Ch 1 A - Advocating and Arguable

The year 2024 is projected to be the biggest voting year in the history of humanity. Over half of the global population living in 76 countries are scheduled to have elections. How fair and free these elections will be is always a question, which will not only test the integrity of democracy but will also be a testament to its significance for humanity.

Every election, no matter how fair or free, will have candidates who advocate views, plans and actions for voters to respond to. Whether voter response has the freedom and opportunity to express their opinion on what is advocated is an open question that an election by itself does not guarantee. In other words, advocacy is always subjected to arguable positions, but how much such advocacy is actually subject to disagreement or opposition is directly dependent on the freedom and will of human collectives and persons to enact positions—notably when in conflict with authoritarian advocates.

Election results in this coming year will reveal the existing condition of humanity. And human collectives and persons will incur the outcomes that inevitably should raise more questions.

The human condition will unfold in 2024 just as it has evolved since its beginning. At all levels of human life we will witness and experience the workings of the human condition notably by human collectives and persons advocating arguable activity in everyday life. Understanding the nature of this advocacy is essential to understanding the human condition—learning that it’s our human condition. This education will make evident the existential reality of its ongoing presence in the daily life and lives surrounding us and in us.

The best lesson to teach us the human condition’s A is taken from the pervasive context of the internet. The internet prevails globally to provide platforms for all of humanity to advocate views, plans and actions for human life. The diversity of this advocacy (even by implication) has no common ground except for the human condition underlying all that is posted on the internet. What has emerged, therefore, and keeps evolving is an argumentative context that allows persons to expose their contentious condition in an ongoing process devolving 24/7. The consequences include misplacing, misinterpreting and misinforming the education available from this condition.

How many opinions have you heard advocated lately that you agree or disagree with? On what basis do you think that you and others have those views? Who advocates what and what is advocated for whom both need to be scrutinized and understood—a basic education for humanity.

Advocating is a common practice that many participate in. For example, in elections not only candidates advocate but voters also do by casting their votes favoring or opposing particular advocates. Advocating is also an elusive practice engaged immeasurably by those using the internet. Such advocating is elusive because of the following:

1. It is often a reactionary reflex stirred up by “likes” or “dislikes” without much if any thoughtful consideration given to the matter.

2. Thus, what’s advocated is usually implied in what is explicitly posted, which makes rational exchange an impractical priority in the face of the urgency to exchange posts.

3. Accordingly, whatever is advocated explicitly or implicitly often has no basis in the facts to counter misinformation, which renders advocacy a mystery that cannot be composed by an inconvenient truth.

4. Much of this advocating dynamic is engaged with little if any awareness both of actually advocating and what is being advocated, including how it is influenced and shaped by the surrounding context.

Moreover, this has only amplified the human condition existing from the beginning, which is reinforced by illusions of optimism and sustained by pessimism. Thus,

5. Though the negative presence of the underlying human condition in any explicit and aggressive expression may be apparent to the naked eye, the implicit and passive-aggressive expressions are only evident to a discerning heart, which eludes those who don’t function vulnerably with their heart.

6. Therefore, the human condition keeps devolving elusively as long as humanity maintains a function focused on the outer-in quantitative aspects of life in contrast to and in conflict with the primary inner-out qualities intrinsic to the identity and function constituting humanity at its origin.

How optimistic or pessimistic have you been about whatever is being advocated? If the nature of advocating is ambiguous, how do you determine whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about what is advocated? Also, how do you assess who advocates what and what is advocated for whom when the consequences for humanity remain uncertain?

Throughout its history, humanity has been baffled by the optimism advocated by the human condition. This is not surprising since the human condition emerged in the beginning with a suspicious claim of optimism, which should have been argued by those receiving it instead of captivated by it. That claim of “you will not be reduced, fragmented or die” initiated the human condition with a falsehood, which then became the basis composing its nature. When this basis is not challenged, the nature of the human condition becomes not only elusive but intentionally evasive. And its evasive nature has evolved to prevail over humanity and dominate the workings of human collectives and persons—the sum of those captivated by its false claims of optimism devolving into the pessimistic nature of its negative presence.

