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.

01/6/23

Looking at Alex Jones’s Book (2022) “The Great Reset” (Part 10 of 12)

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.

Perhaps, God has a different plan.

01/5/23

Looking at Alex Jones’s Book (2022) “The Great Reset” (Part 11 of 12)

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).

0123 Here is a picture of the fall of Eve.

Figure 31
01/4/23

Looking at Alex Jones’s Book (2022) “The Great Reset” (Part 12 of 12)

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.

Not unlike Jones’s book.

10/27/22

Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin” (Part 3 of 21)

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.

Semiotics can.

10/13/22

Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin” (Part 13 of 21)

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.

Why?

Semiotics is not the same as science.

10/4/22

Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin” (Part 20 of 21)

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.

10/3/22

Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin” (Part 21 of 21)

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.

It is beautiful to behold.

0135 Haarsma concludes.

God’s answer is still Christ.

Dissonance gives way to mystery.

01/31/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 1 of 16)

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.

0003 How scholarly is that?

01/22/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 8 of 16)

0044 What happens when the Ubaid begins?

The following claims are stated plainly in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  They are dramatized in An Archaeology of the Fall.  Both e-works are available at smashwords and other electronic-book venues.  Search Razie Mah along with the title.

The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia first appears on the edges of the newly filled Persian Gulf.  The Ubaid is similar to all the Developed Neolithic villages of the day, except for one difference.  The Ubaid practices speech-alone talk.  All other cultures practice hand-speech talk.

In hand-speech talk, the referent is imaged or indicated by the gesture-word.  In speech-alone talk, spoken words are pure symbols, labels that can be attached to the part, as well as to the whole.  The semiotic world of the Ubaid is correspondingly out of kilter. Speech-alone talk can fashion words for things that cannot be pictured or pointed to in hand talk.

Consider the word, “wheel”.  The wheel does not appear in nature.  How can hand-speech talk picture or point to a wheel?  Instead, the rotary motion that goes into making pottery gains a spoken name.  Then, an artifact is built that validates the name.  The Uruk period, following the Ubaid, invents the wheel.

Different producers develop specialized languages, increasing their innovation and productivity.  Different social circles find new ways to organize, increasing their capacities for regimentation and coordinated action.  The Ubaid becomes rich and powerful.  The subsequent Uruk period is more rich and more powerful.  The Sumerian Dynastic is labeled, “civilization”.

These sociological trends take place over thousands of years.  They are difficult to fathom.  No one really can figure out what is happening.  But, whatever it is, it does not stop.  Soon enough, the present erases the past.  Then, the present erases the past, over and over and over.  It is like a pustule that festers, then ruptures, festers, then ruptures, over and over.  Each iteration is different.  Each iteration is more uncanny.

0046 The Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of a king, who lives (according to many intelligent guesses) around 4500 years ago.  The Ubaid coalesces around 7800 years ago.  Let me imagine that a complete overturning of the established order occurs  each time the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn move into a new element, around every 200 years.  In the 3300 years between the start of the Ubaid and King Gilgamesh, sixteen complete turnovers occur.  How can anyone comprehend the changes?

Yet, the fairy tales of Adam and Eve convey the nature of this social process.  There is a definite beginning, in a idyllic garden.  A threshold is crossed, the garden is lost.  Then, another threshold is crossed.  Cain kills Abel.  Then, another threshold is crossed.  Lamech, with two wives, murders a man with none.  Then, the genealogies begin.  One name follows another.  The lengths of the lives call to mind the slow grinding of the heavenly spheres.  One overturning follows another.

0047 Today, we are blessed with novel, otherwise invisible celestial timekeepers.  Uranus, 84 year orbit, associates to revolutions.  Neptune, 165 year orbit, links to dreamy oceanic spirits of the age.  Dwarf Pluto, 248 year orbit, goes with the trees of life and death.  The years of discovery oddly reinforce astrological associations.  They are 1781, 1846 and 1930, respectively.  Think French Revolution (1791), the Communist Manifesto (published 1848) and America’s big stock market crash (1929).

