Category Archives: Our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in
Human psychology evolved under in the social milieu of constrained complexity. Currently, humans live in unconstrained complexity. What has this done to our minds? These topics are addressed in various parts of An Archaeology of the Fall, particularly in chapters 8C and 11B.
0095 Jones discusses the illusion-filled reactionary Great Reset (C) in chapters six, seven and eight.
These chapters cover how the coin of the new realm is forged and hammered out.
0096 In chapter nine, the apparently salutary solution of stakeholder capitalism (D) emerges, like order from chaos, like coagula from solve, and like a mandate from heaven.
Jones closes with a review of K5, the fifth book under consideration. Here is the delusion (D) that Klaus Schwab wants to alchemically precipitate from the implemented illusions (C) of the Great Reset.
0097 At this juncture, I turn back and regard the path that I have taken in looking at Jones’s provocative book.
Jones is on target. He identifies the literary output of Schwab as an act of persuasion.
When I look at this act of persuasion, the Greimas square comes to mind.
0098 Here is the purely-relational structure of the Greimas square.
Figure 19
0099 What does an act of persuasion do?
Well, first of all, one must distinguish the topic from the act of persuasion.
The topic opens with a mind-independent being (A).
The first step (B) of the act of persuasion reminds me of medieval scholastic debates struggling to separate mind-independent being from mind-dependent being (perhaps, I can say, knowledge from opinion).
Needless to say, this scholastic debate does not appear to bear fruit.
But today, I can see that the medieval debate touches on two elements that are drawn into reality through acts of persuasion (C and D).
0100 What are the two elements?
In an illusion (C), a mind-independent being (ens reale) is regarded as mind-dependent (ens rationis).
In a delusion (D), a mind-dependent being (ens rationis) is regarded as mind-independent (ens reale).
Consequently, the Greimas square updates a centuries-old scholastic debate.
Figure 20
0101 To me, the updated scholastic Greimas square introduces precisely what the medieval schoolmen were trying to avoid:illusion and delusion.
What does an act of persuasion do?
Schwab writes books on the topic of the fourth industrial revolution (A).
In the process, Schwab persuades us of the realness of stakeholder capitalism (D).
0103 Another author with the name of Jones, describes the act of persuasion as applying a category of the mind.
To start, there is the mind-independent reality of a situation (A).
For Schwab, this mind-independent reality includes thousands of people working independently, as well as collaboratively, in cutting edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, material science, genetic research, biochemistry, biology and so on. All these technologies will contribute to shaping the future in ways that those who seek control cannot control. Those who seek control envision chaos.
0104 So, B, a mind-dependent being, is formulated. As per the rules of the Greimas square, B contrasts with A and sets the stage for a creative leap to an apparently mind-dependent being, C.
For Schwab, this mind-dependent being (B) is a plan for shaping the future, courtesy of the World Economic Forum, composed (according to Jones) by those who seek control (or their representatives and lackeys, who are compromised and therefore easily… um… directed.)
0105 The mind-dependent being (B) represents the mind, in the term, category of the mind.
How so?
Well, the mind (B) engages what itB thinks belongs to the outside world (A), that is, mind-independent being, as if itA (A) is a mind-dependent being (C).
For example, if I find a slab of marble (A), and I figure that I can carve a statue of ‘something’ (B), I begin chiseling (C) this mind-independent being (A) according to my vision (B). This artisanal example is not only a creative act, but it exhibits the purely relational character of an act of persuasion.
0106 As the slab of marble is fashioned (C) it speaks against the ‘something’ that I figure I can carve (B). Plus, itCcomplements the integrity of the originating thing (A).
For Schwab, the fashioning of the fourth industrial revolution (including the covid-19 business) (B) is precisely an artistic effort (C), similar to a sculptor working on stone. However, as Jones rightly notes, the metaphorical slab of stone is composed of humans, who can be as dumb as bricks, but nevertheless bear the image of their Creator.
Who is the creator here, God or the sculptor of the Great Reset?
Illusions (C) can be confounding. To the mind,a mind-independent being takes on the character of mind-dependence.
0107 Next comes a delusion (D), a mind-dependent being that is categorized as mind-independent.
Ah, is D the category-aspect of the term, “category of the mind”?
Yes, the other Jones is onto ‘something’.
If D goes with “category” and B associates to “of the mind”, then the other Jones’s term, “category of the mind”, labels how D complements B, contrasts with C, and speaks against A.
0108 A delusion (D), appearing to be mind-independent, applies a category of the mind onto the originally mind-independent topic (A).
For the first example of an act of persuasion discussed in these blogs,the apparently mind-independent being is the second amendment of the Constitution (D). This category of the mind is superimposed, by corporate media, upon heinous crimes (A).
