Ch 2 B - Building and Blocking

In a governed context, what construction businesses build must follow regulations, have permits and pass inspections. The business of building, however, is not limited to the construction industry and is undertaken by many sectors of a surrounding context, including by individuals. The problem this creates is not the quantity of what’s built but the quality. This condition evolves because the process of building does not include following regulations, having permits and passing inspections. Without having basic guidelines, whatever is built in surrounding contexts, even with good intentions for humanity’s progress, also become walls that block the welfare of humanity—the dissonant reality of business as usual.

Does this point to the need for more oversight? That depends on the source of the oversight. Political conservatives have argued against more government oversight, but the issue before us goes deeper. When the guiding principle is based on quantity over quality, the building overseen inevitably invokes a competitive system that builds walls in a comparative process. The economy, for example, has a quantitative basis, and its globalization has evolved in systems that block the welfare of multiple sectors of the global community. Any oversight of what the global economy is building has reinforced and sustained this evolution reflecting the self-interests of the survival of the fittest.[1] This elusive and evasive condition points to the lesson making accessible the existential reality that human building reflects, reinforces and sustains the human condition, which then unavoidably ends with us building walls.

The fact that who advocates building and the building advocated for whom are both arguable converges with the B of the human condition. This lesson teaches us:

1. The nature of building and blocking can be observed in human collectives and persons,

3. so that we can understand the forecast for the future and what will change that condition.

Failing this lesson will unequivocally continue to allow the building axis to subject humanity to the consequences constructed from, by and for the human condition. Can human collectives and persons afford to fail this lesson at the cost of their humanity’s well-being?

What is most palpable among rulers (past and present) is their assumption that their actions work for the benefit of humanity’s progress. These rulers (democratic, authoritarian and fascist) will be on display in the 2024 elections throughout the world. Whatever results evolve from this elective process raises two issues that all rulers and any other builders are accountable for.

First of all, the ambiguity of what benefits and progresses humanity not only makes them arguable but also elusive or evasive for oversight. Many rulers have evaded oversight, but builders at all levels have also eluded being held accountable. In the absence of regulations and restrictions, this then opens the door to the means used to build for their end goal. Currently, for example, Israel is in the midst of this process in their building efforts in Gaza and the West Bank. This door widely opens to the working rule of using whatever means necessary to achieve such human goals earmarked for humanity. That is to say, the guideline to follow and enforce becomes ‘the end justifying the use of any means’—whether stated explicitly or operating implicitly.

As this door remains open, what also enters is the underlying nature of building that is the driving force for whatever is constructed. Even though this work may be done in the name of humanity, it needs to be inspected for the nature of its integrity. That is the lesson before us.

Regardless who the builder is on the spectrum of globalization, nations, tribes, businesses, public enterprises, families and persons, all of their function is unavoidably subjected to underlying issues. When these issues are not resolved, they become inescapably subject to the nature underlying these issues. From its inception as a nation-state, Israel’s strategic plan has been to build its independence on a quantitative basis by its claim on the Holy Lands. Their claim has certainly been arguable, resisted and rigorously opposed. Israel’s subsequent tactical plans to build their nation make evident the source of their identity and the nature of their function. Historically from its ancient origin, Israel has been critiqued by the uncommon constituting Source of its religious identity and its function as a people, whose qualitative-relational oversight has disciplined their building efforts—all of which has been documented by the Hebrew prophets. This feedback (and pushback) continues to be relevant today not just directly to Israel but for all other builders, though it usually represents an inconvenient truth.

A quantitative model is the prevailing basis for any and all builders. A quantitative nature of building teaches us that the process of building gives priority to quantity over quality. This may not mean that quality is not important, but that it is always secondary to the primacy of quantity. Thus, where and when necessary in building, achieving the goal of quantity will likely come at the expense of quality. This is to be expected, because the rule for such an operating framework emerges from a perspective (including a worldview and philosophy) using a biased lens focused merely on the outer in of life.

