Monday, October 27, 2008

A systems approach to animals, organizations and humans



In the nineties of the last century the so-called “systems approach” was a trend in management literature. It had been originated from the so-called “systems theory”, formulated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a biologist. I was reminded of it reading a commentary on an Internet blog where somebody used the word “outlet centre” Such an centre exists in Lelystad and is a kind of shopping mall for luxury goods and clothing.. In Dutch an outlet centre, or better: uitlaat-centrum, could be a shop where you can buy a new or second hand exhaust-pipes for cars, and is also not associated with luxury goods, only with men with dirty hands and blue garage clothing. Or maybe a terrain where you can let your dog out. So it’s better not to translate the word, and let it remain English.

The Internet blog where I read the word gives the opportunity to give comments. So I gave a comment: “Your use of the word “outlet centre” to indicate a shopping mall reminds me of a group of shops that relieve their nature and of potential customers who are sniffing around to smell something they might like. Because outlets are also more or less outputs, it reminds me also of systems theory, and I you made me intend to investigate how shops run by humans and animals can be approached by this theory”. It came up in my mind how I once used rabbits as an example (not real rabbits of course but only the drawing of a rabbit on a whiteboard) to explain systems theory to a group of students. As said, the father of systems theory is Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972). He discovered that there are entities such as organisms that didn’t obey to the general physics law that all things tend to decay and fall apart until a state of equilibrium is reached. Example: an apple fallen from a tree will rot and eventually totally integrate into its environment. Also so-called “closed systems” such as car engines, clocks, TV sets, mobilephones, buildings etc. when left at their own, will wear out and get “out of order” After hundreds of years nothing will be left from any mobilephone. Bertalanffy discovered that so-called “open, self-regulating systems” escape from this fate when left at their own, because they have built-in monitors that give them “instructions” to keep them functioning. All living organisms are open, self-maintaining systems. A general model (the core of systems theory) for a system is the so-called input – transformation – output – feedback communication model. The input is everything that comes into the system, intended or un-intended. The output is everything that leaves the system, and everything in-between is called transformation of the input to a desired output (notice the doubtful word “desired”). If the output is not within certain measurable measures (too hot, too cold, too heavy, too light, too etc.) then the feedback mechanism takes care that this info is communicated to the input and/or the transformation department of the system, where it is corrected (think of a central heating system with a thermostat). This is the model as it is described in management-textbooks.

Our management textbooks we use in our school give a clear description of this all, and everybody who reads them can imagine an organisation or a company as an open, self-regulating or self-maintaining system. Of course, its outputs are its products (often sold via outlets). That’s what companies are for. The output of a school is knowledge and competence, but also graduated students in which these are incorporated, because knowledge and competence can only be wrapped in humans. (there are books “full of knowledge” but if nobody reads them there is still no knowledge). These books locate the feedback mechanisms at the output hole (its outlet): the output has to meet criteria and norms, and the output is constantly monitored if these criteria and norms are met. If not, a feedback communication will start. So when I was talking with the students about feedback in the rabbit-system, I also put the feedback monitor at the output. Of course you can imagine the laughter when I was hesitating about the “product” of the rabbit at its outlet, and I was really confused. If the rabbit had a diarrhoea, would there be a feedback communication between its output opening and its inside? But I soon realized our mistake. A rabbit’s system output is not its excrements but a rabbit-friendly feeling. The system “rabbit” looks for a “product” that best maintains it, and that best suits its chances to survive. Then it feels “happy” and quiet. Of course a rabbit doesn’t produce this happy feeling just like a factory produces goods, its production process consists of looking for and searching. The product is what it finds after that looking for and searching.

Many management textbooks tend to blind us by emphasising that the product of a firm is its desired output, namely its products and services. It’s totally different: its products are part of its transformation sub-system and not its output. Its output is the “feeling” of the firm, namely that its management and staff are happy with their market position, revenues, profits, earnings and social status it gives when having a respected job. The feedback monitor is located at the place where this output, this environment can be monitored. These monitors are the market research function, the legal affairs, human resources and financial specialists etc. They are “the eyes and ears” of the firm. When Europe becomes an uneasy place for a firm then it moves to another part of the world, just like an animal moves to a place where there is more food or better shelter, or where costly resources are more efficiently acquired.