Humanity survives to the extent of its optimism. Advocating assumes this optimism explicitly or implicitly, thus what is advocated has to provide some hope for advancing humanity. Who advocates and who is advocated for each embrace this hope consciously or unconsciously in order to counter pessimism and not fall into despair. What becomes elusive and/or evasive in this optimistic process is the basis for hope.

In evolutionary biology, the basis for advancing is to be the “fittest,” which cultivates the advancement of “the selfish gene.”[1] This basis of so-called advancement is certainly arguable, but it continues to prevail overtly and covertly throughout humanity to make evident the underlying nature of the human condition. Less evident in human history are two current bases of hope that have shrouded human progress in an ambiguous optimism.

From the beginning, the human condition evolved on the implication that the individual is free to decide what they want and to determine the way to fulfill that desire: “When you exercise your freedom of choice, your eyes will be opened to benefits beyond your existing limits” (Gen 3:5). This opened the door to self-determination and the priority of individualism given to one’s self-interests and self-concerns over others. It is on this basis of freedom that democracy evolved as the hope for advancing individuals together in some collective form. This optimism has persisted in spite of the trials, tribulations and recurring consequences experienced throughout the development of democracy. The elections of 2024 will further witness to this ambiguous optimism and expose the false hope of individualistic freedom to advance humanity.

Democracy legitimizes individuals pursuing not only their self-interests and concerns but also engaging in advancing the selfish gene. This is the freedom of the individual that formed the nature of the human condition in advocating for one’s advancement. It’s this nature that underlies the optimism of democracy. Yet, for this democratic process to work in human contexts, individuals have to be willing to compromise in their decisions in order to have the cooperation needed to advance together. The current U.S. Congress is a prime example of the consequences that keep evolving from the lack of cooperative compromise and its subversive nature at work; and this influential collective shows no signs of learning about their condition, instead amplifying it notably by misinterpretation and misinformation.

Accordingly, this elusive and evasive nature keeps revealing its negative presence to undermine cooperation and thereby render democracy a false hope. Locally or globally, many individuals have become pessimistic in democratic contexts, becoming even disillusioned by its false hope, since even in the U.S. (the epitome of democracy) humanity has not advanced but in reality has regressed. For example, how does the U.S. explain a major portion of its population struggling in poverty and its growing homelessness? Is it the freedom of choice for these constituents? They are not the exception but the rule of freedom in democracy; and the fragmented, if not broken condition of humanity is indeed epitomized in U.S. democracy, with little hope for positive turn-around change in the forecast.

Locally or globally, the struggles of democracy to embody hope has accelerated another false hope for humanity: authoritarianism, the logical alternative. This scenario will play out in coming elections, which will enact the democratic playbook deeper into the human condition with evasive measures that will subvert humanity’s advancement and even reduce the integrity intrinsic to humanity in all its persons. The latter reduction is a dehumanizing process that is also experienced in democracies as the inevitable consequence of the human condition underlying humanity in general and all human activity in particular.

This is the unavoidable result, which should be expected, whenever who advocates what and what is advocated for whom are based on the false hope composed by the reductionist nature of the human condition. Therefore, any optimism that qualifies this nature of the human condition will be disqualified when challenged at its basis, and thereby getting to its basic roots to expose the evasive negative presence of the human condition inescapably underlying all of humanity and its collectives and persons.

This leads us to the second current basis of hope that subtly generates an even more ambiguous optimism today—the equivocal advocacy of which clouds the future. Elections today are subjected to so-called deepfakes: realistic audio, video and photographs created by AI software. Political deepfakes are biased content that misinform and mislead the public, further undermining democracy and threatening the integrity of humanity. What is evolving generated by the multiple functions of AI has stirred a growing ocean of optimism over a widening area of life; like the origin of the human condition, what’s advocated will result in “you will become like God, knowing everything right and wrong” (Gen 3:5). On the other hand, AI is also stirring up a wave of pessimism due to its elusive and evasive workings that are subject to the nature of the human condition.

