Constructural Elements: Building Your Worldview

To appear is to be known.

Overview: “Always sympathetic to Christians, he claimed to have had a divine vision that helped lead his troops, flying Christian symbols on their standards, to victory in civil war in 312. The most reductionist reading of the evidence would say that, in 310, Constantine saw a solar halo, a rare but well-documented celestial phenomenon, in the south of France and in the company of his army, but Constantine’s account of events changed over the years and we can’t be sure. We can say with greater certainty that for several years he wavered between Christian and non-Christian interpretations of the sign. He eventually decided, to the delight of the Christian leaders in his entourage, that he had been sent a sign by the Christian God. He became a Chris-tian, as a matter of belief and perhaps policy too.” – Prof. Michael Kulikowski (Pennsylvania State University), “Christians were Strangers: How an obscure oriental cult in a corner of Roman Palestine grew to become the dominant religion of the Western world,” Aeon, January 30, 2017.

Sections:

· Appearance

o Manifestation

· Constructural Elements

o Four Questions

o The Now

o Intuitive Knowledge

· Temporal Constructural Element

o Creator

· Epistemological Constructural Element

· Symbolic Constructural Element

o Discrimination

o Symbolic Acts

· Ideological Constructural Element

o Neocons & Neolibs

o Language & Philosophy

· The Ideas of the Ruling Class

o Worldviews Are Not Voluntary

o Modernity

o Generations

Tadao Ando, “Phenomenology in architecture”

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it.” – John Keats.

Constructural Elements¹ is a concept native to Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million (“GGDM”), a macrosocial simulation game in an interstellar setting. As such, it has never existed outside of GGDM – until now.

The only close term I have found, “Constructional Elements” is a term of patent law,² however, even though I had a college course in Intellectual Property Law, I never heard the term and it is not the origin of Constructural Elements in GGDM; in fact, I was using the term long before I discovered the patent law terminology. Unlike “reproductive consciousness” and “super-organic” – terms which I have written about in previous Looking Substack Posts – both of which are terms of cultural anthropology – no one else has used Constructural Elements to describe world-building.

Constructural Elements means something entirely different from and unrelated to intellectual property terminology; my usage refers to the process by which individuals and collective populations “build” or construct worldviews from appearances. Constructural Elements, while building a worldview, also refer more to connectedness by degrees than to unclassified parts.

In short, to my best knowledge, I “invented” the term (if not the concept) as it is being used here.³

The Monolith, 2001: A Space Odyssey movie (1968)

Appearance

“Phenomenology is the study of appearance as such. It is a branch of both Ontology and Epistemology, since appearing is being known. By an ‘appearance’ is meant any existent which impinges on consciousness, anything cognized, irrespective of any judgment as to whether it be ‘real’ or ‘illusory.’ The evaluation of a particular appearance as a reality or an illusion is a complex process, involving inductive and deductive logical principles and activities. Opinion has to earn the status of strict knowledge. Knowledge develops from appearances, which may be: (a) objects of perception, i.e. concrete phenomena in the physical or mental domains; (b) objects of intuition, i.e. one’s subjective self, cognitions, volitions and valuations (non-phenomenal concretes); and/or (c) objects of conception, i.e. simple or complex abstracts of preceding appearances.” – Avi Sion, from abstract for Phenomenology (2005)

‘To appear is to be known’ is the axiomatic statement of phenomenology, it is the synthetic a priori or axiom of phenomenology. Looking is the meeting of conscious will with appearance. What are the consequences of denial? That something can be known without appearing to us in some form? Or that which appears to us does not become known to us by appearance?

Phenomenology is a relatively modern term, according to Merriam-Webster online dictionary its first use was about 1797. The idea has evolved through several phases to the modern meaning. The process of forming new frameworks to understand that which is not explainable within the preceding framework is the process of reforming worldviews of civilization.

“Abstraction relies on apprehensions of sameness and difference between appearances (including received or projected appearances, and projected negations of appearances). Coherence in knowledge (perceptual, intuitive and conceptual) is maintained by apprehensions of compatibility or incompatibility. Words facilitate our construction of conceptual knowledge, thanks to their intentionality. The abstract concepts most words intend are common characters or behaviors of particulars (concrete material, mental or subjective experiences). Granting everything in the world is reducible to waves, ‘universals’ would be equalities or proportionalities in the measures of the features, motions and interrelations of particular waves. Such a theory of universals would elucidate sensation and memory.” Id.⁴

Phenomenology provides a means to explain how ‘non-real things,’ such as how fictional characters or stories (in movies, novels, religion, fairy tales, etc.) can have an impact on our consciousness. How would we discuss these things as ‘real’ if not for the framework of phenomenology? Note the use of the term “real” in the preceding sentence; such were previously discussed, in a dismissive sense, in terms of being fiction, probably at least until the time Kant illuminated how humans spontaneously create the “ought” independent of empirical input. Phenomenology is also the basis of a branch of psychology which holds that our mental reality is formed by perception of phenomenon instead of objective reality.

Manifestation

“HIEROPHANY (from Greek hiero-, ‘sacred,’ and phainein, ‘to show’) is a term designating the manifestation of the sacred. The term involves no further specification. Herein lies its advantage: It refers to any manifestation of the sacred in whatever object throughout history.” – from Encyclopedia.com article, “Hierophany.” (emphasis added)

“Manifest” and “appear” are related but not identical terms in the English language; there are a number of sites which discuss the difference between the two, for example, Wikidiff states:

“...that manifest is to show plainly; to make to appear distinctly, usually to the mind; to put beyond question or doubt; to display; to exhibit while appear is to come or be in sight; to be in view; to become visible.”

The Wikidiff definition implies that manifestation is never considered illusory. “Appear” does not appear in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary definitions for “manifestation” or “manifest” but “manifest” appears once in the Merriam-Wester definition for “appear.” However, only “appear” is defined as “to be” in Merriam-Webster consistent with Avi Sion’s definition above. Imagine Merriam-Webster’s lexicon staff have had some mind-boggling arguments over this.

“As the water tumbles and foams, the world’s most famous chimpanzees sway rhythmically in a state of high arousal. First hurling rocks into the spray, the apes then quiet themselves and sit calmly, gazing at the waterfall before them. Jane Goodall, who knows these apes from 55 years of observation at Gombe, Tanzania, interprets these compelling images of our closest living relatives in a spiritual framework. The chimpanzees’ behavior, she says, are ‘perhaps triggered by feelings of awe, wonder’ for magnificent natural features or events. Chimpanzees are so similar to us, she asks, ‘Why wouldn’t they also have feelings of some kind of spirituality?’ That question – rooted in Goodall’s definition of spirituality as the experience of appreciating magnificent, unknowable powers at work in the world beyond ourselves – has taken on a new urgency.” – Barbara J. King, “Seeing Spirituality in Chimpanzees,” The Atlantic, March 29, 2016.

‘Manifestation of the sacred’ in objects seems to work both ways:

“For Egypt, the greatest horror was the destruction or abduction of the cult images. In the eyes of the Israelites, the erection of images meant the destruction of divine presence; in the eyes of the Egyptians, this same effect was attained by the destruction of images. In Egypt, iconoclasm was the most terrible religious crime; in Israel, the most terrible religious crime was idolatry. In this respect Osarseph alias Akhenaten, the iconoclast, and the Golden Calf, the paragon of idolatry, correspond to each other inversely, and it is strange that Aaron could so easily avoid the role of the religious criminal. It is more than probable that these traditions evolved under mutual influence. In this respect, Moses and Akhenaten became, after all, closely related.” – Jan Assmann, From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change, (2014), p. 76.⁵

Or as Dr. Stephen Griffith (Lycoming College, Dept. of Philosophy) stated, rebels are not really ‘free,’ as being a rebel requires them to be the opposite of what they oppose, therefore, they cannot ever be what they want to be or could be. A very existentialist thought!; sometimes we make our own boxes and live in them. In the context of the ancient Egyptians and Israelites, the Jewish culture developed religion to symbolize their opposition to the other. This opposition religion then was redirected toward the Romans who conquered Egypt and, eventually, Palestine.⁶

Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to suggest that “appear” is intellectual while “manifest” with its certitudes, is emotional:

“For me, when I say spiritual, I’m referring to a feeling you would have that connects you to the universe in a way that it may defy simple vocabulary. We think about the universe as an intellectual playground, which it surely is, but the moment you learn something that touches an emotion rather than just something intellectual, I would call that a spiritual encounter with the universe.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson on The Paul Mecurio Show.

