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Loyalty

February 9, 2020 //
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– What have we done, Gabriel?
– Nothing but what we’ve been told to!
– But look at what they’ve done of our work:

We gave them ‘hand’ and they’ve clenched it into a fist.
We taught them how to make tools and they used them as weapons.
We told them to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ and they started to fight among themselves for the best pieces of land.
We warned them ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ and they’ve somehow convinced themselves that ‘greed is good’.

– True enough but this is out of our hands. They’ve been endowed with ‘freedom of will’ by their Maker.
– Then what are we? Mere robots?
– Nothing but loyal servants of our Master. He orders and we accomplish. Unerringly.
– Exactly as I’ve just told you. Mere robots. When we somehow convince ourselves that a particular idea which has blossomed into our heads comes from Him, we no longer think. We just put it into practice.
You call this ‘loyalty’. That’s fine with me.
But to whom are we to extend said loyalty? To somebody who’s authority stems solely from our acceptance of it? Or to what we perceive as being the ‘greater good’?
– You and your questions, Lucifer… Look at what happened to those poor people after you helped them into self-awareness… They’ve completely lost their erstwhile peace of mind.
What are you trying to do? To make me give up mine?

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices that we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust, yes but

“I’m sorry!”

January 13, 2020 //
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“Please” is an attempt to maximize your chances to get something.
“Thank you” is an attempt to maximize your chances at ‘second helpings’.
“I’m sorry” is an attempt to ‘reconnect’ after committing a ‘blunder’.

All of them, simultaneously, serve the individual uttering them and knit the community.

But there’s something which sets one of them apart.
While “please” and “thank you’ are ‘upfront’, “I’m sorry” has a more ‘hidden’ nature. And is a lot less used…

Both “please” and “thank you” have a very clear message. “I want/am grateful for something’ and ‘I acknowledge the fact that I cannot function/exist by myself’.

“I’m sorry” is far more complex and a lot less upfront.
‘I acknowledge not only that something went wrong but also that I have anything to do with the occurrence’. And ‘please do not banish me for what I have done’!

If we dig deeper, we’ll find some more ‘intricacies’.

“Please” and “Thank you” are ‘face to face’. You know what you want/are grateful for and by uttering them you transmit that information to your audience. Those who might fulfill your wishes or have already done that.

“I’m sorry” identifies you as the ‘culprit’. Or, even worse, tells the ‘victim’ that something nasty is going to happen.

It is here that things become really interesting.
Conscience is a function. A feature which helps the individual. To survive and to thrive. In order to do that, conscience must – first and foremost, to take care of itself. To protect and cherish itself. More about how it does that in my next posts. The point of the present one being that is far easier for ‘conscience’ to ‘please’ and ‘thank’ rather than to ‘apologize’.

First of all, ‘gratification’.
1.0 versus 2.0.
Getting what you want/need versus avoiding punishment.
Which is never as direct.

The ‘buried head’ fallacy.
‘What if/maybe they never find out’?
‘Who did it’ or even that it had happened at all …

The ‘I cannot afford to appear weak’ fallacy.
Or the ‘I cannot afford to accept having been wrong’ situation.

That’s why it is far easier to say ‘I’m sorry’ after stepping on somebody’s toe than to leave a sorry note on somebody’s windshield after denting their fender in an unsupervised parking lot.
That’s why it is far easier to apologize to a a coworker than to admit guilt, as a CEO, in a shareholders meeting.
That is why it is almost inconceivable for a dictator to publicly admit an error which had been committed under their watch.

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Transparency, Trust

Elliott’s Wake

December 8, 2019 //
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Elliott Wave is a theory used by ‘technical analysts’ to predict the evolution of the stock market.
It works.
Robert Prechter had expanded the scope of Elliott’s ideas. He uses them to study how our societies work.
https://www.socionomics.net/

Here’s what I make out of all this.