This leaves an important question unanswered: if you state, like management theory does, that an organisation is an open, self-regulating system, where do you put its products? What are the “products” of comparable open systems such as animals? If we look at animals then we see that they produce three things: offspring, waste and maintenance of the eco-system they live in. They contribute to the welfare, the economy of their environment by maintaining it un-intendedly by catching, eating, producing dung and dying. By creating offspring they maintain their species, also un-intendedly, and by fighting and defending behaviour they take care that their environment is not taken over by others. If needed, however, if their environment is damaged they can look for another environment or take action to maintain its current situation, but only as far as their competencies will allow. In principle the same is the case with companies. Companies merge or change their shapes and structures to maintain their species, they catch, eat, they produce waste. They even fight (with financial and/or legal weapons). The problem with companies, considered from a systems view, i.e. considered from a view of nature, is that most of their products are waste, not contributing to a natural eco-system. They contribute to a psychological, human eco-system, which is of no positive relevance to nature, but has indeed serious effects on the physical natural environment. An automobile factory produces waste. The waste is not only the by-products, but also the sellable products themselves. A company feels fine and happy when “the demand” asks for enough products, slightly more than they can produce, because then there’s growth. This “demand” is purely human, never animal or natural, and humans are also open, self-regulating systems of their own. They differ from animals like organisations also differ from animals in producing (far) more waste than nature can bear, in their striving for a satisfying output, namely a condition in which they can operate satisfactorily. How does this work out in humans? The answer is important to understand why business organisations produce too much waste, without the feedback from their monitors that their output (their “healthy” condition) telling them that they have to change their transformation system, part of which are their production system and their products.

Animal organisms can have feelings. We don’t know if one-nucleus organisms such as amoebas have feelings, but rabbits, horses, birds, and probably also fish have feelings of satisfaction. Even very primitive organisms strive for a state in which they can function optimally, i.e. when there are enough resources around them to make themselves able to function optimally. They search, they move around, travel, sniff, feel, etc. for food and mating partners. They hunt, graze, fight, protect, build nests and holes and do everything they can to reach and maintain that situation. This way so-called eco-systems are created. Within natural boundaries “natural states” are created such as woods, parts of a sea, maybe for certain species whole continents, these eco-systems for the natural environment of the organisms that live in them. An eco-system, considered this way, is also an open, self-regulating system. But only as far as its competencies allow it. An eco-system can be damaged or devastated by natural forces, after which new eco-systems will arise. These processes can take hundreds, thousands, millions of years. Not couples of years or dozens of years at its most, like human or organizational systems. Unconsciously (as far as we know) alle living organisms contribute to the emergence and maintenance of these eco-systems, their outputs are fully in line with the output of the eco-system they live in, until forces from outside the system cause changes. We must assume that this was the way the earth as one grand super-eco-system operated before humans entered it. Evolution theory describes how the transformation processes went on within these eco-systems, bounded by physical events and situations.

