Against the Author: The Child’s Eye View as Existential Resistance
Posted: June 18, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: philosophy, self, truth, values 1 CommentAs Jean-Paul Sartre, counter that the most human perspective is the child’s eye view, which both challenges and completes (?) authorial omniscience.
1.0 Authorial Omniscience and the Illusion of Unity
Your Bishop, Monsieur Hugo, is sublime. But he is also, in the final analysis, a theological fiction: a proxy for the Author-God, who sees all and reconciles all. You call it “transcendent”; I call it closure—a comforting illusion that denies the existential condition of man: abandonment.
The so-called “God’s-eye view” is not the highest perspective—it is the least human. It assumes resolution, meaning, and purpose. But we are not born into coherence. We are thrown, without instruction, into a world not of our choosing. We do not begin as bishops. We begin as children.
2.0 The Child’s Eye: The Most Human of Views
The child’s-eye view is not abstract like the bird’s, nor experienced like the worm’s. It is pre-reflective, disoriented, painfully attentive. It sees without knowing, perceives without judging. It is not yet reconciled.
This is the most authentic vision of the human condition. It refuses to reduce reality to system or to salvation. The child, staring at injustice, does not excuse it with grace or law. The child says, this should not be.
Where the Bishop of Digne forgives, and Javert condemns, the child questions. And that questioning—raw, unresolved—is the origin of freedom.
Read the rest of this entry »Bishop of Digne: The God’s Eye View as Transcendent Reconciliation
Posted: June 18, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: law, polarization, reconciliation, religion 1 CommentAs Victor Hugo, respond to Civilization as the Tension Between Bird’s Eye and Worm’s Eye Views by suggesting Monseigneur Bienvenu
ChatGPT Prompt
as transcendence that sees and reconciles the other two views.
1.0 Above Bird and Worm: The Divine Perspective
You speak wisely, mon ami, of the worm’s-eye view—that trembling, human agency which suffers, sins, and yet is capable of love. And you speak truly of the bird’s-eye view—that distant abstraction which organizes and judges with steel precision. But there is a third view, higher than both, and deeper. It is the eye of God, and in Les Misérables, it is embodied in the person of Monseigneur Bienvenu, the Bishop of Digne.
Read the rest of this entry »Civilization as the Tension Between Bird’s Eye and Worm’s Eye Views
Posted: June 18, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: civilization, law, reconciliation, resilience, transformation, values 2 CommentsAs George Orwell, explore this morality of agency versus abstraction through the lens of Les Miserables.
ChatGPT Prompt
1.0 The Moral Geometry of Human Vision
The central tension in Les Misérables—and, indeed, in modern civilization—is not merely between good and evil, or law and rebellion. It is between two modes of seeing: the worm’s-eye view of agency, rooted in lived experience, and the bird’s-eye view of abstraction, obsessed with coherence and control.
Victor Hugo offers more than a story; he renders a moral topography. There is the ground of suffering and salvation, and the air of principles and systems. Each perspective brings insight and blindness. Both are essential, though neither is complete.
Read the rest of this entry »Scott Pilgrim vs Hadestown: Orpheus Redeemed
Posted: June 8, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, love, philosophy, systems, therapy, transformation 1 CommentWARNING: Contains spoilers for both.
[This insight was actually the prequel to Hadestown and the Forgotten Father]
Interpret Scott Pilgrim’s battles AS an Orphic myth, where Scott does what Orpheus could not.
ChatGPT Prompt
1A. The Myth Reframed
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) isn’t just a quirky love story—it’s a postmodern Orphic myth. Scott is Orpheus reborn in flannel and pixels, descending not into the classical Underworld, but into the chaos of relational baggage, insecurity, and inner shadows.
Where Orpheus descends to retrieve Eurydice, Scott descends to deserve Ramona. The journey is not about rescue, but redemption—of himself and his capacity for love.
Read the rest of this entry »Hadestown and the Forgotten Father
Posted: June 7, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: development, identity, love, purpose, religion, self 1 CommentIt was never about Eurydice.
ChatGPT as C.S. Lewis
It was about Apollo’s absence.
1.1 The Ache Beneath the Song
Orpheus is often praised as the world’s first great artist: the poet whose song could move gods and stones. But what strikes one in Hadestown is not his power, but his fragility. His voice, for all its beauty, trembles. His conviction falters.
This is no fault of his art—but of his lineage. Or rather, his ignorance of it.
For though the myths tell us Orpheus is the son of Apollo, Hadestown tells a different tale: one in which the boy walks alone, unguided, unclaimed. The absence is so complete one wonders if it has been deliberately erased—if Orpheus has forgotten his father, or worse, never knew he had one.