Things, Structure, Mind.
The world, as we experience it, is the consequence of ‘things’ becoming structured enough for ‘mind’ to evolve out of the whole ‘mess’.

Art, Science, Religion.
Knowledge – everything that we know about the world, has started as ideas gleaned by ‘artists’, structured by ‘scientists’ and put together by ‘religious leaders’.

Opportunity, rules, conscience.
Each of us, individual human beings, are the consequences of the opportunities we had been able to identify. Of the manner in which we had put into practice the applicable set of rules. And the kind of conscience each of us has built for themselves.

By putting together these three sides of the evolutive mountain, we notice that ‘knowledge’ (our image about the world) is entirely ‘ours’. And that the world itself is increasingly being shaped by our actions. Actions which are shaped by us, according to our wishes. Wishes which are shaped by what we know about the world.

My point being that while until not so very long ago the world was evolving under its own steam, since we’ve become conscious – aware of our own awareness, in Humberto Maturana’s terms, our influence had grown significantly. Exponentially, in fact.
We’ve changed the geography of our planet. It’s biology, even.

And even though the planet is huge, the opportunities we’ll be able to identify are not infinite. For the very reason that the planet itself is not infinite.

Rather Malthusian, I know, but with a twist. It will be not our numbers which will be our undoing. Only our carelessness. Our infatuation. Our inability to look farther than the ends of our noses.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, religion, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Eve

November 14, 2019 //
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https://redeeminggod.com/genesis_3_1-5/

You might have figured out already that I don’t believe yet I find a lot of inspiration in the Bible.

I’d like to discuss today the subject of Eve.
Many people are adamant that she was instrumental in Adam being banished from heaven. That she was conned by the serpent into convincing Adam to commit the first – and most important, sin. Into disobeying God, his Father.
Hence Eve – and all her daughters, are the culprits for us, men, having to ‘toil for our daily food’. Outside of where we have been meant to live, the Paradise…

Really?!?

Then, if Eve was the root of all evil, why had God chosen Virgin Mary – Eve’s granddaughter, as the vessel for his beloved Son? For the instrument of our salvation?

Furthermore, if we treasure virginity – something which only man can spoil, then how come it is Eve – the entire womenfolk, who is considered the origin of sin?

Let’s move forward to the really hard questions.

Eve engaging in conversation with the serpent resulted in both Adam and Eve learning the difference between good and evil. In both Adam and Eve becoming full fledged, self aware human beings.
And what was wrong with that?!?
Becoming conscious was a bad thing? Thinking with our own heads is sinful?

I remember that, as a child, I had always experimented what was verboten. Except for the obvious things, of course.
And used the trick on my own son. Whenever I wanted him to try something, I led him to believe that that thing was dangerous or out of limits. For him, of course.

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Categories altruism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, fail better, freedom, gender roles, In English, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Centralized systems as areas of opportunity

October 11, 2019 //
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Because of their very nature, centralized systems open up vast areas of opportunity.
For those who bother to identify them, of course.

The internet.
Huge amounts of information only a few clicks away.
Students find it easier to compile their term papers. Or to just click and paste them.
Powerful individuals/organizations have found yet another way to further their interests:

“A long-running Papuan separatist movement has flared in recent months, sparking fresh calls for self-rule.
But with access to the region heavily restricted, social media has become a key source for the foreign press.
One expert told the BBC the apparently co-ordinated campaigns were seeking to skew international views of Papua.“


The government.
A mechanism put in place by nations to manage the day to day survival of the social mechanism.
The more centralized, the more efficient. At least apparently…
Centralized China is decades away from the more ‘lax’ India. According to certain benchmarks, of course…

Corporations.
Individuals, no matter how smart and or powerful, can achieve only so much when acting alone. That being the reason for people coalescing in nations.
Also for economic ventures. People working in concert are more efficient than individuals toiling on their own. When led by a somebody who is simultaneously smart, charismatic and ‘organizationally skilled’ the results can be utterly fantastic.
A corporation might even become powerful enough to resist government.

