((Possible Individualities and how they affect identities))
A1 It is by no means obvious that individuality and identity can be differentiated from each other. Nevertheless: IF they can be separated from each other this can only be done on the basis of a previous tearing apart of WHAT should be done (which is a first decision) and HOW it can be done (which usually is a second decision after the first one already has been made).
In other words, identity and individuality are different parts or levels of decisions and agreements as long as the question as to HOW you are doing and living (together with opthers, in a given environment) is NOT the first and only one to be answered – or, as long as there are things of seemingly far more importance than that „how to do, how to live“ – mostly, these things are related to enhanced technical capabilities, achievements, competences, virtues of all kind.
The most fundamental and frequent individualities, however, are such that the question WHAT to do and HOW to do are dependent on each other – the WHAT being about technical issues, achievements, winning and building competences and power no less than in other „mentalities“ – but within this mode, the WHAT in the long run depends on a HOW you are feeling in doing what you attempt to do. As a consequence, you will act by the guidance of feelings – which is a bit too little an information for to base a life on that – such that you need a second source of possible content for plans, practice, and decisions – and that is, speaking in terms of THAT mode of reasoning, a combination of „normality“ and surprise (to the good or bad) – as they emerge and alternate withinin your experience – together with the feelings they elicit – first of all and most important: the „feeling“ „things are going on like they have been going since long.. everything is well, we can successfully manage any possible challenge by using our strengths and powers such as they are at present“.
I would like to call that frist mentality or mode of reasoning or type of possible individualities (the most frequent one as I said) „Planning and Learning According to Normal expectations“, or short: PLAN.
The term „learning“ in it is meant to denote an overall strategy to deal with uncertainty and possible ways to gain knowledge (when.. how to do research.. what experiments to do.. and how long repeat them).
The term „normal“ has a double meaning – you expect what you have been used to expect since long or since ever (moreover, by the way, what everybody or most people surrounding you do expect as well); and: you expect that what you expect will last – that it will remain what is ordinarily to expect – in special cases, this can be an expectation like „if thing are going worse and worse there will always be a turning point to the good and conditions better than they ever had been before..“ Which will remind you of some principles typical in superstition – for good reasons, another term I use for that PLAN mentality is: MAGICAL THINKING.
A2 This concept also can be made clear also by contrasting it with the second (and historical successor) mode of thinking: RELIGIOUS THINKING. As a real believer, you know that nothing is certain, the world is not wellknown to you, cannot be controlled, and that the amount of possible success achievable in a given period of time with a given amount of efforts cannot be definitively assessed: Our life rather must be seen as a huge experiment in the course of which we might obtain more and better knowledge; but we neither can rely on that (we cannot know WHEN relevant knowledge will be accessible to us) nor know when and if it is sufficient for ever. This has two fundamental consequences:
a. We must live in a maximum careful and cautious way – any danger can realise any time..
b. We cannot avoid or escape that uncertainty determining our lives, we are forced to lead and shape these lives as overall experiments – the only thing we can do is to make sure that our experiment is the best (or one of the best ones if there are several) among and of all experiments still to be carried out.
Another expression standing for experiment could be: doing as if.. (until it is proven that it cannot be that way (as had been assumend)). The content of that „as if“ usually is that of a hypothesis which is tested by the acccording „doing as if (that hypothesis was true) „.
The question is: Which kind of hypothesis is such that our entire life can be based upon it (as THE experiment testing that hypothesis).
The answer is: We should assume the very best for us ever possible – the optimum – until it is proven for sure that the world CANNOT be that way; from then on, we can test the second-best – and so on.
Nevertheless, even if we would not exclude any optimum possible we will have to make all the first steps now and here. – Since it is nothing but an experiment – we don’t expect anything any longer we just try – we will do anything necessary in (cp. point a. above) „a maximum careful and cautious way“. So we will have some principles as to what to presume to be the case in our environment even in the worst case possible for to still be able to carry out our experiment: This can be called the hypothesis concerning the minimum-best/suboptimum which – no matter which second-, third-best etc. hypotheses will follow the first and optimum one in the future – always will guide our first steps within the experiment which our lives consist in – and this minimum-best to presume just defines nothing but the most general conditions for our lives going on as far as that can be effected by our own actions. Starting from a traditional-premodern way of life, we from then on (after having decided to proceed that way) will try to improve that way of life in the most cautious and calm fashion – using free capacities of time, strengths and means for to try new technical ways to better perform this or that step in our practice.
