CATHOLOGIC - A Cure for the Plague of the West Prologue and I chapter Jan Moniak

author: Jan Moniak translated by Copilot

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This book is a misunderstanding.
More precisely: it was born out of a misunderstanding.

On one of the blogging platforms, I asked for help. The help I sought was intended to involve my interlocutors — in their homes and families — in a simple concept of mystical living: turning everyday actions into signs of faith, through home altars, the arrangement of living spaces, and small rituals. Without pretending to be priests, without pomp, without grandiose words.

During our conversations, some suggested that I write a book about this. And here the misunderstanding arose: good people — likely because of my clumsiness with writing — understood that I was asking for help publishing a book, rather than help with the project itself. They even booked a printing date.

The problem was that I had nothing suitable for printing. I tried to refuse, but it was too late. I ended up piecing together blog posts with my raw notes. And in the end — by mistake — I sent the uncorrected, raw version rather than the revised one. In this way, someone became the author of the book who should not have been at the time.

I am grateful to all the kind people who — hidden behind pseudonyms — contributed to the creation of this book through their comments and conversations: Elfii, Miriam of Magdala, MariaHelena, Zawilec, Włóczęga, Konrad Tomasz, Leśny Ludek, and to Dorota and Przemek, who financed the printing of the first edition.

Now, to ensure that their efforts were not in vain, I feel compelled to make this book truly readable. The following text is the result of these — never-ending — attempts.

CATHOLOGIC

A Cure for the Plague of the West

I ask the Esteemed Reader for understanding regarding the instability of my execution (including linguistic execution), which remains the author’s principal flaw. Contrary to appearances, I am working on it.

**Introduction

I am enTANGled (enBONDed). Everything is caught in a web. The most important strands of that web are signs. Through them we think — inevitably — and through them we conquer reality. This book is about them: about signs and their networks. About the methods by which power is gained over the minds of individuals and societies by tearing some networks apart and binding them into the captivity of new ones.

There is no point in hiding these entanglements behind masks of “neutrality,” “universality,” or “secularity.” If we pretend they do not exist, we fail to notice when they enslave us. But if we know where they are, we can choose them — or reject them — more freely.

And if someone starts itching at the thought that I am about to confess my own entanglements, let them scratch. Preferably their head. And consider whether they want to keep reading. For no matter how much one denies or strains, the fact remains that being an atheist, an Orthodox Christian, a liberal, a pacifist, a Catholic, a highlander, an animist, a plumber, a Muslim, a Masurian, a blacksmith, or a “charismatic” will influence what one notices and what one ignores, what one describes favorably (even if indirectly), and what one does not — and even what one accepts as fact.

So beware when someone tells you they are neutral. Believing them makes you defenseless against the subtle and hidden worldview suggestions that enslave. You may not even notice when you adopt their worldview without resistance, simply because they refuse to name it openly — and by pointing to the entanglements and enslavements of others, they divert attention from their own (of which they are usually unaware). Like a thief-architect who shouts the loudest: “Catch the thief!” — projecting his own faults onto others.

Some will say this is “weak,” that by revealing my convictions at the very start I am shooting myself in the foot. Frankly, I don’t care. I do not want to be like those who pretend to conduct objective water-quality research only to sell you their own filter at a “promotional” price. I am not clever enough to avoid getting lost in that game. That is why I begin with “hard‑Catholic” declarations.

I will defend both elites and the common folk, faith and reason, economic freedom and the self‑sufficiency of local communities, the Tradition of the Church and its members — protecting them from the traps of false alternatives and from throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Having received such a “warning,” you will be able to distinguish facts from value judgments and assess the rationality of the arguments that follow.

Are you in?

Then I shall argue that I could not think at all were it not for:

Someone who conceived everything — including me — in the image of His own Thoughts;
that the myths, sacrifices, and rituals of most cultures throughout history express desires that find their fulfillment in the Crucified and Risen Christ;
that change (for example, in the form of the Holy Mass) is neither a value nor a necessity, and what is changed is not necessarily better than what is old;
that if someone else has changed something, we too may change their change — even back to the “old”;
that the old may be fresher and truer than the new;
that there is no such thing as a single “modern human”;
that nothing exists by itself, independently, for things are themselves only in relation to “the rest of the world.”

And that:

a religion which does not involve itself in everything (including politics) would not be a religion;
religious conflict is unavoidable, because the very existence of different confessions (including “secular” ones) arises from that conflict;
we too easily trust distrust, believe suspicions, accusations, and innovations in complex matters even when we cannot verify them;
we accept without resistance false statements and false alternatives forged by our opponents, merely reversing their evaluations — and thus agreement can become the cause of conflict;
concrete customs (clothing, music, entertainment) can be good, and therefore also bad.

And finally, I state that one can — and must — take matters into one’s own hands. How? If you endure to the end, you will find out ;-)

I will not dazzle the Esteemed Reader with flashy terminology, dates, or dramatic accusations (of harming the climate, endangering Grandma’s health with a bare face and lack of injections, spreading Putin’s narrative, cowardice, or Banderism), nor with names or surprising data. In the informational noise of our age, there is so much of this that none of us can verify it. Hence the spread of an unreflective cult of information — and mindless accusations, of yielding to emotional blackmail by tossing into a suspicious sack (Putinism, fascism, Banderism, treason, “crankery”) all those who, together with us, refuse to believe blindly in accusations or in terrorizing people with innovations imposed on those who remain attached to tested, traditional norms — the ones they inherited and which allow them to communicate, act coherently, and orient themselves within society, within its system of signs and values.

Nor will I peddle the illusion that I will present only objective, worldview‑neutral facts supposedly acceptable to people of all convictions. Worldviews differ precisely because their adherents recognize different things as objective facts. Each side may claim that its explanations are proofs, while the polemicist insists they are not. One group will accuse the other of theorizing and lacking evidence. What follows from this impasse?

We need asceticism — in our desire for information, in accusing our neighbors, and in changing norms. We need fidelity to principles and attention to what truly belongs to us, what lies within the sphere of our responsibilities and possibilities.

The universality of the longing for coherence is a result of reason, which belongs to everyone who thinks. Thought necessarily appears as an act of unifying — of applying the same, universal principles to the whole of reality. This is one of the FACTS anyone can verify. It requires no erudition, no great learning, no distant travels. These structures transcend particular histories; they are suspended above time, in eternity. In this little book I will follow them to uncover their intriguingly ordinary consequences.

The human mind is therefore insufficient on its own and — like us — finite. Without a certain humble, often neglected ally, it falters on the battlefield of knowledge. Something in a given situation, culture, historical moment, or set of current events always surpasses it. What once (or elsewhere) seemed wise may today (or here) seem foolish. What once appeared indivisible now turns out to consist of smaller parts.

What yesterday was declared “proven” is today overturned by “new data.” What yesterday was a consensus, accepted even by opposing sides, today proves to be an error that caused conflict. Like amalgam fillings once placed in every child’s teeth, now banned as harmful.

The one who seemed obviously guilty, sentenced to life or death, is today — after eighteen years of destructive or ultimate punishment — declared innocent (because of circumstances previously unknown, or known but ignored by specialists). Declared innocent too late. No human being will compensate him for this.

I want to confront this weakness according to logic, the foundation of all thinking — not only scientific thinking — and discover which vision of the world (not an arbitrary one, but one containing multiple perspectives) and of humanity’s place within it is True. I will also justify whether, and under what conditions, finding truth is possible, and where we should seek it — and where, in the name of seeking it, we deny higher truths.

To this end, I will challenge several commonly accepted stereotypes and show where and how they hinder our understanding of the desired Truth. In the first chapter, I will search for cognitive necessities. The alternative to false stereotypes will be the indication of those that are flawless — that is, those flowing consistently from these necessities.

Before describing the way we come to know reality, I want to point out that upbringing shapes cognitive schemas. These schemas may contradict their own foundations through disorder — that is, systemic incoherence — and, being culturally entrenched, may be difficult to detect.

I also proceed from the assumption that… everyone has assumptions, and it is dishonest to hide them behind the three ladies called “neutrality,” “objectivity,” and “impartiality.” Equally misleading is the claim that one treats all views (including religions) equally, granting them equal rights and freedom. Such a claim is itself a worldview, arising from certain assumptions — and at the same time it robs supposedly protected religions of their essential claim to be the ultimate criterion of everything.

Given these reservations, I would be dishonest if I did not lay all my cards on the table from the start — if I did not warn that I am a Roman Catholic, and therefore will defend a religious, Catholic worldview just as the relativist, atheist, or agnostic defends the relativistic, atheistic, or agnostic one. They call the defense of their convictions freedom of speech, impartiality, and neutrality — but when I defend mine, they claim I am biased and imposing. Is that consistent?

The conclusions about human cognition that will hatch from the arguments to come may at first seem pessimistic, or even solipsistic. Yet once they shed their shell, it will become clear that from the premises of those very schools of thought one can — and indeed must — draw conclusions opposite to those formulated so far. One of them will be the recognition that the “mysterious” and irreplaceable ally of reason is faith. Their opposition is one great misunderstanding.

Further on, we shall see that it makes no sense to question the universality of the principles of thought or their correspondence to reality, because the very act of questioning them already presupposes their use.

Following these facts, we will discover why it is rational to believe in the existence of a Single, Primordial, Personal Consciousness, whose Impression brings into being our secondary, non‑creative consciousnesses, and whose subjectivity gives rise to objective reality. Along the way, we will challenge immaterialism, agnostic epistemic pessimism, constructivism (though drawing richly on its premises), and the solipsistic and postmodern deification of one’s own subjectivity — all on the basis of the very assumptions of those schools of thought.

Strangely enough, I share (read this sentence to the end and do not take it out of context) the reasoning of “extreme relativists,” evolutionists, post- and modernists, and those who deny the existence of a single truth — but only up to a certain point. When their reasoning is carried out consistently, it leads me to the conclusions of the “naive realists.” And these latter — including myself — often, despite making errors in reasoning, arrive at correct conclusions.

This paradox reflects the difference between scientistic‑modernist thinking and traditional thinking. The former is based on observations of mechanisms — necessarily incomplete — and on answering the question, “how does it work?”, whereas the latter examines the final effect and asks, “does it work?” The latter proves more rational.

Reflection on thought and its consequences — undertaken by Berkeley and Descartes, though, as many argue, carried in the wrong direction — helps the mind infected by contemporary “philosophy” assimilate the remedy prescribed long ago by the “Angelic Doctor.” Drawing from Aristotle, he showed that even from the swamps of contemporary errors it is worth salvaging what is true. Falsehood and evil are never self-sufficient: they necessarily consist of good and true elements, merely rearranged.

I will allow criticism when it is required for the defense of those unjustly criticized or harmed, or of matters precious to them. It is criticism of unjust criticism — a counter to the perverse accusation of “being critical” directed at those who defend themselves, their sacred things, and inherited, traditional norms. Hence it is always worth asking: Who started it?

For example, the defenders of the Healing Triad — the Traditional Mass, popular piety, and the so-called “Enthronement” — were first to be attacked, contrary to the common opinions spread by their persecutors, who loudly proclaim that their victims are the persecutors, having first gagged them and pressed their faces into the ground.

In the second chapter, we will see that the rejection of folk culture — often in its own name — during the Age of Reason and Enlightenment as “superstitious” was simultaneously a rejection of the logical Truth mentioned above: the Truth about the Divine source of the universe and the principles of its understanding. We will learn how traditional culture sought to live according to these principles, and why abandoning it is a rejection of the foundations of religiosity, and thus a rejection of reason.

We will analyze several general principles of this cultural framework — now discarded — and attempt to justify that certain modern cultural forms are incompatible with religiosity; or if not with various “religiosities,” then with their coherent fulfillment: Catholicism, which realizes desires that in other religions remained unfulfilled.

In the context of “folk culture” (not meaning colorful patterns on stage or in open‑air museums), we will refer to the now‑controversial idea of the Enthronement of Christ. This attempt — entangled in semiotic confusion not caused by its supporters — seeks to restore to natural religion the position it held in folk cultures, a position lost when those cultures were rejected.

For on the ruins of “rituality” and “folk piety,” mistakenly deemed “empty” or “magical,” a way of life was constructed — using bricks salvaged from those ruins — into which a certain tendency, rampant in the Church (though not being the Church), seeks to fit Catholic religion. This tendency, striving for “progress” and similar stereotypes refuted in chapter three, has shaped a lifestyle that I will examine in chapter four. There I will point to the gradual disintegration of our civilization through the introduction — by the method of the slowly heated frog — of new cultural forms that justify a change in worldview.

The basis for these changes was anti‑formalism and anti‑traditionalism, injected into people’s minds through beautiful slogans (“what matters most is what’s in the heart”). This prepared the ground for the gradual introduction of forms essentially contrary to the Church’s teaching. I will also show that a Catholicism aligned with these ways of life and their anti‑formalist justification — following the principle of modern mass culture — ceases to be not only Catholicism, but even religion.

The only rational solution, then, is to subordinate culture — the meaningful pattern of daily life — to God. This is, in a sense, rebuilding a fallen civilization from the ground up, on a Catholic foundation — a task that cannot begin from the roof. One must begin from the earth, from the nature given to us by God, from the people who produce the basic goods, and from their ordinary, necessary affairs.

The task of the elite is to set the principles before building begins, and to shape the people. The problem is that the degeneration of the “elites” has left the principles of our civilization preserved — fragmentarily and often unreflectively, but still best — in the unconscious practice of the common folk. Conscious actions of the folk tend to be “more lordly than the lords, more intellectual than the intellectuals.”

Proposals for transforming culture will be presented in chapter five, which serves as an active, positive conclusion — one that does not stop at criticism but offers an alternative. The path to healing transformation is the upbringing of new generations through good and coherent example, through concrete external forms — as in folk cultures — in which people attempted to recreate the structure of the Divine Cosmos, so that those we wish to educate might begin to think according to it.

Everything that the “Enlightened West” has mocked —

reverence for what is given from above, for Eternity and tradition,
awareness of the inseparability of different spheres of life and the world, of practice and symbolism,
non‑verbal form and ritual —

Westerners themselves associate with “tribes.” Yet this “tribalness” or folk‑ness, properly understood, turns out to be closer to logic and to Catholic teaching, and as such constitutes a kind of remedy for the disease of supposedly “enlightened” Europe — a disease spread by the upper classes, the “elites,” immersed to the ears in a sick, negative kind of tribalism.

That, in brief, is the outline.

A Futile Fight Against Schemas. Without Imposition, There Is No Education.

Before we come into the world — already then — we begin learning how to see and judge the reality around us. Can one learn such a thing? One can, because the signals we have already received from our environment determine how we will perceive and assess future ones. Past experiences become the filter and instrument for those yet to come.

Before we ever saw our uncle, we saw our mother. At first, the uncle was strange — somewhat like our mother, yet entirely different. A bit more like our father than our mother, yet still different…

Knowledge cannot arise without cognitive necessities — the starting points, the irreducible elements of thought and the actions based on it. These necessities arrange themselves into patterns that allow us to move forward in understanding. And these patterns are secondary, constructed and transmitted through upbringing.

What, then, is our model and our goal? In relation to which impressions do we perceive, name, and evaluate?

We are raised by our environment. Everything that meets us, touches us, frustrates us, or fails to surprise us. Everything we take as a model — and everything we would never want to imitate. Also everything we fail to notice.

The experiences of early childhood and youth imprint themselves most strongly on the pages of our lives. It is then that the basic, earliest of the secondary patterns of behavior, thought, perception, and evaluation are formed. These become the templates we apply to future experiences. Through them we will absorb future impressions; through them we will draw the streams of experiences yet to come.

What has been absorbed becomes part of the person; it grows into identity and co-shapes it. The first years, when the seedlings of human existence grow, are decisive for the shape and condition of the future tree. That is why every good gardener cares for such sprouts — hardly distinguishable from ordinary grass — which can be broken or permanently damaged by a mere breeze or a rabbit seeking survival. He shields the growing plant from harmful influences. He protects it from scandal — from being led into wrongdoing.

Perhaps this is why traditional societies cared so deeply about providing a good example for children and youth, and about shielding them from patterns considered harmful. Those among them whose existence rested on the Order of Christ may have remembered the Savior’s words: it is better to tie a millstone around one’s neck and be cast into the sea than to scandalize — to be the cause of sin for — one of the little ones.

Although we are tainted by original sin, we must ensure that further evils do not become part of us. Perhaps it is precisely because so many of these evils lie embedded in our identity that Christ demands we “deny ourselves,” “put off the old man,” “be born anew,” “pluck out the eye,” or “cut off the hand and cast it away” if they are the cause of our sin.

(2010)

The anthropological principle of indeterminacy arises from the simple observation that people behave differently than they do in everyday life when someone is visiting them — and even more so when the visitor wishes to study their everyday behavior. The very act of measurement distorts the measurement, making the goal impossible to achieve.

Note: This is intended as a semiotic analogy to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics: observing or measuring a system inevitably changes it. Here, it emphasizes how human behavior and cognition are shaped by context and observation.

Discipline

“Always strive to incline
not toward what is easier, but toward what is harder;
not toward what is more pleasant, but toward what is unpleasant;
not toward what is more flavorful, but toward what is tasteless;
not toward what brings rest, but toward what requires effort.”
— St. John of the Cross

In every sphere of life — including the building of great civilizational structures — the ability to restrain one’s desires, that is, discipline, is indispensable. Its loosening leads to the loss of athletic form, emotional balance, the collapse of states and civilizations, the disintegration of reason, economics, and even the damnation of souls.

To cultivate discipline, one must distinguish will from inclination — and from need. They may overlap, but identifying them fully is, in a sense, an act of rebellion against the fleeting impulses that threaten rational action.

The marketing mechanism of “creating needs” works by appealing to our lowest instincts, stoking desire, shifting the boundaries of satisfaction, and generating unnecessary needs. Detached from reality, glued to screens and headphones, people consume a false image of the world. Desire becomes idealized and impossible to satisfy. If impossible, the consumer becomes dependent on the one who stokes that desire, mistaking the provocateur for the fulfiller. The result: inflated expectations, frustrations, and lifelong disillusionment.

In this, we see the alignment of religious and modern scientific wisdom. Self-denial recommended by Our Lord and by St. John of the Cross now finds echoes in neurobiology, which studies dopamine, delayed gratification, and addiction. When scientists show how the Internet becomes addictive, why impulses must be managed in advance, and how unplanned indulgence inflates dissatisfaction, one is reminded of traditional ascetic rules: fasting, retreat, modesty in behavior and dress. Ironically, those who once mocked these rules now eagerly absorb modern advice that confirms their effectiveness.

Coaches and self-help gurus today advise morning reflection, meditation, or walks at sunrise to improve psychological stability. These measures closely mirror recommendations of Catholic authorities, such as St. Maximilian Kolbe:

“Morning meditation is the battle plan for the whole day; the examinations of conscience are the review of the battle. The enemy of the soul tries to occupy it with external things, intoxicating it to death. The soul that keeps its goal before its eyes nurtures interior recollection, remaining an instrument in the hands of the Immaculata. Focus on the inner life; ignore everything else, good or bad.”