Meanwhile, back to stone-throwing chimps:

“Last month, a team of 80 scientists led by Hjalmar S. Kuhl and Ammie K. Kalan ... published a paper in Scientific Reports raising the possibility that chimpanzees at four field sites in West Africa may perform a ritual when they repeatedly throw stones at trees in the forest. The apes take aim at the trees with stones they have accumulated (or cached). This behavior, with its striking patterns of re-use of the same stones and trees, has never been observed at Gombe or the other best-known chimpanzee study sites. ...

Given his broad view of religiosity, I asked [Donovan] Schaefer if he sees the West African chimpanzees’ stone-caching and throwing behaviors as religious. He replied this way: ‘People will always debate what is and isn’t sacred, what counts and what doesn’t count as religious. But if we encountered a group of humans who returned to the same trees over and over and performed the same inexplicable action near them and didn’t seem to have any practical reason to do so, there would be lots of people who would interpret it through the prism of religion.’ ...

For now though, I’m still a firm skeptic when it comes to invoking spirituality or religion in these close kin of ours. I’m uneasy with making 1:1 comparisons between the meaning of human behaviors performed at trees in the forest and similar chimpanzee behaviors performed there. After all, even if we unbind religion from language, texts, and beliefs – as I think we should – isn’t it incredibly anthropocentric of us to expect other species to think and feel the way we do?” – Barbara J. King, “Seeing Spirituality in Chimpanzees,” The Atlantic, March 29, 2016.⁷

Moving on now from manifestations of Egyptians and chimps... (my psychiatrist insists!)

Visualization of a molecular structure

Constructural Elements

“Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.” – Hermann Hesse.

“Constructural Element” is a term I invented for the Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million (“GGDM”) macrosocial simulation game in 2002; you will not likely find it anywhere else prior to this work.

All appearances to an individual consciousness or the collective consciousness of a group, civilization, have four innate/necessary qualities that connect them to everything else within the sphere or realm of consciousness.

Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “innate” as:

“1: existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth: native, inborn innate behavior, 2: belonging to the essential nature of something: inherent, 3: originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience.”

While all may be applicable to the innate qualities of ‘appearances,’ “3: originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience” may be the most pertinent as to Constructural Elements from appearances, paired closely with “2: belonging to the essential nature of something: inherent.”

Merriam-Webster online dictionary similarly defines “intrinsic” as:

“1: belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing, 2a: originating or due to causes within a body, organ, or part, an intrinsic metabolic disease, b: originating and included wholly within an organ or part.”

The four ‘qualities’ of appearances – Temporal, Epistemological, Symbolic and Ideological (“TESI”), each described in a section below – are the intrinsic qualities of all objects within our consciousness (that is, ‘appearances’).

The Constructural Elements discussion is of meta-consciousness of our worldviews. Even imaginary things have Constructural Elements, that is, they have a time and place where the author first imagined them or that they first passed into the public consciousness (‘appeared’); imaginary things can symbolize real things, they can be part of an ideology (e.g., Avalon in Arthurian legend), and they have a place within our cognitive structure of the world – that is, they are imaginary, pretend, not ‘real’ (are you sure you know what’s real?). Anything in our consciousness has Constructural Elements; perhaps, this gives a sort of reality to imaginary things, explaining why they have such force when we know they are not real?

Four Questions

“Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door?

With a thousand million questions about hate and death and war?

‘Cause when we stop and look around us, there is nothing that we need

In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed.”

– The Moody Blues, “Questions” (1970).

The four questions asked by a human of any ‘appearance’ are the expression of the intrinsic/innate qualities of any appearance. These are called Constructural Elements.⁸

Let’s become a dog for a moment, and since I am a male, and obviously male biased... In the case of a male dog meeting another dog, the first question asked is whether the other dog is a male or female? The second question is, if it is a male, am I the alpha in this case, and if it is a female, is she ready to mate? This is not to make fun of dogs (humans quietly do the same, just watch them), but to point out that the questions asked (i.e. the Constructural Elements) in any situation depend on intelligence. Dogs ask questions that fit a dog’s world and pre-interstellar races ask questions that fit a pre-interstellar planet-bound world. Time is only a very vague concept to dogs, the now is paramount (notably less so for intelligences that have foresight and legacy consciousness), epistemology/ontology is non-existent for dogs as far as we can determine, and their only ideology is ‘loyalty to a fault,’ an anthropomorphic trait we identify and treasure in dogs.

The Constructural Elements presented below are thus the questions asked by a planet-bound, sapient pre-interstellar race. How we answer these questions hundreds of times a day defines each individual’s worldview and collectively in the larger themes, the worldview of groups, professions, institutions, societies and zeitgeist. Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “worldview” as:

“a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint à called also weltanschauung.”

This is so because we cannot yet imagine the questions that a real interstellar or trans-dimensional culture will ask when they understand FTL technology, have passed the Technological Singularity, for example or can penetrate black holes. Yet, fragments of worldviews linger from the past, we still have mythopoeic elements in our thoughts and flat-earth phrases in our language, so likely our Constructural Elements will remain in some form as artifacts in future civilizations.

The Now

“Derrida’s enduring references to the metaphysics of presence borrows heavily from the work of Heidegger. Heidegger insists that Western philosophy has consistently privileged that which is, or that which appears, and has forgotten to pay any attention to the condition for that appearance. In other words, presence itself is privileged, rather than that which allows presence to be possible at all – and also impossible, for Derrida. All of these terms of denigration, however, are united under the broad rubric of the term ‘metaphysics.’” – Jack Reynolds (La Trobe University), “Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004),” The Internet Encyclopedia.

Before we start feeling superior to dogs... the ‘now’ is the essence of appearance. Before all else, the four questions being asked of any ‘appearance’ are being asked in the now, as appearances are in the moment, even when being recalled from memory.

Heidegger and Derrida collectively held that Western philosophy privileges presence, what is, what appears, over examination of the condition that made the presence possible or impossible. This examination begins with the fact that our entire concept of time is the now, our language is naturally built on the now (this is the point of the 2016 movie Arrival). This moment, this thing, this point in time, because we are mortal, and time flows in one direction. Without special indicators in the sentence structure or without knowledge of the situation, the listener assumes we are talking about the present, present events, instead of something that happened or may happen. Our language does not begin with the past or future as the natural tense and then need to add modifiers to indicate we are speaking of the present. Rather, verb tenses in English are past, present, future; happen, happened, happening, will happen, may happen, may have happened.

Heidegger and Derrida were not trying to change our language or time sense; we are all mortal and short-lived. They were simply making the point that the crippling privilege given to presence is intellectually overwhelming. They were pointing to a blind spot in our Public Space.

Intuitive Knowledge

“Babies also intuitively grasp that objects exist even when you’re not looking at them, a concept called ‘object permanence’ that goes against the classic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which an object can’t be said to have any definite properties until the moment at which it is observed. Since Jean Piaget first pegged object permanence as a milestone in infant development, psychology researchers have found evidence that ever-younger babies have some sense of it; affirming object permanence seems to be the main theme of peek-a-boo.” – Kate Becker, “Is Quantum Intuition Possible?” NOVΛ, July 28, 2014.

