Agendas of Passion
Making a gun is one type of process, but pulling the trigger is a product of a fundamentally different type of process
“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.” ― Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Tools and weapons
Evolve incessantly. They have their own history parallel to the history of humans and integrated with the history of human knowledge and technological advance. Humans as a biological species are uniquely empowered by the capabilities of their neocortex to manipulate the environment to build tools, and weapons are nothing but a special branch of human tools. In our saturated with violent confrontation world the sophisticatedness with which modern weapons are made follows tightly the highest achievements of technological advance. Nowadays tools and weapons are increasingly embedding the latest achievements in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnologies, Robotics, Gene Editing, Virtual reality and Human Enhancement, to mention a few. In general, even if many discoveries were made by chance, tools and weapons are a product of thought and rational processes that include scientific research and inventive thinking, and their capabilities are tested within the dimensions of our physical reality. The premises where new tools are created are very often quiet laboratories with lots of computers and equipment, and people in white coats, many with glasses. These are people who work with figures and equations, who judge their success by results which can be repeated and verified by their colleagues anywhere in the world. People who live in a well-structured environment with clear-cut rules, where words have precisely defined meaning, and there is public visibility about what they are doing. The only thing this category of people — scientists, researchers, inventors and even entrepreneurs tend to not fully realize is that in the big picture of what is really going on in the world, they are just the armor-bearers. Because tools and weapons are a product of thought and intelligence and are designed to enhance human capacity of solving problems, but the decisions what to use tools and weapons for, are made by a completely different power residing in
The Realm of Passion
Which is an invisible but more than real world where seemingly irrational human energy, generated predominantly by individual self-interest, invigorates never ending fights among wild cards that override any idea of order, and constitutes the blind force of a fireball that recognizes no rules and no authorities. Passion evolves beyond physical reality and makes its way against the laws of nature and the against the restrictions of logic into a dimension where no other human being has no access. With neural modules keeping prejudice vivid, and with resolve spiraled to the extent of accepting even self-destruction as an option. This might be the nucleus of human will in the meaning of what E. Hemingway wrote about: “A man is not made for defeat…a man can be destroyed but not defeated.” It is an astonishing paradox of the human condition that the meaning itself of all what the brightest minds of humankind have created over thousands of years in culture, scientific research and technology advance is in reality being determined by irrational and practically uncontrollable processes taking place in the hidden depths of subconsciousness within that same human brain.
That makes Passion unpredictable, insecure and sometimes even dangerous. In itself it is neither good nor bad. Only by evaluation of the consequences of a Passion Agenda accomplished we could reach conclusions that would always be diverse and at times controversial. Following is a real story about someone I know personally — the Japanese doctor and entrepreneur:
Torao Tokuda
He was born on February 17, 1938 on the small island of Tokunoshima, Japan. When he was nine, his three-year old brother got sick in the middle of the night. Torao ran to call the doctor, but the doctor said he doesn’t see patients after-hours. Torao ran to the other doctor in the far end of the island only to get the same answer. When he came back home his little brother was already lifeless. It was in this moment of deep sorrow and pain when Torao vowed to become a doctor who would assist people in need at any time. Coming from a poor family, his relatives supported him to graduate the Osaka Medical University. After a few years of working as a doctor in a municipal hospital, he decided to open his own hospital. Having no property or financial resources, Torao negotiated with a bank a loan that was guaranteed by a pledge to take his own life (!) in case he defaults. In 1973 Dr. Torao Tokuda opened his first hospital in Matsubara located in Osaka and implemented there his medical philosophy: ’all living beings are created equal’, and introduced 24 hour 7 days a week medical service available for everyone. In the same year, he established the Tokushukai Group, and he began building hospital after hospital in remote regions to provide medical access to the under-served populations of the country. Dr. Torao Tokuda continued following his passion even after he himself was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable disease. By 2010 his Tokushukai Group managed in total 71 hospitals and tens of other medical and welfare facilities.
The story of Torao is a positive one. Human history, however, keeps the records of innumerable human tragedies and destruction caused by the passion agendas of dictators and sick minds obsessed with visions that ultimately violated basic human values. Fascism and communism being the most infamous examples.
Making a gun is one type of process, but pulling the trigger is a product of a fundamentally different type of process.
Only after the self-interest has decided on the desirable shape of reality, Passion creates its Agenda and reaches out to the available tools and weapons to be used in transforming what is perceived as the existing raw reality into what is presumed as the desirable shape of the reality to come true.
If the functioning of the human condition is determined by those two relatively independent on each other but fundamental components — the goal setting of the Passion Agenda and the instrumental of Tools and Weapons, then, especially for the purposes of analysis or for the assessment of the impact on a value system, we need to decide on which one of them is the higher priority: the armor-bearer, or the decision maker? In this case the dilemma can be formulated in another way: if you are determined to go to a particular destination, is it better to ride on a horseback in the right direction, or is it better to take a plane in the wrong direction?
In every era of human evolution, the Agenda of Passion represents a potential to create new realities. But in the era of exponential technologies we have reached the point where it is close to impossible to even imagine what kind of world the new realities could bring. Are we to prepare for realities of abundance, or for realities of suffering and destruction? And to what extent humans would be in position to influence the direction of the processes that already are transforming our world? We are about to start living in a universe of practically unlimited possibilities — the technologically enhanced Human Agency makes it possible for you to reach out and try to get anything your heart longs for. With pursuit of happiness being one of your unalienable rights.
The reality is that our world is a complex system of more than 7.5 billion human agencies who, armed with tools and weapons, follow their passion agendas individually or in coalitions - in the form of nation-states, corporations, families, political parties etc., while interacting and colliding with each other randomly in a Brownian motion manner, or deliberately in violent conflicts and wars. Technology advancement changes only the range and the scale of the consequences of those epic collisions, but not the character of how people interact among themselves.
What degree of stability could have such complex system composed of billions of legitimate but uncontrollable fireballs of irrational passion armed with state of the art tools and weapons, and overpopulating a planet with limited territory and insufficient natural resources?
It is an existential question for a 21st century Humankind in quest of a new civilizational model based on anthropocentric values.
