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.

04/5/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AX

Summary of text [comment] page 81

[As the second Temple moved deeper into the Axial Age, the entire language of Israel shifted in response to this re-application of the flesh and bones metaphor to Society (as well as other usurpations of character-building metaphors).

The Party of the Sovereign changed the meaning of the words.

The Party of the Sovereign destroyed the language.

Paul’s opposition between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ is evidence of a shift in the symbolic order of language.]

04/3/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AV

[What happens when the metaphorical ‘bones of a person’ are usurped by elites into an ideology where ‘the elites are the metaphorical bones of society’.

Here, I tip my hat … er … electronic tablet to Slavoj Zizek.

‘The bones (that are the elite)’ embody ‘a higher power’.

Even though the elites become the scaffolding for ‘the flesh of society’, they are persons. They are composed of flesh and bones.

So they have two sets of bones.

The first set justifies sovereign power.

‘The bones that are the elite’ scaffold ‘a flesh that are the subjects’. These bones operate as cruel and perverse instruments of a higher power. Manipulation and thuggery are the right things to do when ‘the bones are the sovereign elites’. What else can the elites do to achieve their organizational objectives?

The elite bones support – no, they command – the flesh of the unworthy and lazy subjects. The flesh must be anchored by the organized goals attributed to a higher power (available only to the elites).

The second set belongs to the person who is ‘an instrument of the higher power’. There is a person behind ‘the bones that hold up society’. The bones of that person are complaint. They bend with the political winds.]

03/2/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AB-2

[Which social construction will contradict our (human) self-centered and selfish sensible attitudes.

In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the few contenders were family, band and tribal traditions.

In our current Lebenswelt, we are faced with a wide variety of contenders.

After the Incarnation, we are faced with the thinkgroups of our Zietgeist and the thinkdivine of the Way.

Deception is everywhere. Thinkgroups pretend to provide the Way.]

02/28/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AA

[In our current Lebenswelt, all word reference is socially constructed.

This poses a hidden weakness for people who think they are rational, sensible, practical, pragmatic, and so on. These are the people who think that they are right because they make sense.

What is their weakness?

Their stance does not allow them to see below their feet.

They cannot see (or even admit) that they stand on a social construction.

These are the useful idiots of every revolution.]

02/21/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 W

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[Our current Lebenswelt exhibits a wide variety of symbolic orders.

We might distinguish them as ‘specialized languages that make sense of the world’ (sensible construction) in contrast to ‘specialized languages that inspire us to social construction’. This dichotomy matches the distinction between naturalism and theism.

This is a false dichotomy.

Why?

The ‘languages that make sense of the world’ are no longer obviously referential.

Why?

Just try to image a thing using purely spoken words.

Try to point to a thing with spoken words.

Tell me how your spoken words index your body.

Compare spoken words to pantomime and manual-brachial gestures. Hand-talk words were iconic and indexal. They were intuitively referential. That is not the case for spoken words. Even the most familiar speech-alone words do not intuitively image or point to their referent. Instead, reference is projected into word-sounds.

In our current Lebenswelt, meaning, presence and message are projected into our speech-alone words.]

02/20/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 V

[In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our ancestors exhibited constrained complexity.

So, what can we (humans) conclude about our evolved nature:

We innately expect words to be referential, facilitating seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and safely ignoring the rest.

We innately hold a self-centerness and a selfishness that expects to be contradicted by a (nonsensical) tradition within constrained complexity.

We innately expect sensible construction to be contradicted by social construction.

Social construction builds networks of cooperation based on objects that are ‘references constructed on references’.

We innately expect to conduct sensible construction on the basis of a reference, that cannot be fully talked about, generated by social construction.]

02/15/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 S

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[The primary symbolic order, the one that made intuitive and natural sense, was the first to evolve. Reference is intended to make sense. By ‘sense’, I mean ‘different from nonsense’.

In the first symbolic order, the selfishness and self-centeredness of humans reflected a primal innocence. Just like all other animals, we expect our word-gestures to make sense, so we can seek pleasure, avoid pain, and know what to safely ignore.

This primary symbolic order serves ‘sensible construction’.]