The Three Realities of the Three Peoples

I live under the notion that my reductive Three Peoples theory explains everything. 

OK, of course I don't believe that. Humans come in an infinite diversity of types. But I do think that it is helpful to divide people in these United States into three lumps, for the purpose of religious, cultural, and political analysis. Anything more complicated and you lose their attention.

In recent weeks, under the influence of Mircea Eliade in his book The Myth of Eternal Return, I have shined a new light on my theory, especially because of this pull quote:

The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

When you think about it, we all have a tendency to do this, and the reason is pretty obvious. Our brains and our five senses are in the business of noticing things out there in the world that might affect us, beneficially or otherwise. This means that we are inclined not to think of everything that happens in the world as completely random. Survival in this world means tying events together into something meaningful when appropriate.

It doesn't take too much to imagine that a tiger or a wolf that is stalking you is malevolent. Hey, the darn animal is treating you like dinner. And the worst thing in the world for you right now would be to end up as someone's dinner.

So I propose that the basic reality of the People of the Subordinate Self is that the world is out to get them. Malevolent. And you will note that our lefty friends are pretty strong on suggesting to the various People of the Subordinate Self that they wish to recruit into their political army that there are malevolent racist-sexist-homophobes in our society that are out to get them. The ongoing riots over the death of forgery suspect George Floyd is an example of this lefty approach to politics. Who really cares about a 40ish night-club bouncer that has a heart condition and, it seems, a drinking and/or drug problem? Why would the eevil white supremacists care a whit about him?

But, obviously, the malevolence gambit works. People of the Subordinate Self vote, overwhelmingly, for lefty parties that sell the malevolence schtick. So I propose that, for the People of the Subordinate Self, an assumption of malevolence, of evil powers ganging up on you, is front and central in their world view. And this aligns with my view that People of the Subordinate Self live in a world prior to the advent of the Axial Age religions.

Now we come to the People of the Responsible Self, and I propose that People of the Responsible Self believe that the world runs on rules. That, of course, is the logic of having a God that created the world and then created His divine law. In this reality it is up to humans to take the world that God has created and be fruitful and multiply. Only, watch it. You don't want to break God's laws; that way lies disaster.

Now, I am not saying that Responsibles are perfect beings that soldier on irregardless without suspicion that their neighbor might be up to no good. Of course not. There is a lot of subordination in all of us. Humans are hierarchical, and that means that we are all subordinate to someone, and very often we hate it -- and them.

Obviously this kind of clockwork world that operates according to rules takes us right up to the beginning of the modern era but no further. Because the whole point of the modern era, starting with Hume, is that we cannot prove cause and effect. Correlation is not causation. We can't reduce the world to a set of rules.

After a couple hundred years of philosophizing about the problem that Hume set forth the geniuses came up with quantum mechanics and the "state function" to explain how the world works.

At the fundamental level -- or at least at the current understanding of the fundamental level -- subatomic "particles" are not really particles, but a fuzz of possibilities that only condense into something definite when an event occurs. And even then:-- when a single quantum of light goes through a double slit it forms an interference pattern when it hits a receptor.

What this means is that, at the fundamental level, God plays dice. You never know what is going to happen: it might rain or it might shine.

Now, I propose that the People of the Creative Self understand this. They have to, because when an artist creates something new he knows that the creation does not come out of a deliberate process of 2+2=4, but in a contingent process, an inspiration. 

In my own life I tend to say that my ideas come to me from my unconscious. When I encounter a problem, in ideas or in my usgovernmentspending.com website, I do not grind away at the problem; I get up and walk away. And then I find that the solution to a problem comes to me, irrationally, in the middle of the night. Or, as with Puccini, you could say that your music comes directly to you from God.

Now this applies to creative people whether they are writers, artists, business start-ups, whatever. There is always an aspect of chance, or good luck, or an unanticipated inspiration. or just being in the right place at the right time.

Let us call this the "creative state function." All the pieces that might come together in a creative act are fuzzing around in a state of probabilities. And if they come together into a wonderful creation it is the result of unknown probabilities. We have various ways of describing the flash of creation, the condensation of probabilities.

The most obvious example is the creation of every human life at the moment of conception where a single egg is beset by a crowd of sperm. Which one will break through the walls of the egg to start a new life? It's all a matter of probability, a "state function."

Of course, People of the Creative Self also believe in malevolence, and Rules. There is a lot of the Subordinate and the Responsible in each of them. But each creative lives in the hope of being the Chosen One, the result of a condensation of probabilities into a miraculous creation never before seen on this Earth. 

Personally I prefer the idea of life as a "creative state function," so I must be a People of the Creative Self. But I also respect the need for rules, and regretfully, I realize there is a lot of malevolence in the world, particularly where lefties are concerned.

So there is reason for hope, and also reason to despair. As it ever was.