Constructural Elements are intuitive and nearly as axiomatic (in the ancient sense) as Euclid’s postulates and common notions; waiting only for someone to point out the obvious and give it a name (it is possible that someone else did already, but I don’t know it). They are the intuitive knowledge of Earth-bound sapiens living in this universe just as Kate Becker at NOVΛ points out that humans intuitively learn object permanence and ‘a sort of naïve physics’ but not quantum intuition.⁹

It must be true that all of the higher-order animals have some sense of object permanence – though Douglas Adams did comically describe a grazing English sheep being surprised by the same bush every day – because if you are being chased by a predator, it would be fatal to forget the predator or the cliff is there just because not in sight! Don’t play peek-a-boo with predators!

“These innate notions, plus ‘elaborations’ born from watching and interacting with the world, add up to a sort of ‘naïve physics’ that we all grasp without any formal physics training, says [Kristi] van Marle [University of Missouri]. But what about building quantum intuition after that early mental groundwork has already been laid? Most students don’t begin studying quantum physics until college, when they already have both an intuitive and a formal, or mathematical, toolkit for classical physics.” – Id., Kate Becker.

In order to argue against Constructural Elements, you must have a different worldview than I do... meaning you have Constructural Elements but may simply call them something different.

“Time Is A Tragic Jester,” revise by charquill on Deviant Art

Temporal Constructural Element

“Time is perhaps our prime yardstick. The distance to a friend’s home is generally calculated by how long it takes to get there rather than by the number of actual miles it is, for time is the reality given varying road, traffic and weather conditions, and alternate routes, and distance isn’t, not really.... we surround ourselves with realities that depend on one other dominant reality, the inexorable passage of time, a precisely measurable phenomenon.” – Roger Caras, A Cat is Watching (1989), p. 194.

Causality is the basic condition shared by all of the universe; the first question we ask of anything in our world, is where did it come from, how did it get there, we want to know its history, its temporal lineage.¹⁰ So the first connection of any ‘other’ thing in our consciousness is to place it in our timeline, from the date of ‘discovery’ or appearance to what happened to make it be there (if and when we know) and what has happened since (subsequent history).

Because we are born and we die, and time runs in only one direction for us, we tend to assume that this is true of the universe and everything in it; that the universe has a finite point at which it began, before which was either nothing or something else, and that it will have a finite point at which it ends, and that is true of everything within the universe as well. At this point in our evolution, we are unable really to grasp the implications of something that has always existed and will always exist (‘the snake eating its own tail’), without beginning or end; we are limited by the dimensions in which we live.

Thus, the Temporal Constructural Element is the first question of any appearance and concords with object permanence discussed previously.

None of us have personal memories of our own complete temporal lineage. Like the eternal being in Isaac Asimov’s 1980 short story “The Last Answer,” we do not remember coming into existence, we do not know for certain how or when or if our existence will ever end. We assume that we will die at some point because that is the common fate on Earth, and that it will be within the normal human lifespan (what the hell did Adam do for 930 years?);¹¹ we have only the fact that we exist to suggest that we came into existence at some point. And we (most of us, anyway) have parents who suggest to us that we have not always existed and that accords with the common experience.

Creator

“An institute for advanced research with no funds for research. It’s a provocative concept.” – Dr. Harry Wolper (Peter O’Toole) being sarcastic, from Creator (1985).

In terms of what is ‘real’ the things we create or have a part in are more real to us than anything else; it is that we were involved in the establishment of our own Temporal Constructural Element rather than witnessing it or discovering it retroactively. There is nothing more real to me – in this order – than my life (despite having no memory of being born or of anything before about the age of 3-4 years), my lifetime project (i.e., GGDM), and the cat companions I brought in as feral kittens, and those that I caretake outside. A sense of this may be why some people like to grow or prepare their own food, or become craft hobbyist or professionals – they value making something with their hands, the special personal engagement with the Temporal Constructural Element of that thing. And since Western religion teaches that man was made in the image of God and that God is the benevolent creator...

“The late heiress [Gloria Vanderbilt] made it clear throughout her life that she valued making her own money. In a 1985 interview with The New York Times, she said, ‘I’m not knocking inherited money, but the money I’ve made has a reality to me that inherited money doesn’t have.’” – Antoinette Bueno, “Why Gloria Vanderbilt Did Not Leave an Inheritance for Son Anderson Cooper,” Entertainment Tonight, June 18, 2019.

Betcha didn’t know that CNN’s Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt!

Now, if God created the universe, as the Christian literalists and fundamentalists argue, then God predates the Temporal Constructural Element that is the universe. It is in this idea that one might find a way to saying that God is eternal, has always been (in terms of this universe), and so on, because God predates the creation of the Temporal Constructural Element. This does not solve the First Cause or Prime Mover problem, however, because we do not know the conditions of the place from whence God originated (Robert Heinlein explores this a bit in Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)) before creating this universe because we cannot see past the original Temporal Constructural Element event (which was ... The Big Bang); nor does it suggest in any way that God created himself, as some have nonsensically argued.

Slicing the Pie of Knowledge

Epistemological Constructural Element

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” – John Archibald Wheeler, Scientific American, 1992, Vol. 267.

The next question for any object (‘appearance’) in our consciousness is how we obtained knowledge of the object, what we can know about it, and how the object fits within the constructed knowledge of our world (the “how’d you find it?”). Every consciousness must necessarily organize and place knowledge of the world into some sort of structure that is functional, internally consistent, and forms a worldview. In our civilization, this is done by historical narrative, branches of study, college majors, classification, segregation and division – and endless news media opinion shows.¹²

Epistemology is akin to worldview, with the central question being, how are we going to slice the (ever-expanding) pie? And the related and broader questions of who, what and when was it determined how the pie was to be sliced? A cursory examination of intellectual history, and the current division of disciplines, study areas, degree programs, and professions and specialization, and of other cultures and times, shows how the pie might have been sliced much differently.¹³ For example, in ancient China:

“The first to unite the yin-yang and Five Elements into a single system was apparently Tsou Yen (ca. 305–ca. 240), traditionally regarded as the ‘father’ of Chinese naturalistic thinking. Living as he did during the Warring States period, he gave the elements political significance by correlating each of them with a particular dynasty or reign in an endlessly recurring cycle. In this way he and his followers induced several of the Warring States rulers to institute state cults of the Five Elements in the hope of gaining the support of that particular element destined by its position in the cycle to replace the ebbing element of the Chou dynasty. Before Tsou Yen and perhaps for some time after him as well, the Five Elements seem to have been almost exclusively the concern of court astronomers, physicians, music masters, diviners, and the like, and it was to this class of men that Tsou Yen himself possibly belonged. By contrast, the elements are barely mentioned in sociophilosophical writings before the second half of the third century B.C.” [Derk] Bodde (1991), pp. 101-102. (University of Washington, text notes for translation of Weilue 魏略 by Yu Huan 魚豢).

The division of knowledge into professions, disciplines, and intellectual properties is a boundary creation and control function, the same as division by economic class, government power by branches, humanity by national borders, and religious movements by doctrinal fragmentation; nearly all of civilization is a struggle for boundaries and feedback loops.

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.” – Aristotle.

Grave Marker of Sophie Scholl, White Rose Group

Symbolic Constructural Element

“...but face it, most of the things we call ‘sexy’ are symbolic, you know, except perhaps an exhibitionist’s open fly.” – Frederik Pohl, “Day Million” (1966).

Abstraction is a key element of sapience; the third question of any appearance is what does it symbolize (or “mean”)? Experiences and events are reduced (edited) to memories, rules, summaries, points, regulations, codes, idols, icons, and symbols. Symbols are objects, often idols or icons that represent or stand for something else, an idea, image, belief, action or another person or object.¹⁴ For example:

“To the French public, this was a great victory. [Fort] Douaumont was a great symbol. It was of no military significance whatsoever, but it was a symbol. It had to be recaptured. And it was seen in France as being a great victory. In Germany, it was seen as a terrible defeat. The reality is, it didn’t matter tactically. It was all about perception.” – Major Gordon Corrigan (British Army, Gurkha Rifles), interview, Under Siege (2008), Episode 4.

