Spirit of convictions...

 

We often hear that our world has more than enough problems of its own. But then there is more than enough opportunity to seek solutions! This is why I am again working through a book that deals with world politics. Probably because I thought the modern nature of the vision that Daniel from the Bible had to explain can help us better understand things today. I am referring to Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a large statue representing mighty world empires, spanning vast periods and more importantly, the statue had "feet of iron and clay" and for good reasons, I think we historically are, from the era of Christ's first coming, living in the era of the "feet of iron and clay."

In this era, which in reality still upholds all the historical uses and ideas of all the great mighty empires that preceded our era, on a foundation of iron and clay. I think that, as in previous eras, wars are caused and not made. This is because I believe no single conscious goal of a group of people can make a war. War is caused by a complex convergence of circumstances. Is this perhaps the best way to look at war?

Wars are not made, they are caused. The book I am reading talks about the principles of "offensive realism" and "defensive realism" and in a way it involves in both cases not a type of "complete control" over the mechanisms of war - even if all actors involved are rationally busy with what they believe is best to do. It is as if there is a "spirit of convictions" of most people involved underlying that drives things in a certain direction. It is perhaps the case that people, groups, and individuals with strong entrepreneurial characteristics most of the time carry out their goals under the protection of sovereign peoples with primarily noble goals and these inherently noble goals then in turn cause war and war is waged, like a storm is waged, it is not made.

It is not clear to me that any of the modern "Westphalian Nation States," for one reason or another, can't manage in practice, to aim for the most noble goals concerning their own existence and even the existence of mankind as a whole. If peoples' intentions are not mostly evil, there must be something else underlying. It is therefore necessary to look at what we really experience, what the spirit of convictions is that actually describes those noble goals. This is what needs to be investigated in the rest of this piece."

What is not clear to me is the reason why the nature of competition between all people and even animals is understood according to "Darwinian misconceptions". Yes, without wasting too much time making arguments about what type of competition I'm talking about, I want to state that most peoples maintain an underlying spirit of convictions that they understand and maintain in terms of mechanistic and Darwinian processes. I know of no rulers who openly reject Darwinian ideas and pursue another spirit of convictions. What I need to do to investigate this uncertainty about the motives of our modern human is to find out what the general understanding of competition has been as humanity has understood it throughout time - as it perhaps has been understood throughout all eras since the earliest times. Could it be that humanity was not so intensely aware of the way competition takes place in nature and simply lived it out instinctively? Well, maybe it is human instinct that fuels our sense of competition? But believe me, I do not think it is a type of Darwinian and purely mechanistic series of instincts.

Before we further discuss the nature and origin of competition, I must mention here that I am currently listening again to political academic John Mearsheimer's book, where he systematically explains "Offensive Realism". The name of the book is "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics". The thoughts contained in this piece are certainly a type of argument aimed at challenging Mearsheimer's accurate but, as he himself acknowledges, tragic "spirit of convictions". It does not pretend that Mearsheimer presents faulty data and analysis or that the other "spirit of convictions" that I propose really has answers to his tragic insights. My ideas merely aim in the direction of something that might illuminate the "Tragedy" that Mearsheimer sees, possibly in a different way from the general spirit of convictions that most people experience today.

Because I have been considering for some time now that the nature of competition in nature indicates that the competition is focused on ensuring the general harmony of an extremely diverse ecosystem of species, I am going to utilize this "spirit of convictions" about competition. The principle of my argument is that, if the interactions between individuals... (But let me first clarify what I mean when I refer to individuals... I refer to an individual organism as that unit or structure that stands as a whole but can independently of other structures replicate itself or in cooperation to make another individual). Therefore, if the interactions between individuals and other individuals within their own species and also with other species and also the environment in general, are only focused on survival, then the nature of the variety and uniqueness of species would not at all look as it does now. To pretend that the modern version of Darwin's theory does not concern the survival of the individual but the survival of the species is very misleading and wrong according to the strictly a-teleological and mechanistic nature of interactions that dedicated Darwinists observe in all life.