To achieve results, as Kolbe and hundreds of anonymous spiritual fathers teach, one must establish:

Goals
Orders (structures, systems, arrangements) appropriate to those goals
Hierarchies suited to the kinds and segments of those orders
Methods appropriate to those structures
Functions (tasks) for the given time and place

One must focus on what belongs to us, withdrawing attention from what does not — even if good. For example, refrain from checking emails when working on a specific project, or break complex tasks into manageable segments, just as we divide difficult words into syllables.

This analysis resonates with key media and cultural theories:

1. Baudrillard — Simulacra: Advertising creates a world of signs detached from reality, replacing real needs with idealized, impossible ones. People accept what appears on screens as truth, detaching them from objective reality.

2. Girard — Mimetic Desire / Triangular Advertising: Desire is mediated by models. We do not want objects for themselves but to emulate idealized figures. Each new desire must surpass the previous, creating a spiral that burns out the soul and renders the individual powerless.

3. McLuhan — The Medium is the Message: Technology extends our faculties but simultaneously amputates them. Screens and headphones destroy attention and reasoning, while changes in media transform the grammar of social life. A home altar replaced by a television changes the very structure of spiritual practice, even if the content remains.

Conclusion: Civilization collapses when media and advertising condition us to abandon metanoia — the restraint of desire and pursuit of difficult truths. Instead of cultivating effortful discipline, we consume easy, immediate stimuli. We become the fuel for artificial desires, undermining reason, economy, and the very foundations of civilization.

More… Than I Can Bear: Stimuli, Information, Accusations

We must learn not to follow our desires — whether for sensations, possessions, knowledge, or even accusations for which we have no sufficient reason or which we do not need. Otherwise, these desires will overwhelm us, mislead us, and addict us to ever-increasing “more and more.”

The mass of information on the internet and the rapid-fire messages on social media constitute precisely this “more” that exceeds us, distorts our perception of reality, and gives the false impression that we know better — when in fact we lack the competence to process such data, and therefore process it incorrectly. The result is mass stupidity: the arrogance and pride of entire groups, combined with their fragmentation into informational bubbles and sects that blindly believe accusations. A new Tower of Babel.

Stories throughout history have long warned against this desire for more than what is given to us in life, culture, and tradition. It is this desire — to have, to know, and to accuse more than we were given — that explains the rebellion of angels and humans in various apocrypha, in the revelations of St. Hildegard of Bingen (chapter 4), of Anne Catherine Emmerich (the fall of the angels), and in the ancient, non-canonical Book of Enoch from the 4th century BC.

Then it will always be too little. We will never be happy, and we will end up in a hell of eternal lack, unfulfillment, and despair — the despair of being unable to reach the goal. Through our greed for things and mysteries — for knowledge that would exceed us — we have lost the only true satisfaction: God. And we have made our own desire for “more” into a god. If we do not turn away from this before death, we end up in the eternal state of dissatisfaction.

On earth, we deceived ourselves with “almost” and “soon”… When we reached the things and knowledge we sought, they did not satisfy us, and we desired more. We imagined we could endlessly possess, judge, and invent worlds and identities. In eternity, there is no “later,” and therefore no illusions. We know there will be no more. The state of dissatisfaction will last forever — identical to despair.

The same applies to spiritual life (which is not separate from material life but would be dead unless we made it the source of principles governing our daily actions). We will not advance if we cannot act according to rules: if we have decided that from 6 to 10 we write an article or haul wood from the forest, during that time we do not chat, read Scripture, run livestreams, peel potatoes, carve a bear from a piece of linden found by chance, or record an overdue song.

The saints taught that when we have a designated time for sleep, we sleep — even if we feel a strong urge to pray. Such an urge then becomes a temptation. In addition to organizing time, it is also important to organize space and human relations: assigning proper places for specific activities, wearing appropriate clothing, and so on. We do not read Scripture in the bathroom; we do not place chocolate on the desk during intellectually demanding work or during prayer — the brain will choose the more pleasant chocolate and will not allow us to focus on the harder task. Even if we do not eat it, the struggle with temptation will exhaust us, leaving us either accomplishing nothing or greatly reducing our efficiency.

From a broader perspective, things that are immediately pleasant, advantageous, or fascinating often turn out to be destructive for individuals and societies only over time. This is largely because, as St. Maximilian used to say:

“We do not see the connection between our happiness and the circumstances that trouble us,”

for, as he added:

“Our head has limits and fits into a cap or a hat,”

and Scripture teaches:

“We know only in part.”

The Desire to Pass Judgment — “More Than I Can Bear” in Accusing

We often carry within us a desire to judge: to identify a culprit, to explain some problem. We take shortcuts, filling in the unknown with our intuitions — most often accusatory ones — because these cut through the thicket of possibilities most effectively, stirring strong emotions.

We become convinced of the factuality of our intuition: that behind the part of the image obscured by stripes, there must be what we imagine. Yet in reality, there may be many objects we never even considered: lamps hanging on the wall, columns placed exactly where the stripes obscure the view.

We often speak of “connecting the dots.” We accuse others of stupidity because they refuse to connect three dots into a triangle as we do. Meanwhile, it may turn out that behind the dots we see are others, hidden from our view, forming a three-dimensional object. There may also be points outside our field of vision. Yet we want to reduce the entire complex situation to a triangle — or even to a figure with a thousand sides. The level of complexity does not eliminate the possibility of a gross error. We declare as fact an image so distorted because we succumbed to the desire to issue a final verdict, ignoring the limitations of our little heads.

I believe that most of the problems discussed in this book share a common denominator: accusations based on conjecture. Accusations arise against folk faith, against a particular priest, against “traditionalists,” against the “Conciliar Church,” against politicians, against journalists. Accusations of “modernism,” of “crimes,” accusations of “Banderism” based on a surname, made by a man accused of mole-like subversion because of his surname; accusations of “Russian” or “Atlanticist” ideology based on narrative similarities.

Even wicked people can sometimes proclaim mostly correct things — and this may discredit them accidentally or deliberately. Deliberately, if their enemies associate certain accurate diagnoses with them, they reject the diagnoses and thereby harm themselves.

It often turned out that those who had been wronged were themselves wronging others in the same way they had been harmed — for example, through insinuations or accusations made without hearing the accused’s side. Those accused of “Russian-sockism,” who rightly pointed out insinuations, themselves insinuated Banderist connections based on surnames.

In many of these situations — both mentioned and unmentioned — the same defensive pattern repeats itself:

🔹 Blind Accusers Accuse Others of Blind [Defense]

Some people blackmail and provoke others with emotionally humiliating insinuations: if you do not blindly repeat our accusations, then you are blindly infatuated with the one you defend.

They fail to notice that they themselves demand blind faith in their own accusations, as if they were oracles. They hunt for sectarianism, yet fall into its worst form: negative sectarianism. They seek tribalism in the positive attachment to one’s group, yet ignore their own far worse negative tribalism, which marks a group — or even the claims voiced by that group — as inherently evil.

In my own experience, they regularly targeted a person with whom I was in conflict. Yet the matter was, for example, being clarified within a certain circle, and I did not wish to drag it outside that circle. Precisely because of this conflict, I tried not to throw the baby out with the bathwater — not to engage in emotionally driven, blind criticism of everything that person did or said. I believed one must defend against false accusations, so as not to drown out accurate ones, and not to entrench real errors by stirring a sense of injustice through false charges.

Interestingly, I often found myself in conflict with people who were well-disposed toward me, even flattering — but who, while gracious to me, were harsh toward others, criticizing or belittling them in my presence without sufficient reason.

For an entire year, I went from the frying pan into the fire — from one accusation to another, both privately and in activist or social conflicts. I tried to reconcile groups and individuals, urging both sides to restrain their not-necessarily-evil suspicions, and I experienced — vividly and painfully — the repetitiveness of these patterns.

Had I not endured such a harsh avalanche of analogous cases, I would never have identified their common denominator. I myself would have continued repeating them — for I too fell into this at times, and I apologize to those I accused. I could neither plan nor foresee that such a sequence of events would befall me.

I wondered whether to include a detailed analysis here. For now, I have removed it (after briefly including it), because I am unsure how to separate information that must be revealed from what should remain hidden for the sake of the wronged. The way I originally described it is so tangled that it may appear meaningless to outsiders — a jumble of confused fragments — and may even mislead someone.

🔹 He Must Suspect, or Else He Will Suffocate

One explanation for various disputes — rejected stubbornly because it is the most accurate — is the habit of imagining evil in one’s neighbor without sufficient reason.

The sharper ones respond that they must do this to protect themselves from unprovable evil. Their error will be demonstrated later in the book.

🔹 Blind Trust in Accusatory Messages

Often, two hostile sides, each holding accusations against the other, hastily gain a sense of certainty based on the messages they happen to encounter — whether by chance or through intellectual effort.

A message can be a talk, record, or video. It is a mediated representation of a fact and is prone to error. Even our sensory perception of reality is a message — but a necessary one, which we cannot discard when assessing a situation: its positives and its dangers.

Both sides may have read much and are equally certain — yet they proclaim radically opposing views. I do not criticize certainty itself, but the certainty regarding non‑necessary accusatory interpretations, when alternative explanations exist that would undermine them. These alternatives are ignored, dismissed, or mocked. And with full conviction, accusations are made.

People confuse narratives, interpretations, and their own impressions of reality with reality itself. This error is equally probable whether someone is illiterate or has read a million books. Every sentence of a story heard, book read, or film watched offers countless opportunities for such confusion.

The More Accurate, the Less Convincing

A correct diagnosis often becomes the generator of the most intelligently defended logical errors.

The cause lies in the limitation of our mind mentioned earlier — the limitation that prevents us from seeing connections. The solutions to the most common problems are often rejected, mocked, or ignored precisely because these problems are so significant: people consider their causes beneficial and are accustomed to them. Fixing them would be painful, so they repress the fact that these causes are faulty.

All the more so if the causes are intelligent. In that case, people justify the supposed goodness of their harmful impressions and habits even more skillfully. They see that a problem exists but do not allow themselves to consider that its cause lies in something comfortable — something whose rejection would shatter their worldview and bodily‑mental comfort.

Even geniuses, when confronted with the root cause, often fall into logical errors, attack straw men, distort the message, or attack the messenger with socially humiliating insinuations. A psychophysical self‑protection mechanism, operating at the emotional level, removes from their minds — through repression and distortion — even the simplest and most accurate diagnosis. This is rarely deliberate or conscious.

Ironically, intelligence alone can distance a person from the truth — unless it is preceded by humility and asceticism. These are the essence of wisdom.

Arguments are therefore less effective the closer we approach the heart of a problem. The nearer we get to its essence, the more painful recognition becomes. Unconscious defense mechanisms activate more strongly, leading to sophisticated rationalizations of error. The more developed the intellect, the more persuasive the person — and the more influence they gain, sometimes even democratically.

This explains why the greatest errors are durable. Since the time of Socrates — or of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who in Matthew 13, in the parable of the seed that falls and does not always bear fruit, quoted Isaiah:

“You will indeed hear, but never understand;
you will indeed see, but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes,
lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart,
and turn, and I would heal them.”

When reading the chapter The Power of the Word, more than 200 pages later, reflect on why Jesus did not write any book (that we know of). Consider what this teaches — a small exercise for the willing.

A Theory Worth Nothing Without Examples?

One often hears the saying: “A theory is worth nothing without examples.” This is false. Examples can help visualize and remember an abstract rule, method, or principle — whether of correct or incorrect action — but they also bind most people to the specific examples given.

The result is that people often fail to recognize the same problem when it appears in an area not covered by those examples. Sometimes, this leads to a harmful paradox: even if people accept instructions, they tend to apply them only to cases that are no longer relevant.

For instance, they may hunt for Pharisee‑like displays of faith among individuals in environments where faith is not respected but mocked. In reality, the true “Pharisaism” may be the ostentatious hiding of faith or sneering at it. Instead of focusing on the principle, they confuse it with the example, fixating on the example even when the same problem shifts to other — even opposite — cases.

The solution often requires applying precisely the behavior that once caused the problem. A trivial illustration: if a book instructs cutting a table leg because it is too long, people may follow it only when the leg has worn down and is no longer too long — and keep trimming as the table wobbles. Too late. They apply the principle to old problems, not current ones, because older problems are emotionally distant and easy to condemn. Meanwhile, what they need for healing today is precisely what once caused their trouble.

The same occurs in social or cultural judgments: hunting for “liberalism” when the real problem is tyranny, or condemning strictness in upbringing when indulgence is the true danger — as C. S. Lewis noted, devils tempt us to focus on the wrong target.

The only way to break this vicious circle is asceticism: denying oneself, limiting oneself to what truly belongs to us, and accepting that we cannot persuade others to abandon trivial errors. If they did not listen to God, why would they listen to us? Especially when we ourselves just moments earlier misunderstood the same principle, only in a different context.

What allows us to transcend our limitations on a socio‑cultural level is the manifestation of humility and self‑denial. Tradition — the set of rules developed over generations — restrains youthful (and elderly) impulses, requires unpleasant training and metanoia, and protects people from consequences they cannot foresee due to cognitive limitations. Excessive fascination with scientific discoveries or the affirmation of every novelty can be equally harmful.

Hence, tradition is superior to science and to purely “rational” speculation, while both should be verified against one another in the proper hierarchy. Tradition, as the source of value judgments, stands higher, as we will justify further.

(2020–2022)

🔹 Not a Lack, but an Excess — and in the Wrong Place

Those who search for the causes of civilizational decline or educational failures often ask: What is missing? Perhaps too little prayer, too little reading, too little discipline? Others ask: How is it that my child went astray, when NOTHING was lacking? There was discipline at home, religious upbringing, duties.

But what of it if the noble plants of all those good habits and disciplines were choked by the weeds of error? That is why the plants we care about require weeding: removing other plants that are less demanding and therefore overshadow them, blocking their sunlight. They also require proper companions — plants that support their growth. They must grow in the soil proper to them, within the boundaries proper to them — in the right place, in the order of things. They must be shielded at the right time, and in some cases permanently, from what harms them. (September 2022)

Therefore, both in upbringing and in pastoral work, the tactic of “adapting” — of changing what has been handed down from our ancestors — is misguided. It stunts growth, because children and the faithful learn that it is not they who must adapt to what has been tested by generations — what is more efficient, higher, more perfect — but that what is more perfect must adapt to them. This inversion is extremely harmful: it teaches children and the faithful to avoid effort, to avoid reaching higher levels, to avoid training, overcoming weaknesses, and metanoia — that is, “denying oneself.” This is the beginning of civilizational decay. (2017)

Some may feel outraged — those who consider themselves liberated from schemas and stereotypes. I have bad news for them: a negative attitude toward schemas is itself a schema absorbed in the process of upbringing. There is nothing wrong with schemas themselves — with forms, laws imposed from above, institutions, rituals, social relations. On the contrary: their existence is not only a condition for progress, but also the foundation of mutual communication. Without them, we could not understand one another. They are therefore necessary for normal functioning.

Moreover, they allow us to develop. They function like mathematical formulas: we do not need to construct them anew each time, because they are already there. We can begin our calculations from their level, using them. (I will later call them, among other things, self-evident truths.) Thanks to them, we can more easily perform complex operations, which enables growth. A set of schemas recognized as important is, for example, tradition. We must ensure that these formulas are not flawed at their foundation, that they are applied correctly, and that correct ones are not labeled as foolish. The same applies to schemas of behavior, thought, evaluation, and action. They may be poorly constructed or applied to the wrong realities.

Errors in foundational theories produce errors in the entire science built upon them. Cultural errors and personal life errors arise in the same way. I suggest paying attention — not only while reading this book, but also in daily disputes, discussions, and accusations — to logical fallacies such as circular reasoning, straw‑manning (attributing to someone a claim they never made and arguing against it), throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or making a mountain out of a molehill. You may notice that many great quarrels and broken friendships began with small misunderstandings rooted in these errors — in trusting too much our suspicious impressions, which drown out the other side’s explanations of what they actually meant.

The schemas we are discussing constitute the primary material of culture.

“But wait,” someone may ask, “are we even allowed to speak of cultural errors? Cultures are different, relative (some might even say complementary); their elements cannot be criticized because they are ‘morally relative.’”

I reply: criticism of other cultures is an inherent feature of every culture. To renounce it is, in a sense, to renounce one’s own culture.

However, rejecting even an entire culture or civilization does not mean rejecting its elements.

(2021 addition: And as Feliks Koneczny rightly notes, two civilizations will never fully agree — but it is an error to conclude that absorbing elements of other civilizations leads to the dissolution of the absorbing one. Combining contradictory “grammars,” that is, methods of ordering, leads to dissolution — but introducing elements of a foreign “lexicon” may even strengthen a civilization if those elements better fulfill the tasks set by “our” grammar than native signs.)

Often the issue is simply the rejection of the method of ordering those elements. Conversely, where the modern person sees complementarity, there often lies contradiction — but he rarely notices it, and only selectively. This results from the autonomous forgetting of the method of ordering. It is in this method that discipline manifests itself. It is the key to meaning, just as syntax and grammar determine the meaning of words combined into a sentence.

By drawing attention to this, I challenge the prejudices of the modern world: the principles of misunderstood cultural relativism, the false freedom of liberalism, and the taboo against “interfering” with the autonomy of a given culture. Such self-evident truths are transparent: we use them constantly, but do not reflect on them, because we do not notice them — just as we do not usually notice the glasses on our nose or the air around us. We use them like formulas or theories, without asking whether our understanding of them contains errors or contradictions. Glasses may, contrary to our belief, worsen our vision; the air may be filled with stench or toxins that we do not perceive out of habit or because they are naturally odorless.

Even when we notice contradictions, we label them “otherness” and — according to current fashion — assume they should coexist, that this is the nature of culture. We fail to notice that in most cultures throughout history there has been a search for clear criteria, even in those elements where individuals or groups disagree. (2010)

“You Become Like Those You Keep Company With”

As human beings, we belong to the dough of society and its culture. The leaven of bad patterns that have ever come into contact with us must have leavened us as well — whenever we failed to resist their influence. And we could not resist them before we had even acquired the notion that we should, because they were harmful.

Small children do not choose their company or surroundings. They keep company with parents, caregivers, siblings, rattles, cribs, rooms, porridge, chickens, yards, television, floors… that is, with the people and things that surround them. They do not choose until they learn how — until they acquire the criteria for choice: the criteria necessary for selecting an environment and making decisions. These criteria are taught to them by the environment, independent of their will, which they encounter in the first years of life. It teaches them an entire way of life. Whatever in that environment is permitted, presented as beneficial, or simply present, will likely be regarded as such by the child once they learn to judge and choose — unless a strong counterexample appears: an alternative environment and instruction. Only then does the possibility of choice arise.

It is said that forbidden fruit tastes better. Therefore, to prevent the “inclination to evil” from activating, one must avoid voluntary encounters with evil. This is difficult when evil cleverly fills the cracks within undeniable good (for evil is never self‑sufficient), goes unnoticed, and takes root in people’s minds by first entering the subconscious, so that they no longer perceive the boundary where what is evil begins to appear good. Even if parents warn their children against evil (whatever they consider evil), but do not shield them from examples of error, the inclination to sin may become increasingly active. The child has not yet stabilized their own moral system, because its foundations are still being formed.