The stars and the planets are telling.  Recall, Satan, the one who is defeated in the first half of the grand sweep of Paradise Lost, is a stellar angel, at first.  Now, he sells faithlessness, to us, just as he did to Eve.

0048 The conditions that define the authors of Genesis 3 touch base with the reactions of mothers, in the tradition of Seth, within the Ubaid, to ever increasing social complexity.  Each story is like the completion of a spiraling development, like royalty (Jupiter) having to meet time (Saturn), like the cycle of peace and revolution (Uranus), like popular movements, rising like islands, then drowning in a sea of their own contradictions (Neptune) and like a long, treacherous trek between the tree of life and the tree of death (Pluto).  The cycles spiral because labor and social specializations are always innovating.

The fairy tales of Adam and Eve point to the start of our current Lebenswelt.

01/21/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 9 of 16)

0049 What do contemporary scholars say about the emblematic trees?

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil raises the question of human wisdom and discernment.

The tree of life raises the question of human immortality, or lack thereof.

0050 Perhaps, there are other lessons as well.

If the stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales about the one-way increase in social complexity that characterizes the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, made possible by the realization of speech-alone talk, then the women of Seth may be onto something.  

Speech-alone talk projects meanings, presences and messages into spoken words.  Then, culture constructs artifacts that validate those projections.  Surely, the nameless and feminine authors of the Genesis fairy tale do the same with the fabled trees.  The trees are artifacts that validate their projections.  This is a condition2H.

0051 Speech-alone talk exists as two arbitrarily related systems of differences.

The key term is “differences”.

So, what is the tree of life different than?

Obviously, the tree of death.

What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil different than?

The tree of the lack of such knowledge?  The tree of innocence?

0052 Why are the trees of death and innocence not mentioned?

They are projected as shadows onto the trees that are mentioned.

Eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and you will surely die.

Eat of the fruit of the tree of innocence and you will surely live.

0053 God’s command to Adam is sound advice.

But, it is the other advice that God does not speak, because He knows the truth.

0054 Speech-alone talk fosters unconstrained social complexity.  The adoption of speech-alone talk is a one-way street.

Today, no one wants the internet to go off, despite its dangers.  Two generations ago, nobody wants the electricity to fail.  A hundred years before that, railroads and steamships are necessities.  These types of statements go back to the start of the Ubaid, where people learn to trade before the temple.  Technical and social innovations produce more wealth and more power.  Consequently, speech-alone talk spreads from the Ubaid to surrounding hand-speech talking cultures.  It flies on wings of mimicry.  Today, as with the Ubaid, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

0055 So, what is the truth?

There is no return to the innocence and the life of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  The portal is closed.

The women of Seth acknowledge this.  They see people gaining knowledge all around them, as novel specialties arise, flourish, then are replaced by further innovations.  They see new insights gain fashion, order society, then go berserk.  They see people leaving small villages and migrating to larger ones, if only for their own protection.  The old ways no longer offer security.

0056 The women of Seth somehow grasp the Ubaid in their fairy tales.  God is correct.  Once the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is consumed, we can become like the gods, because we may devise ways to live forever and to be all controlling.  Self-anointed human gods may be aided by the tree of life, pruned into the tree of the innocence of others.

But, more worrisome, the tree of life offers an escape from the dreary technicalities and the nightmarish machinations of speech-alone talk and all that it actualizes.  Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden in order to prevent an attempt to escape their divine fate, inspired by a delusion that we can return to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0057 The women of Seth see the madness, through the passing generations.  First, the crowds ridicule and kill the shamans of old.  Who needs the timeless ways?  Then, generations later, the crowds gather like sheep in the hope of a revival of a shaman of old.  Then, a pretender guides them, as they move and become one with the animals.  Then, a flaming sword, swerving in all directions, drives them to annihilate one another, along with everything that seems to prevent their return to bliss.  This is an insight2V.

There is no return to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  We cannot eat from the tree of innocence, ever again.