The outer-in perspective focuses on the outer distinctions of things, people and persons, such as the outward appearance of others. This lens is critical to inspect because its underlying nature compromises the integrity of what is built. For example, in spite of the solid appearance of a building structure, many such buildings around the world (including the U.S.) don’t have the infrastructure to withstand earthquakes. Their integrity lacks the quality necessary for these buildings to benefit humanity.

The quantity of an outer-in approach to building composes the prevailing nature for whoever builds and whatever is built. This pervasive condition keeps being reinforced and sustained in spite of the consequences making evident the nature of its underlying condition. What nature becomes apparent in any outer-in approach is that it may advocate, want and build more, more and more; but that outer-in quantity never goes deeper for the quality constituted only from inner out. More is disconnected from deeper as long as its condition remains composed by the outer in. For example, building a musical sound with more of everything may reverberate in the ears and brains of those hearing it. But that sound will not resonate in their hearts until it goes deeper. Moreover, science and medicine have been discovering that depth of sound has a quality that has healing penetration, making more quantitative measures less effective or even unnecessary.

This all brings us back to the affective reality: The more from outer in is the indelible condition that keeps teaching anyone willing to be vulnerable enough to learn what’s really going on with the building around us, maybe by us, and perhaps in us.

The lesson emerges most convincingly in the ubiquitous building of family that is engaged diversely by all nations, tribes, peoples, and persons. The dominant model for building family has evolved from diverse forms of an extended family to variable forms of a nuclear family. Extended families generally followed a racial or ethnic composition, which included cultural guidelines providing oversight. Their racial-ethnic distinctions reflected an outer-in building process that was reinforced and sustained by their related culture and its traditions. These diverse cultures and traditions composed family life at different levels of depth, but building the more of the extended family still remained primary for its survival. The extended family today has not become extinct but it barely survives globally and struggles to exist in most cultures and traditions. What brought about this change?

The extended family was rocked and thereby shocked by the industrial revolution. The Industrial Age evolved from the late 18^th and 19^th centuries to alter how families are built. The extended family model was transposed to the nuclear family model, initially evolving by necessity for fathers to find more work, have more pay and thus provide more security for their wives and children. To have more they had to migrate from their extended families, and in most cases also separate from the oversight of their cultures and traditions—though not necessarily from their origin. As the nuclear family evolved into the 20^th century, the building of family eluded guidelines, evaded oversight and became increasingly ambiguous in its development.

There are major differences between extended and nuclear families, but they are tied together by mutual issues affecting them similarly. A critical issue that emerged in the extended family is directly related to not how far their extended family reaches, but rather how connected they are to one another. Obviously, family connections vary and they evolve over time. Extended family members could be clearly connected to their identity and still leave unanswered the question of how deep their connections function in everyday life to make their family life viable. The viability of an extended family is neither based nor dependent on the number of connections they have with each other, or on the amount of time they spend together. Viable life is not constituted by this quantity occupying one’s way of life, no matter how productive and enjoyable family gatherings may be.

Viable physical life from outer in could benefit from quantitative measures, as observed in medicine. Viable family life, however, emerges only from inner out on a qualitative basis to determine its relational involvement. Therefore, family connections must by their viable nature be quality relational connections that involve persons functioning from inner out, thereby connecting to each other with their whole persons heart to heart. Sadly, this family education gets misplaced, is easily misinterpreted on the basis of the now (mis)Information Age.

In spite of the more built in most extended families, family life is actually reduced when not based on this viable nature. This reduction first evolves in the family members themselves, whose persons are reduced to their outer-in distinctions that thereby determine how they function in family life without their whole persons. Reduced persons don’t and can’t engage in relationships having depth. The results are what extended families build—working under the limits and constraints of business as usual. This existing reality of family life affecting the extended family has been duplicated in the evolution of the nuclear family, with the latter having intensified the consequences of its building with relational walls and struggling to be viable.

Perhaps you have experienced this family life in your own family, or see it in your friends and among those around you. The above lesson teaches that family life and its development in extended and nuclear families struggles to build their members and relationships to make a qualitative difference in their lives. This condition keeps evolving to essentially block the growth of persons and relationships with the integrity of their wholeness, not their reduction.

