42. About you: Chapter - Below the spiritual minimum (16)

 

The opposite of the normal, true men is the abnormal, lying one, who is not guided by the One spirit, but by some belief in an ideology or an idea, that is, a fixed idea, which could be called a spiritual minimum. When the life of a society depends on the mass person with a spiritual minimum, such societies easily fall apart. This is what we are witnessing today. The spiritual minimum is rationalism and its offspring, the technology, which quickly brought to us the mechanization of life. We have reached the point where almost everything works with the push of a button—the microwave, the TV set, the car, or the mobile phone. It could be said that the people of our virtual age have reached Captain Nemo’s level, because in their home, by button pressing the heating turns on, the window darkens, the car in the garage starts, and the gate opens. The important is knowing which button does what. If we press the wrong button, the dishwasher won’t start; instead, the car will drive out of the garage. 

Life is simplified to button-pressing, to the point where someone who cannot press the right button is not even alive. Button pressing has become a deadly serious task, especially if that button triggers the launch of a bomb. Only needs to get the code or password, and boom. If our fifteen-year-old child is enchanted by button-pressing, it can be forgiven; they may grow out of it. But if adults, who consider themselves mature, believe in the omnipotence of button-pressing and are able to draw conclusions about the real world based on the virtual world, that is madness. If an entire society does this, it is collective madness. A person suffering from madness is limited, irrational, and unpredictable, with no understanding of the values and expectations of the One and Only. They only care about which button to press. The situation of an adult man or woman living below this intellectual minimum is nearly hopeless because, due to their irresponsibility, they have no idea what they are doing. Some say they are the "stuffed people," but we say that everyone has the opportunity to change the direction and return to the One. 

Similarly, the mediocre person lives below the intellectual minimum, called Homo faber, or the person who does things, in other words, the acting person. Hebrew tradition holds that creation is only perfect when it passes through four stages. The first stage is the sphere of potentials, as possibility and thought. The second is the virtual world, which is the first step toward realization. Next comes the shaping of the thing, and finally, the physical completion of the work. The acting person acts only in this final, fourth stage. They only deal with what can be made with the hands. Today, most inventions are mass-produced products that lack spiritual creation, the striving for perfection. Thus, machines and technology are imperfect/unfulfilled creations. The machine is not art, because if it were, it would be one. The machine is not rhythm, but beat, always the same, like the execution of orders in the military or mass production. It is not made to last forever but to serve comfort for a time and then wear out, so it can be thrown away. The world has become disposable, where everything can be replaced, used, and discarded. This is a system society that produces waste and garbage. 

The machine, the technology has become the symbol of rational function, the human ability below the intellectual minimum, and imperfection. With the accelerated time, we have accelerated too, forgetting that the One and Only created us to be time travelers, artists, creators, and saviors, those who live in rhythm, not in beat. The machine is our foolish creation, our comfort servant, which should serve us. In reality, the problem is not with the machine but with those who use it. Today, the machine-controlled person dominates, for example, those with computers and mobile phones, where for sixteen out of twenty-four hours a day, they can press buttons.

The machine operator, is the machine-servant, the mechanical person. Yet the machine is outside of time, while we live within the created time. The machine has no metaphysics, but we do, for we are creatures blessed with a soul. The machine and technology do not know decay, death, conscience, love, or the sacredness created by the One, which is meant to serve life. Will there come a time when the man sunk in matter will pray to the machine instead to the One? This will be the age of the minimum of the intellectual minimum. Today, we are only at the point where we like technology because it is obedient, it does not talk back, it does not need time off or to pay taxes, and it is always predictable. There is no need to make sacrifices for it, and last but not least, because through it, the human feels at home on earth.