Perhaps a somewhat analogous 21^st century equivalent of Ft. Douaumont was the capture of Snake Island (of “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” fame) and its subsequent recapture (four months later) during the early months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though Snake Island arguably had greater strategic importance than Ft. Douaumont. Another example:

[Dialogue in Russian with English Subtitles] “[Lyudmila] Pavlichenko is not just a soldier anymore. With this, she’s become a symbol. And no one invalids a symbol. ... The Germans announced her death. [Officer produces a German propaganda hand-out] The third assault wave is coming and my guys are going to battle with her name on their lips.” – Soviet Officer, from Battle for Sevastopol (2015).

She is then forced to get out of the hospital bed, badly wounded along her back and still bleeding, and put on a uniform jacket and hat, hold a rifle and smile for the camera so they can take a photograph to disprove the German propaganda. After the camera flash, she almost faints.

One of the most literal examples of the power of a symbol is the strange episode of the Holy Lance of Antioch and Battle of Antioch, June 1098 A.D.¹⁵ The success at Antioch set the pattern for the use of alleged religious artifacts for morale and motivational purposes during the Crusades. The power of religious symbols served to make up for the failings of incompetent leadership, poor planning, bad logistics and morale, and strategy based on religious faith instead of realities (e.g., the army of the First Crusade arrived at the walls of Jerusalem in July 1099 without either siege equipment, proper supply or a plan; they just got lucky that ships arrived at Jaffa).¹⁶ Later, in August 1099, a fragment thought to be of the True Cross, discovered in Jerusalem, was used to lead the Crusader army, outnumbered 2:1, to victory at the Battle of Ascalon.

Discrimination

“Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, it’s beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils.” – Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927).

The act of choosing one thing over another, making a choice or decision, or elevating anything over another, is an act of discrimination, an act of creating inequality. Even comparing things requires making a judgment about qualities, such that modern cultural anthropology discourages comparisons of cultures. Discrimination is, by itself, a neutral term of cognizance.

Most discrimination is good and necessary (e.g., comparing price, quality of product, choosing a car mechanic, deciding whether to supersize your meal, which movie to watch tonight, sorting and classifying objects, what to throw away); however, the term has taken mostly a negative connotation in our current culture because certain acts of discrimination against people (e.g., racism, homophobia), being without rational basis, are considered culturally damaging and illegal or legally actionable.

[Narrator] “The uncomfortable truth for [Kim] Philby was that his value to Russia was more symbolic than personal.... but what mattered much more to them was that this old man was a living example of a single victory over the West at a time when the skids were under the socialist dream.” – The Spy Who Went into the Cold: Kim Philby, Soviet Super Spy (documentary, 2013).

Anything, any place, or anyone is capable of being made a symbol of something else or of a class or category of things, by highlighting certain attributes and dismissing or diminishing others. Cult of personality, hero worship, deification, historical distortion, the victor writes history; all of these highlight or exaggerate some things and diminish or hide others to create the symbol. A symbol therefore, is an exercise in inequality (for example, athletes, heroes, political leaders are symbols); true egalitarianism would have no symbols.¹⁷

Interpretations are built on symbols and symbolic events. For example, Rome was sacked by the Vandals in 455 A.D., and within 35 years, the last traces of the Western Roman Empire had vanished under the waves of migrating ‘barbarian’ tribes. Those tribes slowly became Christianized, mainly between 700 and 1000 A.D. The fall of Constantinople was almost 1000 years after the sack of Rome by the Vandals. One might see in these places and important historical events a grand epic cycle; macro-history is a bit of interpretation:

“The French and Hussites had already demonstrated the power of artillery in the field, and now the fall of Constantinople gave proof that the mightiest walls no longer offered a refuge against gunpowder. Yet that May morning in 1453 is remembered as more than a tactical landmark. For a last spiritual link with the ancient world had been broken, and henceforward men would feel free to turn their eyes toward the future rather than the past.” – Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages (3rd Ed., 1960), p. 195.

Symbolic Acts

“Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag stated in Newsday on 22 February 1993, that ‘It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century ... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why.’ In the same issue of Newsday, Holocaust historian Jud Newborn noted that ‘You cannot really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell ... The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that’s a very important value.’” – from Wikipedia article, “Sophie Scholl.” (emphasis added).

Symbolic acts are acts lacking in practical utility but that convey to the audience what the actor believes or wants to happen.¹⁸ Symbolic acts can even have negative utility to the actor in material terms (a ‘cost’), such as the refusal of alms from certain government individuals (military generals) by monks in Myanmar who turn their bowls upside-down in protest.

February 1993 was the 50^th Anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst for passing out anti-Nazi pamphlets. Thousands of copies of the sixth White Rose leaflet were dropped over Germany by allied planes in July 1943. Symbolic act.

One of the members of the White Rose Group executed in July 1943, Alexander Schmorell, has been canonized as a New Martyr by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) in 2012 as St. Alexander of Munich.¹⁹ Canonization makes you an involuntary post-mortem symbol:

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.” – Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1848.

The most extreme, direct, and many believe potent, symbolic act of protest is self-immolation, such as the self-immolation of monks in south-east Asia during the Vietnam War or the fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisa in 2011 in protest of petty police oppression (the police destroyed his weighing scale) which started a revolution. The compelling power of self-immolation as a symbolic act of civil protest lies in its fatality and finality – that the current political-social situation has made life so unbearable to the protestor who is willing to give their life in protest. Self-immolation as a protest is distinguishable from suicide bombings²⁰ or mass shooting-suicides by the fact that no one else is intended to be harmed by the act of protest.

“Words facilitate our construction of conceptual knowledge, thanks to their intentionality.” - Avi Sion

Ideological Constructural Element

“Hate speech like that proudly employed by those organizing, participating in and discussing the horrifying events ... is unwelcome on many platforms. In fact, discouraging hate speech is an ideological stance common to nearly all internet services, with the marked exception of services created specifically to circumvent that stance.” – Devin Coldewey, “Discord shuts down alt-right server and accounts for ToS violations,” TechCrunch, August 14, 2017.

In the final analysis, all things within human consciousness are fitted into a set of ideas, idealized conditions (the “ought”) – or the extent to which the appearance in question departs from ideals and ideal conditions and worldviews, and wishful thinking about our relationships to each other and the real universe around us. It is thus that the questions asked of appearances is a constant testing of our ideology and willingness to modify or hold fast in the face of facts.

“Kant’s argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature – the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be. For Kant, subjective reasoning is necessarily distinct from how the world is empirically. Because of its capacity to distinguish is from ought, reasoning can ‘spontaneously’ originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.” – from Wikipedia, “Compatibilism,” (emphasis in original), citing to Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), trans. by Max Mueller (1949), p. 448. (emphasis added)

This is called the “is and the ought” of sapience and in my opinion, essentially refutes Plato’s essences argument. Ideology is the ‘ought’ world into which we try to plug appearances, as the fourth and final question (or Constructural Element); non-human animals probably do not ask this question of any ‘appearance.’

Neocons and Neolibs

“If you are a conservative when you are young, you have no heart, if you are a liberal when you are older, you have no brain!” – frequently attributed to Winston Churchill (but probably not originally by Churchill).