Moreover, the child is influenced by what is called environmental pressure — which strongly shapes the behavior of adults as well — and not only by social or peer pressure, but also by the broader cultural pressure. It emerges not only from words, not only from human relationships, but from the very structure of ways of life: clothing, entertainment, work and home routines, the arrangement of living spaces, and so on. The authority of parents may weaken and disappear even if the parent behaves exactly as their ancestors did — if competing authorities arise, offering opposite content, especially when their offer is attractive, seemingly good, camouflaging evil, and omnipresent. A child cannot distinguish many of these camouflages.

Such competition between contradictory authorities does not result — as is falsely claimed — in the child “choosing what it wants,” but rather in the child not knowing what it wants. The child becomes a slave to its own desires and a puppet of those who manipulate them. It will falsely equate these desires, impulses, and appetites with its will. A society raised in this way is doomed to collapse. (paragraph from 2022)

The harmful stimuli described above may also be called scandal or bad example. Protection against it is a feature of most traditional cultures, to which I will return shortly.

What cultural schemas have we acquired through upbringing? Which of them are proper, and which are erroneous — and why? Which schemas have we unjustly labeled with a critical stigma, so that anyone who uses them is reflexively condemned? I hope that the answers to these questions will be found here — at least in part.

The aim of these texts is to verify common worldviews by constructing a model that shows what a human being can know about reality, and how they should act, judge, and think in accordance with that knowledge. (2009)

I. THE ONE WHO INVENTED EVERYTHING. PROOF AND FAITH

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect comes, that which is in part will pass away.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.
Now I know in part; but then I shall know, even as I am known.
— 1 Cor 13:9–10, 12

“(…) as God says to the prophet Jonah regarding the Ninevites, we do not know our right hand from our left (Jon 4:11), because at every step, due to the feebleness of our understanding, we mistake evil for good and good for evil.”
— St. John of the Cross

“Because of the narrowness of our head (it fits into a cap or hat), we cannot know everything. God is an Infinite Being, and our head has limits — it fits into a cap or a hat.”
— St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe

Facts Accessible to Everyone

It is enough to look into your own thoughts and ask whether you can conceive that sound or shape, motion or color could exist outside the mind — that is, without being perceived.
— G. Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Katologika is simple. It is a remedy for the tangled theories of distinguished minds… when they detach from reality — including those who pronounce judgments on matters that do not belong to them and exceed their understanding. It reduces everything to facts accessible to everyone. Each person has their own thinking and the reality available through it. This may be a mother, a crib, an axe, a computer, a ceiling, a tree, a henhouse, a microphone, the sky, a stove, a sewing machine, a field, a library, a hut, a cow, or a laboratory. It does not matter.

I will try to begin from these two foundations. Where will I arrive? What will I find? Come with me, and you will see.

FAITH

To reason at all, we must believe in the principles of reasoning, knowing, and proving.
This faith — this assumption — is the foundation of all knowledge. We necessarily use it in every act of thought, including attempts to undermine it; therefore, it makes no sense to deny it. Someone may stubbornly claim not to believe in it, yet will simultaneously rely on what they “do not believe in” in order to deny it.

This assumption is the first level of faith, which we may call a cognitive necessity. There are other levels:

Second level: what can be derived from these necessities, though humanity has not yet discovered it.
Third level: what cannot be derived at all.

The human mind, as we see, is limited and not self‑sufficient, for its necessary support is faith — which many deny.

WE ARE FINITE

There are infinitely many ways of grasping the world and the data we encounter. This is another fact accessible to everyone. We are finite — or more precisely, our capacities are limited, “our head fits into a hat.” Therefore, we experience — sometimes painfully, and thus undeniably — our own error. This too is evidence of the existence of something independent of our thoughts, something that surpasses us, something transcendent.

This applies not only to our descriptions of the state of the world but even more to our moral evaluations of the attitudes and motivations of other people — a topic we will address in the third part of this book.

What Is Truth?

Not only Pilate struggled with this question. Adherents of so‑called “Relativism” struggle with it today as well. They are precisely those who seem to undermine the necessity described above.

Indignant at the “claim to possess a monopoly on truth,” they paradoxically claim such a monopoly themselves. According to them, the only truth is that there is no single Truth. Of course, the previous sentence contains a contradiction. To assert anything at all is to treat it as true. Refusing to call it truth changes nothing, for that is exactly what the assertion means.

The assumption of truth is the starting point of all knowledge. There is no sense in asking whether truth exists or in trying to prove it, because every act of thought already contains the assumption of its existence. The mere claim to truth is therefore not an error. The error lies in pretending to fight this claim while in fact replacing it with one’s own. The only honest stance is to acknowledge that one considers one’s own view to be the truth — and to admit it openly.

Seeking objective truth follows from the fact that, as we have already noted, it makes no sense to reject that by which we are able to reject. Still more: it makes no sense to doubt that by which and thanks to which we can doubt. Nor is there any need to prove that which enables us to prove. We must therefore believe in the principles by which reason functions, and in what follows from them. (2014–2015)

Knowledge, Subjectivity, and Reality

Knowledge is by nature subjective and relative — “in part, through a glass, darkly.” To know is to be subjective; it is relational. And this subjectivity is itself an objective fact. Extreme “relativists,” who deny objective reality, create an either–or alternative. Defenders of real reality often allow themselves to be trapped by this false alternative, so that the cause of disagreement between both sides is, paradoxically, what they share: they fail to consider the coexistence of subjectivity and objectivity. Many disputes — from the sandbox, through the kitchen and school, all the way to politics — are based on such false either–or assumptions.

Implications for Thought

A human being, whose subjectivity is the condition of knowledge, can provide infinitely many — even contradictory — answers to the question: “What is truth?” Hence one finds oneself in a bind. In fact, in two binds. Yet this multiplicity ultimately reduces to two options:

There is no single truth, because reality is available to us only through thought, and therefore each thinking person may have their own truth.
There is one universal truth, because the very act of thinking presupposes applying the same rational principles to the entire universe and to each of its elements — and presupposes communication with other minds.

Someone may claim that these conclusions can be reconciled by saying: “Reality — truth — exists only in my mind.” But is it not the case that our mind experiences what surpasses it, what lies beyond it, what surprises it — because it later turns out to be different from what it seemed earlier, and different from what we would like?

Indeed, that is exactly how it is. And therefore I cannot, without falling into contradiction, regard reality as existing only in my consciousness.

When applying thought to the world, I must assume that its layers and fragments are structured according to universal principles — the same principles as those of thought itself — and therefore I can know them. (Knowing is equivalent to becoming aware, conceiving, and understanding — even partially.) Considering worlds that do not conform to the principles of thought is irrational, because the condition of “considering” and of rationality itself is precisely this application of thought to the world. Another key condition of rationality will be discussed later.

Conclusion

The capacity for thought therefore leads me to acknowledge that:

reality and truth are accessible to us only through this capacity,
and at the same time, they are a Mystery that surpasses it, independent of it. (2012)

And now

I Will Reveal This Mystery to You…

It so happens that Mystery is a category shared by most cultures, and as such it is closely tied to religious experience. The Lutheran thinker Rudolf Otto described mystery as one of the fundamental markers of the holy — an inseparable companion of religious experience (he used the term mysterium).

According to Andrzej Zybertowicz, Mystery is also a foundational category for constructivists. He writes:

“And although the constructivist is, in principle, ready to question any fact (if he believes this may serve the values or the set of other facts to which he is attached), there is one category he approaches with reverence: MYSTERY.
The existence of Mystery follows from the very nature of constructivism.
Since our knowledge and the facts perceived and articulated through it are our fallible constructions, and since these constructions almost always (always?) could have been otherwise, constructivism is aware that the arbitrariness of the cognitive process always produces some residuum — something that escapes conceptualization and cognitive sensitivity (…)”

Among the things that belong to the realm of Mystery, then, is the recognition that:

Science is subjective.

Science Is Subjective

I would like to draw the reader’s attention here to the claims of constructivists, for they largely support the thesis I am trying to articulate. This is an example of a theory whose premises are valid, yet whose conclusions are false. One should accept the premises while rejecting the conclusions, showing that they are simply mistaken. St. Thomas Aquinas did exactly this with pagan Aristotelianism: he took everything good from it and discarded what was bad. This approach is precisely what must be done to persuade those most “entrenched” in their views. The same applies to various forms of relativism, structuralism, critical theory, and postmodernism. We must not allow ourselves to be trapped by false alternatives—but more on this later.

What science recognizes as “facts” is, in reality, interpretation — the product of subjective conditions:

Constructivism doubts whether there exist any facts that, in any ultimate or absolute sense, are unquestionable, necessary, and universal.
Constructivism claims that what some regard as facts, others may ignore, dismantle, modify, or construct in their own way.
Constructivism asserts that the perception of knowledge as objective does not make it neutral.
Knowledge with social status as objective often initiates, sustains, or marginalizes certain definitions of situations that — to use traditional Marxist language — carry class significance. In this respect, constructivism adopts the legacy of critical theory.

Relevant statements cited by Zybertowicz include:

“The sun and the stars are human creations. As distinguished objects they exist only in human cognition.”
— Kołakowski (1957/1989)

“Cognition, as the primordial form of meaning‑creating activity, belongs to the ontological structure of the world; it constitutes an essential dimension of its reality.”
— Siemek (1988)

The reasoning of these authors emphasizes:

“A characteristic feature of the verification process in science is that it is never closed. The decision to end it always has a conventional character, for one can never state that a given claim has been definitively justified.”
— Zeidler (1993), cf. Collins on “experimental regress”

The very structuring of scientific disciplines reflects choices grounded in specific historical and cultural conditions. We might never have looked at the world through the prism of physical laws, mechanical relations (time‑bound interactions among energies and material fragments), chemical reactions, or biological life. We might have continued to take the falling of an apple as an obvious fact and, using symbolic capacities, sought the reasons why physical processes produced precisely this effect, here and now. We could have disregarded physics, chemistry, and biology as irrelevant.

Consider a hypothetical tribe, the Hyrds, who explain falling apples as caused by their ancestors, the Hyndai, shaking the trees. A scientist arrives and mocks them, insisting it is not ancestors but the interplay of gravity and biological processes. Perhaps some believed him, but most deemed him an ignorant outsider. A local sage might have replied:

“Fine, let it be gravity and ripening processes. But we care not for the names and theories you apply; we want to understand why these processes generated this effect, this combination, here and now. It is the ancestors who govern them because they are above them. We care for the meaning and value — good or bad — not the mechanisms themselves.”

Worse, if the tribe, enchanted by the scientist’s exotic authority, accepted a false vision of their culture, they would begin to enact that falsehood. The scientist would not merely study a cultural fact — he would create it. Believing in a false alternative, the tribespeople would choose “ancestors or gravity,” as if forced to choose between “tall or thin.”

Some reason that because belief in spirits and gods can be explained by brain processes, the entities themselves are fictional. Because social structures influence behavior, individual choices are inconsequential. Because knowledge is subjective, objectivity is denied. Defenders of objective reality, reacting to these new theories, may deny subjectivity; defenders of free will may deny the power of structure. By adopting the opponent’s false alternatives, they merely take the opposite side of the same error. It is easy to be trapped this way. (2018)

This reasoning is a logical fallacy: one proposition does not follow from another. Real believers — for example, Muslims — could refute the scientist by claiming that Allah designed the human brain precisely so that humans could know Him. If the “enlightened” rationalist cannot see this, that is his problem.

Contemporary physicists such as Prof. Krzysztof Meissner express a similar insight: the greatest Mystery is the existence of natural laws and the very fact and act of understanding them. Although these laws allow us to explain phenomena, they themselves remain unexplained and require faith. (2018)

It is true that mental processes — like belief in spirits and gods — can be described in terms of brain activity. This is valuable, though obvious. What is false is creating an alternative: either brain processes or the immaterial soul. One does not exclude the other.

A similar logical error underpins some atheistic reasoning: what “superstitious primitives” attribute to the soul is dismissed as neurophysiology, leading to the conclusion that the soul does not exist. This involves two mistakes: a false alternative (soul vs. material processes) and a misinterpretation of the believers’ meaning. Words may be only part of a richer communicative act; reading them literally, without context, is like reading only vowels and ignoring consonants. The error lies with the “omitters,” not the speaker. (2015)

Longstanding dualistic assumptions — good vs. evil, being vs. non‑being, body vs. soul — appear in Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Hermeticism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Bogomilism, Catharism, Taoism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Protestantism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and contemporary anti‑formalism. I will propose an alternative — ancient, tested, yet requiring the humility of a child to see that “the king is naked.” (2018)

The Trap of Contrarianism

Since atheists claim God does not exist because of brain processes shaping religious needs, believers often react emotionally instead of recognizing that one does not preclude the other. They thus adopt the atheists’ categories. Similarly, defenders of Tradition may accept modernist claims without verifying them, inadvertently rejecting the very Tradition they aim to protect. When the world redefines morality, defenders of truth risk reacting incorrectly, taking only the opposite side of false alternatives. This is a mechanism by which the left historically disarmed the right. (2018, revised 2021)

The Ancient Choice: Balance or Extremes

Humanity faces a perennial choice: bind apparent opposites with the Cross or tear them apart, swinging from one extreme to another. Today, this manifests as contradictory leaps between modernist anti‑traditionalism, evolutionism, and archeologism. Being pushed toward one extreme provokes a swing toward the opposite.

I propose the Catholic approach: balance.

Is Killing Animals Wrong Because They Suffer?

It is not because of suffering that we consider killing to be wrong. After all, we are capable of killing painlessly.

We forbid killing because we recognize someone as a person — that is, as someone who possesses a non‑material, spiritual component. By this, I mean the immaterial soul, of which “breathing,” “in‑breathing,” “spirit,” “pneuma” — the material soul — is only a sign, just as the category “word” (Logos) is a sign of the category “meaning”/“sense”/“content”/“concept.” It is this component that we call rational, not the electrical currents and chemical reactions in the brain and the rest of the organism.

For the same reason, we consider the killing of the unborn wrong, regardless of the stage of development of their organs or sensory mechanisms. This conclusion follows from logic and worldview. The latter foundation is — indeed — non‑neutral and often not empirically demonstrable, yet everyone adopts some worldview. It is a prerequisite for reasoning and logic, for logic requires some “substance” upon which rational operations may be performed.

Does the Earth have a “soul” because it blows and breathes?
The fact that we cannot yet scientifically determine whether the Earth experiences pain does not mean it does not. And what then? Should we cease eating anything at all, because everything lives — “this rock also has a soul, the rainstorm is my sister, the stream my brother”? Or because, as a certain apolitical politician, former journalist, and self‑styled Catholic moralist once said, “the animals I have eaten will judge me at the Last Judgment”?

The Bambi–Pocahontas syndrome — a mindset of those raised on Disney fairy tales — is now reaping its tragic consequences. I would call it more broadly the Disney syndrome.

More on these matters will be discussed in Chapter Three. According to the original plan, the following article belongs there, but for certain reasons I have decided to place it here already:

How Do We Differ from Animals and Things?

Without thought, we would know neither ourselves nor anything else.
Our brain processes and actions would be—
like dominoes,
like puzzle pieces,
merely elements of the ordered, fractal mosaic of the universe.

We could not know them if we did not transcend them, if we were only their parts.
A puzzle piece does not know it is part of a puzzle.
The brain does not know that it produces ordered material processes.

To think about them,
to perceive their order,
to assign them meaning,
we need a principle qualitatively different from matter—
a soul?

The brain is like a photograph, an image, a film, or a sound recording.
And like a camera, a camcorder, or a recorder.
When we watch a film, we do not see the film itself but the reality to which it refers.
Its purpose is to make the absent present. It is a sign-relation.

Memory is a kind of photograph or drawing.
Like a photograph, it can be blurred or distorted by other factors.

But how is it that we are not only the camera and the photograph, but can want or refuse, believe or disbelieve what is recorded on the film of the brain?
How is it that we are not merely ordered processes, but also aware of them and capable of evaluating them?

You might say that awareness is nothing more than matter—that what happens in the brain is built from the same physical processes as the workings of the universe, only at a different scale and in a different region. True.

Yet all these processes can occur in our bodies even when we are not aware of them, when we are thinking about entirely different matters.
If it were otherwise, I would not have survived my trip to the store, at the end of which I suddenly realized where I was. I walked the entire route without conscious awareness of the individual decisions I made along the way—crossing streets, navigating obstacles—while intensely analyzing completely different matters.

How is it that we can choose?
That we can contradict ourselves, disrupt processes, err—that is, reject structural order?

It is a fact, and at the same time a mystery, that within humans there exists:
meaning-making — reasoning — abstraction — ordering — distinguishing — consciousness — knowledge.

This is not identical with the material brain processes sometimes called “thinking.”
Those consist of electrical impulses flowing through material carriers. The current causes biochemical changes in the brain.
Animals, plants, nature, and computers have similar processes.

In a similar way, we may call “information” the ordered structure of:
a snowflake,
a crystal,
natural systems and cycles,
the solar system, galaxies…

All of these are structures of a fractally constructed universe.
(One wonders what role the holographic principle plays here.)

Some structuralists claimed that our thinking is merely an element of immanent, matter-identical divisions and orders (structures). Some equated it with language (though it was not always clear how they understood “language”).

This resembles Hegel’s reduction of everything to structure, excluding the existence of a “simple being,” later echoed by Marxists and some structuralists.
The latter, unlike Hegel, maintained that the whole is more than the sum of its parts—but they saw this “more” only in the “grammar” of the world.

One can detect here the Hegelian abandonment of simple cause-and-effect in favor of feedback loops.
The world would be a structurally interconnected web of such loops.
Such a reality could exist independently, purely immanently… if it were possible.
It is not possible, because it violates the conditions of our thinking.

Continuing reflections on our finitude and on the elementary component, I will try to show that this condition is the necessary and simple being. But more on that later… (2019)

Reason is not the materially expanded brain.
Reason is not the brain and the intellectual processes occurring within it.
Reason is not a part of the structure that reflects the rest of the structure the way a film reflects the flight of a bird it records.

Reason is the ability to abstract from structural dependencies, enabling us to:

become aware of them,
experience their order, coherence, and meaning,
and use structured matter as a tool of thought.

This ability is not graspable by material means alone. It escapes scientific analysis.
It cannot be comprehended because it is the boundary tool of our cognition, the ultimate element of our identity.

We cannot transcend it, because we necessarily use it to think.
This boundary element is likely a component of the soul—the Divine Image.

It is a mystery.

Even if we think we have found a mirror, the mirror remains a mirror, and is not identical with what it reflects.
Material processes and structures are therefore only tools for recording meanings—and they are perceivable and fully describable only because there is something that qualitatively surpasses them.

Universal principles of structuring can be perceived only by someone who possesses within themselves an element that surpasses material structure.
Therefore, even if organisms or machines were created with greater intellectual efficiency—better neural connections, faster processing—this would not imply spiritual superiority, equality with humans, or spiritual existence at all.

Complex intellectual operations, eloquent speech, choosing a direction of travel—all this can occur using our bodies but outside our awareness.
We can drive, walk, or cycle through a route full of lights and intersections requiring concentration and reflexes while thinking about something entirely different—and arrive safely, wondering: “When did I get here?”