The interactions are always an interaction of an individual with other individuals or goods. The fact that species can team up to achieve survival is precisely what needs to be explained on the basis of the goals to ensure only the blind or purposeless survival of the individual. It is furthermore clear that there are so many species that can employ interactions with other species and the environment to achieve survival, at the expense of the fact that these interactions are not nearly mechanistically and statistically more likely. It is an inherent requirement of a-teleological processes that cannot pursue any abstract goal within the Darwinian "spirit of convictions". The life forms that we see and experience on earth must be measured against pure mechanistic processes, but when we do that, we see from first principles that it is not mechanically, chemically, energy-wise, or information-wise the statistically most likely way for those organisms to survive, regardless of the environment. At most, one can recognize that a single-celled organism exists with the optimal or improving mechanistic, energy, chemical, and information structure, because we see that single-celled organisms within all known ecosystems have the ability to replicate optimally without any unnecessary or ineffective structures and systemic dependencies. That such a single-celled organism is the logical, only and necessary outcome of a strict Darwinian order, forms the crux of the reason why I reject it and argue that competition is not about survival, but about something entirely different and something much better and more human than what Darwin proposes. (I know it is popular to despise your own humanity, because we are so destructive, but that is precisely the problem I am trying to address because I believe that destructive nature is precisely Darwin's fault.)

Today, it is possible for us to identify those types of optimal structures, as our knowledge about the interactions of matter explains to us in "classical mechanics" and "information science", as well as the "General Theory of Relativity" and also "Quantum Mechanics". We see this as an ecology of many types. But, if life's interactions tend blindly, non-teleologically, without goals to ensure that pure physical optimal state of survival of any individual, then the world would not have these types of interactions and ecology, over a long period where pure statistical or probability events, physically "sort out" things so that only the most probable remains. What should remain in Darwin's fantasy is certainly not interactions that are physically so "sub-optimal" as we do experience. 

Here, I may need to provide an explanation about what information means in a non-teleological reality, that is, information without inherent meaning or goals - as materialistic determinism proposes. If you bend your mind far enough, then the information encapsulated in life simply means a mechanical structure that has very specific chemical interactions, leading to structures that live... in the sense that these structures without goals use energy to allow those structures that "are life" to replicate itself and let a next generation survive.

Moreover, the argument is also that you cannot describe the structure of the "first life" in terms of meaningful information if you cherish a materialistic Darwinistic idea about it. It is very important in this conversation to realize that my argument doesn't even attempt to explain the origin of life in the first place - I accept the origin of first life axiomatically. This is very likely a completely senseless position since it is not rationally sensible to just accept the origin of life and then a Darwinistic explanation for the origin of diverse life and diverse interactions as we see it in the world we inhabit. But let us accept in principle the origin of the first life without a physical explanation, because it is what Darwin tries to explain that is important and that is why I want to test his theory against the realities of the claims he makes.

If it has now become clear that Darwin's mechanisms are not the fundamental nature of the interactions of all life. That the interactions are not blindly and mechanistically trying to achieve survival, is deduced from the sub-optimal nature of most of the interactions when measured by what the actual statistically optimal interactions of which we are aware. Statistically optimal interactions can be so obviously and undeniably observed in all the ecosystems of single-celled organisms – So, there is no excuse of ignorance on our part – We can test it with our own eyes and scientific methods and test it again - things are not going to change if it's just about the processes of the physical world. There simply isn't an argument against it. A Darwinistic argument which, even in principle, can undermine the optimal nature of single-celled organisms and their ecosystems has not yet been made. If the interactions of a structure to survive require more dependencies, more interactions with the environment, more energy than what is statistically optimal, then those dependencies will simply have a smaller chance from mechanistic probabilities to cause that structure to replicate and survive, as pure Darwinistic, mechanistic survival describes. The secret to understanding this counter-intuitive argument is to understand what purposeless nature really is. It is not difficult, we see it in so many physical processes and we have so many laws of nature that describe precisely those purposeless processes.

The fact that we try to arbitrarily choose the boundaries of the "structure that survives" to possibly be the species, to possibly be the race, to be the colony of bacteria, to be the forest of trees, to be the school of fish, to be the swarm of bees, to be the flock of birds, to be the herd of antelope or lions, does not matter where and how we want to describe the structure. In a purely mechanistic blind process, we know exactly what the mechano-chemical interactions are that are more optimal to ensure survival. It is this knowledge that I call upon to be applied in thinking about Darwin's theory.