This is a detail often not being mentioned when talking about pre-modern societies and their totally faith-oriented members: That there was free space and leisure enough for steadily advancing technical progress at least by incessantly improving traditional production methods and open ever new ways for trade and commerce – let alone all trips and adventures being ventured under whatever pretext like pilgrimage, missionary work, search for new land to settle on, or even early colonial and belligerous endeavours like crusades, jihad or reconquistas of all kind which in the end, often enough definitely had a certain tinge of discovery and an obsessive desire to learn, to see, to gain knowledge.
You may wonder if such risks ever would have been tolerable for members of a primitive tribe.. Where migration, discovery, invention and adapting to new conditions of life took place often enough – but just being enforced by dramatic shifts in life conditions i.e. by an external incentive and not by active research.
A31. The result of that maximum careful and cautious premodern way of expanding the basis for traditional ways of life and production was a growing wealth of experience and knowledge as well as a growth of frequency and reach of movements between regions far distant from each other, growing exchange of ideas, hence increased availability to people of knowledge on the ways of life and practices of strangers. As a consequence, the number of possible alternative technological solutions, ways to produce, means, substances, concepts, procedures kept up increasing as well as new wants and wishes or a becoming more aware of the requirements of organising life conditions of a growing population, in bigger states and on larger areas than ever before.
This growing number of alternatives to tradition and/or requirements going far beyond what had been known until then had a further effect: An ever bigger number of people learned that they had to re-arrange their way of life – their own as well as that of people they were responsible for – by recombining new technological possibilities on the one hand, and satisfying new needs and requirements on the other. By doing that, they not only re-invented new traditions and lifestyles of more or less stability – they gained very important insight into their position in and towards the world: They became aware of what it means to make decisions and be responsible for them – and they became aware of HOW they made decisions – how they were thinking, how they were using knowledge, how they were dealing with uncertainty, and by which ways they used to proceed to gain missing knowledge. In being aware of all that, they learned yet another fact: Whatever they did – they did it themselves – they themselves were the cause of success and failure; the more they learned to control things and facts surrounding them the more they learned what had been wrong and what had caused evitable misheap and disaster. They learned to identify what they had not done and caused themselves and to distinguish their own influence on the outcome of actions and attempts and that of processes going on without anybody doing anything – nature as a (often invisibly or slowly acting) cause for processes and events. They learned that there was no other alternative to deal with those natural causes than theirs – everybody had done in their condition what they did: because it was sensible.
By that chain of realisations, they formed an idea of what it is to be like a PERSON – to be as sensible as a person – such a person as they themlseves were. And by developing that idea, they simultaneously removed step by step any free space for being MORE than a normal PERSON can be:
„GOOD SENSE is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed ; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess. And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken: the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing Truth from Error, which is properly what is called Good Sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men ; and that the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a. larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough ; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations ; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality; on the contrary, I have often wished that I were equal to some others in promptitude of thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in fulness and readiness of memory. And besides these, I know of no other qualities that contribute to the perfection of the mind; for as to the Reason or Sense, inasmuch as it is that alone which constitutes us men, and distinguishes us from the brutes, I am disposed to believe that it is to be found complete in each individual; and on this point to adopt the common opinion of philosophers, who say that the difference of greater and less holds only among the accidents, and not among the forms or natures of individuals of the same species.“
With these few lines started what has become known as ENLIGHTENMENT; within this text, you find the argument necessary for to annihilate any religious belief whatsoever: There is no god, allah, buddha, heavens, tao, no secret knowledge, wisdom, revelation that is more and higher than you and your reason – and, by the way, no genius or genes, either. – The mode of thinking based on this insight is that of the modern era..
A32. This quality of the collapse of religious faith points to the specific character of the religious form of a hypothetical optimum: It regularly involves an idea of something personal (not necessarily a special person, or mind, though) in or behind the world: A system of ideas and thoughts, plans, purposes, emotional motives, useful knowledge – this system simultaneously being the cause of the world’s being as it is as well as its being good and helpful for us by virtue of this being so as it is.
For to be able to be causes like that, the according hypothetical personal (or psychological) categories have to represent a INDETERMINATELY BEST (or optimum) version of the underlying entity – they must be maximum effective, powerful, never wrong, unalterable, at the same time maximum adaptable (in an intelligent and favourable way) etc. The point is: this is just one possible form of a (optimum) hypothesis – a very special hypothesis, though – but even if it gives you the impression to be the best optimum you can conceive ever – the question is: whether you can conceive it AT ALL – whether it is logically possible at all.