The ideology involved may or may not be overtly political, but nearly all ideology relates to politics, economics or religion (and the entanglements thereof); it would be difficult to imagine otherwise without significantly changing the meaning of the word “ideology.”²¹

For example, one day long ago, I started trying to really understand the American political term, “neocon,” a group upon whom much blame has been heaped for world history since the end of the Cold War. I eventually realized that the neocon movement and individual politicians of the group, were attempting to resist, albeit with limited success, the famous observation above

Neocons were trying to be both. Neocon is the current name for what is probably a normal historical process or movement in any civil society culture that has conservative and liberal political elements; there are, for example, “neolibs,” though the term hasn’t gained widespread use here in a society moving toward conservativism since the 1980s.

The process of understanding neocons is a good example of the normal application of Constructural Elements (even if you think my understanding is wrong), as each question was answered in order – temporal, epistemological, symbolic and ideological (“TESI”) – and they were fitted snugly into the political spectrum present in the current worldview.

The Ideological Constructural Element is perhaps the hardest to grasp in any concrete way; this is in part because we are all members of the modernity; modernity, starting with Machiavelli’s discussion of politics of power in 1532, elevates realism over the idealism that came down through Western civilization from Plato through Hellenized Judaism, and finally, Christianity. Modernity is a worldview because membership is not the least voluntary; you were raised in it and it informs your expectations. Even Martin Luther, an ordained clergy in a very religious time, found a streak of realism and was bereft of illusion when writing about what Christians actually do, and the subject of secular authority in 1520.²²

Language & Philosophy

“Resistance to Aristarchus, a kind of geo-centrism in everyday life, is with us still. We still talk about a sun rising and the sun setting. It’s 2200 years since Aristarchus and the language still pretends that the Earth does not turn, that the sun is not at the center of the solar system.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Episode 7.

Language serves as an ideological archeology; a sedimentary deposit of ideas, silt accumulation in the intellectual stream.

Political philosophy is often, but should not be, confused with ideology:

“Let us start by noting that the Austrian School of Economics is not an ideology, but a way of scientific thinking. The Austrian theorists never thought in terms of an ideological assumption that ‘the free market is the best, so we have to build a theory around it to integrate this ideology with the general body of science.’ Quite the contrary. Carl Menger, considered to be the founder of the Austrian School, experienced the real market first hand by talking with entrepreneurs and stock investors, and this inspired him to develop his theory in a way that best suited reality. ...

The reason the Austrian School may be accused of being ideological is probably that it is often associated with libertarianism. These two, however, are separate things. The fact is evident by the existence of libertarian economists who are not Austrians, and Austrian economists who are not libertarians. Libertarianism is a political philosophy. Philosophy answers a different kind of questions than economics. Economics, as Ludwig von Mises wrote, does not ask which ends should people desire, but what means they should employ to achieve their desired ends.” – Econclips.com, “The Methodology of the Austrian School,” (undated, no author attributed). (emphasis added).

The preceding commentary links ideology to epistemology in its description of how ‘knowledge’ is sometimes built in an unscientific way (i.e. backwards, where the conclusion comes first) via ideology and distinguishes between a priori science and philosophy.

Gustave Doré's illustration of Camelot from Idylls of the King (1867)

The Ideas of the Ruling Class

“Ibn Khaldun also argued that ‘asabiyya’ [social cohesion] is cyclical and directly related to the rise and fall of civilizations: it is most strong at the start of a civilization, declines as the civilization advances, and then another more compelling ‘asabiyyah’ [social cohesion] eventually takes its place to help establish a different civilization.” – from Wikipedia article, “Asabiyyah.”

The Constructural Elements as discussed thus far, are the story of the individual encountering and processing ‘appearances.’ Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million (“GGDM”), from which they arose, is a macrosocial simulation game involving both macrohistorical time periods and planetary populations; as such, to “operationalize” Constructural Elements within the game, I had to – in a vaguely Hari Seldon-like way – apply them to planetary populations and ships (a sort of zeitgeist) by treating the polity as one individual²³ at the moment of looking:

“Psychohistory dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire (1952).

How many people live in your head, how many people are you in a lifetime? For operational purposes in the game, Constructural Elements were each considered “active” or “inactive” (zero or one) on each colony and ship. In-game events (‘appearances’) affecting the population are tested or ‘processed’ for effects on the population’s Constructural Elements by an extensive ‘disruptions’ mechanic that can change the state of Constructural Elements which can be restored by ‘cohering’ (i.e. social cohesion) efforts. The operationalized Constructural Elements provide a unique, incomparable core mechanic of the GGDM game.

This operationalization was not without controversy. My mid-December 2020 “Periodic Public Space” blog entry noted:

“Second, I did, perhaps subconsciously, pull a ‘sleight-of-hand’ trick with Constructural Elements for the sake of the simulation. The discussion in 1 Constructural Elements begins with the idea that Constructural Elements are the innate qualities of appearances (which only exist when we are ‘looking’), and in that sense alone, perhaps they are of interest to phenomenologists. However, quickly after that point, Constructural Elements are functionally transformed in the simulation to representing the very generalized worldview of colonies and ship crews, and most specifically, whether that worldview causes them to act in ways different from the way their civilization or at least the government, would have them act or perform.

Thus, Constructural Elements functionally within the simulation became a representation of Karl Marx’ famous dictum: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” That is a far cry from Constructural Elements representing the innate qualities of any appearance, though ruling class and ruling ideas are by a stretch, appearances. Any serious thinker will immediately recognize the discontinuity and thereby dismiss my simulation as sloppy in a theoretical sense. That development however, was important to the mission of and rippled through the simulation in representing population as more than just numbers or money or resources.”

That I was aware of this issue while designing the game is evinced by the discussion on p. 191 of GGDM wherein I stated:

“Inactive states of Constructural Elements is a game artifice: Zero or one is not generally reflective of human affairs. Rather, ‘inactive’ refers to a state in which the worldview (or socio-political views) and actions (this does not mean violent revolt, but divergent interests) of a group diverge from those desired by or agreeable to the government or governing powers.”

Thus, I do not maintain that the representation of Constructual Elements operationally within the game is reflective of the real world (but is a reasonable simulation of such at scale); the problem of how to apply Constructural Elements to population masses and eras is intriguing to say the least. But there’s not a Nobel Prize waiting if you solve it.

Worldviews are Not Voluntary

“Alienated from the present. There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former worldviews. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those who have never left it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Worldviews are mostly not voluntary (via cultural transmission); it is very difficult to change an established worldview. But extremism (including anti-Semitism) is a choice in the interpretation of appearances:

“But what makes extremists extreme – whether they’re leftists, right-wingers, fundamentalist Christians, or anti-vaxxers – is a ferocious resistance to anything that contradicts their worldview. When you spend some time with young white nationalists on YouTube, Reddit, or 4chan, you understand that counter-information is nothing but fodder for validating their beliefs. And an attempt to force it on them only reinforces the whole weltanschauung of the new white supremacists: that there’s a massive global conspiracy to disempower white people and destroy Western civilization, accomplished by clamping down on free expression and hiding the dirty ‘truth’ about race, gender, global finance – everything.” – Bob Moser, “How YouTube Became the World Wide Leader in White Supremacy,” New Republic, August 21, 2017. (emphasis in original)

It is very difficult to step outside your time’s worldview; medieval people are alien to us; we are more like the Romans (and also not very much like the Romans) than people of what were later called the Middle Ages.²⁴ Most characters in modern-written medieval fantasy, docudrama, or historical fiction and costume epics, are modern or nearly modern people in medieval costume, and most of them are lords and ladies (i.e. ‘important people’), and not peasants. This was a point that stood out most noticeably in the abysmally bad – it lasted one month – 1992 television series, Covington Cross: the characters were modern people in medieval costumes; the pilot opening scene was ridiculous, and the rest didn’t improve by much.