Who will advocate AI and for whom AI will be advocated both are critical issues facing humanity today. The use of AI is mainly under the control and determination of human collectives and persons, who need to understand the implications of what AI generates. Furthermore, as AI develops sentience, will AI elude the control and evade the determination of humans? This uncertainty renders any optimism for advancing humanity a false hope; this then is ongoingly subject to the negative presence of the human condition, whose nature easily evades and eludes accountability when not exposed at its roots.

In other words, technology is the prevailing basis of hope that has not only captivated humanity but also holds it captive for the dominant hope of human progress. Technology has certainly made the world more efficient and life more convenient. This has evolved at a high cost for humanity, because the use of technology has efficiently avoided the inconvenient truth of consequences advocated by the human condition underlying its use. Who and what progresses are not only ambiguous but also evolve in falsehood, and thereby devolve in the negative nature of the human condition’s unavoidable and inescapable presence.

The subtle nature of advocating keeps evolving in its tenuous and equivocal workings. As long as its nature remains ambiguous, what underlies its will continue to be elusive and evasive. Humanity will always incur the consequences in this process, which is the inconvenient truth facing all human collectives and persons. Until they/we meet this challenge, the human condition will ongoingly prevail in their/our lives. Without learning and understanding how they/we reflect, reinforce and sustain the human condition, they/we will not realize how they/we are reduced, fragmented and broken. This reality is unavoidable and inescapable, but its inevitability for humanity is binary. The human condition exists in an either-or process, which human collectives and persons have the choice to maintain or change at its roots. This change, however, requires the turn-around of redemptive change. In spite of the struggle for collectives and persons to be free to make the choice to change, this redemptive change is accessible for their turn-around.

Embracing this inconvenient truth involves engaging in the arguable process that counters the ambiguous optimism and false hope advocated by the human condition. This counter-reality is also unavoidable, which then makes it irreplaceable with anything less and any substitutes.

The nature of advocating can be argued philosophically with any worldview—not to mention argued emotionally with any feeling—but that debate never gets to the roots of the existential problem pervading humanity. Throughout human history, collectives and persons have discussed the pros and cons of who advocates what and what’s advocated for whom but have been unable to arrive at a consensus of the cause of humanity’s struggles. Even the good intentions of the United Nations have produced at best only remedial solutions to solve humanity’s global problems. This makes evident that not only is the nature of advocating elusive and evasive, but so also is the arguable nature needed to turn conditions around and open the door to resolute change.

The nature of being arguable operates on a dual track. This binary process either engages the nature of the human condition to give pushback to the optimism of advocating, which becomes contentious and even violent. Or it enacts a posture for change that counters the ambiguous optimism and false hope of who is advocating and what is advocated. The former track could be useful to undermine the nature of advocating, but it also exposes its own nature that is empowered by the nature of the human condition. In other words, all these natures converge to operate inseparably on the first track—with the second track an exception rarely taken.

The latter track for the nature of being arguable is more complex, on the one hand, while on the other it is a single-minded enactment. The nature of being arguable is complex because it operates as follows:

1. It does not assume optimism or embrace hope just because it offers more and has many benefits.

2. It does assume the negative presence of the human condition and makes itself vulnerable to its workings.

3. It willfully engages in exposing the human condition’s presence and negating its influence.

4. It is committed for the long haul of this process and pays the cost necessary for the wholeness of humanity to be restored.

The latter track unfolds in everyday life as its arguable nature is enacted rigorously with a single-mindedness ongoingly guided by the big picture for humanity growing in its collectives and persons. The integrity of this single-mindedness is constituted only when anything less and any substitutes do not compose its basis and

operation. Sadly, but not surprisingly, this single-mindedness becomes an inconvenient truth that can readily be eluded or evaded to set it off track. That’s why the nature of being arguable necessitates its complex track to work synergistically for the wholeness needed in being arguable without the influence of the human condition. In our current advocating-arguable state, we are faced ongoingly with the crossroad of these two tracks, with the latter always an inconvenient truth.

