Recent developments have helped me to understand something. And no, not the fact that there are more worlds out there. One happy about what’s going on, one horrified and a few rather indifferent.
Trump being elected for a second term as President of the United States hasn’t changed much in the real world. Not yet, anyway. What it had changed, dramatically, was our image of the world. Of the US, in particular, but also of the world as a whole.
This development has helped me to understand that we don’t deal in realities. We don’t consider things, make decisions, by examining the things themselves. No!
We consider things by examining the images we have in our minds.
We look at things and we get a ‘set of data’. A virtual image. We recollect from our memory whatever other information we have on the subject. Another image. We put two and two together. And we reach a conclusion. Most of the time ignoring the fact that we’ve been dealing with images instead of the real thing.
Until we are forced to acknowledge that our image was incomplete. Inaccurate… Or that, simply, we’ve chosen to see what was more comfortable for us!
Etiquette is a matter of social interaction. A mannerism used to convey ‘we are in sync’. ‘We see eye to eye’ on most matters that count.
In this picture, one of the two men are dressed ‘inappropriately’. According to the ‘normal’ etiquette.
This is ‘posturing’. That choice of attire – in flagrant breach of ‘comme il faut’ – is a constant reminder to the rest of the world that he, and his country, are not ‘normal’. Like the rest of us still are. For now…
We can accept his ‘look’. Demonstrating that we feel with him. And with his country!
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.
“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?“
Adam called back and we all what happened next.
The serpent was cursed for his role, Eve was cursed for tempting Adam and Adam was cursed for…. In the end, all those involved – including the serpent, for whatever reason – were banished from the heaven. “Lest he put forth his hand…”
What are we to understand from all this? That God, the omniscient and all powerful Father, was ‘evil’? He must have known what was going to happen… he was omniscient, wasn’t he?
There are people who believe the Bible to be an accurate rendering of the past. I happen to be one of them. Only I don’t interpret what I read in the literal sense… the narrative is true, those things did happen, only not in the ‘real’ world. The Bible is not the story of flesh but a story of mind.
It is the story of what has happened in our minds. In our collective mind!
Genesis is the story of how we’ve grown conscious! Starting from the sensations perceived during our interaction with the ‘real’ world – read ‘serpent’ – and using the evolutionary accrued ability to speak among ourselves – we’ve learned to identify ‘information’. We, like all other living things, were already able to make the difference between good and ‘bad’. All living things ‘know’ what’s good for them and what to avoid. Or, at least, act as if… We, like all other primates and along many other animals, were already adept at ‘reading minds’. Were already able to figure out intentions. As conscious ‘human beings’ we have started to attribute intent! “To know good and EVIL”!
So evil is of a conscious nature, right?
‘How about ‘God’? Is it real?’
Sorry, I don’t have a reasonable answer for this question. All I know is that the God so many of us believe in is nothing but a representation. A figment of our collective imagination. And since we cannot imagine things but starting from the real world, there is a strong possibility that there is something, somewhere, which fits, however loosely, our concept. Our concept of a God…
Being able to ‘see the difference’ is what makes us able to considerate. The result of our considerations…
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to spot the difference between a spot and a curve. You don’t even need to be able to read…
Every adolescent steps out of the straight and narrow. Time and time again. And is told by his elders to toe the line. Until they learn that stepping back into the fold is easier than remaining an outlier for the rest of their natural life. Only the fold is no longer were it used to be… It has reached its current position because those who had the guts to explore have done that for the rest of us. Experimented being outliers. So that we, all of us, did not have to experience every possibility before choosing where to go next. They, the outliers, found out what was ‘out there’ and told us.
I’ve already made a few considerations about the two pictures above. About some of the differences between the top and the bottom ones. I’ve left the main one for today’s post.
We do have a certain bias towards conformity. We do, socially and statistically speaking, tend to follow the trend. Like all other social animals. After all, no society/herd can function – as a group, when all its members behave ‘outlierly’. So much outside the trend as to buck it. The difference between the top and the bottom ‘graph-s’ being the attitude towards the situation.