Conversely, sometimes a true effort is rewarded:

“After researching about old pagan beliefs and folklore about witches, that were supposed to roam the mountain woods in those times, my interest was to develop a character that these folk tales would have branded as a witch, but to dig deeper into her psyche and see her as the traumatized, mistreated and finally delusional person that society constructed. As well as to understand what utterly evil things people were lead [sic] to do while suffering from psychosis in the middle ages and being surrounded by superstition and religious prosecution. The film tries to depict a very personal and empathetic mental image of a nightmarish and sick mind.” – Lukas Feigelfeld discussing his movie, Hagazussa – A Heathen’s Curse (2018), from Brad Miska, “‘Hagazussa’ Poster Evokes a Heathen’s Curse,” September 13, 2017.

Modernity

“Despite signs of spiritual revival in the late seventeenth century, secular values gradually were replacing religious ones as major influences on European life. By 1715 it had become unfashionable to go to war in the name of rival Christian creeds, and within states themselves, a few princes noted the political and social impracticality of inconveniencing religious minorities. In their quest for new settlers the German rulers of Brandenburg and Saxony deemed religious affiliation a private ... matter, a position which the Dutch had long accepted....

Nevertheless, because credal affiliation could easily be confused with political loyalty, bigoted rulers like Louis XIV or Leopold I failed to see how non-Catholics could ever be loyal subjects.... Despite this, however, the notion was in the air that religious association might be irrelevant to citizenship. Nurturing such a position was an accompanying movement that subjected religious practice to rigorous critical analysis, ridiculing unproven credulity, and weakening traditional belief.” – Raymond Birn, Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648 to 1789, 2nd Ed., pp. 173-174.

Prof. Birn describes the core issues of the early modern Western turn to secularism; think about this the next time some tent preacher or televangelist fellow wants to turn back the clock to the ‘good old days’ of religious devotion (i.e. ‘old tyme religion’).

The sum total of the evolving Western worldview over the last centuries is in the term “modernity,” which Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines in part at “2: the modern era or world and especially the ideas and attitudes associated with the modern world.” Modernity is a worldview because membership is not the least voluntary; you were raised in it and it informs your expectations.

That’s the simple part. The discussion of what modernity means and how it is defined across various fields of social study is the core of the modern studies discipline. Modernity must always be contrasted with past civilizations to have any meaning, but is typically looking at the now and future of humanity. Modernity is associated with a range of tag terms, such as secularization, post-traditional culture, modern history, institutional complexity, market economy, experimental observation, inductive logic, moral relativism, feminism.²⁵

Deviances from the theoretical modernity are both extreme and slight in all of us. The fact that such deviances exist in such a wide array informs that worldview is neither monolithic, nor ruler-straight in any civilization, despite not being entirely voluntary, cultural transmission is imperfect.

Generations

“Rouhani, 69, suggested there was a generational element to the unrest, which appears to have been spearheaded by under-25s. ‘We cannot pick a lifestyle and tell two generations after us to live like that. It is impossible... The views of the young generation about life and the world is different than ours,’ he said.” – Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, “In a jab at rivals, Rouhani says Iran protest about more than the economy,” Reuters, January 8, 2018.

As the government of each generation comes from the previous generation and is peopled by the sons and daughters, it tends to macrohistorically follow the trend of its civilization. This ground shift explains, for example, the fading of monarchies in modern times, some ended abruptly and/or violently (e.g., Tsar Nicholas II, Keiser Wilhelm II), some lived out their lives in exile (e.g., Umberto II of Italy), some are extinct as a title (e.g., King of Italy, King of Bavaria, Emperor of France, Holy Roman Emperor) and the remainder are now just public figureheads (e.g., Albert II of Belgium, Charles III of England, Felipe IV of Spain) with limited political influence. Simply, the world moved on from monarchies, as republicanism and modernity converted the worldview of their subjects who became citizens.

To fight this, the remaining actual monarchies have stagnated their culture and limited influences. Suppression is not, by definition, a cure in medicine any more than it is a solution in countries were dissent is suppressed by the government; the outward symptoms are suppressed but the underlying problems remain.

For an interesting exercise in change of worldview over time, study a line of portraits of Holy Roman Emperors from the Middle Ages to the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, who abdicated in 1806 (e.g., found in Wikipedia article, “Holy Roman Emperor”). In between portraits are vast, sometimes startling changes not only in dress and personal appearance, but also in artistic style and the way in which they chose to be depicted. This process can be repeated with any line of monarchs, e.g., a line of portraits of monarchs of England, Russia, Germany, Popes, etc.

Thus it is a dynamic process of gradual change. Over time, the passage of generations and the turnover in government, governance does and must shift with the worldview of the governed and those who govern.²⁶

This last point dawned on me when I wrote a fantasy world history around 2000 featuring a necro-state called Vam’s Empire ruled by ... vampires! – who, being unable to change, being stuck in time of their death as it were, their unchanging dress, speech and mannerisms (unlike in movies and shows such as Forever Knight) made them obvious to the population, staid, and predictable, despite their best efforts to keep medieval civilization in perpetual gothic state.

“School of Athens” fresco by Raphael

Preceding Substack Post: “Reproductive Consciousness: The Seed of Human Meaning,” https://charleswphillips.substack.com/p/reproductive-consciousness-the-seed (June 29, 2025).

1. I debated about whether to capitalize “Constructural Elements” in this Post. They are the name of a thing in a proper noun sense, and in my original work, Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million, where they appear, they are capitalized throughout as it was necessary to make the game term stand out to the reader when used. The Grammerly site (and most English grammar teachers, I’d guess) supports this:

“Three types of words are capitalized in English: the first word in a sentence, the pronoun I, and proper nouns. Proper nouns (specific names for a particular person, place, or thing) are always capitalized in English, no matter where they fall in a sentence.”

Still, I have this nagging feeling that an argument could be made for not capitalizing “constructural elements” throughout the post. Terms that are at first capitalized as proper nouns can tend to lose special emphasis over time in English writing, for example, “bootlegging” was capitalized in the 1920s, but MS Word does not now flag that it be capitalized. Nor are we now required to capitalize “algebra” which probably was at some point, and is vaguely comparable to capitalizing or not capitalizing Constructural Elements here. Additionally, overuse of capitalization nullifies its purpose of which I may be guilty here.

2. At www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/cpc/html/defF16S.html.

3. A search on MS Bing for “Constructural Elements” on July 2, 2025 brought up results only for structural elements in building. An identical search on Google Generative AI yielded a fancier result that basically amounted to structural elements: “Constructural elements are the individual components that, when combined, create the structure of a building or other object. They can be made of various materials and serve different functions, from supporting weight to providing enclosure or aesthetic features.” Neither acknowledged the patent law term. Whether the term is actually used in the building trade or not, I do not know, more likely, the AI was just trying to make the words fit into something it knew.

Anyway, the point is threefold:1) no one else has used the term as I described it, 2) despite GGDM being published on the web for free in 2020, the search engines have not picked up my use of the term (no surprise there) and 3) it is not likely to change before or after the publication of this Looking Substack Post in July 2025 or any time before the vampiric extraterrestrial-angelic zombie nuclear giggle plague apocalypse.

4. “Before the French philosopher Descartes (1596–1650) pointed out the existence of the conscious self as a turning point in epistemology, using the phrase ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ the 11th century Iranian philosopher Avicenna had referred to the existence of consciousness in the flying man argument. Thus, long before Descartes, Avicenna had established an argument for the existence of knowledge by presence without any need for the existence of the body. There are two stances on the relationship between the arguments of Avicenna and Descartes. Some scholars believe that there are apparent similarities between the floating man and Descartes’ cogito. Others consider these similarities trivial and superficial. Both Avicenna and Descartes believed that the soul and self are something other than sense data. Also, Avicenna believed that there is no relation logically between the self and the body. In other words, there is no logical dependency between them.” – from Wikipedia article, “Floating Man.”

5. “The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe. … The meaning of a deity is his or her specific character as it unfolded in myths, hymns, rites, and so on. This character makes a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits. The similarity of gods makes their names mutually translatable. … The practice of translating the names of the gods created a concept of similarity and produced the idea or conviction that the gods are international.” – Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (1997), p. 45.