At a certain point in the development of species, humans emerged from them. How these first humans originated and found their way in this world is nowhere better described than in the Genesis-book of the Bible. They learned the difference between “good” and “evil”. (Did they? Even now philosophers and scholars cannot give an exact definition of the two concepts. But we have to assume this difference, and they are described in theology and morality). In a more or less simultaneous process, their brains developed the possibility to separate an immediate situation they are in, from the imagination of that situation. I think that this process was a result of naming. A name is the symbol, the sign of the object it refers to and this way people could give each other information about things that are not immediately present. Take e.g. a dog. When you call the name of his boss in the presence of the dog while his boss is away, the dog assumes immediately that he is at the front door. He is not able to think of his boss as somebody being somewhere else. Humans can think of anything which isn’t in the immediate here-and-now, they simply imagine it. Simultaneously with the development of this ability humans developed language, a series of auditory (later also visual) signs by means of which they could combine images, situations and cause-and-effect relations that not really take place, but only in their minds. However, this language originated from its practical applicability, and not (as e.g. Plato thought) from innate ideas and concepts. They could give each other information and instructions, and they could construct instruments and weapons, and better shelters and fire. Hereby the humans became “masters of the universe”. Their outputs began to match a far wider eco-system than the eco-systems of their competing living organisms. Other than animals, humans eventually could construct their own eco-systems with dykes, acres, and hunting habits. They were much, much faster than the processes of evolution that determined the development of earthly systems up to then. They became like little gods, creating and exerting power over things and creatures that lied outside the reach of any other organism. So far so good. However, this new option of thinking, imagining, using language and power-exertion was not in line with other features and abilities that organisms possess for creating a good output for themselves. Such feature is the signal that the system has reached a satisfactory output in which it can optimally function and operate. Men are often insatiable. Animals have built-in mechanisms that tell them that they have done enough for their feeling of wellbeing, men live in a spiral of never-enough. Only their own mistakes or refusal of physical nature can stop them. This is because of their faculty of thinking, using language and imagination. Next to these, men have kept their feelings and emotions that animals also have, some psychologists have explored this mismatch as a result of evolution. Men feel anger, fear, love, loss, joy, etc. and of course they want to reach a state in which non-pleasant emotions and feelings will not occur, and pleasant feelings and emotions will be there, just like animals. We deliberately use our brains to improve our situation and to protect our possessions. We invent cars, not one car for ourselves, but millions of them because they can be sold. We invent markets. Our leaders proclaim that markets are needed, and we believe them. We are employees of a factory that produces cookies and our target is to make and sell as many cookies as possible. We write books about how to run such factories, calling them open systems and their output cookies, and their environment markets and competitors. In fact these factories are kind of temples. Closing them means great disaster because it causes unemployment and loss of money, the cookies themselves become at once unimportant, they are now only a means to keep a factory running. Please buy our cookies!

In management literature there was a debate about “the goals of the business firm”: was it production of the items it produces or was it gaining profits? Mr. Iacocca, the GM of Chrysler, spoke the famous words: “If it were money, then I know better ways of making money than producing cars”, thus indicating that he found the product the most important goal. It also illustrates how humans think in goals, destinations, purposes, intentions, functions etc. Every activity must be purposeful, and we seldom realize that most things are there just because of themselves. Systems theory is adopted by management to make their processes going on better. In debates it’s forgotten that business firms, just like so many other organizations, are just there for their own sake, because people working in them use their work to reach and maintain a state of happiness. The managers and CEO’s think too often about their wallets and bank accounts, and the profits of the firm are there to ensure this goal. Lower-ranking workers use their work for social contacts and positions, for fulfilling the need to be busy with what they and their relations find meaningful things.