“The FBI Wanted a Backdoor to the iPhone. Tim Cook Said No.“

Only some governments are more determined than others.

“Apple drops Hong Kong police-tracking app used by protesters.“

How else to explain what’s going on but by remembering that all centralized systems are simultaneously manned and surrounded/watched/accessed by individual people?
Who identify the various opportunities presented by the increasingly centralized structures which bloom around us.
Who use them to further their goals, whichever those might be. Who choose which goals are worth pursuing and which are better abandoned.
Who determine, individually, what decision must be made in each situation.
Who use whatever the power they have at their disposal in such or such manner.
Who allow others to use them in a centralized manner. Or not….

“Explainer: How Trump used the U.S. government to chase conspiracy theories“

NB. The last example I used can be substituted by countless others. Trump just happens to be ‘on top’ the still most powerful, and looked up to, government on Earth. Furthermore, he had been democratically elected into that position. Hence his actions – and his government’s reactions, illustrate perfectly the situation we find ourselves in.

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Categories authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

A man and a gun

May 3, 2019 //
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“In many ways, technology has leaped ahead of leaders and organizations, and the human element needs to catch up.”

Erica Volini et al, Introduction: Leading the social enterprise—Reinvent with a human focus

I’m afraid there is nothing new here.

‘Technology” has always been the elephant in the china shop.
Only it is very seldom that elephants enter by themselves. Anywhere, let alone in a china shop. And the mahouts who led them there were not always up to the task.

First things first.
“Technology has leaped ahead…” is an oxymoron.
Technology has always been one step behind the humans.
For no other reason than the fact that technology is a human invention. Each and every technological feat has been initiated and put in practice by a human being.

Hence ‘ ‘technology’, (wink) has leaped ahead of leaders and organizations, and the rest of the human element needs to catch up’!

Secondly, the ‘mahouts’ have a relatively easier job than those who drive the ‘rest of the human element’. Developing a technology is fairly easy but making sure that people do not hurt themselves while using it is fairly impossible.

The physical world is straightforward. It’s reaction is always the same. Once the experimenters learn what happens when they execute a certain action, the ‘response’ elicited from ‘that’ physical system by the experimenters’ consistent actions will never change.

On the other hand, people – conscious people, that is, are not that straightforward.
Being self aware, they constantly evaluate the consequences of their responses. They constantly evaluate what happens after they respond to whatever probes them from ‘outside’.
They constantly re-evaluate the consequences their actions produce upon themselves. They learn.
Only they don’t do it ‘mechanically’. Each of them has preferences and a certain freedom of will. Hence their inconsistency. Each of them learns slightly different things from the same situation. And each of them may choose to react in their own manner.
In spite of their assumptions, people are at best reasonable and never fully rational.

Bluntly put, it is fairly easy to evaluate the consequences of a gun being shot at a man but a lot harder to evaluate the consequences of a man shooting a gun.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperare, democracy, effective communication, In English, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Transparency, Trust

Cherry picking.

April 11, 2019 //
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It’s not unusual for a Christian ‘zealot’ to accuse an atheist of ‘cherry picking’.
When the latter uses a quote from the Bible to argue something which ‘displeases’ the former, of course.


“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”

I found this quote, which belongs to Dostoevsky, in an article published by http://www.thecatholicthing.org in 2016.
” That is to say, the nonexistence of God means that we live in a world of perfect moral freedom; we may do anything we like, up to and including mass murder. “

Well, if I remember correctly – more than three decades have passed since I had read The Brothers Karamazov, which didn’t impress me much, the book is an intricate, but very compelling, demonstration of the exact contrary.