The inconvenient truth is that blocking evolves in any and all building when its underlying condition is composed by the human condition prevailing in all human contexts. This is the inescapable reality of business as usual. Therefore, the nature of building brings to the surface the blocking nature pervading what’s built and who builds.

When human life is built with an outer-in priority, it invokes the paradigm of anything less and any substitutes. Such building effectively blocks the growth of qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness, the lack of which creates barriers to making relational connections within human collectives and between persons. Aside from the obvious barriers blocking connections in human life, the subtle barriers pervading collectives (including churches) and persons elude their level of sensitivity and evade their level of awareness. The results have ongoingly blocked physical and emotional connections, which are consequential for reducing, fragmenting and breaking apart their life both together and individually.

Currently, the most pervasive blocking evolves with smartphones, which even children use to wall themselves off at school and even in their own families. This blocking is ubiquitous and the social norm, which is evident as persons are walking around, sitting together or driving. A recent cartoon illustrates this condition: Aliens from another planet return from their expedition to explore intelligent life on earth to give this report. “Well, the supposedly advanced species we studied was truly frightening. Their worship of a deity who demands constant attention has put a stop to critical thinking, and their belief in the holy scriptures is unquestioning, no matter how nonsensical it is.” When asked if they were able to bring back any artifacts of this primitive culture, they replied, “Yes, we snuck off with one of their sacred altars.” As they go to retrieve it, the urgent question was raised, “Whoa, hold on… Are we safe from being infected by its toxicity?” The answer, “Yes, as long as its kept uncharged,” referring to the smartphone that pops out of the spaceship.[2]

Whenever and wherever any part of humanity is reduced from their inner-out integrity of origin to the outer in, their persons are separated from their qualitative nature; and they become distant in their contacts with others, whereby they are disconnected in their relationships, overtly or subtly. In spite of how elusive and evasive the detection of this condition can be in the building process, it emerges to make evident its blocking nature.

Having more connections are not the same as relational connections; and relational connections are not built from outer in by its operating paradigm of anything less and any substitutes. What many think of as building connections is simply having associations with others. Furthermore, relational connections are not unilateral but reciprocal, requiring the relational involvement of both persons. The blocking nature substitutes relational connections with connections of anything less; and it advocates these alternatives without having sensitivity to and awareness of their consequences for persons and their relationships. Currently, this evolving condition prevails more among men than women, but it certainly pervades all of humanity to dominate its nature with blocking connections that shape humanity with blocked connections.

This lesson is palpable in recent surveys making evident how much loneliness prevails among men. For example, a recent 2023 State of American Men report from Equimundo found two-thirds of men between ages 18 and 23 feel alone and say “no one really knows me.” Since 1990, studies such as by the Survey Center on American Life have learned that men at various stages of life have evolved with no close friends, leaving them increasingly lonely. How would you interpret these findings?

The lesson made evident in the lives of these men teaches how they become distant both from others and also from their own selves. They then are disconnected by the blocking nature in a life alone, even in the midst of and the company of others. The latter are the associations commonly advocated and increasingly built within families and on the internet. Without relational connections it should not be surprising how loneliness pervades humanity. This teaches us

When we understand the nature of the building-blocking dynamic and its related advocating-arguable process, what is evident is the human condition composing their human elements, workings and results. This expands the lesson to teach us the human condition underlying human life and its nature encompassing humanity. We can learn that the natures of blocking and the human condition converge in a cyclic interaction that prevents persons from finding, knowing and living in the primacy of their whole persons from inner out. Thus, these persons are unable to connect with others person-to-person, because they do not make their hearts vulnerable and thereby are not able to experience the depth of relationships together—namely the heart-to-heart connections of intimate relationships.

The blocked hearts of some of these persons create various feelings that try to bring to the surface their condition. But the persons have become too insensitive to be aware of such feelings, because they live by an outer-in mode. This entrenches them in an optimistic-pessimistic symbiosis that holds captive their hearts. The outer-in mode is the default mode of the human condition, which prevails over humanity until change gets to the core of humanity from inner out. This lesson teaches what is at the heart of both the human condition and humanity.

