INTELLIGENT PROGRESSION III: Peering deeper into the mist of the human condition

My mind is a computer of unimaginable complexity and wonder. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), my capabilities and capacities have increased, but only because I create my World from those assumptions and trials and errors that my reason tells me are good for me. I occupy a pocket of time during which I am God, in the sense that no one can tell me what to do (they can try to do so by force or manipulation). I am guided by the sum total of my life experiences. There is nothing unique about me other than I am the only me, much like no two fingerprints are alike, or no two snowflakes look the same. I didn’t create this phenomenon. It certainly did not come from the future.

When I say that “I am the sum of my choices and their consequences,” this is my past that informs how I act and look at my purpose in life. The choice is so important that it defines humanity from animality. We progressed intelligently (evolved is the outdated expression because it only applies to the reality you can see). “I am not you; you are not me; we are not God, and, most certainly, we are not God.”

Being human means I can give away this choice, but not the ability to continue to choose another set of ideas, not my own, can be inadequate for me. Some time back, I visited the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. They called it a high-class joint at that time because there were so many white-collar criminals. We met with a group of prisoners who had formed a Holy Name Society, a popular gathering of like-mind Catholics who were more conservative in their spiritual practices. The president of this Holy Name Society gave us a talk in the chapel. I thought I was back home in my parish because of what he said. I asked the guard who that person was who was giving the talk. She said he was a former bank president from near Chicago who was convicted of embezzlement of thousands of dollars. She also said he acted and sounded just like her grandfather. “He had only one fault,” she told me, “he thinks stealing is okay.” Where does all this aberration in the human condition arise? We are taught that human nature is not evil, just prone to bad choices. Tie this back into the human urge to resist anyone telling us what to do, and you have the basis for the Genesis narratives on why humans can be good by nature but also be so bad in how they make choices. Genesis narratives are about what they consider to be God as the Gardner of a perfect place. Humans messed it up by introducing sin (poor choices), and it continues as the context for each individual in which they seek what is good or evil. These narratives are a very sophisticated myth (in-depth explanation) of why some humans do good while at the same time can compartmentalize moral behaviors.

I have always looked to Erich Fromm’s Art of Loving as a power indicator of what it means to be human. He suggests that love is an acquired skill that is not assimilated into our consciousness and then abandoned but must be nourished with more love to sustain its integrity every day. Fromm calls this “The Art of Loving” because humans must constantly renew it to become more and more human as new situations are experienced each day that require love. Past performance is no guarantee of present or future success. Faith is also an acquired mindset received from a source of energy outside our human experience. That Faith can transform a human from being more like an animal to more like our nature intended (conversio morae) is due to the energy that comes from being in the presence of the one who can transform humanity from being just human to their next step in intelligent progression, being an adopted son or daughter of the Father.

I am on an eight-one-year-old journey to discover my purpose in life and how all reality fits together to move me forward to be as human as possible. There is also a collective movement of humanity forward, from animality through rationality to the end result of evolution, fully human. God did not provide all this communication to humans, including sending his only Son to tell us (knowledge) how to love, but show us how to sustain this love (service) until we can claim our inheritance after our human bodies die.

THE MOVEMENT OF HUMANITY VIA INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Galatians 5. I have applied The Rule of Threes to my search to become more familiar with this astounding process of how the physical universe and mental universes prepare me to reach the fulfillment of my being human. I intend to parse out three separate movements in the history of humanity as it moves forward so that I can apply these lessons to my constant obsession with moving from my false self to my true self (capacitas dei).

When I ask, “What does my humanity look like?” I offer these assumptions not to prove I am correct because this is only speculation (that is what humans do best) but some new thoughts on which you might chew. I like to use The Rule of Threes to pull apart some of the elements of intelligent design I must address.

QUESTION: Within the period of my human lifetime, I make a myriad of choices that affect who I am and who I will become. Some of those choices are good and not so good in terms of being what my human nature intended me to be. I can choose what is good or bad for me at any time on this timeline.

There are three levels of humanity, ranging from animality through rationality to spirituality. This is a sliding scale for me each day. Good choices today; don’t assume I will make them tomorrow.

ASSUMPTIONS

• My nature as a human being is good because God made me that way.
• The movement from animality to rationality gave my species the ability to reason and choose what is good for me.
• Knowing what is good for me is the challenge.
• Just live “love,” “faith,” and “hope,” these patterns of human thinking are not innate but are learned qualities. Nature does not give me control over my choices.
• I have to make choices that are good for me.
• Coming from animal nature, I still harbor those traits and emotional DNA traits.
• Choosing what is good for me can be like B.F. Sinner’s operant conditioning (choosing pleasure and pain to react to choices).
• Choosing what is good for my nature as a human means moving away from my animality by using my rationality.
• If I make bad choices, I do so because the key I have chosen to measure my behavior against says it will not improve my humanity but limit it (sin).
• Using my rationality does not have the energy to move me from rationality to spirituality, the destiny of where nature progresses automatically. It is the end product of evolution.
• When I give my ability to choose to God as a gift, what I get back is the ability to choose to enter a new realm of existence (spiritual universe), one where I am not just a spectator but being treated as an adopted son of the Father and heir to His kingdom.

INTELLIGENT PROGRESSION IN ONE REALITY

Movement (time within the space of a beginning and an ending) is from simpler to more complex as matter and its antecedents collectively interact. This table views one reality with three distinct universes, each separate from another, with their own characteristics, and how humans can measure each one with different instruments. This is the big picture of humanity from its inception to extinction.

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