There is therefore no proof that the brain is the source of consciousness.
It is rather that elusive “something more.”

This level—the one that constitutes our identity—cannot be analyzed.
It always escapes our field of vision, because we always “look” with it.
We can state that it exists and trace its consequences.
The rest is mystery.

Is it not the case that even science selects, according to subjective impressions, fragments of reality from a world that can be divided in infinitely many ways, a world that on both macro and micro scales is unfathomable to our reason, limited by time and memory?
Indeed.

Therefore, the most rational course is, on certain three levels, to renounce proof and accept belief.

But what are the principles of this reason—the first and at the same time the ultimate level of faith? (2010)

BOND IS THE FOUNDATION

The capacity for knowledge consists in seeing something as other than itself, and at the same time distinct from “the rest of the world” and from the other elements within it. A bond equal to the distinction between two things is therefore indispensable for knowledge to arise.

(It is like the shadow of a roadside cross cast upon the surface of the earth and the road. But is it a surface? Or is it uneven terrain that distorts the reflection of the Archetype — increasingly warped the more obstacles lie between the Cross and its shadow?)

The two bonds described above intersect, forming a cognitive triangle. Divisions in reality and classifications are given to us only through the principles of our thinking — that is, by distinguishing something from the rest, which is equivalent to binding it.

The opposition between the objects we perceive determines their identity; it constitutes the particular features that differentiate them from others. These properties may also be called form.

Form reduces to the place a thing occupies within an order, structure, or system that surpasses it as a whole, and to the internal arrangement of its components.

A forest can be grasped in a single thought based on an impression — a green or multicolored, rough, rustling, swaying, and distinctively scented mass — and expressed with a single sign (for example, the color green, or the word “forest”). Yet we can also break the forest down into its elements, and recognize it as part of a larger whole from which it differs, but without which it could not be distinguished. We would not identify a forest without trees and undergrowth — but also not if everything were forest, if there were no seas, meadows, fields, or peat bogs — that is, if there were nothing that is not forest.

This separation of the forest from what it is not — its placement within a certain order, structure, or system — together with its internal structure, allows it to exist.

We may regard an apple as a whole, but we may also divide it into pieces, those pieces into smaller pieces, cells, atoms, protons, neutrons, quarks… Therefore: what once seemed indivisible later turns out to be divisible into even smaller parts, and so on. Once we thought the atom was indivisible. Later, we isolated its components. I do not know what is currently considered indivisible — perhaps some elementary particles, dots, strings, or waves.

Or perhaps the perspective of our eyes, imposed upon mathematical formulas as the basis for describing matter, is the wrong approach? How will we know when this downward descent — this continual process of verification — has reached its end?

One may then ask whether there is something indivisible, some substrate subjected to division. If there is no such thing, can division continue endlessly? If so, then we are not dividing anything at all — only supra-material relations contained in consciousness exist (as Berkeley suggested, who justified much of what is argued here). I have no proof that this is not the case.

There is, however, a logical proof of the impossibility of declaring that we have reached the final level: the certainty that “we know only in part.”
We do not know what we do not know.
At the same time, we are certain that there is something beyond us, for we have already encountered realities that contradicted our prior desires and imaginings.

Therefore, we have no access to an absolute material “substance.”
But we do have access to a mental substance: our capacity to bind and divide — that is, to think.

This capacity reduces to binding. Hence, BOND is the foundation.
Its opposite is DISRUPTION — please remember these terms. We will return to them.

We can therefore consider reality only as infinite division — that is, the simultaneous establishment of connections, the perception of relations, meanings, and contents. This activity we call thinking, consciousness, reasoning, knowing.
The operator of this activity we call someone — a person.
Reality has its source in consciousness.

But…

I Have Direct Access Only to My Own Consciousness

I nevertheless assume — that is, believe — that other consciousnesses exist, for otherwise communication with others would make no sense. And beyond that — which undermines the proposals of solipsists and pantheists:

I know that I do not possess a collective, “single” mind, because I have no access to the thoughts of others, because I often disagree with the people I encounter, and because reality frequently exceeds my own thoughts. What I once considered a complete line of reasoning or a full vision of things later reveals new elements, which entirely reshape the whole as I come to perceive it.

Moreover, every act of reasoning — including scientific or historical reasoning — rests on the selection of certain facts, observations, points, or carved‑out areas, chosen arbitrarily. Years later, someone else might select different facts, dividing the same reality in a completely different way. For reality can be divided and its components isolated in infinitely many ways — not arbitrarily, but within the limits of our cognitive capacities. How can I know that my current division is better than others?

My desires and imaginings collide with a reality that contradicts them… and therefore I know that I do not grasp everything.

Thus, for my thinking to make sense, I must assume that there exists something independent of my consciousness — something that surpasses it. That my consciousness does not create the world. But does that mean that no consciousness creates it? In light of the above conclusions, I cannot assert that. I can vouch only for myself.

Recalling the Starting Point

Let us recall, dear Reader, the starting point of these reflections. I analyzed the principles of thought in order to determine what necessarily follows from them. I sought to establish the relation between thought and Truth, between thought and the reality about which we think. I began by noting that it makes no sense to undermine the principles of thought, since the very act of undermining them necessarily employs them.

Given these conclusions, it follows that for my reasoning, knowing, and proving to make sense, I must assume something — that is, believe in something. I must believe in what makes proof possible, and in what follows from it. I must also exclude possibilities incompatible with it — and see what remains.

We have already excluded the possibility that only what I think exists; nor can we assume that each person creates their own world, because thinking presupposes the universality of the principles of thought and of the world (even if their application at higher levels may vary). Nor can we consider a reality independent of all consciousness — a point Berkeley demonstrated exhaustively — analogous to ours, yet not our own.

What remains?
Truth as dependent on consciousness. But whose consciousness? Mine? No — certainly not mine.

The Condition of Rationality: The Creative Person

What was obvious to earlier Europeans — what in the arguments of St. Thomas required no explanation — must today be explained. In other words, Aquinas’s proofs are often misunderstood today. The word “proof” itself is misunderstood. A proof is never absolute (just like freedom and coercion, subjectivity and objectivity), because of the necessity of faith arising from our finitude. The strongest form of proof is demonstrating that something is a condition — a “necessary being” — without which thinking and proving would not be possible at all.

This condition of rationality is the Creative Person.

It makes no sense to assume that the Being ordering the universe is impersonal. All things, natural phenomena (including brain processes), and principles are always given to us as thought. A being capable of willing, knowing, becoming aware, distinguishing, and relating — we call a person.

Since it makes no sense to consider the existence of a reality contradictory to our reason,
since reality is accessible to us only through thought and its principles,
since we encounter what surpasses our inventions,
and therefore our thinking does not create the world,

we must assume that there exists a Being who, by His Thoughts and according to the pattern of His Thoughts, can create reality —
whose capacity for thought defines personhood —
and who shares with us the capacity for thought,
and therefore we can know anything at all — that is, apply our thoughts to the rest of reality.

To deny His existence is to deny every one of our thoughts — and the reality given to us through thought.

Therefore, some Person — similar to us, or rather the archetype of us — who creates objective reality by His knowing, must exist. “Must” here means that this assumption is implicitly contained in every act of thought. It may also be a set of perfectly concordant consciousnesses. What this consciousness is — that is a matter of strictly religious faith. Revelation. For this conditional Creative Consciousness is what we call God.

A Personal God necessarily appears as the Source of principles, the Source of our secondary capacity for thought — in which we must believe in order not to contradict ourselves. In this light, the wisdom of the biblical teaching about the Logos — Meaning, Thought, Word — which is the Beginning and condition of all things, which creates all things, and which is a Person, becomes clear.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
It was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be that has come to be."**

John 1:1–18

Pope Benedict XVI expressed this truth perfectly in his Holy Saturday homily:

“In the beginning is reason — creative, divine reason. And because it is reason, it also created freedom; and since freedom can be misused, there also exists that which is opposed to creation (…)
Therefore, so to speak, a thick, dark line runs through the structure of the universe and through human nature. Yet despite this contradiction, creation as such remains good, life remains good, because at the beginning there stands good reason, the creative love of God.
Therefore the world can be saved (…)
Therefore we can and must stand on the side of reason, freedom, and love — on the side of God, who loves us so much.
Now, thanks to the Risen One, it ultimately matters that reason is stronger than irrationality, truth stronger than falsehood, love stronger than death.” (2013)

In this light, the categorical statement — indigestible for the “progressive” Western mind — of the supposedly eminent physicist becomes justified:

“We are forced to assume the existence of a conscious, intelligent mind behind this force. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
— Max Planck

Someone may say that such ultimate conclusions are unnecessary.
And I will answer: without such conclusions, no thinking makes sense.

For, as we have already established, they are the conditions of rationality (including the very possibility of proving anything). And beyond that:

Harmonizing the elements of a fragment makes no sense without harmonizing the whole that surpasses it. If the whole had no meaning, then no fragment of it would have meaning. The nature of meaning lies in relation — in bond, in reaching beyond the element that seeks meaning.
What sense does it make to ask about the meaning of a piece of an apple for the apple itself, if we do not seek the meaning of the apple in relation to the tree, the soil, the river, the sun, to our life and the world?

Science studies fragments.
Religion assigns meaning to the whole.

Indeed, the very principle of knowledge rests on the assumption that our consciousness has the same structural principles as all of reality — that reality, at every level and in every element, follows the same rules of relating, distinguishing, structuring — that is, of making sense.
If we must assume these principles to be the same, then we cannot claim that seeking relations among elements within a fragment of the whole is more meaningful than seeking them in the whole of reality, of which that fragment is only one element.

To recognize the meaning of anything, one must believe in the existence of the whole of which that thing is a part, and in an Ultimate Reality different from everything else — one that does not require meaning from outside itself, because it is the very principle of meaning, and thus closes what would otherwise be an impossibly infinite chain of justification.

This Ultimate Reality is therefore the condition not only of rationality, but of the world understood as structure.
We call this “Irreducible Reality” the Personal God, who creates the whole by His own consciousness.
(This is a Thomistic proof from the First Cause, supplemented by the role of knowledge/thought and its consequences — and thus answers contemporary objections.)

Are we tracing a vicious circle?
Reason alone would trace a vicious circle — if it could exist without faith.

I have no access to other consciousnesses, but I can think, assume, that there exists a consciousness that has the same principles as mine, but is something more — because it creates all other consciousnesses, and therefore they can know the projections of the Creator’s consciousness, that is, objective reality.

I can think this — though I might never have thought of it.
But someone thought of it long ago; humanity knows this idea.
If not for that, agnosticism in this matter would be justified.
But now this possibility turns out to be the only cohesive one, because all others have been excluded.

Yes, someone may rightly say that we do not know whether we have forgotten some possibility that would be an alternative or would refute the above proposal.
I can only answer: we may not have enough life to find such an alternative by proof.
Especially since it too could be undermined by the same argument — and so on, endlessly…
Such infinite meta‑doubt would paralyze and destroy us.

Let him therefore present a better proposal — and if not, it is better to accept this one.
Old and proven.
Just as we accept the old and proven assumption that our senses do not deceive us, that the people we see and speak to really exist.

Someone may say that starting from Catholic premises I reach conclusions toward which I was already inclined.
Yes — and that is no problem.
Science, too, rests on conjecture — on a hypothesis later verified. Even the exact sciences work this way: first comes an idea, then verification, then proof.
And very often it succeeds.

From the side of faith, Revelation exists precisely to offer not only what surpasses the possibility of proof (the third level of faith), but also what a human being might simply never discover — due to limited lifespan, time, culture, conditions, and other circumstances (the second level of faith). (2013)

A person may lack the time and circumstances to discover what can be logically deduced.

A person cannot rely solely on “cognitive necessities” and what can be derived from them.
Derivation requires time and a certain intellectual “capacity,” while life demands decisions.
If you wanted to analyze every claim necessary for life in such depth, you would never accomplish anything.
Reality can be divided and analyzed endlessly, both in macro and micro scales.
Everyone understands this — I need not explain it.

I know no one who could prove everything he relies on in life and everything he considers obvious truth.
(It is, by the very nature of proof, thought, and reality, impossible — as we have already established.) (2011)

Therefore we must believe in certain schemas, certain claims, in order to base our actions on them.
Human beings are condemned to partial, incomplete knowledge.
Thus I conclude — on the basis of subjective faith (faith in objectivity, that is, conformity with the Divine Perspective–Logos–Meaning–Content of that faith) — that I must believe in certain cognitive foundations, because my knowledge is imperfect, incomplete, confined to a subjective space.

We now understand the depth and weight of St. Paul’s words from the Hymn to Love:
“For we know only in part…”

And so I ask the necessary question at this point:

What should we believe?

(2011)

What, then, should we believe?

“What is beautiful is not
— said Maurycy —
what pleases today or once pleased,
but what ought to please;
and likewise
what is good is not
what is more pleasant,
but what makes us better…”
— C.K. Norwid, Promethidion

Following these words, one may say even more:

The true is not what seems true, but what ought to seem true.

And what ought to seem true?

That which the Creator recognizes as true, and that which He wills each of us to recognize as true.
And this is what we are to believe.

But why?
How do we know what the Creator recognizes as true?

Foundations we accept without examining them

There are certain foundations we accept without testing, without negating, without asking whether they are true. Only such acceptance makes it possible to reflect on anything at all. Whenever we reflect on something, we do so using certain principles and assumptions — those we are not currently questioning. We could question those as well. But that would be yet another infinite regress, one we cannot afford, because we would go mad.
We live far too briefly; we would run out of time.

We must, of course, assume that human reason does not distort the world. But that is not enough: we must also believe many things that we will never verify by “cognitive necessity.” A human being could not live normally if he tried to deconstruct and analyze every assumption he holds. (Some people try — and they do not live normally.)

Therefore Christ came into the world

He entered the world known to humanity so that we might encounter Him.
He became a Person entering into relationship, communicating according to the same principles as human beings. He came as the God‑Man, emphasizing that to receive Him — to receive Truth — scientific proofs are not sufficient (as we have already established). What is required is Faith, Hope, and Love.

These three must lie at the foundation of the edifice of reason:

Faith — the act of choosing one’s foundations
Hope — the guarantee of their endurance
Love — the motive, confirmation, and meaning of the choice of what we believe

All three are graces and virtues grounded in decision, not in emotion.

“God is Love.”

Love that has stable, defined contours.
Love as the Perfect Bond — the Matrix of reality and of the capacity for knowledge, its substance, its elementary particle.
Love whose unique expression was the descent of God into the world, into historical concreteness and accessibility, into humanity with which we can communicate on our own terms — His suffering, death, and resurrection, which delivered us from eternal misery. (2009–2010)

St. Paul — a philosopher?

The “Hymn to Love” — the words of St. Paul in chapter 13 of his First Letter to the Corinthians — is often associated with a sentimental text read at “Novus Ordo wedding Masses.” This supposedly saccharine, kitschy approach to the text has become a veil hiding its extraordinarily deep philosophical layer.
In my view, it is one of the most accurate treatises ever written on the relationship between ontology and epistemology.

To see this, it is worth beginning the analysis from the end (the part just quoted):

“Love never fails,”
but the temporal form of our knowing does pass away.
This knowing is weak, poor, “imperfect,” “partial.”
Yet this is not a problem — as the Holy Spirit explains through St. Paul — because “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away; we shall know as we have been known.”

He does not specify by Whom we have been known, but in this enigmatic statement he smuggles in the assumption that if we have been known, then it is by Someone — Someone who knows perfectly, no longer “in part,” but in some mysterious way wholly.

What does it mean to know perfectly?
Who can know in this way?
These very attributes constitute the foundations of the identity of the One we call God.

The importance of partial, selective knowing

Paul’s earlier emphasis on the existence of partial, imperfect, selective thinking is crucial.
We experience this selectivity when we look at the history of human sciences, at the fact that:

we do not know what we do not know — and what we do not know may change the meaning of what we think we know.

The Superiority of Tradition over Scientific or Cultural Innovation

A telling example of this feature of human cognition is the development of science itself, in which yesterday’s “proven” certainties and consensuses (e.g., the Newtonian model, the false allochthonous–autochthonous dichotomy, or the Polish POPiS political binary, etc.) — and even more so what climate publicists call “scientifically proven” — have turned out, in light of so‑called new data, to be merely approximate descriptions, simplified explanations analogous to the old “myths” once mocked by those who created these simplified models.

From this we may infer that today’s consensuses may one day also prove to be such simplified “mythologies.”
The error lies not in creating simplified models, but in treating them sectarianly, as dogmas — with solemnity and a sense of irreducible truth. And above all, in imposing them, in destroying on their basis traditional cultural norms (which must be imposed in order to enable communication and functional social life — a reflection of the Creator’s imposition of analogous laws upon all creation, enabling its harmonious existence and its knowability by those who are likewise subject to these laws).

It is an error to emotionally blackmail, propagandistically shame, and deprecate those who wish to remain with these norms and refuse to accept the solutions forced upon them by the adherents of such consensuses.
An even greater error is to turn the tables and demand that those who remain with traditional norms — such as the uncovered face, heating with a stove, driving a diesel, calling women and men by their traditional names, the traditional form of ritual, or obedience to the highest authority — prove their innocence.

Most people are unable to verify whether what a climate propagandist calls “scientific” truly is scientific. They are left to believe it as one believes the dogmas of an oracle. And anyone who doubts is met with sneering rebukes delivered as verdicts.
The problem is that believing such claims is sectarianism, while remaining with the old is rational.
The emotional blackmail of mockery directed at those who remain with the norm is the Terror of Innovation. A sectarianism of its own kind.

This is analogous to the Presumption of Guilt.
In complex cases, one must give priority both to the existing norm and to the innocence of the accused. In dubio pro reo.
Here the first “accused” is the norm (energetic, health‑related, cultural, moral), and the accuser — and the harmful agent — is the one who, wishing to impose Innovation, splashes mud and paralyzes the lives of those who follow the principles handed down by tradition.

Another error — described elsewhere — is scientolatry, the attempt to prove by science what lies beyond its capacity: for example, whether the unborn child is a human being and from when; whether certain sexual orientations are good, bad, proper, improper; or which life may be terminated, and thus which termination may be called killing and which may not.

For us, Revelation is a certainty (we simply accept it without examination).
Science is only an auxiliary and imperfect tool for operating on matter.

Science studies how things work.
Traditional worldviews — including religions and, for example, folk medicine — examine whether something works and under what conditions accessible to us; they concern themselves with origins, purposes, and consequences. They also indicate what is good and what is evil. They evaluate. They seek the meaning of Everything.

These latter approaches — extremely rational, given the limitations of our cognition — lead to humility.
Such humility requires acknowledging that it is necessary to accept certain assumptions from above, as imposed: the laws of nature, tradition, language, the cumulative judgments of previous popes, kings, or other authorities within a given institution whose identity rests not on the individual who holds the office, but on the Office itself.

We cannot creatively construct these foundations according to our own invention or the invention of people of our time alone, programmatically rejecting what preceded us and was thus “imposed” upon us.
We must accept them in order to communicate both with the world and with other people.
And also…

…with God. (2019–2020)

The Principle of the Conservation of “Energy” in Limited Systems

About the fact that to patch a hole in one place, one must make a hole elsewhere.