Therefore, being arguable has a unique nature that sets itself apart in human contexts. When its nature is distinguished existentially, it exposes the competing natures of advocating and the human condition at their roots. This then makes accessible the binary choice, whereby the true hope for humanity is made available to turn around, change and restore it to its created wholeness.

Since the beginning, all the advocating through human history has produced systems of inequality. This inequity keeps evolving in a competitive process that has stratified humanity in comparative distinctions of more or less, good or bad, and better or worse. Human collectives and persons become entrenched in these systems, constrained in this structure, and thus are enslaved to their distinctions without recourse to be redeemed. This is the unavoidable and inescapable consequence when the human person (collectively and individually) is defined in identity and determined in function by this outer-in process—a process that fails to get to the inner-out integrity of the constituting roots for humanity.

When this now devolving condition is not perceived and vulnerably learned from by the constituents of humanity, the nature of this process keeps recycling. In spite of any optimism and hope with good intentions, this recurring condition will elude and evade the change needed to turn it around. In principle, the competitive process devolving mirrors the evolving survival of the fittest, except for the fact that the self-promoting of the latter is overtly explicit in its operation. In contrast, the former operates insidiously to mask the nature of its condition and the consequences for humanity devolving from what amounts to its own selfish gene—the self-designation as the most popular, if not the fittest. Since the scope of its influence exerts widespread pressure and subtle force on human collectives and persons to agree with its optimism and submit to its hope, any dissension and all contention are always subject to deferring to the so-called more, better, best defining what is good. That’s the nature of the system prevailing in humanity, and its collectives and persons must bear the cost for their limited participation and constrained belonging.

One insidious example that masked its own selfish gene evolved in the 20^th century, in which “the best” in the U.S. advocated for eugenics. This scientific selective procedure was used to weed out and eliminate “the worst” in the U.S. population, in order to purify its citizenry and preserve its human race—that is, a race of its own human construction. While some of those deemed less were tolerated, the limits and constraints imposed on them would not allow climbing the social ladder to achieve any sense of equality. Even with having comparable resources, the distinction of less created a genetic marker etched indelibly in their resume. The face of such a distinction could not be altered with remedial measures, thus the structural inequality would never be equalized.

The dynamic that engulfs humanity in an ocean of optimism churned up by waves of pessimism is a recurring cycle in all human contexts, where its tides are predictable. The advocating-arguable dynamic makes evident that the human condition keeps recycling no matter the context, and regardless of measures taken to limit or constrain its consequences. Perhaps the global issue that best makes this evident is climate change. Climate change is subjected to the tide of advocating. The global community has experienced its high and low tides ongoingly cycling. Since this tide is also subject to the advocating-arguable dynamic, its cycle variably reinforces and sustains the human condition with the unintentional result of recycling its consequences. Whatever reforms have been advocated and even implemented have neither changed the tide of recycling nor turned around its pervasive and prevailing condition. Given the fact that 2023 was the hottest year on record for the Earth, what will the future unfold?

What this teaches us is essential for humanity and all its collectives and persons. No matter how strong the optimism in what’s advocated, there is no guaranteed hope for humanity. No matter how far the good intentions go in advocating, this does not mean that humanity will benefit. No matter how extensive the support for what’s advocated, this does not insure that change will become a reality. And no matter how inclusive what’s advocated embraces humanity, it does not mean that the human condition is addressed at its roots to deal with its nature.

Change has been advocated throughout human history. What direction these changes have gone and where they have taken humanity are always arguable. What we need to learn from this terrain is that the human GPS is not reliable. Nor does it guide to a valid destination that can be counted on to bring humanity to the place necessary for its renewal. It’s as if this GPS has no true sense of direction; and that it can’t discern the terrain to get humanity to where it needs to go. So, human collectives and persons get lost in unrecognized surroundings with no valid alternative route to take that doesn’t keep circling back.