0109 The delusion (D) expresses a mind-independent being that speaks against the originating mind-independent being(A).
Thus, the delusion (D) imposes a category of the mind onto the originating focus (A). It is as if the second amendment(an apparently mind-independent being) opens the door to heinous crimes (as mind-independent beings) and is therefore complicit. If this statement makes sense, then pause and savor the delusion (D) as an act of persuasion, leading to the imposition of a category of the mind upon mind-independent being.
Figure 22
0110 Both D and B precipitate, or “co-create”, the category of the mind.
The delusion (D) complements the mind-dependent being (B) and, often enough, serves as a mental impression of the originating mind-independent being (A). B is the mind in a category of the mind. D is the category.
Who is the other Jones?
Think E. Michael.
0111 For Schwab, the delusion (D) comes with the label, “stakeholder capitalism”. Stakeholder capitalism is like a statue, a mind-independent being, chiseled out of social upheaval during the fourth industrial revolution. There are three stakeholders: progress, people and planet. All three are reified into mind-independent beings that somehow put capital, the undead blood flowing through the living arteries and veins of the global economy, into perspective.
Once the work of the Great Reset (C) is complete, stakeholder capitalism (D) will have replaced the second amendment (D) as the mind-independent being (D) imposed on all sorts of encounters with reality (A).
Schwab’s act of persuasion will become fiat accompli.
0112 Here is a diagram of the Greimas square derived from the titles of Klaus Schwab’s five books.
0113 From the very start, the intrepid Alex Jones intuitively anticipates the purely relational structure that defines Klaus Schwab’s act of persuasion. After bringing these associations to consciousness, I want to futz.
Here is how I associate Jones’s summary of Schwab’s approach to the Greimas square.
Figure 24
0114 To me, Jones’s selection of terms reproduces what Schwab sees in his mirror. Schwab’s mirror tells Klaus what is happening, just as it would tell any sorcerer. As Jones dismantles Schwab’s argument, Klaus’s mirror remains unsullied.
Figure 25
0115 So, here is where I want to futz (that is, to suggest a small adjustment).
Typically, people futz because they think that they are smarter than they actually are.
Perhaps, my futz reflects the same underlying condition.
Here are alternate terms to “problem, reaction and solution”. They express the same character, but with a different flavor.
Figure 26
0116 Surely, this Greimas square portrays the persuasive act in Schwab’s five books.
Figure 27
Plus, this Greimas square reflects in Schwab’s mirror.
Figure 28
0117 What does that imply?
A robust argument needs to be made that Schwab’s act of persuasion is not the only response to the vision in Klaus’s mirror.
0118 This examination adds value to Jones’s eye-opening book, without replacing the work itself. The book is a great read. Plus, it rests on the surface of an alternative to what the sorcerer sees in the mirror. Below that surface, a Great Awakening flows.
A Great Awakening (C)?
What (A) is happening?
God has a plan (B)?
Is revelation (C) the antidote to illusion (C)?
Does faith seeking understanding (D) challenge delusion (D)?
Figure 29
0119 Is the unfolding of our current theodrama an act of persuasion?
What an odd question.
Have we seen this theodrama before?
0120 Exactly how ancient is the Greimas square’s update of a medieval scholastic debate?
Is it as old as the stories of Adam and Eve?
0121 How could it be?
Here is another way to picture the updated scholastic Greimas square.
Figure 30
0122 Now, I associate elements in the Biblical story of the Fall to this relational structure.
A is the tree at the center of the garden. This tree is a mind-independent being.
In the October 2022 blog, Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin?”, this examiner suggests that the tree of life in the garden of Eden is already a mind-dependent being that is regarded as mind-independent. If so, then the Greimas square already operates before Eve takes interest in the singular tree. Remember, D can replace A. Remember that John Milton’s masterpiece, Paradise Lost, begins with Lucifer’s rebellion.
B is the spoken name that God gives to the tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil comes with a command, “Do not eat, lest you die.”
In C, Eve reacts to the name. The serpent assists Eve in regarding the mind-independent being in the center of the garden(A) as a mind-dependent being (C). The fruit appeals to the eyes, may be good to the taste, and is desired to make one wise. The serpent pushes the envelope of an illusion (C).
D follows. Eve is deluded into turning the illusion (C) into a mind-independent being (D). When she eats the fruit, she violates the command accompanying the naming of the tree. The mind-initiated violation is a mind-independent being. All humanity is plunged into a primal state of delusion, where we habitually and blindly project categories of the mindonto mind-independent reality. We frame. We name. We entertain illusion. We create delusions. Then, we regard our delusions (D) as mind-independent beings (A).
