Sepher Ehben: Reveries — יעקב פטורהצ’י — A Certain Formality

re-posted with permission from author

re-posted with permission from author

Those who know me best know me to be a formalist. I believe in processes. I believe in collaborative and cumulative human progress. I believe that proper categorization, modification, renovation, and winnowing is fundamental to human existence. I believe this not only as a historical, pragmatic and logical consequence of the human condition. It is the religious and mystical foundation of birur which underlies the Jewish concept of Creation and Salvation.

I also believe that our capacity to act in this manner has been severely disrupted. Various intellectuals I find to be the exceptional thought leaders of our time have emphasized this. Most notably Eric Weinstein speaks of the Intellectual Dark Web, which is a network of people engaged in this type of progress from a manner of social exile. His brother Bret speaks of a “sense-making apparatus” for humanity. Jordan Peterson speaks of “competence hierarchies.”

All of these are various ways of talking about the mechanisms of human progress. They are speaking of basic breakdowns in academia, politics, mainstream media, the social fabric, etc. These are the mechanisms for disseminating information, identifying problems, recognizing solutions, collective decision making. These are the mechanisms of human progress. They are the vehicles of Redemption.

A fundamental Truth forms the foundations of this worldview. Human beings are finite. No individual is capable of doing everything. No individual can simultaneously be a competent doctor, competent lawyer, competent artists and competent engineer. Human knowledge is too vast and the mental capacity of humans is too limited. If our society is to function, it can only function in collaboration.

A necessary corollary to this finite nature is to grasp the immense scale of society. There are over 6 billion human beings on Earth. Even if you were capable of doing everything, you could not do it for everybody. A single doctor can operate on a single person at a single time. We have achieved amazing scalability in our efforts. Someone makes a video which can entertain millions if not billions of people. But that increase in scale far beyond anything previously available does not make us infinite. It removes some limitations, not all limitations.

The human beings is fallible. Even the most competent doctor can make a silly mistake. It is thus necessary for even a person who could do all the work by their self to create redundancy. Redundancy is not a waste. Redundancy is a necessity. We must not and cannot create chains which break with individual links.

What we create as human being is necessarily flawed. We must always include a mechanism for further improvement. I believe that this is a fundamental reason all extant religions describe themselves as a path to be followed. While this may surprise some of the most ardent atheists, I don’t know of any religion which holds itself as complete and immutable.

(While some of the most fundamentalist sects of some religions may arguably hold this tenet, it is truly an extreme position even amongst them. For instance, a belief that Islam was truly Sealed by the Prophet would completely obliterate the necessity for fatwas. Nobody believes that Islam could exist without fatwas.)

Our institutions have completely negated this basic understanding of human limitation. I am constantly faced with people who think they are infallible, immortal, omnipotent and omniscient. Worse yet, I am constantly faced with people who demand that others be infallible, immortal, omnipotent and omniscient. Most tiringly, I find myself dealing with people who do not assume these things to such a fundamental degree that it does not need to be said.

So we end up in the horrible position of both having to admit our limitations in order for people to understand them and simultaneously being dismissed for our limitations. Thus you get the ugliest parts of the Donald, who is both incapable and incapable of acknowledging he is incapable. Should he admit his weakness, he will be dismissed as weak. Since he doesn’t admit weakness, he has fans that proclaim him to be strong.

It should not be necessary to say that you may be wrong. It is a given that you may be wrong. There is no possibility that it is impossible for you to be wrong. To the point where denying the possibility of being wrong is itself proof that you are wrong.

Now go tell the scientist you hold most dear that gravity is “just a theory.” See how they bristle and tell you to take a flying leap to prove it.

The possibility of being wrong does not mean that you are wrong. The possibility that you may fail does not negate your ability to succeed. The imperfection of humanity does not negate its value.

This is where our competence hierarchies have been corrupted and our sense-making apparatus has malfunctioned. This is what has caused our intellectual web to go dark. This is the root of what ails society. We see it every day when someone’s imperfection is used to dismiss them utterly, to dispose of them completely.

We no longer accept apologies. We no longer forgive mistakes. We no longer admit fault. We no longer value growth and humility. We no longer acknowledge that we are finite.

Originally published at www.facebook.com.

By Jason Medland on November 29, 2018.

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Exported from Medium on March 4, 2019.