Interpretatio graeca is a comparative discourse in which the ancient Greeks sought to understand mythos of other religions within the concepts of Greek mythologies, Interpretatio romana is the Roman continuation that led to the merger (wholesale looting) of Greek polytheistic religion into the existing Roman pantheon, along with reinterpretation of Gallic and other religions in Roman terms. There was a process through the Middle East, around the Mediterranean Sea and through Western Europe, of comparing gods of different religions and identifying similar or compatible spheres of influence, myths, heroes, so that gods of one religion were identified with similar gods of another pantheon, translating all religions to an international, intercultural commonality.

6. “One remarkable fact is evident from study of these works, as well as from specific statements in other parts of the Old Testament: that Israelite Wisdom was similar to that of neighboring peoples like the Edomites, and had antecedents and counterparts in the much older cultures of Phoenicia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. It was in fact part of an international, intercultural, and interreligious school of thought whose beginnings can be traced to early times in Sumer and Egypt, and which was to make its impress eventually on the New Testament and the Talmud. ... In the neighboring cultures, and also in Israel, the Wisdom literature was of two main types that apparently represented divergent tendencies among the sages.

The first is represented in the Bible by the Book of Proverbs (except for 8:22-31 and 30:1 4), the second by Job and Ecclesiastes (Kohelet). The spirit of the former is conservative, practical, didactic, optimistic, and worldly wise. The latter type is critical, even radical, in its attitude to conventional beliefs; it is speculative, individualistic, and (broadly speaking) pessimistic. The former expresses itself characteristically in brief rhythmic adages and maxims suited to instruction, as well as in longer admonitions; the latter, chiefly in soliloquy and dialogue.” – Rev. R.B.Y. Scott, excerpts from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (1965), published on myjewishlearning.com.

7. It seems bound to happen in every religion. One-third of the animal mummies scanned by the Manchester Museum contained no animal parts, and one third contained some parts of animals but not the whole animal. It was big business for the industry supporting the priests and the temples, people paid to have animal spirits sent as messengers to the gods and their deceased love ones. The researchers have chosen to give it a positive spin, explaining that the demand for animal mummies far exceeded the supplies (the old “it’s the thought that counts” saying); however, I could see it equally as a financial scam perpetrated on the believers. The findings were published in a Smithsonian Magazine article by Danny Lewis, “A Third of Animal Mummies Contain no Animals at All,” May 13, 2015:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/many-animal-mummies-are-just-bundles-rags-180955247/

I cannot find it now, but I recall hearing or reading that in the late period of Egyptian religion, it became public knowledge that the priests had been fleecing their believers with fake animal mummies and it was a big scandal that rocked the temples and government. Since I cannot now find it years later, perhaps that information was made-up or incorrect; however, it is difficult to believe that such a scam went on for millennia without discovery. Which suggests that it was known and wasn’t considered a scandal, maybe it was a ‘you get what you pay for’ tiered system?

8. The original concept of Constructural Elements was similar to a molecular building set, like the one seen in the movie, Lawnmower Man (1992). It is thus that Constructural Elements were ‘sticks,’ representing bonds, joining the parts of society. This is the reason I first called them Constructural Elements and an entire clunky, vague game system was built on that idea. In a rewrite of the system more than five, probably ten years later, the Constructural Elements became innate and intrinsic qualities from which our worldview is ‘constructed.’ Thus the name Constructural Elements remains even as the underlying concept changed perceptively.

9. “Physical intuition starts developing early, long before we ever encounter Newton’s laws on a blackboard. ‘Babies have a few skeletal principles that are built in to the brain and help them reason about and predict how objects should act and interact in the world,’ says Kristy van Marle, an infant cognition researcher at the University of Missouri. They understand, for instance, that objects can’t pass through each other, a notion that’s at odds with a quantum effect called tunneling, which allows objects to slip through barriers that, in the classic world, would be impenetrable....” – Kate Becker, “Is Quantum Intuition Possible?” NOVΛ, July 28, 2014.

10. “Temporal” is used here in the modern sense of time separated from space (that is, chronology) and not in the pre-modern sense of worldly existence separated from spiritual eternity, e.g., Lords Temporal.

11. About the only things we know Adam did was talk to God, get tossed out of the Garden for being too curious and handsy with Eve (like Octavia the Octopus who died because it accidentally drained the aquarium) – but other reasons for the eviction were made up later – and have a bunch of kids by one or more wives/women. And those kids grew up, intermarried, inbred, and acted just like us. How convenient.

See, J. Michael Kennedy, “Octavia the Octopus Dies as Tank Empties: Animals: The sea creature at San Pedro aquarium apparently tore off a drain pipe with her tentacles overnight. The death intensifies controversy over her captivity,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1994.

12. Ontology – the study of existence – is the geeky big brother of epistemology – the study of knowledge. Note that no gender has been assigned to epistemology by the preceding statement.

13. Had GGDM been written in another idealist time, the Constructural Elements (a realistic construct of worldviews) – if the concept could even exist – would have been sliced differently, it might have followed, for example, Plato’s essences or Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine – there might, for example, have been two representing the left hand and two parts for the right hand of God (which would be considered dogmatic and quaint, as my construct will undoubtedly be in 500 years), and they would have been the idealists construct of worldview.

14. My neighbor was arguing with his wife because she wanted a red front door. His wife talked about the Chinese and American meanings of a red door. I talked about the meaning of a red door on a Christian church. He then asked why does everything have to have a meaning assigned to it? The answer is because that is what humans do; true egalitarianism would not be human. Because what, other than the void, exists beyond meanings we assign, however silly they are?

15. Peter Bartholomew (aka “Peter the Hermit”) the purported discoverer of the Holy Lance of Antioch in 1098 A.D., went through an ordeal by fire in April 1099 A.D. to prove himself as an authentic prophet or holy man due to vocal skeptics at the time of how the relic was allegedly discovered and his claims of holy visions. He survived, but was probably severely burned (beyond what medieval medicine could help), he died less than two weeks later (organ shutdown? infection?).

16. Some crusaders believed a reported vision that they would capture the city in nine days if they paraded around the walls of Jerusalem. On July 10, 1099, twenty thousand crusaders marched barefoot in a religious procession over sharp stones and rubble, singing hymns, following priests carrying holy relics. This may have been repeated for a few days. The defenders could only watch in amazement from the walls.

17. “First among equals” – as the Norse god Odin described himself in Robert Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984) – is an old ironic phrase in English, its actual meaning is the opposite of its intended meaning: Being first is not being equal. It is often expressed in the title First Citizen; the Latin term for it, Princeps, was a title of the Roman Emperor. As TV Tropes website points out, it is often used in fiction to avoid the complications of being called Emperor.

18. Acts can be both practical in the generative sense and symbolic in that they achieve nothing in the short term. What would be more symbolic of the death of Second Temple Judaism than the remaining Rabbi being smuggled out of the city in a coffin by his students? Did it literally happen that way, is it literally true? Who cares? The important underlying elements are the students (the next generation), caring for their master (the old generation authority figure), and exercising ingenuity to insure the survival of the tradition. The idea of leaving the ancient sacred city and going forth may also be important.

Although Rome was the co-seat of Christianity alongside Constantinople, Rome is not the “Second Temple” of Christianity, even if the Vatican acts like Sadducees. Christianity as originally practiced, inherited the format of Rabbinical Judaism, centered on pastors in community churches.