0124 Does the bombastic, entertaining, yet earnest Alex Jones speak fiction to fact? Or fact to fiction? Or both? Or neither?
0125 This look at his most recent book suggests that the terms, “fact” and “fiction”, are inadequate. Terms that are much older, yet still explicit abstractions, are preferable.
To me, the Latin terms, “ens reale” (mind-independent being) and “ens rationis” (mind dependent being), apply.
0126 I will not be the first to falsely accuse Alex Jones of being what he is not, when I say that Jones works in the vineyards of scholastic thought. He intuitively senses and exposes illusion and delusion. Plus, he strives to identify a nomenclature to describe how Klaus Schwab casts his sorcerer’s spell in an act of persuasion, just like that serpent in the third chapter of Genesis.
The scholastic world of the high middle ages (roughly 1100 to 1600 AD) rocks with controversies concerning how to distinguish (and perhaps, separate) ens reale and ens rationis. The schoolmen struggle against manipulative influences that bring these two types together, alchemically mixing them, in order to precipitate novel (mind-dependent) mind-independent beings (D). D can become the next A. Such is the nature of original sin.
0127 The Greimas square is an act of persuasion that does not fit what anyone currently imagines is an act of persuasion. Yet, Alex Jones smells it. He sniffs out a rhetorical pattern that seems credible, yet defies practical reason. This is his charism.
0128 A little philosophy goes a long way.
Indeed, this look at The Great Reset may seem to be a revelation.
0014 In the Introduction, Haarsma states that human evolution2H and the doctrine of original sin2V seem dissonant.
0015 All intersections seem dissonant.
Why?
Two apparently independent actualities constitute a single actuality.
0016 I call the single actuality, “one realness”.
What should I label this “one realness”?
0017 Maybe, the term, “our current Lebenswelt”, will do.
The word, “Lebenswelt”, is German for “living world”.
0018 Here is an initial picture of two actualities constituting a single actuality.
Figure 04
0019 The problem?
Original sin2V applies to our current Lebenswelt, the world after Adam and Eve.
Human evolution2H covers a much longer timeline than our current Lebenswelt.
This introduces a wrinkle to the fabric of Haarsma’s work.
The natural3H and theological transition3V marking the start of our current Lebenswelt2 involves only a fraction of the entirety of human evolution. It is like trying to fix one’s glasses with a tool kit designed for automobiles. It is like cutting a handkerchief from a bedsheet.
0020 Haarsma premises his book on the tenet that there are several possible ways to harmonize human evolution and the doctrine of original sin.
Plus, none of them are good.
Why?
None of them raise the following question, coming from the standpoint of original sin2V and addressing experts on human evolution2H.
Why is our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
0020 Clearly, a natural transition3H and a theological transition3V contextualize the start of our current Lebenswelt2.
Furthermore, our current Lebenswelt2 arises from two, apparently independent, potentials: an adaptive change in human prehistory1H and a cultural change that is captured in the stories of Adam and Eve1V.
As already noted, these two potentials point to the Ubaid, Uruk and Sumerian Dynastic archaeological periods of southern Mesopotamia2.
According to the e-work, The First Singularity And Its Fairy Tale Trace, these two potentials pertain to a cultural change that potentiates civilization (specifically) and unconstrained social complexity (generally)2. This cultural change marks the start of our current Lebenswelt.
0022 In brief, the doctrine of original sin2V challenges the discipline of modern Anthropology2H, which currently proposes a litany of material causes for the potentiation of civilization, such as the birth of agriculture, or the use of irrigation, or population pressures, or this or that material condition.
0023 Original sin2V forces the Christian to ask the scientist, “What if the natural transition3H to our current Lebenswelt is not material?”
This is the location where Loren Haarsma cannot go, because he values the discoveries of natural history and genetics. For years, he has been working with human evolution writ large.
The result is that the initial intersection is lopsided.
Figure 05
On top of that, natural history and genetics cannot propose a scientific hypothesis for a cultural change in the way humans talk.
0093 Chapter seven (A’) traces the history of original sin and completes the single actuality2, knitting human evolution2H(4D) to interpretation of Scripture2V (1A) and the doctrine of original sin2V (7A’).
0094 Here is a picture.
Figure 22
0095 Saint Paul, in his letters to the Corinthians and to the Romans, calls this interscope into being. The elements are fuzzy. The natural transition is not clear. It is implied.
0096 Saint Augustine clarifies the theological transition. In doing so, he posits a natural transition, whereby the rebellion of Adam and Eve passes to all humankind. Original sin passes to all humanity through direct descent from Adam and Eve. Why? Procreation is bound to desire. Desire is now subject (through Adam and Eve) to concupiscence, which transliterates into “being with Cupid, the love child of Mars, the god of war, and Venus, the goddess of love”.