It is precisely within that transition to modern thinking that you learn what makes up a person or a sensible being – what is SUFFICIENT to be such. Within the concepts defining what is sufficient for that nothing occurs which is able to be measured (able to exist in more or less quantity) or even to be more and more increased to unknown degrees of excellence – as would be necessary for to build concepts like „god“ or „a final purpose or aim of the world“ or „the totality of knowledge sufficient and necessary for to make possible whatever is good for us“ – without telling what this being good would consist in etc.
The personal categories involved in any religious idea or concept – in order to gain that „all-transcending“ superiority that is characteristic for them – need to be defined as „higher“ than any version or occurrance of the same categories in daily life. Just defining the daily life version shows: There is no space left for increases of that kind. The daily life version is the highest available. And it is THIS that makes the putatively harmless starting sentence of Descartes‘ Discours (cp. the quote in A3) such a revolutionary statement.
From the perspective of its collapse, it is rather mysterious and a challenging question of its own: how, then, and from where could religious thinking emerge at all? Where must any transition to religious thinking start?
For to answer this question, let me present a couple of remarks on the way of dealing with the unknown within that other and previous mode of reasoning I have called PLAN or magical thinking. Let me call the cognitive or learning strategy of PLAN „superstition“. – Superstition works with mainly these three concepts:
a. what has proven itself since long, or the reliable, normalcy; this provides a background for:
b. surprising chance (and its possible conditions such that it can be actively repeated or predicted, at least from signs; including cases of possible preventing threatening events from happening (when did they not happen against all expectations or rules?)
c. surprising failures in routine practice such that you must repair or replace the usual practice or from then on do without the outcome of that practice.
The actual challenge for active exploration on the basis of superstition is c. (whereas b. is a challenge for creative interpretation of experience, rather: Which are the hidden rules and regularities in the facts? how to classify possible sets of cases being related together? Anything could relate to anything else, after all.. it is just a question of classification and statistics: this is the very core of superstitious theoretical thought).
In cases like c., a far more tricky problem is added: The rules to be applied to forming, choosing a replacing method or device are not known yet – at least not for sure; you would have to try and design possible experiments or trials. So in cases like c. there is this additional problem to solve as to the HOW to to it – whereas a chance is a problem being presented just together with the according solution (such that the only remaining question would be IF you will seize the chance) – otherwise, PLAN persons would not see a chance at all – they don’t do any research or even trials without having an incentive or occasion. „Repair“ – situations are the only ones such that PLAN people feel a challenge to make hypotheses on possible relations (regular connections) between sets of events out of which one at least is a set of events relevant enough for them to reflect upon. In a „repair“ -situation, the PLAN-persons in addition to what they are doing in „chance“-situations have to search and gather possible sorts of events and regularities as being relevant ones for a technical solution replacing the part in a technical procedure that is not operational any longer.
Increasing this kind of endeavour and/or taking it off and out of any connection with actual problems with malfunction in the end would lead to systematic technological development and a need for science. Nothing could be more alien and an obvious waste of time to PLAN persons!
A33. In fact, the way to proceed of PLAN people in order to gain necessary pieces of knowledge is a 3-level hierarchy corresponding not only to the three cases a-c just mentioned but to the three classical ways of gaining knowledge in general: i.e. by trying (in order to optimize the purposefulness and satisfaction to be gained from procedures, things etc), by designing and carrying out experiments („doing as if“ something presumed within a corresponding hypothesis was true – as long as the contrary is not proven yet), and by searching, researching, observing facts, things, substances and increasing knowledge on facts like that.
PLAN people deem their life and (re)productive practice as being something sufficient – and, at best, they would expect that there are certain conditions to heed and meet because the sufficient course of actions would be missed, otherwise; fulfilment of the conditions, doing what is necessary, in turn, would be – sufficient.
