the consequences. Directly!
Neo-liberalism – a ‘folly’, to be polite – was, and continues to be, a reaction to an all-encompassing left wing etatism. A reaction to the overbearing attitude of the government. Of too many of the governments around the world. The fact that neo-liberalism has ‘gone too far’, way too far ‘in the right direction’, doesn’t excuse etatism. One folly doesn’t justify another. Since Milei’s Argentina is a particularly poignant example of neo-liberalism, I may very well point out that ‘it takes two to tango’… As for the root of all our problems… that’s ideology itself. Left, right… each and everyone of them. Each of every pre-scripted attitudes we tend to adopt when trying to cope with the excesses we need to survive on a daily basis. We no longer examine the factual reality whenever we need to figure something out. To solve a problem. To cope with a situation.
We check what ‘our’ ideology has to say about the subject…
‘Evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest as it is about the demise of the unfit‘. Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is
As an engineer, I’m more concerned about consequences than fascinated by explanation. OK, explanation – as in understanding the process – is necessary when trying to improve things. To fine tune. To ‘increase efficiency’… But ‘survival wise’… sometimes it’s enough to bring things back to square 1. To repair. Specifically when the thing which no longer works used to make wonders.
Passeist? Anti-progressive?!? No, as I already mentioned, I’m just a ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ engineer. And currently … IT is broken.
Democracy doesn’t work anymore. Not like it used to, anyway! If we want to fix it, we don’t necessarily need to understand what happened. Only to return democracy back to where it was. For that, we need to understand what democracy is, not what had happened to it.
Looking back, we notice that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Crumbled under their own weight, usually, and failed abysmally when attacked from outside. Usually, again. While no democratic regime had ever failed as long as it had managed to conserve its democratic nature.
‘But the Pharaohs have run Ancient Egypt for three millennia, give or take. In a very authoritarian manner…. they were absolute monarchs, you know!’ Not so fast. During those three millennia, The Ancient Egypt had been run by 33 dynasties. By 33 different authoritarian regimes… When each of those dynasties were no longer able to run the country – when each regime fell under the weight of its own mistakes, with or without ‘outside’ contribution – another dynasty, the next one, took over. ‘Usually’ not in a nice manner… Same goes for all other authoritarian regimes!
While under a democratic regime, whenever those at the helm of the government start behaving badly, or commit too many mistakes, they are changed in a peaceful manner.
So, basically, democracy is a social arrangement which is able to change itself. To adapt! To what happens inside or outside it. While the authoritarian rulers do their best – or worse? – to conserve their own power/position at the helm, the democratic regimes contribute to the survival of the entire society. For as long as they manage to conserve their true democratic nature. Their openness. Their ability to depose those who overcome their welcome at the helm of the government.
nicichiarasa 