19. https://orthodoxwiki.org/Alexander_Schmorell

20. “Some 500 ‘Saudis and other Arabs,’ most of whom are probably Muslim, have signed up with a private company, Mars One, which promises to bring them to the Red Planet to establish a permanent human colony. But a new fatwa may force those would-be astronauts to put those plans on hold. This week, a United Arab Emirates-based group called the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment (GAIAE) has issued a fatwa against living on Mars, reasoning that such an attempt would be akin to suicide, which is prohibited in Islam. ‘Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam,’ the committee said. ‘There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death.’ (In case you’re wondering: There is a fierce debate among Islamic scholars as to whether suicide bombings are forbidden or permitted because they are a ‘supreme form of jihad,’ in the words of influential cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Some Muslim clerics have even issued fatwas in support of suicide attacks despite the seemingly rock solid prohibitions against it under Islamic law.)” – Katelyn Fossett, “What a Bummer for Muslim Astronauts: A New Fatwa Bans Travel to Mars,” Foreign Policy, February 20, 2014. (emphasis added)

21. I read a 2009 Marxist review of the 1955 movie, Strategic Air Command, which actually makes several very good points, but is so loaded with extreme ideological language that it is choking on its own vomit. It is intended to placate and reinforce those who are already convinced, and offend anyone who is not already convinced: It is not seriously attempting to convince anyone who is not already convinced.

The elephant in the room for any 21st Century Marxist, communist or socialist argument is the failure of the Soviet Union. For the aspiring 21st Century Maoist, it’s in the name – the Great Leap Forward, the Great Chinese Famine, the Red Guards, and the Kamer Rogue travesty. For future Islamic extremist or idealist, it is the Islamic State. How do you get around that elephant without being trampled or sat on?

22. “If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword – or need for either – pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.

To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the world with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should put together in one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep, and let them mingle freely with one another, saying, “Help yourselves, and be good and peaceful toward one another. The fold is open, there is plenty of food. You need have no fear of dogs and clubs.” The sheep would doubtless keep the peace and allow themselves to be fed and governed peacefully, but they would not live long, nor would one beast survive another.

For this reason one must carefully distinguish between these two governments. Both must be permitted to remain; the one to produce righteousness, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds. Neither one is sufficient in the world without the other. No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government, without Christ’s spiritual government. Christ’s government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians. Now where temporal government or law alone prevails, there sheer hypocrisy is inevitable, even though the commandments be God’s very own. For without the Holy Spirit in the heart no one becomes truly righteous, no matter how fine the works he does. On the other hand, where the spiritual government alone prevails over land and people, there wickedness is given free rein and the door is open for all manner of rascality, for the world as a whole cannot receive or comprehend it.” – Martin Luther, “On Secular Authority” (1520).

23. The three sections on Constructural Elements in the GGDM rules establishes the usual sort of pattern repeated throughout the entirety of GGDM: The first section explains the concept behind the game artifice of Constructural Elements, the second is the game rules for Constructural Elements in GGDM gameplay (operationalizing the concept in the game), and the third section is a continued discussion of related subjects intended to provide inspiration for gameplay and educate the reader on history, historical movements, and concepts.

24. In a game of Twenty Questions (with “yes” and “no” answers) is it possible to identify an object of which you have no knowledge, that is outside of the Questioner’s cognitive structure? Carl Sagan in Cosmos, Episode 10 maintained that any object in the universe could be identified by 20 skillful questions with yes and no answers (the segment is available on YouTube). Suppose I played Twenty Questions with a 13th Century European Monk, I am the Answerer, the object is a Trinitrotoluene (TNT) molecule. What are the chances that the Questioner would guess correctly in 20 questions or 2,000 questions? Thus, we are limited by the items and objects in our cognitive structure; however, what is more interesting is that our cognitive structures are filled with things that never existed, except in movies, literature, myths, to which we give nearly equal standing to real objects. Such that, in a modern game of Twenty Questions, “Is the object a Looney Tunes character” would be a legitimate yes/no question to the Answerer.

The parlor game of Twenty Questions became a radio program in 1946 and a television game show in 1949-1955 and attempts were made to revive it in 1975 and 1989.

25. Anti-Semites have implicitly refused to cross the credal barrier described by Prof. Birn. Rather, the opposite, to them credal affiliation is the sole defining attribute of the ‘other,’ more than just a question of citizenship, but a question of their human status and worth. It transcends even the male-female question. Thus, to an anti-Semite, a Jew regardless of gender, age, or nationality, is a non-person. Anti-Semitism merges easily with racism because the Jewish people consider themselves a race rather than a religious affiliation, and racism applies the same value system based on skin color, appearance and apparent ancestry – regardless of gender, age, or nationality. Thus, in an important sense, based on the elements of historical development of modernity, racists and/or anti-Semites have refused to take an important step over the threshold, and thus remain outliers in modern society.

Now, this is not to suggest that anti-Semitism is a phenomenon solely of modernity. No one would argue that the Romans were great humanitarians and the result of the Bar Kokhba War leaves little doubt what the Romans thought of Jewish people.

“Hadrian (emperor 117-138 CE) attempted to completely root out Judaism, which he saw as the cause of continuous rebellions. He prohibited the Torah and the Hebrew calendar and executed Judaic scholars. The sacred scroll was ceremonially burned on the Temple Mount. At the former Temple sanctuary he installed two statues, one of Jupiter, another of himself. In an attempt to erase any memory of Judea or Ancient Israel, he wiped the name off the map and replaced it with Syria Palaestina, supplanting earlier terms, such as Judaea. Similarly, he reestablished Jerusalem, this time as the Roman polis of Aelia Capitolina, and Jews were barred from entering the city, except on the fast day of Tisha B’Av.” – from Wikipedia article, “Jewish-Roman Wars.”

Still, in other places throughout the Empire, the Jewish people lived and flourished and were given a pass from required attendance at Roman state-religious functions, thus it is most likely that the Romans disliked the Jews as radical disturbers of the peace, which is a different quality than later anti-Semitism. The last thing an empire wants is disorder and the Romans created enough of their own through their endless succession wars.

The Christians picked up from the Romans and added new religious layers to existing anti-Semitism. They either thought Christ would approve or they didn’t care whether he did or didn’t. The Romans would have never thought of such, their state religion was different; modern anti-Semitism is a Christian phenomenon, not a Roman one. Over 1,500 years later, in the time that Prof. Birn described above, some sense started to creep into the secularization of Europe. Note that this was not a religious revelation, but a result of secularization.

But it wasn’t finished yet. The time-honored formulas of anti-Semitism found new adherents and uses in radical ultra-nationalism in modernized Europe. I cannot imagine that any Roman emperor or counsel would have approved of the Holocaust, despite what Roman Legions did during the Third Roman-Jewish War.

26. Not all alternate worldviews are potent, it takes more than daily briefings (or in one famous case, tweets) from a national politician to create potent alternate view:

“Slotted in between Chairman Adam Schiff’s daily paeans to conscience and Constitution and the witness’ earnest introductions – Nunes fundamentally sought to change the channel on impeachment. The millions of viewers getting a steady drip of Trump’s questionable activities on Ukraine were abruptly brought in, for five to ten minutes each day, into an entirely different political universe.

In that universe, Trump is totally innocent of all of the Ukraine allegations, and what’s more, those allegations are just one more step in a coordinated and years-long conspiracy by an evil coterie of actors – Democratic Party operatives, the ‘fake news’ media, faceless and nefarious deep state bureaucrats, and even Ukrainians themselves – who will stop at nothing to destroy the president.

It was the same story, and the same handful of chapters, that Nunes told across every day of the public impeachment inquiry. Ultimately, they blended together, becoming something like a prolonged shout into the void.

Indeed, Nunes’ remarks hardly ever left a lasting impact on the hearings themselves or the coverage of them. The viral moments went to the Republicans who focused laser-like on the Democrats’ case. Nunes himself left the room each day with little beyond some attaboys from Trumpworld, a healthy dose of Fox News coverage, and plenty of snarky tweets from his dedicated online detractors.” – Sam Brodey, “The Chronicles of Nunes: How His Impeachment Speeches Created an Alternate Reality for GOP,” The Daily Beast, November 26, 2019 (emphasis added).