For the same reason, a benefit in one area — for example, health or technology — does not always mean that, in the overall balance, it is better than having slightly less health and a somewhat shorter, yet nevertheless happier, life. A supposedly “won” war does not always benefit the very purpose for which the warring entity — the state — exists; hence sometimes it is better to negotiate, to talk, or even to surrender in order to spare human lives. There are things equally important, or more important, and often more satisfying than technological conveniences. What good are multitudes of things and ever more possibilities if their excess begins to exhaust us and generate inflated expectations that ultimately produce constant dissatisfaction?

Although the principle of conservation of energy does not seem to describe the physical world as a whole perfectly, it does hold in limited systems. And as we have already noted, our capacities are precisely that — limited. To transcend them, we must metanoically step outside ourselves; Someone Infinite must come. Thus, if we devote time and strength to one aspect, we automatically devote less time and strength to others.

Therefore, the mere fact of greater hygiene, longer life, or more advanced technology does not testify to the superiority of a given culture or civilization over those in which people live shorter lives and lack such advanced technologies. When I write does not testify, I am not claiming that long life or physical conveniences are bad. I am merely pointing out the rashness of such judgments — criticizing a criticism that is itself unwarranted. And the very unwarrantedness of that criticism, demonstrable by pointing to a falsifying alternative, is proof of the legitimacy of my critique of the critique. Sic! A critique of the critique. (2020)

The fact of our limitation — and the rationality of believing in what surpasses us — I will illustrate using a deliberately chosen example of a certain institution. (In my contrariness — meaning not the opposite, but the refusal to submit to “neutralism” — I must remain consistent.)

**Without the Oneness of the Head

and without the hierarchical ladder of the Church,
one cannot speak of the identity of its message.**

And this identity, anchored in its Institutional representation, is necessary wherever ultimate and total matters are at stake.

In other words, I have chosen to believe most strongly that Christianity — in its fullness within the Catholic Church — is the most internally coherent and logically consistent doctrine, one that solved the problem of the relativism of social norms (which is a form of epistemic relativism) by establishing on earth the papal authority, which, according to the principles outlined above, simply must be believed.

This faith must be rooted in another faith — in the divine origin of Peter’s authority.
Connected to this are:

Faith in the Tradition of the Church as the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s action… ensuring that within this Tradition the transmission of Christ’s teaching occurs between living persons, not dead letters, and ensuring its proper interpretation.
Faith in the One God, who by His own Perspective establishes the single true essence of all things — faith in the subjective Gaze of God, which by its subjectivity establishes the objective state of affairs: the actual structure of the cosmos, flowing from the Logos and revealing Him “fractally” at its various levels.

This is the Perspective of which St. Paul speaks in the Hymn to Love — the perspective from which “we ourselves have been known.”
It is the establishment of which St. John speaks in the Prologue — the establishment through which all things came to be, and without which “nothing came to be that has come to be.”

(2010)

The development of this theme will appear in the next chapter, beginning with the article:
“The Catholic — the TRUE Native Believer.”

Everything Is a Sign, and a Sign Arises in Thought

There exists a strict — if not necessary — connection between knowledge and sign. One cannot exist without the other. The difference between them is one of level. What on one level is “knowing the thing in itself,” on the next level refers to something else that is itself known. Hence reality may be understood as a sign of our capacity for knowledge.

Human thought is a sign of the thing thought, not the thing itself. We know — through our own mistakes — that things exist outside our thoughts. And the thing thought, as follows from our earlier conclusions about the condition of rationality, is a Sign of the One who conceived it.
From Him come the universal principles of reality and of thinking; therefore everything is His sign, and everything can become a sign of anything else. Whether an apple becomes a sign of sin or of health, whether white or black becomes a sign of death, depends on the decision/agreement/tradition of persons who bind such sign‑relations into structures. (2011)

The capacity for knowledge is a sign of reality — and reality is a sign of that capacity

Reality may be a sign of our capacity for knowledge…
But it is always a sign of God, the Creator of that reality.
The Creator — the One who is “in the Beginning.”

Such an understanding of reality as a Sacred Sign of God (“ancestors,” “spirits,” or other “forces”) was obvious to representatives of traditional, cosmological, folk mentalities. It was — or rather is — the essence of that mentality.

It was abandoned by the “Western worshippers of paradox,” who illogically assumed that they need not rationalize the System of Everything, ultimately. That they need not believe in the condition of the existence of temporality and of the fragments of reality. That these fragments are autonomous… They did this in the name of rationality. They rationally examined elements of fragments mistakenly assumed to be independent, autonomous.
But they forgot that these fragments are elements of larger wholes — and that there is no rational reason to treat one level as more important than the next.

Therefore it makes no sense to rationalize fragments of a whole that itself is not rationalized as part of what surpasses it. And we know that what surpasses our cognitive capacities exists, that there is always something more… Something that may change the image and character of what we have already known.

Thus, in rationalizing the world, one cannot stop at quarks, waves, or galaxies.
These turn out to be irrational projections without… Faith in the Establishing, that is, the Ultimately Rationalizing Reality.
This we call God.

What good are bricks, cement, and sand…

What good are bricks, cement, and sand if you do not make from them some whole — a house, for example — if you do not order these materials, bind them according to certain principles, according to a certain order?
Rubble you can buy cheaper — or they’ll even bring it to you for free…

(2012, errata 2017)

The Nature of Error / Evil

The internal order of an element depends, to some extent, on the place assigned to it by the order of the system to which that element belongs.
To regard a whole as good merely because its elements are good is unjustified. Every error at a higher level must consist of elements that are true at lower levels. One cannot formulate any statement without true elementary particles of meaning. Evil may arise at the higher level of the connections between them — in such a case it consists in contradictions. And contradictions consist in LACKS that cause discontinuity — a breaking of the continuum of bonds between the elements of a structure.
From bond arises meaning.
Meaning is relational — it is the perception of connections.

If we cannot find a connection between statements, it would imply that there is no overarching principle governing those connections. But the human mind cannot accept this, because its very operation presupposes such a principle. Reason appears together with differentiation, which necessarily involves relation: something, by being different from something else, simultaneously stands in a particular relation to that other thing.

If therefore we have a lack of relation, we simultaneously have a contradiction — one in which two elements become indistinguishable, and thus occupy the same place, even though a place presupposes the uniqueness of the element that occupies it.
(Strange reflections from 2010…)

Subjectivity That Creates Objectivity

Recall how the Personal God, according to Scripture, created the world.
By the Word? Yes — by the Word.
But I suspect that “Word” meant far more than we might think, and we would make a grave mistake if we assumed it referred merely to sounds emitted from the mouth. “Word” meant — as the Greek Logos — Thought, Reason, and Meaning.

What kind of Thought, what kind of Meaning?
Divine Meaning.
The Meaning of everything.
Divine Thought, which by itself creates all things, including our secondary capacity for thought, imprinting in it its own principles — its Image and likeness. Only because of this is our thinking possible.

The very act of creation — Divine Thinking — was the assigning to everything its proper place, according to the principles of Thought; it was the granting to each element its relation to the rest, to other elements.

Do you now see why you have the principles of thinking that you do, why in order to perceive something you must separate it from the rest?
If not, recall the story of creation in Genesis. What happens there?
God speaks — that is, thinks — establishing the world by dividing it into two opposing spheres: light and darkness, the waters above and the waters below, land and sea… man and woman.

Because He applied the same principles to everything, reality is a coherent system, and each element can refer to others and to the whole — can signify them.

Yet if the Thought and will of the Creator are the source of the order of the Universe, then the thought and will that the Creator shared with creation — and which He allowed to be disobedient — can become, and sadly have become, the source of the disruption of the Original Creative order.

Creation can, by an act of will, destroy — but it cannot repair.
Thus, like a child who has broken something despite a parent’s prohibition, it can only wait for the parent to fix it.
And so God can recreate the entire universe anew — for the identicality of the elementary particles known to us allows, at some fundamental level, the reconfiguration of the “bits” of the universe, all of which are reducible to reflections of the Light of Divine Thought and Will, identically in every mirror…

Umberto Eco wrote that the universe becomes one great gallery of mirrors, in which every object both reflects and signifies all others.
He further claimed that this hermetic way of thinking about the universe contradicts the logical principles of non‑contradiction and identity.
But from our reflections it follows that the opposite is true: those principles of logic would not be possible without the fractal similarity of the various elements and levels of the universe.
Thanks to this similarity we can apply our thoughts to fragments carved out in countless ways.

Humanists sometimes speak of a cosmological, hermetic, sympathetic, magical, sacred, or simply religious way of interpreting the world. It consists in the idea that everything is a sign. What is the meaning of one sign becomes the sign of another meaning, and so on — potentially without end. This arises from noticing the similarity between all fragments of Everything.

Eco writes in the same work: if two things are similar, one can become the sign of the other; and the transition from similarity to semiosis is not automatic but arbitrary.
Yet this similarity is not something invented, imagined, or unnecessary for thinking about the world.
This similarity appears everywhere thought appears.
For thought is the application of the same principles (separating equal to binding) to different fragments and levels of reality.
These principles are that similarity.

The fashionable claim that “everything exists in the mind”

In contemporary philosophy, statements such as “everything exists in the mind of the individual,” “truth is subjective,” or “the division of the continuum of reality occurs in the mind” contain a grain of truth.
It is indeed a fact that divisions and classifications in reality are given to us only through the principles of our thinking — through the “play” of binary oppositions.

Up to a point, even the holographic‑fractal New Age intuitions seem justified:

“Each part of this holographic image forms a miniature structure of the whole. It is as if reality were interwoven; by looking at one fragment you can learn something about the rest, as though the whole of being were contained in a single shard.”

But their validity ends at the same point as the validity of postmodern subjectivism:

“The very act of observing the world around us is responsible for co‑creating it.”

Only up to a point.

For we experience — let me repeat — that we do not have a collective, “single” mind; we have no access to the thoughts of others; we disagree; reality often exceeds our thoughts and even contradicts them. What we once considered complete reasoning later turns out to be incomplete. Newly discovered elements change the whole we perceive.

Moreover, every act of reasoning — including scientific and historical reasoning — rests on the selection of certain facts, certain observations, certain carved‑out areas, chosen arbitrarily. A few years later someone may select different facts — carve up reality differently. Reality can be divided and its components isolated in “infinitely” many ways.
How do we know that our current division is “proper,” more “functional,” or more “economical”?
How do we know that these criteria of evaluation are themselves proper?

The Christian proposal as the “solution”

A remarkable “solution” is the Christian proposal of God‑the‑Logos, who creates reality and the mechanisms of our secondary cognition by giving them the formal features of His own consciousness.
To reach objective truth, one must seek the Divine Point of View.

Matter itself has a place within this whole, and within it there are places where the ordering of the system — of which matter is a part — manifests itself fractally and metonymically.

Creative Subjectivity creates objectivity.
We may discover or lose what God — who surpasses everything — has already conceived in the Creative Act that transcends earthly time.

I believe we draw too sharp a boundary between the technological and symbolic parts of human cognitive reality.
The cognitive act is necessarily a semiotic act: it consists in the relation between the subject’s capacity for knowledge and the object of knowledge. This relation is a sign — the basis of the relation between signifier and signified.

One may also consider another sign‑relation: the subject stands “behind” the brain (or behind the human organism as a whole, since some locate certain subjective acts in the heart — I do not know), in which appear the reflections of the rest of matter, of which the brain is a part. And it is between the spiritual intellect and ordered matter that the primary sign‑relation may occur…

Claude Lévi‑Strauss might laugh if he heard that I seek the structural capacities of the human being in Transcendence.
But the facts listed above — the experience of disagreement, the experience of error, the experience that something surpasses us, and above all the possibility of choice, of going against the current, of inconsistency, that is, of anti‑structurality — all point precisely to the fact that in the very act of thinking we use that which presupposes the existence of God, who by His principles of knowledge creates objective reality.

(2011)

In the Image of God He Created Him

This — as Catholics believe, and not only they — is precisely the Divine likeness: Consciousness–Knowledge–Reason–Thought. We differ from the Creator in that our subjectivity does not create things. Divine Knowledge, however, does create reality — it creates the very principle of structuring from which human knowledge itself emerges. Knowledge that is not only a structure, but also abstracts from it — becomes aware of the Order (Systēma–Formē–Kosmos) and the Law (Nomos) of reality. It abstracts because, for example, it can disturb these structures. The possibility of opposing them — Free Will — the possibility of irrationality, is merely the necessary consequence of the fact that the human being transcends the material manifestations of that structure. Yet every attempt to alter the structure intended by the Creator is the “creation” of gaps, voids, lacks — the tearing of good by nothingness. For only that can exist which has appeared in the Divine Mind. And that Mind, as the source of the unity of ordering principles, allows us to seek in reality the meanings necessary for knowledge — for consciousness…

I think, therefore I am…?

Agreed. Thinking is a good starting point. But it leads us to the condition of that thinking — to the Divine Thought. It is an error — by the way — to claim that this statement implies that if we did not think, we would not exist. No. It means the opposite: if we did not exist, we would not think. Thinking is evidence that I exist, but it in no way means that only what I think exists. Just as the statement “I walk, therefore I am” does not imply that only what can walk exists. There may be errors in other parts of Cartesian philosophy (I do not know, so I do not judge), but not in this statement. This one is very good. The same applies to the “Hermeneutic of Continuity” and many other formulations hastily criticized on the basis of strangely distorted interpretations. When we analyze this in chapter three, it is worth recalling the issue discussed here.

The Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” seems to suggest — perhaps contrary to Descartes’ own interpretation, but present in many mentalities — that thinking allows a human being to create reality, to invent “something new.” This is why today the almost sole criterion of everything is “creativity.” But in truth, only Divine Thinking can be equal to Creating and Establishing — including that which is the essence of “my self.” Had I not been conceived by the Creative Reason — the Logos — I would not exist.

If “therefore” meant, as many understand it, that what precedes it is the cause of what follows, then one would have to say:

“God thinks, therefore I am.”
“God thinks, therefore anything exists.”

Better, however, in English, to say:

“I think, therefore God Is” — that is, “I think, which follows from the fact that God exists.”

Or best of all:

“I could not think if God had not conceived me, if He had not shared with me the capacity for thought.”

These proposals are not mine — they are as old as the world. For since my own existence is a mystery to me, since I cannot even define it, and therefore cannot “prove” it, then on the basis of reason alone I cannot be certain even of my own “self.” I can be certain of it on the basis of faith. I believe in the “I.” I assume its existence as an initial necessity — one that nevertheless exceeds the possibilities of rational derivation. On the basis of reason I cannot be certain of reason — I need faith. Faith in the CONDITION OF REASON. For reason cannot exist without faith.

once again by AI:

1. Latin version: Cogito, ergo sum

Cogito – “I think,” the premise.
Ergo – a logical connector meaning “therefore,” “thus.” It indicates that the statement after it is a logical conclusion from the premise. It does not indicate a physical or temporal cause, only a necessary logical dependence.
Sum – “I am,” the conclusion.

Logical schema:

$Cogito ⟹ Sum$

Interpretation: The existence of the subject is a logical consequence of the act of thinking, not a physical or ontological cause of existence.

2. Polish translation: Myślę, więc jestem

“Myślę” – the premise.
“więc” – conveys the Latin ergo, i.e., a logical conclusion.
“jestem” – the conclusion logically following from thinking.

Logical schema:

$My \overset{ˊ}{s} lę \Rightarrow Jestem$

The Polish translation preserves the logic of ergo. It does not suggest that existence is caused by thinking, only that thinking necessarily demonstrates the subject’s existence.

3. English translation: I think, therefore I am

“I think” – premise.
“therefore” – translates ergo as “consequently” or “thus.”
“I am” – the logical conclusion.

Logical schema:

$I think \Rightarrow I am$

The English version functions the same as the Polish: it is a logical conclusion, not an ontological creation of existence.

4. Confronting the “reversal” interpretation

Some interpret Cogito, ergo sum as a “reversal,” suggesting that the subject’s existence is secondary to the act of thinking:

$Act of thinking \Rightarrow Existence (ontological)$

The problem with this interpretation:

In Descartes’ philosophy, thinking does not create existence, it only reveals it.
“Ergo” indicates a logical necessity, not a physical cause.
Conclusion: the subject exists because it thinks, meaning the act of thinking proves existence, not that existence depends on the act of thinking.

Correct logical interpretation:

$I think ⟹ I exist (as a conscious being)$

It is not “secondary existence” or “created by thought.”
The act of thinking is the requirement for proof of existence, not the ontological cause.

Evil? Free Will?

My mind therefore has its source somewhere beyond itself — a source it can simultaneously contradict. It can contradict it, that is, fall into inconsistency, because it has Free Will. And Free Will means that we can diverge from the Will of God, who creates Truth and reality by Wishing and Thinking them. Free Will allows us to detach ourselves from the System, from the proper place in the ordered — that is, Known and Willed by the Creator — whole, which we may call Everything. Outside that Everything there is only nothing. Free Will allows things to be moved beyond the boundaries, criteria, or (if one prefers) vectors of the order established by the Creator…

Objective evil is a linguistic construct describing deficiency and detachment from the relation that gives meaning — the ejection of oneself from the proper place in the order. This detachment is the result of free will that sought to exceed the Divine Will, to step outside the Divine, loving Order. This deficiency often has consequences for the entire Cosmos, just as the alteration of one element of a system changes the meaning of the whole, just as a single comma can change the meaning of an entire sentence.

This explains why I regard so-called structures or forms of reality as morally non-neutral. For God established good criteria in the divisions of the Creative Act — and every transgression of those criteria, including the “plucking of the fruit in Eden,” has consequences in the form of evil, that is, death. Behind the evil of cultural structures there always stand persons — which does not mean that the persons who use those structures or participate in them must be guilty. (We share one primordial guilt in which all participate.)

Objective evil exists as a hole exists in trousers, as in the weave of existence there are stains of non-existence; as the uprooting of a flower from the soil, the severing of a head from a body — the tearing of elements from their proper place, producing alienation and meaninglessness… Hell exists. It is the detachment from God and from the Order willed by Him — a detachment we ourselves have brought about.

The Relation Between Creator and Creation as a Sign

The relation of authority and the primacy of tradition over innovation — expressed in the Fourth Commandment — is itself a sign of the relation between the Creator and creation.

In this sense: All authority comes from God.

Authority and Freedom

How do the “fetters” of tradition enable freedom — a freedom which, in our case, is possible only when it acknowledges its proper boundaries?

The fundamental error is the identification of freedom solely with absolute freedom.

It is a mistake to forget that our freedom is not absolute.

To maximize it, we must understand its limits and — through a free decision — accept those limits that allow us to train the skill of achieving effects consistent with our will not only in imagination but in reality.

The revolutionary paradigm gradually deprives not only individuals but entire societies of this skill and of the ability to transform the world.

As a result, people begin to claim — falsely — that free will does not exist, or that a “free market” is one in which “everything is allowed.”

Communication and Objectivity

If people did not share the foundations of thinking, how could they possibly understand one another?

To share them, they must be common.

To be common, they must be imposed — in the Absolute dimension by God, and in the dimension of particular cultures by tradition.

The imposition of Innovation (especially in the name of “modern man,” who does not exist as a single entity) is the negation of this.