It’s the human drama. Everything we invent is wonderful and often miraculous. But does it contribute to something else than mankind and market? Do the products, the output of all those organisational efforts contribute to some eco-system? Rationally speaking we cannot assume that mankind lives in an eco-system of its own, different from the eco-systems of other living organisms. It’s the same planet, the same universe that we are both dependent on. Now we enter the realm of ethics. Knowing the distinction between good and evil, together with the possession of language, symbols and imagination, makes us different from the animal world, let alone from the world of plants. We must conclude that only humans have morality which tells us what is good and what is evil. We must also conclude that there are only a few moral or ethical laws that are lived up to by most people. Many moral prescriptions and ideas are different from one era to another, from one group of people to another. I think these moral laws and guidelines are there because humans feel their lack of determining ultimate goals for activities. All human activities have some goal or purpose, or can be ascribed to some goals or purposes. But these goals and purposes are almost always limited in their scope, and when pursued, often clash with other goals and purposes of other people and organisations. Humans need morality so badly that activities are shared under the flag of a moral principle or view while a period later they are assessed as immoral, human history is full of examples. We say: people want to justify behaviour that could be seen as immoral by non-group members. So how do these moral principles and views fit into our open, self-regulating system called human being? I think that one way or another humans want to come in terms with their unique and lonely position in the universe. They see that people can damage themselves or other people by pursuing goals. They are aware that they form such an open, self-regulating system but that they cannot function like that by simply leaving everything as it goes, like animals do. Animals have no problem in damaging or devastating things, it’s in the order of nature. Men see what the effects are of their conduct, they plan and draw conclusions. Men have possessions and “vested interests”, they feel responsible for other people, for events, for the consequences of their behaviour. But in pursuing the protection of possessions, events and regulating the behavioral consequences, they are urged to pursue, again, goals and objectives, which cannot always be in line with the same valuables cherished and pursued by others. Ethics, and part of religion, is there to remind us of the Ultimate Goal: self-regulation of our System, i.e. not getting worn out and falling apart as everything else in nature.
Nothing that humans produce has a contribution to any natural eco-system, except for some organisms that feel well in the presence of humans. Which cannot be said about animals. They are fully integrated into their eco-systems. Humans produce for other humans and when they form organisations such as business firms, political parties, religious organisations etc. these organisations tend to maintain themselves, just like regimes and power-exerting systems. The goals they pursue are often empty words, hallelujah-ed by many people, despised by many others. What product is better: cookies or cars? Is it “good” to produce and sell them? Or neutral? It cannot be neutral because cars use a lot of physical space, accidents, pollution. Cookies: the same answers. Most other products: the same. Power-exerting organisations and institutions tell s what is good or bad in laws and regulations, but these organisations and institutions are influenced by vested interests: if something appears to be bad, then stopping that bad will create a still bigger bad. I’m afraid that Western society is captured in its own vested interests and manipulated moralities. Other societies have other problems, all have the problem of men that want to be free in pursuing the own goal of self-regulation, i.e. achievement of a state of satisfaction. That’s also what morality tells us, but we are too often inclined to adjust morality to vested interests we are imprisoned in. Satisfaction means literally: “done enough”. Like the cow in her meadow, chewing her meal. We don’t want to be like her. And yet…

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Pictures of God




Of course we don’t know how God looks like (suppose that He “exists”). There are however images of old wise men with yet powerful body appearances that are intended to represent “God”, the most famous of which is the Great Creator by Michelangelo portrayed while He is creating Adam and Eve. In the Jewish and Islam religions and some orthodox Christian denominations it is forbidden to make representations of God in pictures or sculptures, or sometimes even to picture people.
Nowadays many people believe there’s no God. There are even people who say they believe in a God who doesn’t exist. Many other people believe in a really existing, personal God who guides them through their lives and listens to their prayers. Of course, they also want to have some message of this God, and they find it in the Holy Books (I’m only talking now about the three great monotheistic world religions). The Holy Books are written thousands of years ago and especially the Bible (Old Testament) is a collection of stories and reportages. The Quran is more a collection of admonitions and promises, with less stories. Christians, Jews and Muslims who call themselves “believers” are supposed to believe in these stories and admonitions. And here the great theatre is starting. There are many different ways to believe, also within each religion. Performance of religion has much in common with theatre play, and this need to play has to do with the needed respect people must have for each other to keep a community, society or group peaceful. Although any monotheistic religion with a Holy Book claims monopoly for itself, the faithful believers must come to terms with the existence of other religions or branches of religions with the same claim. The official ways of performing religious acts and duties are a form of theatre to express one’s faith, and also to keep control over the “pureness” of the own religion by enhancing and reinforcing the truth in the stories and admonitions in the Holy Books. But, as said, this resembles a theatre play. It isn’t equal to a regular theatre play because the latter maintains full distinction between the role player as a person and the played role. In a religious ceremony the role player is far more the played role itself. At least, is supposed to be. Be honest, many will experience some religious functions or acts as a little bit of pretending, even if they are deep-religious persons. In Christian churches the “Twelve articles of Faith” (the “Credo”) are recited by many people without any conviction that what they recite is really their deeply-felt faith. They are reciting “dogma’s”, i.e. facts that they are supposed to believe, that they “must” believe as a condition for their religion. In the past people who were not brought up with these mixed feelings, could get heavy struggles with their conscience. When they told their doubts to a priest they got as an answer that these were sinful thoughts and a proof that they only were bad human beings. Only the elite, the upper classes knew that you were supposed not to have problems with these doubtful feelings, but simply to play the game for the sake of order and control.