The top one comes with the ‘normal’ bias. Each normal individual does have a certain ‘something’ against the ‘outlier’ situation and a certain affinity for the comfort of being trendy. But we have learned to respect the outliers, for as long as they don’t hurt us. For as long as they don’t rock the boat so much as to get us seasick. The bottom graph states from the beginning that only the outlier opinion is valid. That no matter how many people continue to follow the trend, they are wrong. Even worse, they are insignificant. Hence disposable.
OK, there have been instances when the trend was leading in the wrong direction. Quite a few. Yet people have somehow managed to survive. They stuck together, realized the outliers who kept warning them were right and followed them out of the dire situation they found themselves in. But in each and every situation where an outlier had declared the rest of the ‘mob’ to be insignificant/disposable, and had enough traction to act upon their convictions, the situation had to become worse before people realized they had to change tack.
Before the people had realized they were following the wrong outlier!
And it thus becomes obvious that Nietzsche has been falsely accused. It wasn’t he who had murdered God! He was simply the first who had the guts to write His death certificate…
My point being that what we call ‘God’ is a man made image. A concept. It doesn’t matter, for this analysis, whether there is an actual god or not. What we call God is nothing more than our image of one.
And it had been enough. For a while. For as long as we have followed the rules we ourselves had established to guide our own behavior – as in written them down – the God we’d imagined worked as intended. ‘Religion’ did what it was supposed to do. People had a ‘spiritual environment’ in which they behaved both coherently and cohesively. Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from slaves – owned and/or owners – to equal rights owning/yielding citizens. Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from horse driven war chariots to the M1A3 Abrams tank. Coherently and cohesively enough to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to the tune of 8 billion. Give or take. Not all of them following ‘the rules’ but all of them benefiting from the results of those rules having been followed for a while.
Yet, when things were unfolding so smoothly, why have we given up following those rules?
Have we outgrown the need for a shepherdly Father? For a Ghost to frighten us unto doing the right thing? Or have we become so infatuated with our own ability to think, to reason, that we have turned it into an idol? Against all odds… Despite having been warned about it!
Pascal’s wager is about turning the tables on ‘God’. The image we made for ourselves about God, the ‘Holy Gost who frightened us unto staying on the straight and narrow’, convinced us to behave in a constructive manner. Benefiting the entire community. The argument made by Pascal was made to convince us, individually, that we – each of us – should believe in God for their own sake. For their own benefit! Effectively transforming each individual belief into an idol… ‘Graven’ by each individual, upon their own soul, in the likeness of things in heaven, for their individual use… Transforming the community creating God into an individual tool designed and believed to ‘give’ each of us ‘everything’. Individually. As opposed to making it possible for everybody to exist.
As Nietzsche observed, by making Pascal’s wager – by transforming faith into a rational thing – we have collectively killed God. The same God which has made us possible. Against everything we have been warned about, by our wise ancestors, we have replaced God with ourselves. So that we “gain all”. Individually. Each of those who had made the rational decision…
“None other than Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, has called shareholder-value ideology ” the dumbest idea in the world.” Yet business executives still pretend that maximizing shareholder value is their primary fiduciary obligation, which is nonsense except in few restricted cases, such as when a company is going to be sold.“
Value… What is that?!? Does it exist on its own?
Something must exist if anybody is to extract it, right? If that something may be created, then it would be a no brainer to make some before attempting to extract it… if you want to be involved in a sustainable process, right?
How do you make value? How does anybody establish that something is valuable in the first place?
– I declare this to be valuable. – Who owns it? – I do. – How much do you want for it? – xxx – OK
That ‘this’ had became ‘valuable’ only when ‘OK’. Before its value had been agreed upon, it being valuable was on the declarative level only. ‘Virtual’ versus ‘real’.
Only after two interested parties had negotiated about and agreed upon the value of something the value of that something has become established.
As an engineer, as down to Earth as it gets, I tend to agree with Jack Welch. A company should be managed as a long term project. It needs to satisfy the natural interests of the investors – profit – in a sustainable manner. Providing something useful to both parties involved. A useful ‘thing’ to the buyers and a satisfying profit to the investors. While creating little to no damage to the ‘environment’ in order to remain acceptable to those living on the same planet…
But who am I to judge… even if I have the blessing of Jack Welch… Who am I to tell anybody – any investor and/or any manager – how to run their business?!?