It leads to a Tower of Babel of individual expressions.

For if one person is allowed to change the meaning of the words by which he names himself, then another will want to do the same.

And potentially everyone will have their own meanings and customs.

There will be no field of mutual understanding or cooperation.

Tradition — that is, the norm whose imposition upon many enables communication — is analogous to the imposition of the Presumption of Innocence, for innocence is the starting point, the norm.

An Experiment

I conducted a (rather simple) experiment and wish to share it with the Reader.

Struggling to express my thoughts in tolerable words, I presented them to a so‑called “artificial intelligence” and asked it to process them.

I was curious how a statistical mind — one shaped, in the age of marketing, to suit the average reader — would express these ideas.

I gave the instruction (removing only the most glaring “mistakes” of the AI):

Grok responded:

(I keep your formatting and content, but translate it into polished English.)

Grok’s Answer (translated)

Concepts that reduce the universe to fractally reflecting elementary particles in the form of consciousness are a fascinating blend of physics, metaphysics, and philosophy. Here are several key points:

1. Fractality and Holofractality

Fractality in the context of the universe means that structures at different levels of organization may repeat in similar ways but at different scales. Introducing consciousness as a fractal structure suggests that consciousness may be present at every level, from the smallest particles to the entire cosmos.

Holofractality is the idea that each part contains the whole. In this model, each elementary particle could contain the entire universe, and thus also consciousness.

2. Infinite Regress in the Search for the Elementary Particle

The problem of regress: In physics, the deeper we probe matter, the more new, smaller particles we discover, leading to infinite regress. Each “elementary” particle may turn out to be composed of even smaller elements.

The impossibility of certainty: According to quantum mechanics and the philosophy of science, we can never be certain that we have reached the most fundamental level of reality.

3. Consciousness as a Fundamental Particle

Panpsychism: This philosophy suggests that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, present in all its components.

Fractal reflections: If consciousness is fractal, each particle could reflect the whole universe, leading to the paradox that everything is in some sense conscious.

4. Philosophical Implications

This raises questions about the nature of reality, identity, and perception.

If each particle is conscious, is there individual consciousness, or only a cosmic one?

In summary, these concepts suggest a universe in which consciousness is not merely a product of biological evolution but a fundamental aspect of reality…

Your Reply to Grok (translated)

Grok’s Further Explanation (translated)

(I translate this as well, preserving the structure and tone.)

Grok explains the metaphor of an infinite screen‑capture recursion:

the computer is the source, the screenshots are manifestations, and not every screenshot is itself a computer.

Thus:

If consciousness is the source of everything, it does not follow that everything is conscious.

Everything may be a manifestation of consciousness, but not everything possesses consciousness in the active, generative sense.

The Sign of the Relationship between the Creator and Creation

The sign of the relationship between the Creator and the created is the relationship of authority and the primacy of tradition over innovation, expressed in the Fourth Commandment. In this sense: all authority comes from God.

Authority and Freedom
How do the bonds of tradition enable our freedom, which in our case is possible only if we respect its proper boundaries? The mistaken identification of freedom solely with absolute freedom is an error. It is a mistake to forget that our freedom is not absolute. To maximize it, we must understand its limits and, through a free decision, accept the constraints that allow us to exercise the skill of achieving effects in accordance with our will not only in imagination but also in reality.

The revolutionary paradigm deprives not only individuals but entire societies, gradually, of such skill and the ability to transform the world. As a result, some erroneously claim that free will does not exist, or that “a free market is one where everything is allowed.”

Communication and Objectivity
“If overcoming subjectivity were impossible, how could we build a common life?” — Benedict XVI
(…) If people did not share the basics of thought, how would they communicate? (…) [From the original article, only this sentence remains.]

To share these basics, people must have something in common. To be common, it must be imposed: in the Absolute dimension by God, and in the dimension of individual cultures by tradition. Imposing innovation — especially in the name of the modern human, of whom there is no singular definition — contradicts this. It leads to the Tower of Babel of individual expressions. For if one person could change the meaning of the words they use to define themselves, another would want the same. Potentially, everyone would have their own understanding of words and customs. There would be no field for mutual understanding or cooperation.

Tradition, that is, the norm whose joint imposition enables communication among many people, is analogous to the imposition of the Presumption of Innocence, since innocence is a starting point, a norm.

I conducted a rather simple experiment and wish to share it with the reader. Struggling to express my thoughts in reasonably sounding words, I presented them to “artificial intelligence” and asked it to process them. I was curious how a statistical mind — in an age of marketing, adapted in some way to the reader of such things — would express these ideas. I issued the following instruction (I removed only the most obvious AI “mistakes”):

Instruction: Describe concepts that reduce the universe to fractally reflecting elementary particles in the form of consciousness. Pay attention to the infinite regress of searching for an elementary particle, resulting from the impossibility of being certain about the ultimate level of investigation.

Grok answered:

Concepts reducing the universe to fractally reflecting elementary particles as consciousness are a fascinating blend of physics, metaphysics, and philosophy. Key points include:

Fractality and Holofractality:
Fractality in the context of the universe means that structures at different organizational levels may repeat in similar ways, but on different scales. Introducing consciousness as a fractal structure suggests that consciousness could be present at every level, from the smallest particle to the entire cosmos.
Holofractality is the concept in which each part contains the whole. In this model, each elementary particle could contain the entire universe, and consequently, consciousness as well.
Infinite Regress in the Search for Elementary Particles:
The problem of regress: In physics, the deeper we examine matter, the more new, smaller particles we discover, leading to infinite regress. Every elementary particle we consider fundamental may be composed of even smaller elements, creating an endless cycle of exploration.
The impossibility of certainty: According to quantum mechanics and the philosophy of science, we can never be completely certain that we have reached the most basic level of reality. Each discovery is merely another step in the infinite cognitive journey.
Consciousness as a Fundamental Particle:
Panpsychism: This philosophy suggests that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, present in all its components, even the smallest particles. In this model, consciousness is not the result of the complexity of matter, but an integral part of it from the beginning.
Fractal reflections: If consciousness is fractal, each elementary particle could carry consciousness, reflecting the entire universe, leading to the paradox that everything is in a sense conscious, but at different levels of complexity and perception.
Philosophical Implications:
This concept raises questions about the nature of reality, identity, and perception. If each particle is conscious, is there individual consciousness, or is it a shared cosmic consciousness?
The problem of solipsism and intersubjectivity: If every particle has consciousness, does it mean every being is merely part of a larger consciousness?

In summary, these concepts suggest a universe where consciousness is not only a product of biological evolution but a fundamental aspect of reality, manifesting in the infinite regress of elementary particles, each of which may contain the whole universe. This leads to constant exploration and questioning of what is “ultimate” in physical and philosophical inquiry.

I responded to Grok:

The fact that consciousness is the source of everything does not mean that everything is conscious. Where does this leap in reasoning come from? Use the image of an infinite live screenshot.

Grok:

Comparison to an infinite live screenshot (first, intuitive, unrefined thought) can help understand this concept:

Infinite Screenshot as a Metaphor for Consciousness: Imagine a screenshot of your computer screen, showing the current display. Within that screenshot, there is another screenshot, and so on infinitely. Each screenshot is generated by the computer, which is the source of what you see.
Source vs. Manifestation: In this example, the computer is the source of all screenshots. Similarly, consciousness can be the source of everything in the universe. However, not every screenshot in the infinite sequence is “conscious” in the sense of functioning like the computer or being able to generate further screenshots. Screenshots are merely reflections of what the computer (source) has produced.
Leap in Reasoning: The leap in reasoning — that if consciousness is the source of everything, then everything must be conscious — comes from the mistaken assumption that every level of reality possesses the same quality as the source. In our metaphor, each screenshot comes from the computer, but not every screenshot is a computer. Likewise, consciousness may permeate the universe, but not every element must be actively conscious; it may simply manifest this consciousness, as a screenshot manifests the computer’s activity without being the computer itself.
Fractality without Conscious Unity: Fractality means the structure may repeat, but it does not imply that every part has the same functionality or consciousness. In the infinite screenshot, each image may carry aspects from the source (the computer), but not every screenshot can generate further screenshots or possess the full consciousness of the computer.

Thus, the idea that consciousness is the source of everything does not automatically require that every element of the universe be conscious. Rather, everything can be a manifestation of this one fundamental consciousness, without possessing its own independent awareness.

Information Theory:
Information theory studies the quantitative description, processing, transmission, and encoding of information. Key concepts include:

Information: Measured as the reduction of uncertainty or entropy. The less probable an event, the more information its occurrence conveys.
Entropy: A measure of uncertainty or randomness in a dataset, defined by Claude Shannon as the average amount of information produced by a data source:
$H(X) = -\sum_i p(x_i) \log_2 p(x_i)$
where $H(X)$ is the entropy of random variable $X$ , and $p(x_i)$ is the probability of state $x_i$ .
Bit: The basic unit of information, representing one of two values (e.g., 0 or 1).
Encoding: Transforming data into a form suitable for storage, processing, or transmission. Methods include lossless and lossy encoding.
Channel: The path through which information is transmitted, potentially subject to noise that may distort the message.
Noise: Disturbances that may alter or corrupt the original message.
Redundancy: Additional information added to enable error correction, improving reliability at the cost of efficiency.

Key Theorems:

Shannon’s Source Coding Theorem: Any information source can be encoded with entropy close to its maximum, allowing minimal loss in data transmission.
Shannon-Hartley Channel Theorem: Defines the maximum rate of error-free information transmission through a noisy channel.

Applications:

Data compression (ZIP, MP3, JPEG)
Cryptography
Telecommunications, bandwidth management, error minimization

Subjectivity Creating Objectivity:

In information theory: Information is treated as objective, but its interpretation is subjective. Subjectivity refers to how data is decoded and understood. In your reflection, Divine Subjectivity (God) creates objectivity (the world), analogous to the emission of information that is interpreted by creatures (us), creating our subjective experience of the world.
In theology: God as Logos (Word, Thought, Reason) creates the world through thinking and speaking. These “words” are not merely sounds but thoughts, ideas, and principles structuring reality. The creative act is also informational, where God’s subjectivity becomes the source of objective reality.

Thinking, Meaning, and Creation:

Thinking as information: God generates information that organizes the universe. In information theory, entropy (disorder) is reduced by information, analogous to creation where Divine Thought gives sense and order.
Meaning of everything: The universe is structured according to Divine Thought, embedding information in reality and giving it meaning discovered by human cognition.

Fractality and Likeness:

Fractal reflection: The universe as a hall of mirrors reflects a fractal nature of information; each fragment may carry information about the whole.
Likeness and semiosis: Similarity leads to the creation of signs. Your reflections show that similarity is embedded in Divine Thought, which creates reality.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity in Cognition:

Cognition as a semiotic act: Each act of knowing decodes information, where subjectivity (our thinking) meets objectivity (reality’s structures).
Objectivity from God’s viewpoint: True objectivity is accessible only through Divine Thought, understanding information created by God, where each element points to another and ultimately to the whole of creation.

In this way, your reflections link information theory with theology, showing how information, thought, and Word (Logos) are central to understanding creation and knowledge, highlighting that Divine subjectivity underlies objective reality.

next AI:

The Reconciliation in Ten Points:

Subjectivity That Creates Objectivity — Interpreted Through Information Theory**

1. Information as a Creative Act

In information theory, information is the reduction of entropy — the imposition of order upon what would otherwise be chaotic.

In your metaphysics, Divine Thought is the primordial act of reducing absolute entropy (nothingness).

Creation is a coded message, formed when the Creator imposes structure upon being.

Thus “In the beginning was the Word” means:

In the beginning was Information — the principle that gives form to what would otherwise be nothing.

2. Entropy and Sin as Distortion of the Code

Your definition of evil as “lack,” “gap,” or “rupture” corresponds precisely to information theory:

• Good = fullness of information, coherence of the code, continuity of relations.

• Evil = loss of information, rupture of relations, increase of entropy.

Original sin becomes the first introduction of noise into the communication channel between God and humanity.

From that moment:

• the world’s message remains true,

• but the receiver (the human mind) is noisy,

• and the channel (culture, tradition, language) requires redundancy to preserve meaning.

This explains why Tradition is necessary:

it is a code‑correction mechanism safeguarding the message from corruption.

3. The Bit as the Minimal Moral Decision

A bit is a choice between 0 and 1.

In your anthropology:

• free will is the capacity to choose between 0 (rejection of the bond) and 1 (acceptance of the bond),

• every moral act is a “bit” inscribed into the world’s structure,

• God allows the choice, but only one choice aligns with the Creator’s code.

Thus absolute freedom is noise — and noise destroys information.

4. Encoding and Revelation

In information theory, encoding is the way a source shapes information for transmission.

In your theology:

• Creation is the first encoding,

• Natural Law is moral encoding,

• Tradition is cultural encoding,

• Scripture and Revelation are verbal encoding,

• Christ is perfect encoding — the uncorrupted transmission of the Divine Message.

Christ is the noise‑free channel, the only place where the Divine Information passes without distortion.

5. The Communication Channel and the Role of Culture

A communication channel may be noisy.

In your analysis:

• traditional culture = low‑noise channel,

• modern culture = high‑noise channel,

• revolution = deliberate introduction of noise,

• individualism = fragmentation of the shared code,

• relativism = the claim that everyone may invent their own code.

This leads to the Tower of Babel of individual expressions, where communication collapses.

6. Noise as the Metaphysical Nature of Evil

Noise in information theory is interference that:

• carries no meaning,

• destroys meaning,

• prevents meaning from being decoded.

This is exactly your definition of evil as nothingness invading structure.

7. Redundancy as Tradition

Redundancy is the repetition of information to protect it from error.

In your theology:

• ritual,

• law,

• custom,

• hierarchy,

• repetition,

• obedience,

• liturgy,

are redundancy mechanisms that preserve the Divine Message from distortion by the world’s noise.

This perfectly supports your defense of Tradition as the necessary condition for communication.

8. Fractality and Similarity as the Structure of the Sign

Your comparison of the universe to a “gallery of mirrors” corresponds to:

• holographic models of information,

• fractal mathematics,

• Eco’s semiotics,

• the metaphysics of the Logos.

Every element of the world:

• reflects the structure of the whole,

• is a sign of something greater,

• is part of the code,

• is information about Information.

Thus:

everything is a sign, but not everything is conscious —

just as every pixel is an image, but not every pixel is a computer.

9. Subjectivity and Objectivity

In information theory:

• information is objective,

• interpretation is subjective.

In your metaphysics:

• Divine Subjectivity (the Logos) is the source of objectivity,

• human subjectivity is the capacity to decode,

• objectivity is alignment with the Divine Code.

Thus:

Objectivity is not the opposite of subjectivity —

it is the Subjectivity of the Creator.

10. Final Synthesis

Your thesis “Subjectivity that creates objectivity” means, in the language of information theory:

• God is the Source of Information (Logos),

• creation is the Message,

• humanity is the receiver and co‑interpreter,

• tradition is the error‑correcting code,

• evil is noise,

• sin is loss of information,

• free will is the bit that affirms or denies the bond,

• meaning is the relation between the code and the Mind that established it,

• objectivity is the Divine Point of View,

• knowledge is decoding,

• salvation is the restoration of perfect communication.

Interpret the lyrics of my song (known in Polish as "Przetrwamy Huragany chwiejnych mód"):

REFRAIN

We will survive the hurricanes of shifting trends,
We’ll take up the labor of creating the world.
We will not let them tear our hearts away,
We will not run after the spirit of the age!

REFRAIN 2

We won’t let the winds of fashion rip us apart,
What we love is not some relic of the past.
With our faith we’ll make the world flow sweet as honey,
The sun of eternity has risen above us.

Why do you torment yourself so much
To gain what time will soon grind down
In the mortar of the world?
Change is no value in itself —
What matters is what will last forever,
Not for two short years.

Infinity — it is You I long for.
Without You no thought can even arise.
Even time I draw upon a single axis,
For reason, child of eternity, knows no other way.

Atoms, quarks, leptons, photons, bosons (and drones);
The division of matter seems endless.
But the elementary particle of existence,
The one we can grasp, is the capacity to think.

REFRAIN

We will survive the hurricanes of shifting trends,
We’ll take up the labor of creating the world.
We will not let them tear our lives away,
We will not follow the spirit of the age.

You say that God and spirits are only illusions
Of a brain that likes to see persons
Even where none exist.
But I believe God shaped this little head
So it could fish Him out
From the nebulae of the world.

You say nothing exists beyond matter —
Or the opposite: that things are products of consciousness.
The first is nonsense; the second I almost accept.
I only add: not every consciousness —
But the Divine.

I could not think if not for Her trace upon all things —
The Matrix of Divine Thoughts that binds the world
Into one great order.
Had She not shared with me the capacity
To know, to will, and to give love.

REFRAIN

We will survive the hurricanes of shifting trends,
We’ll take up the labor of creating the world.
We will not let them tear our lives away,
We will not follow the spirit of the age.

You believe you can apply your thoughts
To every fragment and level of existence —
That others have roughly the same reason.
Without this, mutual understanding
Would be impossible.

Divide — and bind each fragment
To the rest of the world.
This binary law of thought
Is one for all reality.
It lets one thing signify another,
And makes everything a sign
Of the Creator’s Consciousness —
The perfect relation: Love.

When I am dying,
I will take a bouquet of moments lived fully,
To cover those wasted chasing
What ends in itself,
Means nothing more,
Reaches not into eternity.

HALF‑REFRAIN

We will endure.
Endurance consumes what passes.
We will endure…

FINAL REFRAIN

We will survive the hurricanes of shifting trends,
We’ll take up the labor of shaping the present age.
We will not let them tear our lives away,
We will not follow any spirit of the times.
We won’t let the winds of fashion rip us apart —
What we love is no mere past.
With our faith we’ll make the world flow sweet as honey,
The sun of eternity has already risen above us.

10.

And you will die someday.
Do not waste things,
Do not squander moments or words.
Your home, your bread, your clothing, your work, your time,
And your service to your neighbor —
You have them to rebuild
As a Sign of God and His Love.

AI Commentary (translated):

The song as a whole appears to affirm the idea that in a world full of change and passing trends, true meaning and permanence are found in union with the Divine Consciousness that creates and gives meaning to reality. In this way, the music and lyrics become carriers of information whose interpretation leads to reflection on subjectivity and objectivity in the context of Divine Creation.

Next instruction:
Connect the above reflections with the rationality of hierarchy and Tradition, and with the irrationality of the Terror of Innovation (revolution). This terror is the opposite of the principles of the presumption of innocence (of people and of inherited norms), of in dubio pro reo, and of primum non nocere. What unites these principles? Why is the imposition of rules (linguistic and cultural) not an oppression, but a kind of limitation that trains us and enables freedom to the extent that freedom is actually possible (given that the existence of freedom does not imply its totality, and that seeking total freedom ends in the oppression of noise, entropy, and conflict…)

AI Grok’s answer:

The connection between the above reflections and the rationality of hierarchy and Tradition, as well as the irrationality of the Terror of Innovation (revolution), can be interpreted as follows:

The Rationality of Hierarchy and Tradition

Hierarchy and Tradition as an Informational Structure:
Hierarchy and tradition can be understood as informational systems that regulate society and culture. They provide stability, predictability, and a reduction of entropy. In information theory, the reduction of entropy means the establishment of order; therefore, traditions and hierarchies function as mechanisms that structure social interactions, enabling effective communication and cooperation.