In her book “The History of God” Karen Armstrong elaborates on the dogma principle. We in the West, she says, are looking at dogma’s as imposed-on facts that we must believe in, whereas in the Eastern Christian churches a dogma is more considered as “mystery”, which protects us for feelings of guilt if we are not inclined to believe in their historical or physical truth. This leaves room for contemplation on symbolic and/or more abstract meanings of what is taught by e.g. the Credo, or other facts of faith, such as the Resurrection, the virginity of Mary, the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus, etc. As a mystery, they keep their unshakable truth and at the same time don’t need to have “happened” or to be “measured” as physical sequences of facts like required in a court session (even there it isn’t often clear what the meaning of historical facts is).

Nevertheless, leaders of religious groups and organizations such as churches, rabbis and the Muslim Brotherhood stress the historicity of facts that must be believed such as the fact that Allah wrote the Quran by the hand of Mohammed, that Mary was a virgin (papal decree), that Jesus’ corps really resurrected from death, etc. etc. There is however a trend to question or to ignore all these facts. Take for instance the Evangelical movements among Christians. It seems as if for them, only two facts are important: Jesus, God’s Son, saves us from evil and prayer is the only way to improve things. Has he resurrected from death? OK, but if he wouldn’t , also OK. But resurrection is better because it tells us that death can be defeated and we must not despair. They don’t even seem to ask themselves if things such as these are true, they simply adopt it in their mindsets. Other people, especially those who have been brought up in a Christian environment and acquired knowledge by later education and life experience in a non-orthodox environment (such as myself), have doubts. They often go through a dozen or more years of doubts and negligence in their religious lives, don’t practice their religion anymore (because they “tell lies and sell myths as truth”). When I was a kid I asked my mother a very difficult question: “mother, tell me, grandma never goes to church and believes nothing, but she is always so good and lives exactly how the gospel and the pope tells us to live, will she go to hell?” Our religion teacher (the parish chaplain) at the primary school explained that we live further after our death, either in heaven (good heavens, we had to look at God eternally, and that was supposed to be delicious!) or in hell (worse than that) or in the purgatory, a kind of waiting room for heaven, where our minor sins would be burnt away. I remember having raised my hand and asked: “Sir, so in fact we are half-eternal, because we do have a begin, but no end?” which was confirmed by the chaplain, I remember that he smiled after my question, and I was reassured that we were not that good as God, who had neither begin nor end. I also remember having been bothered by the pressing question how astronauts who got an accident in space and would never return to earth, would get a so-called “delighted body” and get up from their earthly graves when Christ would return to judge the living an d the death. Didn’t their corpses wander somewhere between Mars and Jupiter? Or lie still on the moon? This problem kept me from my sleep, because I told it to my parents after I went down from my bedroom to look for consolation in this difficult matter. Of course this was in a time when in the R.C. Church cremation wasn’t done, that was something for the heathen.

Anyway, my point is that there are many ways to be religious, to pray and to experience the presence of God, and that nevertheless churches and mainstreams in monotheistic religions proclaim a historical, physical series of wonders and happenings which must be believed in to be a good religious person, and a series of acts and ceremonies you have to participate in, also to be a good believer. So: what is the picture of God? Can be expanded to what is the picture of religion? I think we have to back to the core of the matter, despite all attempts by leaders and officials of churches and faiths to keep their sheep within the fences. The core of the matter lies outside these fences. Let’s start with my personal experiences and feelings.