Learning what’s at the heart of the human condition and humanity is not an easy task that persons readily engage or complete simply. Two major causes intervene to complicate this learning process: (1) the human condition’s heart is evasive by intentional design, and humanity’s heart is elusive due to surrounding issues; and (2) getting down to their hearts necessitates the vulnerable transition from the outer in to the inner out—a vulnerability that is threatening to most if not all human collectives and persons.

The heart of the human condition is well-conditioned in its prevailing rhythms for its pulse to evade detection and measurement. Aside from its precipitating event(s), heartache is a notable example that is readily blocked, with the hypertension of anxiety and fear easily disguised; this evasive process then distorts the heart’s condition. The human condition’s heart always spikes when engaged in advocating-arguable and building-blocking dynamics, and is intensified by their optimism-pessimism symbiosis. This heart activity commonly causes fibrillation that goes undetected in the outer-in mode. The pulse of this activity is immersed in a competitive system that blocks the heart and builds relational walls in a comparative process. The majority of persons bear the weight of this human condition. The resulting inequity builds inequality to reinforce and sustain their human condition.

This heartbeat, however, is able to be detected and measured when examined beneath its outer-in mode and monitored beyond its default mode. The nature of this heart then emerges to learn its condition from inner out. Examining deeper and monitoring further are essential to bypass the human condition’s heart evasiveness—analogous to bypass surgery. But, an important lesson to learn about this discerning process is that mere observation is insufficient to detect the heart’s condition, no matter the extent of observing. Accordingly, it teaches that examining deeper and monitoring further are of necessity and irreplaceable, in order to discover the human heart’s true condition by bypassing the bias of its false readings in a pretentious life that pervade human contexts to evade even those observing. The above examples keep teaching this inconvenient truth.

Understanding the various walls that persons as well as collectives build to block off the heart of their human condition will not only expose the roots of their condition but also reveal the heart of their humanity. This humanity has eluded much of human life from the heart of its integrity constituted from inner out. As long as the default mode defines the primary human identity and determines its function, the heart of humanity will remain elusive and its integrity will continue to lack wholeness. That is the inescapable consequence for this heart condition when its teaching is misinterpreted or misinformed.

The basic understanding of humanity’s heart emerges from how it has evolved. The roots of humanity were essentially invaded by the weeds of the human condition. The subtlety of these weeds choked humanity from outer in, thereby reducing humanity’s fundamental anthropology down to the secondary parts of (1) what a person does and accomplishes, and (2) what a person has in resources and achievements—the sum of which never adds up to wholeness, regardless of its quantity. It is critical to understand this reduction process.

This invasive reduction not only transposed the heart of humanity from inner out to outer in. As reductionism pervaded humanity, the human person was fragmented into one’s secondary parts, the outer-in nature of which blocked being or becoming whole. For example, when human identity revolves on race/ethnicity, class, gender, ableness and other sociocultural distinctions, this limits, constrains or prevents persons from knowing their full humanity. Directly correlated to such identity is the lack of depth in human function, which then is capable of building a quantitative human life but unable to go deeper to meet the requirement for building the quality of human life. Reductionism has no such building permits, because it lacks qualitative sensitivity and can only function, at best, in some pretentious way to simulate having it.

Furthermore, the innate nature of reductionism is counter-relational, therefore its counter-relational workings fragment human relationships by building walls and breaking down their connections. As commonly experienced, this relational condition evades those lacking relational awareness. This lack becomes humanity’s default mode that gets naturalized in surrounding contexts, cultures and families. This then builds new normals, whose reductionist nature evades assessment at the heart level. The results are witnessed in existential situations within collectives and among persons.

Currently, the work force in some contexts is returning to the office after working from home since the COVID pandemic. But employers are finding that those employees need to be resocialized for more respectful and peaceful interactions at the office. Also, in Japan persons wearing masks during the pandemic have to learn to put on a smile again after removing the mask. What does this teach you about the nature of these persons? No doubt you surely have examples in your surrounding context that you can learn from.

