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.

10/21/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CQ

[All interventions by the postreligious (enlightenment) sovereign religions are ‘we win and you lose’ for traditional religions.

Once intentions are more consequential than consequences, then consequences may be blamed on scapegoats.

When the intervention improves the actuality, it verifies the ideological slogan.

When the intervention worsens the actuality, it verifies the ideological slogan.

What slogan?

We are the good ones who must identify and destroy the bad ones.]

10/19/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CO

Summary of text [comment] page 75

[In addition, the single actuality in an intersection may be contextualized by a content-level normal context.

When Progressives try to do good through central government intervention, they impose a context that influences this single actuality. They impose a normal context as part of their sovereign religion.

That normal context brings a potential into relation with the actuality of ‘what is good and what is bad’. For Progressives, that potential always contains ‘the possibility of enhancing sovereign power’.

How?

The so-called benefactors of Progressive sovereign power are rendered good, in concert with the slogan ‘welfare is for the good of single parent households’.]

10/13/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CL

Summary of text [comment] page 75

[For example, consider the case of the Progressive’s ordinate system with respect to welfare for ‘poor families headed by a single person’. At no point in the past 50 years have Progressives come to terms with two facts:

  1. Progressive interventions to aid ‘poor families headed by a single person’ generates ‘poor families headed by single persons’.
  2. Single parenthood is a prime contributor to childhood poverty.

Assistance has merely shifted the role of fatherhood onto the sovereign state.

What?

The state does not cause the conception directly. However, it assumes the role of the husband as the female’s helper who ‘the female puts in charge in order to demonstrate her fidelity’.

How could ‘helping poor people’ produce such perverse consequences?]

10/7/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CH

[What do I mean by the word ‘nature’?

What is the word ‘nature’ different than?

Did I hear you say ‘culture’?

What happens when, in the course of human evolution, culture becomes natural?

Well, then, you might reply, “By culture, I mean civilization.”

“OK.” I say, “Civilization is different than nature. But, what happened to culture? Is culture still the same as nature? Or did culture somehow disappear when civilization appeared? If so, then how can civilization be culture?”

“Ouch,” you say, “my head hurts.”]

10/6/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CG

[I suspect that the so-called ‘natural’ attempts to access our evolved nature are cultural phenomena.

They are scams, inducing self-destruction.

Why?

Natural ordination cannot be obtained in our current Lebenswelt.

The ordination of talk has changed. Before the first singularity, hand-speech talk held the qualities of reference. After the first singularity, speech-alone talk holds only symbolic qualities. Reference must be projected into words.

So what does ‘the projection of ‘what is natural’’ into words suggest?]

10/5/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CF

[At this point, I wonder:

Can I put these thoughts into a nutshell?

Here goes:

‘The modern contrast between grace and nature’ is false, as opposed to true.

Why?

We cannot “naturally” access our nature in our current Lebenswelt.

‘Our current Lebenswelt’ is not ‘the Lebenswelt that we evolved in’.

So how can any of our behaviors be natural?]

10/4/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CE

[In our current Lebenswelt, humans no longer have these options, even when the band itself is specialized (say royalty or blacksmiths).

Concupiscence has been unloosed.

To me, this unloosing resonates with Rene Girard’s descriptions of ‘unconstrained mimetic desire’.

Cupid is the god of mimetic desire.

After the first singularity, religious traditions wrestled with concupiscence, at first through thinkgroup (which originally served as thinkpost-first-singularity for a band or a specialization), then through a slow awakening to a trans-thinkgroup, which I label thinkdivine].

10/3/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CD

[In ‘the Lebenswelt that we evolved in’, the eternal cycles of the world and the always present ancestors ordinated each member in each band.

‘Freedom for responsibility’ did not constitute ‘free will’. Rather it was our natural evolved condition.

‘What we now call ‘concupiscence’ (or ‘the state of being with Cupid’) did not involve turning away from the divine. Instead, desire was triggered and channeled by band and tribal traditions.

How else could it be? Desire was a condition for survival. We mimicked the desires of others in order to survive, including the desire to ‘totally give myself to another’.

Our ancestors were in ‘the state of being with one another’. Grace came naturally. Timeless and ancestor-bound traditions facilitated, ordinated, and guided.]

09/30/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 CC-2

[‘A transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk’ both promoted and demoted humans.

On one hand, specializations allowed greater productivity and, even more importantly, cooperation across tribal boundaries. In fact, specializations became a substitute for tribes.

On the other hand, ‘the Lebenswelt that we evolved in’ no longer applies. We can no longer follow our evolved instinctive ordinations.

We are dis-ordinated. We are born into this world with compasses designed for a world that not longer exists.]