I have been brought up in Roman Catholic tradition, went to R.C. primary and secondary schools and even the first two years of my academic study. My parents had been converted to the R.C. religion I think because shortly after World War II they moved to South Limburg in the Netherlands where 99% of the population was R.C. at the time. Our family wasn’t very pious, they lacked the R.C. tradition, so we went to church every Sunday, but not every day like in many other families. In short: if a religious R.C. performance demanded too much time or effort in our 5-children household it wasn’t practiced. In the seventies my parents said goodbye to the R.C. church and became “nihilists” or at its best “agnosticists” with some kind of belief in life after death. I think they said goodbye because they couldn’t come to terms with all these stories and myths, those saints and above all, the arrogance and dominant behaviour of priests. Priests were part of the elite, they were represented in the boards of all associations, schools, institutions, clubs etc. as “spiritual advisors”. My parents found that priests lacked life experience, they were educated in religious matters and always single, so how could they tell mothers and fathers how to raise and educate their children? Or how could they be trainers and educators for young people wanting to get married (in the so-called “courses for engaged couples”). Nevertheless they acted as if they represented and knew about the one and only truth they had to teach you. It was also a time in which there was much status difference among people: there were labourers, office clerks, educated people, government officials etc. Sociologists made studies of these class differences that now seem to have almost totally denuded from their intrinsic value, nowadays differences are more based on career achievements and material possessions. The goodbye to church was a goodbye to hierarchy for most people and to dominance of the priests, vicars, imams and rabbi’s.

Doubt was en is a reason to make one’s own choices, especially when one has the freedom to do so and would not expect punishment from family or community for the act of leaving the traditional religious performance culture. One leaves the stage on which the play is performed. However, in the meantime many others continue to play despite their doubts, separating their true feelings and beliefs from the rites and symbols they are participating in. A third group, the group who isn’t bothered by doubts for whatever reason became more outspoken and found a refuge in Pentecostal movements (I wouldn’ t call them churches) or right-wing parts of churches. In Islam and Judaism we see this development in fundamentalism and ultra-orthodoxism. The traditional religions without extreme orthodox or fundamentalist wings don’t seem to appeal to many people anymore, which on its turn seems to strengthen the orthodoxes and fundamentalists in their zeal. E.g. in the Netherlands it has become extremely difficult to recruit young people to become a priest. So the reverse of the situation of 100 years ago takes place here: we import priests from South America and Sout-East Asia to perform the priest office here. They can hardly speak Dutch and, above their lack of life experience as a married or semi-Christian person, they are supposed to perform pastoral duties, with their background of working in a far more orthodox, 95% R.C. country, now in a country where the R.C. church has become an almost ridiculous institute, thanks to Rome’s policy to appoint orthodox bishops whose main characteristics are offending pastoral volunteers who try to compensate the lack of “genuine” appointed priests, and stressing the church truths as historical and physical truths, only referring to their symbolic meanings as explanatory circumstances. In fact, they despise the connotations of the word “symbol” when it comes to religion, in religion everything is fact and truth and you have to believe it. I am my self a divorced man and for that reason I’m excluded from the holy sacrament of the Communion. A divorced man remains excluded, certainly when he is re-married again outside the Church with a woman of another confession, and refuses to ask permissions and licenses to the Church Court. In most other Christian churches I would be welcome and get support for the difficulties in my life. Which also caused me to think about how people are religious: are they dependent on a Book with stories, what do these stories tell them, are they dependent on an institution, staffed with divinely-powered leaders and guides, founded by the Son of God Himself? Are they dependent on habits and rites observed by the community in which they live, e.g. a village in Iran or Brasil? I think the latter is the case in most situations.
Resuming: In the Netherlands and also other Western and Islam-countries numerous people leave the churches because of the discrepancy between on the one hand the “truths of faith” and on the other hand the meaning that these truths are (were) intended to convey. In general, religious leaders and orthodox believers support the historical and physical “truth” of the book stories and admonitions. In Western countries, and far more so in Islam-countries because of heavier community pressure, many experience religious performances as role play-rites with valuable symbolic connotations without the need to be true as factual happenings or to be observed admonitions. I returned to the R.C. church because after reading some literature about the gospels and about symbols and their meanings I found much truth in the many parables and words of Jesus Christ: yes, that’s how we are supposed to live. I found many parallels with day-to-day life, which is too much permeated by economical, instrumental and political reasonings and decisions and avoids moral issues as topics to be dealt with. Thoughts and actions that are considered ethically justified or necessary by non-church members are often considered very ethical by orthodox church members “because the Bible says so”, and/or because people have an interest in them. Take e.g. the fishermen of Urk, a Dutch fisherman’s village where far more fish was caught than legally allowed, although the Urk people are orthodox Christians who are not supposed to steal or who agree that “what belongs to the emperor, should be left to the emperor”, the classical gospel-quote about taxes and government rules concerning profit. Or take the Muslim leaders of Somalia who forbade pirating because Islam forbade it, but after some successes of pirates became strong supporters of pirating, sharing its financial benefits.
What’s also striking is that believing in the twelve articles of faith (the “Credo”) as established during the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., only applies to the status of God, His Son and the Holy Ghost . Nowhere it refers to how one should live, like the ten commandments do. Church schisms are always caused by interpretations of historical or factual events or situations, never by moral issues. However, for orthodox people morality and factual truth are inextricably interwoven. They see symbols and rites as reinforcements of the historical truth of their faith, and, as a consequence in the second place, as guidelines for their ways of life, derived from this historical truth. A striking example is the resurrection of Christ after His death. The papal hierarchy, referring to St. Paul, claims that if this historical fact didn’t take place, our whole faith would be in vain and useless. Fact is that only orthodox Christians believe this resurrection really took place. Non-orthodox believers such as I am, believe that Christ’s resurrection fits in a whole series of resurrections throughout mankind’s religious and mythical world. They refer to a fact of faith, namely that mankind can only survive thanks to a positive view on life in which death always will be followed by new life, yes, even that new life needs death and destruction. Not by causing death and destruction by mankind itself, on the contrary, but that we have to both avoid and fight it on the one hand, and accept and resign ourselves in them if inevitable, in the view that after it new life will follow. Maybe not in heaven as a place where our souls go to, but in the universe of all that exists, which is a universe broader and larger than we will ever be able to observe with our human biological senses (maybe that is what is meant by “heaven”). This is maybe the crucial fact of life, and the reason why Christ’s resurrection is considered the most important fact of faith (historical or symbolic) in Christian churches. Claiming it as a historical fact means reinforcing the differences between religions and people.