These teaching moments occur in the spectrum of changes observed in human contexts. What is learned from these changes is that no amount of reforms has prevented the recycling of the consequences directly or indirectly tied to the human condition. This tether of humanity simply has not been severed by any and all of these changes, thereby keeping humanity tied to the elusive and evasive nature of the human condition. Even with the best of intentions to bring change, recycling prevails to rule over any apparent exceptions to this reality.

Causes advocated by activists is another lesson to learn from. What it teaches us is that causes come and go but what remains is the condition targeted, however rigorously, to change. A glaring yet misinformed example of this is the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Notably since the 1960s, these activists have paraded their optimism in hope of change. Their platform was and still is misinformed, because it hoped to change the racist basis for defining the structures and institutions of the U.S. and for determining its policies and everyday life. Widespread optimism was amplified by the Voting Right Act of 1965, whose reforms were expected to equalize all persons (especially black Americans) in the political process. While some changes were made to improve some situations and circumstances, racism has not been eliminated or even hindered; thus it continues to recycle, for example, in current voter requirements laws and the gerrymandering of voter districts, to reinforce and sustain the racist nature of the human condition.

One misguided solution to racism is to become colorblind. The problem with racism, however, is not that it sees color. Color is a natural characteristic of humanity, but race is a human construction that evolved from the survival of the fittest to control the human order. The underlying problem is rooted in human identity being defined and human function determined by the outer-in characteristics at the expense of seeing, knowing and responding to their whole person from inner out—with color and all other outer-in distinctions secondary and thus subordinate to persons from inner out. This inner-out perceptual lens is always subjected to the outer-in lens prevailing in human life; and it is susceptible to submitting to the latter’s prevailing influence. When the inner-out lens becomes subject to the outer-in lens, as it currently does, the consequences of the human condition’s reductionist outer-in modus operandi recycles and becomes the default mode informing what it advocates and guiding what it changes.

This unavoidable default mode operated in leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr. In spite of their rigorous advocating against injustice and inequality of race and class, their failure to include gender thereby reinforced and sustained the unjust inequality of females.[2]

We can also learn from our default mode that as long as our perceptual lens is focused primarily on the outer in, our everyday lens will have distinctions biases such as race, class, gender, age, ableism, and so forth that reduce persons of their whole integrity. Such biases reflect our human condition, which is sustained by our default mode until our biases are changed from inner out.

Recycling the most and longest in human history is the contentious nature of the human condition. This has been evident in global and personal contexts where the cause for peace has been generated. Historically, however, advocacy from the peace movement has been an endless call for a limited peace defined by the absence of conflict. While Ukraine and Gaza would certainly benefit from such peace, such conflicts keep recurring because as merely reforming the condition, such peace doesn’t get to the root constitution of peace as humanity’s well-being of wholeness. Nothing less will bring peace. Yet, peace advocates and activists have not learned from this lesson, and thus lack understanding the true meaning of peace.

Where does this all bring us? Have we been educated to know the true difference between right and wrong? Have we learned why and how the human condition recycles? Also, do we understand what changes don’t change but effectively reinforce and sustain the underlying human condition of humanity? Or is this education being misplaced, misinterpreted or misinformed?

The hope for humanity has been advocated tenuously as well as falsely. This teaches us how elusively and evasively the nature of the human condition can operate, even among the best of intentions. Without knowing of its negative presence and understanding its covert workings, whatever is addressed doesn’t get to the root of the problem that needs to be changed for existing conditions reducing humanity to be turned around. This change must include the reduction of our own condition by default.

The hope for this turn-around change is constituted only by the essential process of renewal, which will restore humanity’s reduction to the wholeness of its original integrity. It is insufficient to advocate merely for the dignity of humanity in all persons. New is not a concept but an existential reality. For the rise of this new, however, the old currently existing in its place must effectively die. Dying, for example, to our optimism and the false hopes of exercising our freedom of choice can be confronting for our worldview or threatening to our way of life and its basis. For the new to emerge, the old at the core of our existence must be transformed from outer in to inner out. In other words, our hope for humanity and expectations for change need to be reeducated at the heart level, so that we will learn to advocate nothing less and will understand its basis needing to be composed with no substitutes.