Once reductionism controls the roots of humanity, this condition is irremediable. Humanity’s collectives and persons become entrenched with entangled roots in a reduced, fragmented and broken life, which is resistant to attempts to turn it around. Humanity’s heart is rendered to life-support in an inescapable condition. The only recourse humanity has is to find a redeeming source that will free its roots in order to raise up a new heart. In contrast to reforms, this involves the transformation analogous to a heart transplant. Here again, the nothing-less-and-no-substitutes paradigm emerges to prevail by its irreplaceable nature over the persistent nature of the anything-less-and-any-substitutes paradigm—the paradigm which reductionism tenaciously conducts at the heart of the human condition to capture the heart of humanity.

Hearts struggling for peace is a prevailing condition at all levels of human life. Yet, in the never-ending search for peace, the heart is a lonely hunter, wandering through an optimistic-pessimistic landscape with the hope of fulfilling an insatiable hunger. The unexamined heart may feel at times OK, dissettled, or that something is missing. But its condition remains a mystery until what underlies such feelings is understood. Many retreat from searching further and deeper, in spite of their feelings recurring. Others may pursue the matter further but don’t go deeper. What do we need to learn from all this?

In many human contexts the search for peace has become a lost cause. This has not stopped some from striving for peace regardless of situations and circumstances. On the one hand, a waning and fading search is a realistic conclusion when peace is not attained. The hope for peace becomes unrealistic to sustain in such a condition. On the other hand, striving when peace is not achieved is an arguable optimism that may not be realistic. In such a condition peace becomes a false hope. What is essential to understand in these dynamics is twofold:

Those searching for peace generally do not have in mind what they specifically search for. They just want their current condition to stop or at least change in some positive way, though that change is not defined to fulfill the peace they need. In other words, their search is ambiguous and becomes misguided, which leads them on a path with tenuous hope or to a dead-end. Searching prevails in the heart of humanity, because peace is a pervasive need to neutralize the negative presence of their human condition. As long as its presence remains, the search for peace will be in the heart of humanity.

Those striving for peace differ from their counterparts in a key distinction. In contrast to searchers not being able to define the object of their search, strivers have specific things in mind that assumes to know the peace they pursue. Peace movements evolve on this assumption, and their activists strive for achieving this goal of peace. For example, peace activists in the 1960s movement were tenacious in ending the war in Vietnam. Their peace, however, was variable, thus leaving the door open to promote violence in order to end violence. Others advocating for human rights strive for peace integrated with justice—“No justice, no peace”—and appear to be motivated by a moral imperative that is also variable. Whether explicit or implicit in their assumption for knowing peace, those striving for peace have a specific condition in mind that brings peace.

Aside from this distinction, however, strivers and searchers have an important characteristic in common: What each desires and wants for peace is not the peace that they both need at the heart level. The ambiguity of searchers and the variableness of strivers teach us about their lack of understanding integrally what peace really means and the nature of its roots for humanity.

There are those who assume to have clarity about peace by going below the surface with the use of meditative techniques. Gaining peace for them is a more spiritual process for the serenity they seek, but who are engaged with a limited mental scope that doesn’t get to the heart level. Thus, this mentality is always searching for more peace. This search overlaps with striving in what is an invariable basis for peace.

In much of human history, the basis of peace is rooted in the classical Greek perspective. This view defined peace as the opposite of war, thus basically the absence of conflict, unrest, tension, and related conditions. This absence is foundational for the culture of peace, whose traditions evolve in cycles. Even though human collectives and persons need such peace, it is insufficient to encompass the heart of their humanity. The absence of these conditions and feelings is incomplete for the peace humanity needs.

Turning from a classical Greek view, the complete definition of peace is found in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew shalom is used in different ways and times to connote peace, similar to the two-finger peace sign. What is essential for peace, however, is what shalom denotes:

well-being having both an individual dimension and a collective dimension. This well-being constitutes the condition of being complete and thus to be whole. This wholeness encompasses the heart of humanity in all aspects of daily life. Therefore, shalom penetrates deeply beyond the mere absence of negative activity to stipulate integrally what is necessary to be present for peace and what belongs to peace only can be nothing less and no substitutes.