Yes, that sounds a tad rebellious. With friends like Cupid, who need enemies? We can can get in trouble on our own, when we are subject to concupiscence.
Amazingly, Augustine’s position turns out to be unwittingly scientific. It is so scientific as to be debunked, sixteen centuries later, by modern genetics.
0097 So, the stories of Adam and Eve do not describe a de-novo creation of humans. Instead, the potential of these stories1V underlies Augustine’s doctrine of original sin2V as it is held, in the single actuality of our current Lebenswelt2, in contact with a twist in human evolution2H, that Haarsma is not aware of.
0098 In fact, at this moment, no modern anthropologist is aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity2H, arising from the potential of a phenomenal change in one Neolithic culture, manifesting as the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia1H.
0125 Chapter ten addresses the question, “Whose fault is it?”
Subsidiary questions include (more or less), “Why doesn’t God stop sin and suffering?”, “Did God create humans in a way that permitted sin?”, and “Was the Fall inevitable or unavoidable?”
These questions will eventually be leavened with Haarsma’s interscope, containing the hypothesis of the first singularity2Has the twist in human evolution2H.
Figure 24
0126 If one looks at the first singularity2H from the point of view of original sin2V, one could ask, “Why does God not stop the transition from hand-speech to speech-alone talk?”
Why does God permit it?
If one looks at original sin2V from the point of view of the first singularity2H, one could ask, “Was it inevitable or unavoidable that the multi-generational and incomprehensible increase in labor and social specialization in the early Ubaid would naturally give rise to the stories of Adam and Eve?“
Of course not.
So, why does our Creator the speak to us through the depths of the confusion associated with the emergence of unconstrained social complexity?”
Why tell us the stories of Adam and Eve?
Is it a coincidence that the serpent has no hands in which to hand talk?
0127 These are not questions of blame.
These are question of mystery.
0128 Our current Lebenswelt binds the hypothesis of the first singularity2H and the doctrine of original sin2V, allowing cross-talk between two apparently independent nested forms. Cross-talk opens our awareness to irresolvable contradictions between the two constituting actualities. Thus, the potential of Genesis 2:4-111V is in conversation with the potential of speech-alone talk, in contrast to hand-speech talk1H.
Spoken words allow abstraction in ways that cannot be imagined in hand-speech talk. Speech-alone talk offers the capacity to exploit and corrupt human relations by manipulating the meanings, presences and messages underlying purely symbolic words.
0129 Indeed, speech-alone talk is a vector for Satanic deception. Consider the serpent’s conversation with Eve. What a demonstration of speech-alone talk in action.
0130 In chapter eleven, Haarsma raises other difficult questions.
I would like to elevate my own question for examination.
0131 When does sin begin?
Here is an artistic way to appreciate the answer.
Consider the two interscopes of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and our current Lebenswelt.
0132 Consider the theological actualities2V.
For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, it2V is humans as images of God.
For our current Lebenswelt, it2V is the tree of life.
Here is a picture.
Figure 25
Consider the tree of life as a metaphor for the roots and the branches of belonging, intuitively nurtured by prehistoric humans living out their lives as images of God, …
0133 … then, in order to appreciate the depths of callousness and total depravity implied by the doctrine of original sin,consider the wickedness of plucking the fruit of the tree of life in order to attain immortality.
0134 Loren Haarsma tries to calm the dissonance of two apparently independent actualities: human evolution2H and original sin2V.
In doing so, he creates a semitic textual structure that allows my comments to suggest that these two actualities belong to a single reality. Two category-based nested forms intersect. The intersection of two nested forms offers a message. Here is a mystery.
0001 Mark S. Smith is a theologian in the Catholic tradition. He writes a book that is equally weighted between text and endnotes. The text ends at the center of the bound volume. The endnotes begin at the center of the bound volume. Smith sends a message. At the very center, there is a gap. The gap is between the text and the endnotes. Does the text write the endnotes? Or, do the endnotes write the text?
The full title of the book is The Genesis of Good and Evil: The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible. It is published by Westminster John Knox Press, in Louisville, Kentucky.
0002 A scholarly introduction sets the tone. This work is not about the Bible. This book is about scripture. Nowhere in the Bible, does anyone say the word, “Bible”. Instead, people in the Bible say, “scripture”, all the time. So, their scope (or cultural impress at the time) includes Jewish scripture. Only a retrospective reading, by Christians, years after the gospels are added to the Jewish scripture, allows the use of the word, “Bible”, which comes from the Greek, “biblos”, denoting a collection of manuscripts. The Bible, at its heart, binds two books, which we now call the Old and New Testaments.