‘Nothing less and no substitutes’ is the inconvenient paradigm that is imperative to validate the process of renewal; and this ongoingly serves to expose illusions and confront simulations of the new. Otherwise, anything less advocated and any substitutes hoped for will continue to recycle the human condition in any of its consequences, whereby human collectives and persons will continue to be relegated to and will ongoingly be entrenched in its pervading and prevailing negative presence. ‘Anything less and any substitutes’ is the contrary paradigm used by the human condition to subtly counter the wholeness integral to humanity with any reductions of humanity’s constitutional integrity. The ongoing tension between wholeness and reductionism becomes a battle, which many try to appease with compromise—only to learn they’ve used the ‘anything less and any substitutes’ paradigm because the ‘nothing less and no substitutes’ is inconvenient.

Humanity’s journey to wholeness is a road less travelled. In our specific journeys, we need to understand the road necessary to take in order to reach wholeness.

A journey to wholeness often starts out on roads full of potholes, barriers and detours. Such roads readily prevent this sojourn from reaching its hopeful destination. When collectives and persons rely on the human GPS, they will be led to the most convenient road that obscures such potholes, barriers and detours. What is thought to be facilitated is a bad but typical assumption made when pursuing wholeness evolves by the anything-less-and-any-substitutes paradigm.

Many presume, therefore, that because of the advocacy voiced by humanity’s diversity, the entrance to the road to wholeness is wide and opens to many lanes for this road. The reality, however, is that human collectives and persons are misguided or misled when the road taken to wholeness is wide, perhaps like a freeway with many exits to get distracted by other secondary interests or concerns, and thereby get off track from the primary matter essential for their well-being. They make the false assumption that the easier road is the simplest way to achieve wholeness for any of humanity’s reduction, fragmentation and brokenness. Recycling and existing conditions make evident that this is a false hope.

What lesson do you receive from this evolving reality pervading your surrounding contexts?

Some go away from all this with the thinking that wholeness is unachievable, and that we all need to just make the best out of our situations and circumstances. Others will argue that we need to keep trying and can’t give up on reaching this important destination. Still others will advocate for different ways to achieve this goal. But who will truly learn what this lesson is teaching us?

Many try to fix inequities in human collectives and persons. These problems pervading their situations and circumstances are not easy or simple to fix. What’s reduced, fragmented and broken are never restored nor renewed by patchwork solutions. Restoring and renewing these parts of collectives and persons require putting these parts together for their wholeness. The outcome of wholeness, however, unfolds only on a narrow road that is not easy yet it is a straight forward. Journeying on this narrow road to wholeness necessitates humility (both epistemic and ontological) in an ongoing process of being vulnerable from inner out. Because of what it necessitates, the narrow road to wholeness is a road less travelled, rendered too difficult or demanding and thus too inconvenient by the advocating-arguable dynamic prevailing among collectives and persons. Therefore, this results in an elusive and evasive process prevailing to recycle the human condition on a wide and winding road, which is travelled on by the diversity of humanity.

As long as the above lesson is not taken to heart and wholeness is perceived with bias as an inconvenient truth, human collectives and persons will be unable to make whole their reduced, fragmented and broken conditions that reflect, reinforce and sustain their underlying human condition. When will this existential lesson teach us to turn around from outer in to inner out, so that we will change at the roots of our humanity?

Until it does, the class continues with more lessons to learn. For the sake of humanity, this class will not be dismissed, and the attendance of each and every collective and person will always be monitored for cutting class. Also, progress reports are forthcoming, whether convenient or not, notably to identify misinterpretation and misinformation. Meanwhile, a new normal will keep evolving to simulate hopeful construction for humanity. Such ambiguous optimism will promote building measures for humanity that will result in elusive and evasive results generated by the nature of the human condition underpinning its construction.

[1] Discussed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

[2] This shortcoming is discussed by Jennifer Holliday in “Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement: A Discussion Guide: A closer examination of heroes in our culture” July 9, 2009, online at tolerance.org/magazine; also discussed by bell hooks in Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990).