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.

10/4/16

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.]

09/1/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 BK

[Similarly, the vast nothingness that we see in contemporary American television is supported by the dynamics of ‘I recognize myself according to some … nothingness’.

This ‘nothingness’ consists of characters, such as ‘a helpless victim terrorized by a bad one’. The televised helpless victim inspires sympathy, because the viewer is also a victim (a disempowered person who cannot talk back to the television producers).]

08/12/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 AY

[Televisionaries transformed ‘love (agape)’ into ‘something that does not proceed from grace and that requires no conversion’. They have transformed ‘freedom’ into ‘celebrity and slavery’.

The real victims are the unsuspecting folk who do not watch Progressive television.

They have no idea what is going on, especially when they are suddenly branded as ‘bad ones’.]

08/11/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 AX

[Progressive television – ideological broadcasting – redefines ‘freedom’ as ‘without obligations’.

Yet, when the hero saves the victim (standing in for the disempowered viewer), the victim is emotionally obligated to the hero (standing in for the television producers and their Progressive religions).

These redefinitions produce an idol of unreal love (where television elites and disempowered viewers are united in hatred against a foe).

These redefinitions produce differential freedoms (the television elites are not obligated to the viewer victims, but the viewer victims are emotionally obligated to the elites).]