Now considering these discrepancies and concluding that orthodoxism is keeping us away from the truth that we all are put on this ball of matter travelling in circles through space. That a general moralism is needed to guide our behaviour. That men are essentially religious because any human gifted with senses must ask: why has our life an end? Why do we exist? Why does nature favor us sometimes and why does nature strike us with disasters at other times?, and that these are religious questions, leading to the question: how must we live to survive? Well, I think the truly religious human will conclude that there must exist a non-written moral system we have to pursue, and that orthodox people are free to believe what they think is good, but must refrain from imposing their truth on us, because they divide humanity in a way that we cannot afford to, namely the true believers (their “we”) and the non-believers (their “they”). On this small planet there cannot be a they and we in the long term, we all are we. Which leads us to an answer to the question with which we started namely : does God exist and if yes, what is His picture? I think God is the wording (John also says in his gospel that God is the Word) of the good, of our wanting to avoid death and disaster wherever possible, and accepting it and resigning ourselves to it in a positive way. The best way to do so is starting with respecting each other and wipe away feelings of superiority, of revenge and own glory and achievement. That’s what God is, the Highest we as humans could achieve, if we only were able to, but we aren’t, we can only strive for it. I purposely avoid the term, “love”, and used “respect” instead, because I think that true love can only exist if we respect each other first.

Seeing God as a mighty person creating and ruling everything is more nonsense than the God spoken to in a prayer of a child asking for recovering his very ill father or mother. Prayer is a mystical act, addressing to the Universe which in itself is neither good nor evil, but in which we poor mortals are suffering and create our goods and evils ourselves. Prayer gives consolation, not in the way of being aware that there are worse things and around and don’t worry, but in a way that gives strength and power to cope with our existence. That’s how God is working.