It cannot be ignored that nothing about Darwin's theory makes sense. What Darwin does not answer is: “Why do the most inefficient mechanistic structures of matter survive and flourish? Why is there such diversity that exerts unnecessary interactions? Why is energy consumed more than necessary to cause pure mechanistic replication in the form of survival? Why is there interdependence between various cell structures that ensure that the organism cannot replicate before a huge number of very complex interactions have all been completed perfectly? (What I mean is that cells that cannot survive unless all other cells replicate together in a very specific and complex manner, as we see in multi-organ organisms and indeed any multicellular organisms, are problematic for Darwin, precisely because we know single-celled organisms do not need this and survive in many more environments than multicellular organisms.) Why is the world filled almost everywhere with organisms that have various interdependent organs and sexuality? Why are there so many forms and varieties that we must truly marvel at precisely the inefficiency that causes all those amazing interdependencies in the replication process? Why is even the most amazing structure that is classified as an individual full of cells that make organs that only bring about sub-optimal interdependencies? Why is the world not, not even in principle, involved with only the mechanistically optimal organisms? Why is the world covered with the most breathtaking organisms with the most breathtaking interactions that we can think of or even dream of? Why are there organisms like us that can waste energy thinking about our own interactions, while we know that the "ecosystem of zombie bacteria" is so much better than us when it comes to Darwinian survival?

It is precisely these types of questions and the extremely fruitful field of investigation implied by the questions, which I now propose to become the fundamental basis of our original investigation.

If we accept for some reason that we believe that Darwin's mechanistic claims about the interactions of all species are to ensure survival, and that all interactions between people and any mechanical structure that people can cause flow from those interactions, without language or reason. Interactions such as a nation, a military, a weapon arsenal, an economy, a trade fleet, a border and a wall... all those structures and their interactions. If we accept this then in practice there is a very clear consequence of such a mechanistic and Darwinian "spirit of convictions".

A book could be written about how people experience themselves and how we have looked at everything we do as people for the past three hundred or even four hundred years. Yes, I include most Christian ideas and thoughts of the past few centuries in this "mechanistic misconception", because if you pay close attention, anyone can believe that God, in Christ, employs this kind of Darwinian mechanisms to achieve his objectives and we must come to terms with that. Just think about the influence of the deistic thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment on Christianity. It is exceptional when meaningful questions about our behavior as humans are asked that do not follow the "spirit of conviction" articulated by Darwin."

It is that spirit which describes our modern wars. Because I do not want to rewrite Mearsheimer's book, I will encourage you, if you read the book, just try to test your own "spirit of convictions" to the questions I asked above.

In conclusion, I will ask the questions that may help us continue to seek where that tragedy of potential destruction of all multi-cellular organisms will come from. Yes, human actions that could very likely lead to the destruction of all life or very likely the destruction of only the sub-optimal structures of life, so that only single-celled organisms are the true survivors. Yes, a reality created by Darwin's ideas, has cursed humanity.

The questions that help me follow up on the questions I asked earlier: "Why is competition in nature focused on favoring complex genes, which maintain extremely complex, beautiful, technologically sublime, and useful structures? Is our human competition not focused on the same type of complexity and goal-oriented and conscious interactions? Doesn't man aim to set up species of interdependent peoples and other human structures and institutions and goals and loves in such a way that diversity of life is the greatest goal of our own existence and all life's existence? Are we not fundamentally and diametrically opposed to the mere "survival of the species or individual" focused on the emergence and protection of an awareness of all this astounding diversity of beings and the whole universe of wonders that we can still experience? Why should we see that reality of human and all living organisms' interactions with a spirit of convictions that fundamentally always returns to a "blind struggle for survival", while reality obviously aims to cause consciousness and cooperation of a growing diversity of mechanisms? Why do we reduce the interaction of people with each other to the lowest reasons for our morality and not the highest possible reasons for our morality? Why don't we recognize that Darwin's spirit of conviction can only lead to optimal zombie structures of life as we see it in single-celled organisms? Why do we regard our own life, our sexuality, our senses, our language, consciousness, love as isolated from all other forms of life, so that we narcissistically and solipsistically try to make ourselves like zombie bacteria? Why do we degrade our existence to what Darwin's curse brings? Why do we allow our spirit of conviction to be shaped by Darwin and his disciples?

I believe that if we reject this Darwinian spirit of conviction with regard to the true deep meaningful, teleological, non-reductionist, consciousness-focused existence and true love for what can be experienced outside the individual and can be loved at the expense of the individual, if we can do this, then we can also prepare the tragedy of our time for the coming of our Savior and Redeemer and the Creator of all things - Jesus Christ the Word who was with God at the beginning and was God himself, from whom all things that have arisen have arisen. We will be able to meet Him who sees, cares for and cherishes all forms of life, with a spirit of conviction worthy of Him.