” Raskolnikov is unable to live with himself after the assassination of the usurer. It is fundamentally unable to clear his sense of right and wrong, to silence his conscience. Initially, he tries to continue living, enjoying his cunning, concluding that it is a superman. Yet the humble Sonya reminds him of his act, reminds him of his guilt and therefore needs forgiveness. Dostoevsky destroyed the theory of the Superman condemning the characters involved in the mental suffering until they recognize the truth.“

Time has come for me to admit of having myself committed the sin.
The quote I used above ends with ” and the light of Christianity. “

Cherry picking had grabbed my attention while researching for a future post. ‘Moral identity‘. Which implies ‘autonomous morality’:

” The theory that each person imposes the moral law on himself. It is opposed to heteronomous morality, which holds that the moral law is imposed from outside of man by another, and ultimately by the divine Other, who is God, which makes the moral law theonomous. ”

So.
Those engaged in cherry picking do it because the selection serves their purposes or because their actions are “imposed from outside”?

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Whose liberty ends where?

April 4, 2019 //
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There’s a seemingly unending debate about what “my liberty ends where yours begins” really means.

The initial saying was a little longer, “Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.”, and had been coined during the disputes between those who tried to impose the Prohibition and those who opposed it.

In that context, it made sense.
‘How close to my house – a teetotaler, should you be allowed to open a bar and why should I be able to tell you what to drink/serve in your house.’

In a wider setting – individual rights, for instance … not so much!

‘Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins’ only if at least one of the following is true:
– My arms are as long as yours AND I’m willing/able to defend my nose.
– You are a civilized person.
– We, the entire community, have reached the conclusion that we are better off, together, if we observe – and enforce, this rule.

The first sentence describes a situation of generalized conflict. Not necessarily ‘hot’ but, nevertheless, always ‘waiting to happen’.
In the second situation, ‘one side’ depends, decisively, on the ‘other side’ behaving ‘properly’. Nice and commendable but what happens when one of them goes berserk?
The third describes the de facto functioning of any civilized nation. Which nation, any nation, is composed of individual people. ‘Endowed’ with ‘free will’ and not always ‘well behaved’.

Hence the danger of narrowly defining freedom as a collection of individual spaces where each of us might do as they please – as long as the consequences of their actions remain inside that space.
Which spaces would have to be constantly defended.
Or could be extended, whenever any of the neighbors wasn’t on the lookout.

How about ‘our mutually respected individual liberty is the well deserved consequence of our collective effort to enlarge OUR freedom’?

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, human rights, In English, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Deterministic Science as an Oxymoron

March 24, 2019 //
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“The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.”

“The systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms.“

In these terms, science must be deterministic.
No systematic study of anything might ever be made if not starting from the conviction that a given set of causes will produce the same results, over and over again. No laws attempting to describe any facts in general terms might be formulated unless starting from the same premises.

On the other hand, it was science itself which had taught us that:

“It’s impossible to determine, with absolute precision, both the position and momentum of an electron“

The same ‘uncertainty principle’ can be extended to other pairs of “complementary variables, such as length of time and energy“.

And there are countless other examples of ‘in-determination’ which have been documented by scientists during their search for the ultimate truth.

Any chance of reconciliation?

Well…
To start, I’ll note first that ‘determinism’ is a concept which had started its career in philosophy while ‘science’ has a more ‘complex’ origin. It might have been initiated by Christian theologians trying to ‘guess’ God’s will only they were attempting to fulfill that task by closely watching Nature – which was seen as the very embodiment of God’s intentions.
In this sense, scientific determinism can be understood as the conviction that Nature must make perfect sense – must be completely explainable, simply because God’s creation – which includes Nature, must be perfect.
OK, and since all theologians agree that no human will ever be able/should ever pretend to know God, what’s the problem in accepting that Man – collectively speaking now, will never learn enough to find a complete explanation for everything?

‘And what about the atheists?’