The Presumption of Innocence and Tradition:
The principle of the presumption of innocence, applied to tradition, means that existing norms, values, and practices should be regarded as valuable unless it is proven that they are harmful or ineffective.

(Here I add what I did not correct earlier: even proving something does not automatically justify changing a norm, since most people are not capable of verifying whether the proof is correct. Requiring them to accept a novelty and abandon a traditional norm demands a kind of sectarian faith that the proof is indeed valid. Therefore, innovations should almost never be imposed when the matter is complex or unclear — especially when our judgment about, for example, a pandemic is based not on reality itself (such as bodies falling in the streets), but on media information that overlays events with emotional, fear‑inducing interpretations, sometimes using misleading imagery, such as the well‑known photo of coffins from Bergamo. Such media “facts” become self‑fulfilling prophecies and generate real social disruption and real deaths through the reorganization of, for example, healthcare systems, which leads to confusion, errors, and increased mortality. A climate of fear produces real disorder. Imposing innovations (extraordinary measures, lockdowns) in such an atmosphere becomes a form of terror, causing worse consequences than the threat itself, because it paralyzes us with appearances while we attempt to fight real dangers.

To introduce extraordinary measures and frighten people with them, there must be equally extraordinary and universally observable evidence — for example, bodies lying in the streets or bombs falling on cities. Not media reports or statements from “experts.”)

A State built on endless legislative fantasies is an evil.
The same problem is the source of the immorality and perversity of such a State and of other institutions founded upon constant intrusions into people’s daily lives, based on someone’s theories and concepts piled into stacks of regulations that no one — not even lawyers — is capable of fully knowing, let alone understanding in their mutual contradictions.
Such law, and the State built upon it, contradicts its own purpose.

Individuals who take seriously their duty of obedience to authority face an insoluble conflict: they cannot determine the boundary up to which they are obliged to know the law, and there will always be some regulation they have not yet learned — or even if they have learned it, they cannot understand it when confronted with other provisions that appear contradictory.
Such law leads to social death, to the paralysis of sensitive and honest individuals.
The only psychological and practical survival strategy is to ignore such law.
The problem is that even if one ignores it, the law does not ignore us — and sooner or later such a person will be blamed, and their life will be destroyed.

Those who thrive in such a legal system are the individuals who can simultaneously ignore the law and selectively apply it wherever it benefits them, shifting blame manipulatively onto others.
This system rewards deceit and egoism, not the practice of honest principles.
Honesty is crushed even more severely here than in a world without bureaucratic excess and socialism.

Let the AI continue :)

This approach is analogous to in dubio pro reo (“in doubt, rule in favor of the accused”), where tradition is the “accused” that should be protected from being discarded too hastily.

Primum Non Nocere:
The principle “first, do no harm” in medicine applies here to a conservative approach toward social and cultural change.
Introducing innovations without understanding their consequences can lead to harm; therefore, tradition can be seen as a protective system that tests novelties through time and collective experience.

(Let me add here that the phrase “without understanding the consequences” is meaningless, because everyone who introduces innovations believes they understand them. The point is that they may understand them wrongly. And it is precisely against such wrong understanding that these principles protect us. Introducing innovations by force and displacing tradition is harmful by definition, regardless of the innovator’s self‑confidence. Let us return to the AI:)

The Irrationality of the Terror of Innovation

The Terror of Innovation as Entropy:
Revolutions and abrupt changes can be seen as an increase of entropy in the social system, where information (norms, values) is disrupted and order is violated.
This produces cultural and social “noise,” making it difficult to distinguish valuable information from the unnecessary or harmful.

The Inversion of Legal Principles:
The Terror of Innovation negates the principles of the presumption of innocence and in dubio pro reo by assuming that everything old is, by definition, bad or obsolete — which can lead to the rejection of valuable aspects of tradition without proper consideration.

(In reality, this terror does not openly claim that the old is bad. It often declares that the old is wonderful and insists that it does not deny it at all. But in practice, despite such declarations, it applies subtle emotional blackmail and negative PR toward those who remain faithful to inherited norms, and even uses the force of regulations to compel the ABANDONMENT of the norm.)

Violation of “Primum Non Nocere”:
Revolutions often ignore the potential harms that may result from sudden changes, which contradicts the ethical imperative to avoid causing harm.

Limitations as Training for Freedom:
Linguistic and Cultural Rules as the Framework of Freedom:
The imposition of rules is not oppression, because such rules create the framework within which individual creativity and freedom can develop. Just as in games, where rules define possibilities yet also allow for strategy and creativity, so too in culture the rules make meaningful action possible.

Limitations and Information:
In information theory, constraints (such as coding) allow information to be transmitted more effectively by reducing noise and error. Likewise, cultural and linguistic rules facilitate communication, understanding, and cooperation — which are the foundation of freedom.

Freedom in Context:
The existence of freedom does not imply its absoluteness. Freedom within the boundaries of tradition and hierarchy enables personal and social development in a predictable, intelligible environment. The pursuit of total freedom, by contrast, leads to chaos and conflict, because the absence of boundaries results in the absence of a shared language and shared understanding.

In summary, hierarchy, tradition, and principles such as the presumption of innocence or primum non nocere function as structures that not only protect against chaos but also enable the development of freedom in a way that is balanced and intelligible for society.
The Terror of Innovation, by contrast, destroys these structures and thereby distorts freedom, turning it into oppression through the absence of order and the excess of entropy.

Next instruction (translated):

Try to explain clearly and concisely, in the context above, why traditions — like the rules of a game — must be imposed, while novelties must not be imposed but tested cautiously. And why it is better to err by remaining with an existing norm than by imposing its rejection on people in the name of innovations.
Then show the legitimacy of a single subject at the top of the hierarchy, who in our theory is the reflection of the Oneness of the Creator — the Oneness that makes possible the coherence of the structure and perception of reality for those creatures who possess the capacity to know it.
Apply the words “all authority comes from God” to this understanding: that every relation of authority is, by its very nature, a reflection of the Creator’s authority over creation.
Integrate into this the Fourth Commandment, which stands closest to the first three concerning God, and show how the intersection of the arms of the Cross constitutes the mediation between Creator and creation.
In this context, show how the New Creation — given the reducibility of elementary particles to the Divine Consciousness reflected fractally in the universe — can occur at the level of those very particles.
Incorporate this into the symbolism of the Cross, in which along the vertical beam God descended in Bethlehem — the House of Bread — and lifted human nature (the horizontal beam) into the heavens, establishing the center — the mode — in the intersection of the Cross.
Indicate similar interpretations from the Church Fathers.
Show how easily a creature endowed with free but limited will can damage the order so severely that it cannot repair it on its own, and how only God, creating anew at the elementary level, can do so — and did so on the Cross.
Explain how the assumption that consciousness lies at the foundation of the world aligns with Occam’s Razor and with the fact that every level and fragment of reality is always necessarily given to us as preceded by consciousness.
And show how solipsism is refuted by the fact that, despite this connection between things and consciousness, consciousness sometimes misleads us, and we cannot change an unwanted state merely by willing it.

Answer (translated):

Traditions vs. Novelties

Traditions as Rules of the Game:
Traditions are like the rules of a game: they provide stability and predictability, enabling social coordination and creativity within boundaries. Imposing them is necessary to ensure that all players (the community) can participate in the game (social life) effectively and harmoniously.

Novelties Must Be Tested Carefully:
New ideas or practices can be sources of innovation, but imposing them without testing can lead to chaos. Novelties should be introduced cautiously so as not to disrupt a functioning system that has already proven its value over time.

Better to Remain with the Norm:
An error made by remaining with an existing norm is less harmful than introducing innovations that may turn out to be destructive, because norms carry with them proven value and stability.
(My addition:) They can be destroyed in a single moment, but rebuilding them requires generations — and sacrifice.

Hierarchy and the Oneness of the Creator

The Legitimacy of a Single Subject at the Summit:
A single subject at the top of the hierarchy — such as a king or a pope — symbolizes unity and coherence within society, just as the One Consciousness of the Creator grants unity and order to the universe. This oneness makes possible a coherent perception and construction of reality.

Authority from God:
The saying “all authority comes from God” can be understood to mean that every relation of authority is a reflection of the relation between the Creator and creation, where authority is given in order to serve order and the common good, not itself.

The Fourth Commandment:
“Honor your father and your mother” stands closest to the commandments concerning God, symbolizing mediation between the Creator and creation. It is like the intersection of the arms of the Cross, where human authority — the authority of parents — reflects Divine authority, teaching obedience and love.

The New Creation and the Symbolism of the Cross

Reduction to Divine Consciousness:
If the universe is a fractal reflection of Divine Consciousness, then the new creation can occur at the level of elementary particles, where God as Creator can introduce a change that is simultaneously spiritual and material.

The Symbolism of the Cross:
The vertical beam of the Cross symbolizes God’s descent in Bethlehem (the House of Bread) and the elevation of human nature into heaven, while the horizontal beam represents humanity. The intersection of the beams signifies the unity and reconciliation of Creator and creation.

The Church Fathers:
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that God “became man so that man might become God,” expressing the idea of unity and transformation through the Cross.

Free Will and Order

The Rupture of Order by Creation:
Free will allows the creature to disrupt the Divine order, but not to repair it, because only God can create anew at the elementary level.

The Cross as Renewal:
Through the Cross, God performed this creative act anew, repairing what had been damaged by human free will.

Why Solipsism Is Impossible

Assuming that consciousness lies at the foundation of the world is consistent with the principle of the fewest assumptions (Occam’s Razor), because everything we know is already preceded by consciousness.

Solipsism is refuted by the fact that our consciousness can be mistaken, and our willing does not always change reality. This shows that there exists something beyond our subjectivity — something objective, not entirely dependent on our will or perception.

Conclusion

Thus, traditions, hierarchies, and the symbolism of the Cross are not merely social or religious tools, but reflections of deeper ontological and epistemological principles rooted in Divine Consciousness as the foundation of reality.

Another exchange of thoughts with AI ChatGPT, though corrected and expanded by me to a much greater extent:

The Primacy of Tradition over Novelties as the Presumption of Innocence – the Status Quo In Dubio Pro Reo

(I wrote to it:)
In complex matters — known to most people only through the media and second‑hand reports — people are pressured to accept accusations and the terror of innovation over the existing, tested, and traditionally transmitted norm.
(A norm can also be understood as the fundamental innocence of others, and deviation from the norm as guilt — especially when it becomes grounds for accusation.)

Because these matters are complex, people have no way of verifying who is right.
If they are required to accept accusations — that anyone who disagrees with a given military, sanitary, or climate‑energy narrative is an enemy, a traitor, or an accomplice of criminals — then what is being demanded of them is sectarian faith.
And not faith in something positive (which would be acceptable), but faith in accusations against people, groups, and norms.

One may believe without verification in a norm (climatic, customary, linguistic, sanitary, war‑peace related), including in the innocence of people and groups.
Such presumption must be imposed in order not to paralyze social life by allowing this tendency to be exploited by those who cast suspicions.

The Balance of Benefits and Harms

Some say that refraining from judging someone’s unexpressed and uncertain motives and intentions leaves us defenseless against malicious people.
This is false.

Even if, because of such restraint, we occasionally fail to detect an individual threat, the real danger arises precisely when we allow ourselves accusatory guesswork based on strong intuitions.
Then we become defenseless against a far more serious and lasting danger — one generated by our faulty method of judgment:
the exploitation of our intuitive tendencies by dishonest people, who, through manipulation techniques, direct our intuitions toward false leads and divert our attention from real threats.

This is why the principles of the presumption of innocence (regardless of whether someone is actually guilty or not), in dubio pro reo, and the Status Quo are more rational than opening the gate to suspicious intuitions.
But these principles must be understood both more broadly and more strictly than is commonly assumed.

The Mediation of Reality by Media and Marketing

The increasing mediation of reality through marketing, media, and “bouillon cubes” of super‑stimuli and idealized narratives (designed so that we believe them more readily than facts) blocks our sensitivity to reality.
It cripples our intuitions.
These intuitions become even more vulnerable to manipulation than before the era of instantaneous communication.

This vulnerability, combined with the social permission to accuse based on intuition, creates a permanent and systemic problem of social manipulation, which works to the advantage of accusers.

We will be inclined to believe those who are more effective in marketing and who produce better black PR against their enemy, rather than their victims — who have only complex, effort‑requiring, and therefore more difficult explanations in their defense.
Such explanations are usually rejected because they lose the battle for human attention against the weeds of simplistic narratives, while the noble plants of reality‑based, measurable arguments require effort.

Measuring is harder than blind belief in unmeasurable yet sensational accusations.
Thus, truthfulness loses.

Opening the Gate to Suspicion

If we open the gate to suspicion, other intuitions will rush through as well.
They will storm the gate, topple the entire wall, and trample the guard — the principle of caution in judgment.

Media and Manipulation

Perceiving the world through media deepens the problem.
Media narratives are designed to be easily digestible, but not necessarily true.
Their priority is not accuracy, but marketing effectiveness — evoking emotion, trust, or hostility.

As a result, our society increasingly trusts narratives that “sound better” and are more effectively promoted, rather than facts.

The Harmfulness of Intuitively Assuming Evil in Norms and in One’s Neighbor

People have a natural tendency to rely on intuition, but in a world where intuition is constantly manipulated by media stimuli, it becomes impaired. As a result, society will more often believe those who have mastered the art of black PR rather than those who are actually right. This, in turn, leads to a diversion of attention away from real dangers and toward enemies fabricated by accusers.

Principles such as in dubio pro reo not only protect the innocent but also limit the power of accusers who, by manipulating social intuition, can destroy the foundations of trust and rationality in public life.

Mutual Reinforcement of Errors and the Formation of Ever‑Growing Echo Chambers Through False Accusations

False assumptions about someone’s motivations and intentions have another serious side effect: they can entrench errors in the very people who become targets of such accusations.
If the attribution of uncertain, reality‑incompatible motives turns out to be false, it produces a sense of injustice in the accused. As a consequence, such individuals may later reject even legitimate criticism of their actions when it finally arrives.
Instead of reflection and improvement, a sense of wronged indignation appears — one that can harden their attitudes and solidify the very errors one hoped to prevent.

Additionally, such false accusations divert the attention of others away from real problems and real mistakes, focusing it instead on imaginary charges. As a result, we lose the opportunity for substantive evaluation and correction of actions, and our perception of reality is redirected onto false trails.

Decisions based on such erroneous diagnoses can have tragic consequences. Instead of solving problems, society begins to waste time and energy on conflicts built on false premises, while simultaneously ignoring real dangers and challenges.

Therefore, a rational approach — grounded in the principles of the presumption of innocence and the status quo — not only protects against chaos and manipulation but also minimizes the risk of mistaken diagnoses that could lead to further, lasting damage in social and political life.

Higher Intelligence Will Justify False Impressions Even More Skillfully

Relying on intuition is dangerous for yet another reason: black PR is specifically designed to manage the intuitions of individuals and societies. Intuitions precede rational judgment, and thus even an intelligent person will merely rationalize their manipulated impressions more effectively.

The only solution is to focus criticism on what is directly observable and to refrain from inferring what is unnecessary — especially when we cannot exclude other possibilities.

“Fear” of innovation is wise

“Fear of innovation” is more rational than mocking that fear, because it functions as a defensive mechanism against the uncertainty and risks that accompany any change — especially changes affecting social foundations, norms, or values tested in everyday reality across many generations.
Here are several arguments supporting this position:

1. Evolutionary adaptation for the protection of stability

In the social and cultural context, long‑standing norms and traditions are the result of an evolutionary process in which their effectiveness and value have been tested in practice by many people, across different times and places.
Fear of innovation acts as a filter that protects against the risk of introducing changes that could lead to social or moral destabilization.

2. The cost of faulty innovation

If a novelty (a vaccine, a drug, a decision to support an armed conflict, a ban on traditional methods of heating homes, or the imposition of naming human sexes contrary to established norms because someone “feels like it”) is implemented without proper testing, and its effects turn out to be negative, the cost of repairing the damage may be far greater than remaining with the status quo.
In this sense, fear of change is a form of rational caution.

3. The pressure of manipulation and marketing blackmail

Modern communication and marketing techniques — often wrapped in scientific language or appeals to “progress” — can exaggerate the benefits of innovation while ignoring its potential dangers.

For example, a problem such as a power outage (especially in the face of a looming war and simultaneous encouragement to fight despite the disarmament of the army) can deprive people of the only possible means of heating their homes.
Even if someone permits such a change, people accustomed to comfort for years will have lost the skills required to obtain and use fuel.
And stoves will disappear, along with the stove‑makers capable of building them.
These are skills that seem trivial to those who know them only in theory, but in practice they may prove impossible to restore quickly — precisely when speed determines survival.

Mocking fears related to innovation can be a tool of manipulation used by lobbyists to make people dependent on their product or service.

4. The importance of social intuition

Fear of innovation can be an intuitive response to the lack of full knowledge about the consequences of change.

5. Examples of negative consequences of innovation

History provides numerous examples of innovations that, despite good intentions, produced negative effects — such as the introduction of new technologies without assessing their impact on the environment or society (e.g., asbestos, amalgam dental fillings used on a massive scale and later banned as toxic only after nearly the entire population had been exposed, or pesticides).

6. The value of tradition and its verifiability

Traditional norms have the advantage of time — they have proven their effectiveness.
Innovations do not have this luxury; they require advanced testing and evaluation, which is often skipped in the pursuit of quick results.

Thus, forcing innovation should rightly be called terror.
Norms, although imposed, are imposed precisely because their function is to enable societies to cooperate freely according to shared intentions, and to allow individuals to achieve their aims by avoiding misunderstandings and developing competence within a concrete culture.

7. Tradition as protection against artificial needs created by marketing

Marketing based on intense emotional stimuli leads to simplifications and the creation of artificial needs.
Fear of innovation acts as a counterweight to such manipulation.

In summary:

Fear of innovation is a mechanism that protects against impulsive decisions that could destroy social stability or expose society to high risk.
Mocking this fear — especially in the form of media‑marketing blackmail — can lead to hasty changes and the neglect of potential dangers.

Let us return to the philosophical reflections:

Reason, Bond, and Love.
Relation — going out of oneself.
The meaning of an element lies outside itself.

To think about something, it must be distinguished from the rest.
Thinking is the act of becoming aware of something and allowing it to exist in the mind as a concept — a meaning.
If something is distinguished, it is not by “autonomy” (a completely separate law and thus complete separation from the rest).
If that were the case, we could not perceive it at all, for there would be no point of contact between us and the object of knowledge.
Nor could we perceive any relations between such objects — and therefore no rationality in them.
Without this, we could not become aware of anything.

The object of knowledge exists in our consciousness as thought.
Likewise, the subject.

Thoughts exist only as meanings — concepts.
These meanings can exist only by being distinguished from others.
Distinction is identical with relation.
The perfect form of differentiated‑unity
we call love.