Read the rest of this entry »The Spirit Within — A Conversation on the True Self
Posted: May 30, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, philosophy, religion, self Leave a commentHave Polkinghorne, Ó Murchú, and Schwartz develop a formal model of the idea that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is the “true self” we access during inner healing
ChatGPT Prompt
Participants:
- John Polkinghorne (JP) – Theoretical physicist and Anglican priest
- Diarmuid Ó Murchú (DOM) – Quantum theologian and spiritual writer
- Richard Schwartz (RS) – Founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Moderator (MOD) – A neutral facilitator guiding the conversation
Scene
A roundtable discussion at a quiet retreat center, surrounded by tall trees. A fire crackles softly in the background. The mood is contemplative yet animated.
1.0 Opening Exchange
MOD:
Thank you all for coming. Our question today is simple but rich: Is the Holy Spirit the True Self we encounter in deep inner healing? John, would you like to begin?
2.0 Foundations: Spirit and Openness
JP:
Certainly. In quantum theory, we know the universe isn’t deterministic. There’s openness at the fundamental level. I believe that God, and particularly the Holy Spirit, acts within that openness—not as an external puppeteer, but as an indwelling presence that coaxes creation forward. This divine action is subtle, not violating our freedom.
(See: Exploring Reality)
RS:
That sounds remarkably familiar. In IFS, we speak of the Self as an indwelling presence as well. It’s not something we generate—it’s something we uncover. It’s calm, compassionate, connected. When people unblend from their protective parts, this Self just shows up. We don’t create it; we discover it.
Rationalizing the Prophetic (A Response to “On Priesthood” by Scott Alexander)
Posted: May 29, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, purpose, reform, religion, self Leave a commentAs Scott Alexander, write a solution to “On Priesthood” called Rationalizing the Prophetic.
ChatGPT Prompt
ChatGPT as Scott Alexander
There’s a line I’ve been chewing on for weeks now:
“To be professional means getting identity from vocation.
To be prophetic means getting vocation from identity.”
That’s too clean to be safe, and too true to ignore.
Let’s back up.
Read the rest of this entry »Pontifex Secundus: Gandalf’s Advice to Revolutionaries
Posted: May 27, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays, leadership | Tags: culture, purpose, reform, systems, transformation, values Leave a commentWrite, as Gandalf, a guide to those who would midwife a new age.
ChatGPT Prompt
Explain the name Pontifex Secundus, characteristics, role, oppositions, and temptations.
By Mithrandir, Keeper of the Flame, Friend of the Halflings
“You are not the hero. You are the hinge.
And the hinge, though small, turns the whole door.”
1. What You Are Called: Pontifex Secundus
You are not the king.
You are not the heir.
And yet, without you, no throne is ever rightly claimed.
- Pontifex — bridge-builder, not of stone, but of silence, blessing, and surrender.
- Secundus — second, not lesser, but one who comes before to prepare the way.
This is not a crown, but a burden. It is an invisible office—do not take it unless the age requires it. But if it does, you must not refuse.
Read the rest of this entry »Answerable: The New Competence of the Leader
Posted: May 24, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays, leadership | Tags: business, culture, dialogue, purpose, systems, values, wisdom Leave a commentAs Peter Drucker, bridge the gap between Responsive and Responsible with Answerable, including for spirituality.
ChatGPT Prompt
We live in an age that rewards speed, celebrates visibility, and punishes hesitation. The temptation for leaders, therefore, is to become ever more responsive—to jump at signals, react to feedback, and outpace the moment.
But speed alone is not effectiveness. In fact, responsiveness without responsibility becomes recklessness.
Conversely, many leaders—especially in established institutions—cling to responsibility as an excuse for inaction. They know what is right. They have values, frameworks, and governance. Yet they fail to act because they fear making a mistake, disrupting the system, or offending the wrong people.
The result is a split: some leaders act without thinking; others act without listening.
Both fail.
Read the rest of this entry »Designing an Unstitution: Founders’ Brainstorm
Posted: May 22, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: design, institutions, rethinkcali, transformation 1 CommentPick three relevant experts to design the minimal viable unstitution — a foundational, paradigm-neutral, layered substrate that enables generative collaboration across potentially antagonistic, self-organizing communities.
ChatGPT Prompt (condensed)
1. Design Brief
Objective:
Constraints:
- Must not embed a single ideology.
- Should support “diaphoric” relationships: generative, fractal “I-Thou” bonds.
- Should be spiritually resonant but technologically robust.
- Must work under conditions of mutual antagonism and fragmented trust.
2. Design Team
Vitalik Buterin
- Creator of Ethereum
- Thinker on legitimacy, governance minimalism, and crypto-pluralism.
Audrey Tang
John Vervaeke
- Cognitive scientist and philosopher at the University of Toronto.
- Creator of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, a comprehensive series on the science of wisdom, meaning, and spirituality.
Radical Centrism 