Wholeness cannot be reduced in any way or time and still be whole. The prevailing paradigm of anything less and any substitutes can never bring peace as wholeness; at most, it only brings the absence of something, which does not preclude the presence of the human condition. The lesson needing to be learned from all this human activity is that the heart is at peace when, and only when, its condition is made whole by the well-being of wholeness.

Peace remains ambiguous and variable with anything less and any substitutes, and the hearts of its searchers and strivers remain lonely hunters, even in the company of other hunters. This challenges any peace supposedly being built in its elusive image, and exposes the evasive blocking subtly shaping such peace. Accordingly, we can learn the imagination of peace that human collectives and persons use in their advocating and building, which all converge to form their peace culture.

Searchers and strivers of peace have imaginations about what they desire or want. That is, they form mental images in their minds about the peace that is not an existential reality in their life. What they imagine is informative for both what eludes their daily life and what they expect from the presence of peace. Consider your own imagination of peace in order to bring that image to the forefront of your mind.

Of course, some lose their imagination of peace as they fall into despair, and thus can only imagine the worst. Others’ imagination becomes influential for strivers and a source of optimism, if not hope, in a time of trials and tribulations. One such imagination was composed by John Lennon (the former Beatle), who released the song “Imagine” in 1971. The song has been a popular image of peace for many strivers. What does Lennon’s imagination teach you about this image of peace that has become the basis for peace in a large portion of the human population:

Lennon had an altruistic imagination that projected images of nirvana. His karma touches nerves in the brain that trigger the hope of many. What is the basis for his imagination of peace? As musically creative as Lennon was, his imagination of peace was limited to imagining a sweeping list of “no” this and that. His basis for peace is simply the absence of all those barriers to peace. What he assumes in this image is threefold: (1) this absence will negate the presence of the human condition, and thus (2) this absence will add up to a new condition for the whole of humanity, which therefore (3) will reconcile all “as one.” In spite of such a pipedream, Lennon knew that “I’m not the only one” with this imagination of peace, thereby hoping their numbers will add up to peace.

The existential reality of human life is a wake-up call to such imaginations of peace. Namely, reconciliation shakes the imagination at its core. Challenging images of becoming, living and being as one, reconciliation is the intentionally vulnerable relational work that penetrates to the heart level for persons, in order to (1) deconstruct the counter-relational barriers created by the human condition, so that (2) hearts can come together in relational connections bonded from inner out—not in shallow associations from outer in composed by the absence of secondary issues (even if important). For this relational outcome to become and be a relational reality, not a mere image, there is a critical process that must, by the nature of reconciliation, be engaged. Reconciliation is not only building relationships but it necessitates the transforming (not reforming) of relationship.

Transformation only happens at the heart level when, first, the old composed from the outer in is put to death—which includes deconstructing the counter-relational barriers. This will result in not simply the absence of the old, as observed in a culture of peace. When the old truly dies, this condition opens the door for the new to emerge as the existential reality that transforms persons’ hearts, so that their relationships can be reconciled in relational connections bonded from inner out—not merely cycling back and forth, up and down from outer in.

This transformation is the inconvenient truth for the peace needed that restores humanity to wholeness and raises up human collectives and persons in this new condition. Without this transforming change, humanity and its collectives and persons continue to evolved in the human condition—a condition whose presence is never negated by the mere absence of its symptoms. Therefore, their wholeness cannot be constituted by reformed images of “becoming…living…being one.” Peace activists notably must learn by necessity that reconciliation invariably is the radical relational work of peace essential to change the roots of the human condition; and that anything less and any substitutes will not have the radical depth to address these roots, much less change them, even if inclusive of the grassroots.

The hope of advocates and builders is arguable ongoingly. The blocking that results from their efforts, in spite of good intentions, renders their optimism a false hope. This lesson persists in teaching emphatically that the human condition always underlies the scope of human life; and that its negative presence should not be surprising even in the absence of negative situations and circumstances. The genius of reductionism is its subtle form of pretension to mask what indeed exists above and below the surface. The consequences are collateral in every dimension of human life, which keep masquerading in a conflating process.

[1] For further discussion about this, see Vinoth Ramachandra in Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008).

[2] “Non Sequitur” by Wiley, Los Angeles Times, 11/12/23.