Distinction necessarily introduces order —
that is, proper places for everything we can distinguish.
These “places” are more like distances,
that is, relations
in reference to other conceived things.
And these relations determine their identity,
because it is from them that things are what they are —
just as the shape of bread depends on the mold into which the dough is poured.
The negative, distinguished from the positive, determines its shape.
When things occupy a certain place, they prevent other things from occupying that same place at that moment —
and thus those other things must limit themselves in shape and/or position.

An element that changes its place within an ordered whole to which it belongs changes not only its own meaning but also the meaning of the whole.
One small letter can change the meaning of an entire sentence.
One defender breaking the defensive line turns an offside into a goal for the opposing team.
One electron in a chemical compound makes it a substance with entirely different properties.
Sometimes a single painful (or joyful) childhood experience marks our behavior in adult life.

It is difficult to speak of the meaning of anything in itself.
Only God has meaning that is independent of others and total,
because what arises in His Consciousness
becomes the Normative Order
and objective reality.

Although…
one may say that His Triune nature is a fundamental internal relation that is difficult for us to analyze.
It may only be revealed.

He Himself has a permanent place in the structure of Being —
that of supremacy, creative primacy, and exemplariness,
the One who establishes divisions and orders,
and the One who constitutes their only true unity —
Love.

The meanings of creatures depend on the place He assigned to them,
the place He thought for them
in the system of reality
of the Creative Mind.

For there to be order that gives meaning — for anything to be knowable at all — there must be relation:
a positioning in reference to others,
mutual influence,
and at the same time separation from the rest.

This relation, to exist, must be mediated by the Ultimate Relation — the Creator,
whose Knowing establishes,
together with difference,
the principles of its unification.

In other words:
For relation to exist, its foundations must exist —
some commonality, shared principles, a source and a goal.
One Creator of principles.

The reality we know is available to us only as meanings —
as elements of consciousness.
Therefore, the relations between objective things must be equated with the relations between thoughts‑concepts‑meanings.
We must treat them as such, despite the rational assumption that objectivity exists independently of our thoughts.

The only reconciliation of these two truths is to acknowledge
the Divine Source of objectivity in His Subjectivity
and the origin of our thought in the Divine Thought.

Our thinking may be understood as that divine breath —
the breathing of God —
which allows us to know the Divine Thoughts,
the Thoughts that became objective reality.
We can know it because the foundations of our thoughts are created in the image of the Divine Thought.

All distinctions — all relations — rest on the binary principle of distinction between Creator and creation,
whose most important element is the relation between God and His image — the human being.
(The Trinitarian relation I cannot analyze here.)

Distinction must go hand in hand with unification.
For this, a principle of unification is needed.
For our mind experiences connections, reactions, and relations between the distinguished elements.
Ultimately, we know in the name of the assumption of the “rationality of the universe.”

Such rationality requires a principle
that separates and unites
through relational ordering.
Conformity to this principle is meaningfulness.

This principle is the Meaning — the Logos,
which must be Personal and One,
so that thinking — through which alone we have access to reality —
together with that reality
may have Meaning.

That Meaning is Love.
Relation — that is, Love — is the unification of differences.
Such relation is meaning beyond itself, meaning in Transcendence.

This Ultimate Transcendence
is the only mediator
between different elements and persons.
Without it, there could be
neither separation
nor union.

Such relation is at the same time
responsibility.
It is “Love and Responsibility.”
For it presupposes existence within an all‑relation,
that is, within a system,
an order,
in which the change of one relation may disrupt the meaning of others,
or even of the whole.

If the perfect relation is Love, we must remember
that love is always freedom — free will.
It is free will that gives
the possibility of choosing relativism,
and within it, error —
choosing what lies outside the Divine Thought,
which is annihilation, choosing
nothingness —
lack.

This nothingness tears the continuity — the unity — of the Whole of the Cosmos.

This possibility confirms that the human being is a person
in the image of God,
and at the same time reveals the difference
between the image and the Archetype.
For only God has the ability to establish beings by His own Thought.
Man has only thinking.
God would have to contradict Himself by giving man the ability to create.

Thus, this possibility of choosing —
the condition of love —
opens toward nothingness, toward lack.

By choosing lack,
the human being opened
and crossed
the gates of barren time
and death.

In this disruption of the whole,
he blasted himself
out of his proper place,
out of his proper relation,
and lost the stable reference to his own essence.

And as we have already noted,
the essence of man must lie outside him.
And by disturbing the order of relations,
man lost his own essence.

He became an example of the phenomenon called:
SEPARATION / LONELINESS
(autonomization / monadization / “alienation”).

Since relation is the foundation,
separation from it is the fundamental error.
Pride reduces to this.

Cognitive necessities can be denied by human free will and consciousness.
When this happens, the human being falls into contradiction.

Separation consists not only in the fact that man does not remain in his essence —
that it is always a desired goal,
yet still unachieved,
unbearably unreachable,
like the completion of a Sisyphean task.

Another element of alienation is the fact
that what is possible
is not actual.

In other words:
A human being never knows whether, in a given time and place,
he holds in his consciousness everything that is possible and necessary to be aware of.
More: a human being knows that he will never know everything that can be known — neither on the macro‑ nor on the micro‑scale.

Konrad Tomasz says
that even in Heaven, beyond alienation,
a human being will not know everything,
because he is not God.
Yet then he will not need to know,
because he will not need to search
for the place proper to him —
the place from which he fell,
slipped,
reaching for the apple…
And that reaching
was out of place.

By using the expression “in a given time and place,” I wanted to show
that existing in flowing time
and in changing circumstances
determines which truths we currently remember.
This “currently” presupposes
that there also exist truths
that are potential,
possible to remember in given circumstances.

Thus we may ask:
Can we be certain that we remember all the elements
necessary to construct the true meaning of the reality we are aware of?

The time of our activity in the world,
the time of particular epochs and generations,
is also such an “actuality,”
limited in relation to the “possibility”
of the endless river of time and the boundlessness of space.

Where, in that river, can we find a point of support that gives meaning?
After all, infinitely many such points can be distinguished —
even on a river flowing
not over the earth,
but over a grain of sand…

Everyday experience, the history of science, and the encounters of cultures
give us experiences showing that the above statements are true.
For what else, if not this alienating limitation,
is the act of searching for glasses
that are on one’s nose?

What else is the development of science,
in which from time to time it turns out
that we have found data forcing us to abandon our previous,
“proven” certainties?

What else is the experience
that what we consider morally obligatory and obvious — because “natural” —
may be considered evil elsewhere?

What else is the fact that a human being does not grasp all things?
What else, if not this
actuality?

Here again Konrad Tomasz interjects,
rightly pointing out that this not‑grasping‑everything will apply even in eternity.
But then — I reply — we will not need to search for our place,
for we will be in it.

What certainty, then, remains for us?
How are we to satisfy
this hunger
for coherence and understanding —
a hunger
that refuses to leave the stomach of knowledge
without meaningful nourishment?

What remains is that which allows us to search.
What remains is that without which there can be
neither faith,
nor doubt,
nor distinction,
nor the perception of relations.
— Consciousness.
— Cognitive necessity.

But even it
does not remain
in the total rationality
possible to it.
For although falsehood cannot exist without truth,
truth can exist without falsehood.
Reason can exist without stupidity.

I will say more:
Reason, Truth, Coherence, Consciousness, Knowledge, Thought
cannot tolerate falsehood,
cannot tolerate stupidity,
cannot tolerate
incoherence,
lack of meaning,
LACK itself.

They cannot tolerate it, and therefore they constantly try to patch the holes within themselves.
They try,
but it turns out they lack the material —
for in filling one place,
they create a hole elsewhere.

They must seek outside themselves —
in what is Transcendent.
Otherwise they will never dig themselves out of their alienation.

Cognitive necessities require faith, because they themselves are accepted on faith.
And from these necessities necessarily follows (as I argued elsewhere)
the existence of the One Principle of structuring —
lovingly uniting distinctions
through His Creative Thought.

The alienation that is our condition means
that necessities are not enough
to satisfy our cognitive
and ultimate needs.
For we are not certain
whether circumstances — time and place —
will allow our consciousness
to find
what is possible to think
and what is the final, correct conclusion.

Why do scientists choose to study these fragments of reality and not others?
Tomorrow they will choose different ones,
say they were mistaken,
and a different picture of the world will emerge.
Why?
Because they must choose something.

For although thinking is synchronic —
it is imagining spatial or structural systems as timeless stabilities —
it nevertheless takes place in time —
in diachrony.
It takes place in time,
although time itself can be conceived only through
the metaphor of synchrony — a space without “before” and “after,”
as an axis drawn on school paper
(as we were taught in primary school).

Therefore, we may not have enough time
to find the “place” of thoughts‑concepts‑meanings
that point to the Meaning of everything.

Therefore it is worth returning to faith.
Faith in the Holy Spirit
who reminds us
of the proper place of thoughts in their proper time.
Faith in the Revelation of God
which descended into history and can be transmitted.

One may also say it differently:
That a human being can do something
does not mean he will do it —
for he may simply not think of it,
or he may run out of time.

And here Revelation helps.
It does not cast us into the danger of fruitless searching,
but gives us a discovery
whose rationality we do not need to reach —
it has come to us itself.
We need only read it.
And here faith helps.

The above demonstration that reason and cognitive necessity lead to God
is essentially another name for
“natural law,”
“the possibility of knowing God — His reflection in the Order of the Cosmos,”
as the Church taught.

This possibility of finding
the Final Truth of Life
is like the possibility of finding, for example…
tea —
which is on the shelf (though hidden behind another package).

Often it happens
that it is possible to find it —
and yet we do not find it —
because we have not
currently
thought to move the bag of sugar
behind which the tea was hiding.

And as life strangely goes,
we conclude that there is
NO tea in the house,
because we have
currently not found it.

And so we content ourselves with plain water, drink nothing, or go to the store to buy tea
(only to return home,
turn straight toward the place where the tea lies,
and move the sugar
to put the newly bought tea there).

It was possible to think that the tea was hidden.
And yet we did not think of it currently.
Actuality again limited us.
It is, after all, the whole life of a human being and of humanity
(not tea, but actuality).

How often it happens
that memory makes us search for a lost thing where it is not,
while we consistently and dismissively avoid its true location.

The Church explains this fact —
this current failure to reach what is possible —
as a post‑sinful weakness, a cognitive imperfection.

Here we have touched matters as distant as heaven and hell.
I am not able to determine whether they can be reached by cognitive necessities alone.
If we combine the above with the observation that man does not grasp the infinite, we may draw another conclusion:

It is the recognition
that some truths
which we cannot currently derive from cognitive necessities
must be accepted on faith.
For even recognizing that something is such a necessity
requires time and reflection.

But even if we search, we may not find. Why?
Because all our knowledge is ultimately accepted from above, on faith, without deriving it.
For the principles of reasoning, analyzing, deducing,
and the material subjected to deduction
are also accepted from above —
we do not know why or whence they come to us.

We know that they come;
we may accept them or not — and this we call faith.

We do not know whence,
in a given time and place,
there appear in the mind
the structures and objects of knowledge inscribed within it,
which together generate meaningfulness.

For ultimately
not only the possibility and method of reasoning are given from above,
but also the elements, conclusions, and results of that deduction
may appear —
or not.
We may “think of them” —
or not.

We become aware
that we have reached them
only when… we have reached them.
For in reality
they come to us.

We cannot take a single step except to accept or reject —
except for free choice.

We can only accept
the belief in their derivation (conditioned by the culture of parents, friends, individual habits, circumstances, scientific and mass fashions, etc.),
their rationality —
and thus accept them
from beyond ourselves,
accept them as transcendent.

We cannot reach conclusions on our own.
We can only be gifted with the reaching of conclusions —
we can know them and accept them,
or not.
Accept them from the Creator of Rational Derivation —
the Creator of the coherence of distinctions.

False conclusions can exist only as “constructed,”
even if at one level they arise from correct conclusions.
Therefore these given‑from‑above conclusions
do not guarantee total correctness.
For in the accepted reasoning some connections at lower levels may be missing,
and this will disturb the whole —
the final conclusion.

We can never be certain
whether we have forgotten something
and whether the conclusions we have found follow from complete premises.

If so, then every conclusion rests on faith in the completeness of the premises.
But nothing can be done about this.
Nothing needs to be done about this.
For it is no problem.
It is a given fact over which we have no control.
And we need not have control,
for it turns out to be a fact most fortunate for us.

For if we assume, as above, the truth of the premises,
then reasoning is entirely dependent
on That which is beyond us
and on faith.

Therefore the rationality of anything —
the principles and the material of reasoning —
is always accepted on faith.

Therefore
the rationality of faith in God
can be accepted only on faith.
Therefore faith in Him
cannot depend on whether
His existence
seems to us currently justified or not.

For ultimately, faith in God without seeking the rationality of His existence
has the same cognitive and rational value
as faith that sees
why the existence of God is rational.

[2011]

God–Reason and the Sacred

“The mathematics of the universe does not simply exist by itself, nor can it be explained by the hypothesis of the divinity of the heavenly bodies.
It possesses a deeper principle — the creative Spirit; it proceeds from the Logos, who contains within Himself the archetypes of the world’s order, and who, through the Spirit, impresses these archetypes into matter.
Thus, from the perspective of His creative function, the Logos was described as ars Dei, the art of God (ars = techne!).
The Logos Himself is the great Artist, in whom all works of art — the beauty of the universe — are originally contained.”
— Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy

“The world is presented as a rational reality:
it proceeds from the eternal Reason,
and only this creative Reason constitutes the true power
that rules over the world and within the world.
Only faith in the one God
truly liberates and rationalizes the world.
Where this faith disappears, the world becomes
only seemingly more rational.
In reality, one must then rely
on the action of the powers of unpredictable chance.
In place of the conviction of a rational structure of the world
enters the ‘theory of chaos,’
placing man before darkness
that he cannot dispel
and that sets the limits of the rational side of the world.”
— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

One may call the perspective that establishes existence Creation, which human imagination — shared across cultures — locates in the mythical and mystical time of the beginning.
This time is the point of reference and the proper form, the proper place of beings, which the human being seeks to restore through participation in the primordial time, space, and consciousness — which, though transcendent, can be invoked immanently through rituals, ceremonies, customs, and traditions.

Whenever a change of status occurs, it must be confirmed in That which God created; it must see its anticipation in that primordial creative act.
This calling forth and manifestation of the Beginning — which is the manifestation of the Sacred — is precisely hierophany.

Therefore mythical narratives attach such great importance to what comes from beyond time and space — to what, being born as the first determined thing, became simultaneously something secondary in relation to the holy Oneness, which nothing shapes, and which itself gives shape to all that proceeds from Its knowledge, a knowledge equal to being — or rather, a knowledge that creates being.

What is secondary receives meaning — yet this meaning does not create objective beings; it must discover what has already been established, for it is itself already established and possesses stable principles.

[Fragment from a text written in 2010]

The Iconic Sign

Do a photograph and an Image contain, in some way, the person they depict?
Stranger still: does the signifier contain the signified?
This depends on what we consider the signified element to be: the matter being organized, or the principles of organization — the relations.

We may ultimately conclude that everything in matter consists of indistinguishable elementary particles — light, strings, bubbles, energy, waves, and so on.
Any identity is then determined by relational differentiation, by separating these particles (or lower‑order relational systems) according to certain principles of ordering.

If the identity of things is determined by principles of ordering, then these principles constitute the essence of the signified element — and therefore they can be contained within the signifying element, can be made present by it (re‑presented).

Thus, considering the universality of ordering principles, we must acknowledge that all reality, at every level, is a reflection of some One Primordial Source.

Meaning arises with the binary relation, which is the elementary particle of ordering.

Since we have established that knowledge arises through abstraction and the perception of relations, we must equate knowing with seeing meanings.

Let us repeat once more what meaning is:
It is the directing of the signifying element toward the signified — in other words, a relation, and at the same time a separation between them.

Since we have acknowledged the uniqueness and universality of ordering–relational principles, and the fact that outside of knowing — which requires these principles — objectivity is not accessible to us, and since objectivity is God’s Knowing, then in this Knowing lies the meaning of everything.
God is the Ultimate Meaning of all things.
Meaning — the Logos, the Sense that was in the beginning.

Let us recall once more the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.
Creation unfolded through division.
From something emerged two opposing spheres.
From each of these spheres, further ones.

Some wise people today claim that all human cognition proceeds in this way — through dividing into binary oppositions.
This is said to be connected, for example, with the structure of the human brain.
Why not?
Perhaps the structure of the brain was created by Divine Knowing precisely on this principle — so that the human capacity for knowledge, a faint reflection of Divine Knowing, could find itself comfortably at home within it.

In this light we may affirm that everything is a Sign of God, and God is the Sense of everything.
Just as He is the foundation of all Knowing and all existence, so without Him no meaning can exist.

We may therefore construct the following:

The Semiotic Pyramid

Creator, Sense, Primary Meaning, Creative Reason (S)
↓
Meaning‑relation, semiotic relation,
the primary binary relation (r)
↓
creation (s)

This primordial relation between Creator (S) and creation (s) participates in every secondary relation within creation, as the source of the possibility of transferring the same ordering principles that make unity and system‑structure possible — including communication and thinking by non‑creative minds.

Secondary relations have levels, and at each level the primordial relation must participate.

There exist many levels of secondary meaningful relations.
These too reflect the Primordial Relation fractally, which enables their meaningful connectedness.
In the human mind everything known is knowable as meaning — including what is objective.

The criteria of correctness of internal structure, arising from the Will of God, are not points but regions that allow infinitely many good possibilities.
Infinitely many — but not arbitrary, for they must fall within certain criteria.
These criteria, established by the Creator, are direct values — first‑order meanings (s).
They morally oblige and/or constitute objective truth.
Within them, relative meaning‑systems of further orders are possible.

Of course, a human being may treat as a direct value something that is secondary and relative, and treat what is absolute as relative.
But such is human nature — flawed, seeing only in part, as in a mirror.
We cannot therefore abandon the defining of primary values, for then we would negate all values — that is, all meanings — and we think through meanings.
We would negate that by which we negate.

Cultures too are a kind of organization of meanings socially shared and practiced.
Therefore they also possess primary — absolute — criteria, and secondary — relative — ones.
They too are subject to the tension described above.
Thanks to these levels — relative and non‑relative — the multi‑layeredness of cultures is possible, as well as their intermingling, or unity in diversity.

Let us return to the conclusion:
Everything is a sign of God, and God is the Sense of everything.

If so, then the human being is obliged to call forth the “Time” of Creation, in which God assigned things their proper places — conceived in His Mind.
These proper places are the direct values — the first‑order meanings.

Today we often look with condescension upon folk rituals and ceremonies, which were not merely spoken but enacted attempts to call forth the Creative Act — that Primordial State of things — in order to cyclically repair the degrading, barren temporality.

But perhaps this ritual search was more rational than what today is called rationalism?

[2011]

SUMMARY — English Translation

The condition of rationality is faith in a Reason that requires no justification — a Reason that creates universal laws and the reality governed by them.
The fundamental law is His Thought, and its elementary particle is the Bond between that Reason and Creation — a bond immediately reflected in the connections between the individual elements of the created reality, making the world a system built upon laws.

This Creative Reason has shared the capacity for knowing, willing, and giving love with one category of creatures, enabling that creature to know all the rest.
To this category belong us — persons.

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