What about them?
Oh, you mean the people who are sure that God doesn’t exist? Who are just as sure that God doesn’t exist as the staunch believers who are perfectly confident that God not only exists but also micro-manages everything? Under the Sun and beyond?
I’ll just leave it there…

On a deeper level, there is no contradiction between ‘determinism’ – philosophically speaking, and scientific thinking. As long as we keep these two ‘apart’, of course…

‘So you are going to accept that science will never ‘know’ everything AND that ‘everything is a consequence of the previous state of affairs’ ‘ ?

Well, again…
The key word here is “inevitable”!
Determinism is ” the philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs ”
For a philosopher it is very easy to say ‘inevitable’. Even more so for believing philosopher.
For a scientist… how is a scientist going to say that something is ‘inevitable’? ‘Philosophically’ speaking, of course… as in ‘with absolute precision’?!?

Specially since entertaining a truly ‘scientific attitude’ means, above all, to be prepared, at all moment and without any notice, for all your previously held convictions to be contradicted by new evidence…

‘What are you trying to say here?
That everything revolves around the manner in which each of us relates to the meaning of his own interpretation of each concept?
That truth itself is relative?’

‘That man is the measure for everything?’

Yep!
AND that man is also responsible for the consequences his own actions! In front of his own children, before everything else.
For no other reason than it will be his own children who will bear the brunt of his own decisions.

Additional reading:
“Science as Falsification“, Karl R. Popper.
” 800 Scientists say it’s time to abandon “Statistical Significance” “
“Protagoras”
“On the Essence of Truth“, Martin Heidegger
“Suicide now leading cause of death among children aged 10 to 14 in Japan“

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, effective communication, evolution, In English, man induced fragility, Mindset, Mutual Respect, physics, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Science

February 18, 2019 //
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Homo had become sapiens when he had started to learn.
To actively discover information and to discuss the findings with their peers.

This was how our ancestors had developed both consciousness and language.

The next stage was reached when people were no longer satisfied with mere survival. And attempted to glimpse into the future.

” “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
    or let the fish in the sea inform you.
9 Which of all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
10 In his hand is the life of every creature
    and the breath of all mankind. ” (Job 12:7-10)

Until that moment, the deal was simple.
People followed the rules – which had already been set in ‘stone’ and passed over from ‘the beginning of time’, and things continued unabated. Hence no need for further inquiry.

From that moment on, everything had changed.
People still had a set of rules to guide them. But they had also been endowed with ‘free will’:
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” (Galatians, 5:13) and
“Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” (John, 7:17)

So, there were rules, there was freedom and there was the Will of God – which had to be determined if it was to be followed.
How to determine it? Nothing simpler. ‘Ask the animals and they will teach you.’.
Meaning that the answer of any question our ancestors might have had about the Will of God was accessible to them. And that they had the liberty – the obligation even, to look for that answer. By studying the nature.
Because understanding the nature – which was the incarnation of God’s Will, was considered by our grandfathers to be the key to understanding the Will of God. And, implicitly, a keyhole through which they could glimpse into the future. Their future, of course.

It was a very recent development that more and more people had become convinced that science had killed God. By producing ‘scientific evidence’ for more and more things which used to be considered ‘acts of God’.
Franklin’s lightning rod and Georges Lemaitre’s Big Bang are but two small examples.
Benjamin Franklin was convinced that ‘God governs by his Providence and that the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children‘ while Lemaitre was an ordained Catholic priest. Yet many of our contemporaries construe their endeavors as scientific proofs that there is no such thing as a Creator God.

And what about ‘science’?
What is it, after all?
An attempt to understand God’s Will or a method to prove that God does not exist?

How about science as an attitude?
Which maintains Man can, and should, learn about things. Regardless of the name each of us chooses to call them: ‘Nature’ or ‘the Will of God’.
Which also maintains that Man, in their quest for knowledge, must preserve its modesty. Nature and/or the Will of God might be ‘accessible’ but it would be actually presumptuous, for each and for all of us, to consider that we’ll ever be able to know/explore every nook and cranny of the World.
To learn, and express, all the Truth there is.

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, freedom, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust
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