– Are they blind? Don’t they see this economic model doesn’t work?
Hm… “Share holder value is a result, not a strategy”, remember? Same with ‘inequality’. Let’s focus on sustainability. On the process. And notice that the process sputters! As a consequence of our own decisions!
We have told/allowed the investors and the managers to run the business – not their businesses, the entire business environment – in the current manner. And we are the ones bearing the brunt. Having to deal with, among other things, the current level of inequality. We, our decisions, have produced the current situation. Inequality is but one of the consequences. One, among many, of the consequences engendered by our own weltanschauung.
OK, I can give you this. God may have done all this. But is He aware of His creation?
‘But He loves us! Otherwise why make us in the first place?!?’
What if it was us who had come up with this notion? The way I see it, we may very well be an unintended consequence of His activity. So unintended that He isn’t even aware of our existence…
‘But He knows everything…‘
That’s what we think… about Him. And about the relation between Him and His Creation. Take us for example. Do we know everything? About our body. About what’s going on inside us.
‘No, of course we don’t!’
Think again. For an outside observer – specially one that lives significantly less than we do – our bodies are ‘perfection in motion’. They work ‘perfectly’. As if minutely controlled by somebody who perfectly knows what they’re doing. Right? We know this isn’t the case… because we are the ones who ignore what’s going on inside our bodies… Well, ignore is too strong. Not fully aware, at least for as long as things go on in an acceptable manner, would be a more accurate description. Same might be happening with God. And this is a far more sensible explanation for what’s going on. We’re the ones responsible for our behavior, not an inscrutable God. Who, despite being our Creator, allows us to defile His Creation.
‘We killed God and we now have to face the consequences’. That’s what Nietzsche told us. And then died. Like everybody else. Is this consistent with the notion of an all-powerfull and omni-scient God? As suggested by the second image?
The only God we know is the one we talk about. Among ourselves. During the ‘Middle Ages’ some of our ancestors killed each-other over their particular interpretations of the Bible. But they all agreed about one thing. For them, there was only one God. And they killed a lot of unbelievers attempting to convince them. At some point, and Nietzsche witnessed that, people had stopped believing there was only one God. God was no longer seen as an unifying principle and had become a mere representation.
I don’t know whether there is a god. A ‘real’ one. But is has become obvious that the one we talk about has stopped playing its role. It no longer unites us. We’re no longer children of the same father.
We have splintered ourselves into clans. Each wielding their own representation of God. Each wielding their own ‘hand made’ idol.
We are currently convinced that ‘an eye for an eye’ is an excessive – abusive, even – form of justice. But in its time, it was a very progressive principle. Do not exert more punishment than the original damage. NO MORE than an eye for an eye.
We don’t need more chaos. We need more consideration!
The likes of Trump are turning the tables on all of us!
Yes, some of those pushing left-side issues have jumped the shark. Not in the sense that the issues themselves were worthless but in the manner used to pursue them.
The likes of Trump have done nothing else but appropriated that very same manner of conducting business.
““The late Phyllis Schlafly, whom I worked so closely with, used to say, ‘If you get to claim and frame the argument, you almost certainly get to win.’ In other words, if you take their framing, it’s a woman’s right. Are you gonna put women in jail? No. It’s about a baby. Now, what do we do? Frame the argument. Own the argument,” he said.”
Recognize the lingo? The line-up of arguments?
Only this time the method is used by Ed Martin. The Trump nominee who wants to jail women for having abortions.
While the hard right argues for a blanket ban and the hard left argue for a no holds barred policy regarding abortion, real people have a hard time trying to lead a normal life. The extremes keep pushing for their stated goals while we’re stuck in a kind of limbo. Watching them as if mesmerized by their antics…
Consideration rather than more chaos would come in handy at this point!
It’s the ‘vengeance’ part which spoils the whole thing.
Evil is to be resisted, of course, only this is better done in a sustainable manner.
WWI was won for nothing. The vengeance part in the Versailles ‘peace process’ had spoiled the whole thing. Hence the war had to be won again. During the process, the winners had become wiser. Some of them, at least. The peace process had been inclusive this time. The North Atlantic region, the end result of that peace process – no scare marks needed this time, is one the most successful stories of human development.
nicichiarasa 