The very core question within any PLAN practice is: How to divide your strengths and powers and resources – and how much strengths and resources are to be assigned to which task within your practice? The implicit optimum hypothesis being tested by this way to proceed at least partly can be put like this: This current normal practice is not far distant from the optimum that can be reached within this environment at all – any such distance or gap being left is bridged by kind of revealing itself by sooner or later presenting the according chances not exploited yet. The same is true for expectations as to the pieces of knowledge necessary for to fix sudden lacks and parts of the normal practice that actually fail to work as usual: Every and any repair and fixing action, according to that point of view, is to be seen as part of the entire ROUTINE practice – something to reckon with now and then, something some reserves have to be safed and prepared for, but, being of even more importance: something which can be coped with by using a mass of „know-how“ that already is available to a SUFFICIENT extent – as being either part of the usual daily routine (to be transferred to the dysfunctional situation), or part of the kind of „passive“ reserve of knowledge (actually not being used within any technical procedure), or a variety or variant (variation in one aspect or other) of either of them. To the consequence that – considering the wealth of possible reserves of knowledge and still more possible aspects to produce variants of wellknown qualities of and relations between facts – there is not a lack but quite an abundance of possible trials – such that the question is not: what to do? but rather: when to end special trials because continuing would not make sense any longer. The answer to that latter question is given on the basis of the method PLAN people use in general to organise their practice (which, at the same time, is their only experiment to find a way to approach more and more what they believe to be the best (optimum) condition of life and practice that can be reached in this environment): As part of the entirety of practices, the practice of repairing and fixing a failure has its special quantity of strengths, resources, time assigned to it – the appropriate amount of each depends on the total mass of resources of the respective category available in general, the extent of certainty and reliability the practice has proven until then, the possibility to do without or to replace the practice by another that is easily accessible etc
Again: The basic problem in making decisions and plans for PLAN people is to determine the point when a mere challenge has to be treated as a real chance or definitive failure such that it is advisable to change the present practice (routine, expectations). Considering the fact that the established practice has been proven stable since so long a time – how long (and for which further evidence or degree of certainty) would you wait before you would seize the chance or give up – how long would you wait, in turn, before you give up further trials to repair and fix a failure and try to get along without the failed procedure? How many sacrifices (in terms of e.g. risks) would you deem to be acceptable? What can be lost in one case or the other? Lack of knowledge and uncertainty regarding exactly these issues will cause a kind of despair in PLAN persons. It is this field where they think to conduct their very experiment: Trying to find answers to the question: In which kind of situation is it worthwhile to invest how much effort, risk, strength, resources?
They want to LEARN making correct judgements and estimations on that.
They want to gain more and more certainty on it.
They hate being surprised – even to the good (because it would raise the question: why had they not been prepared for it? why had they not reckoned with it? why had they not tried to accelerate its occurrance, or why they had not known since long the signs annoncing it? They are always asking: Why had we not expected that?)
The unexpected is what HAUNTS and torments them, again and again. They cannot bear it. They FIGHT it. They try to minimize it. They try to OPTIMIZE their being prepared (never too much – never too little.. )
They are obsessed with fear of missing to do the right thing in the right moment, and to not enough having been attentive to the signs and experiences – not to have the correct rules to interpret experiences – those experiences that almost exclusively matter for them: Failing expectations – surprises that suggest they missed to do the right thing in time.
They are obsessed with refining and optimizing those rules of interpretation by way of experience.
The result is called: SUPERSTITION.
A.34 To sum up what has been said so far: PLAN is a way to act such that you presuppose that there must some sort of useful environment around you (and the group you belong to). This usefulness of the environment implies a certain practice within which it is well-known to you what to do in this environment in order to gain what you need – such that you can go on living and repeat doing what is necessary (and known) for to gain what you need. Moreover, you know ways of how to proceed for to make things better for you, to reduce dangerous threats, to cause relief from labour, use raw materials in an economic way etc. – brief, you know a way of progress starting from your original situation.
The underlying hypothesis or rather expectation of PLAN is that there MUST be some sort of such an environment in combination with knowledge on its relevant useful qualities immediately available. The only question for people practicising PLAN is: Which part of the world around us is part of that useful environment? – In that presupposition, there is no separation being made of possible facts and possible knowledge of them, no separation of known facts and facts useful to know about (because they relate to our interests and possible actions), and even no separation of useful facts (in a technical sense) and facts actually used in a practice of reproduction or progress within a framework of definitive expectations.
This, in turn, not only means:
i) treating facts, having knowledge of these facts, relevance of knowledge and actual being able to use relevant knowledge as being one and the same but rather as a sort of fact in itself.
It is no question IF there is an optimum and immediately accessible way of reproduction (on a given level) and progress – the only question (as just has been said in 10b) is: How does it look like?
And there are two additional presuppositions which make things even easier:
ii) The actual practice of reproduction and progress as far as it is well confirmed by experience is thought to be an approximate model of the optimum – even if it is not THE optimum it is more or less near to it.
iii) As far as this practice is NOT the optimum possible, it is expected by people acting according to the PLAN mode that there must be a learning process such that step by step they will come nearer to the optimum – such that the difference keeps on getting smaller and smaller (and never increases again..)
This implies that it is indicated to them as to WHEN to look for any improvement or as to WHERE, and WHAT that could look like (such that it is worthwhile doing, trying, researching etc.) by clues within their experience as well – experience, after all, has taught them (or their ancestors) the existing practice and will teach them how to improve that practice for to get nearer and nearer to the optimum being possible in that environment.
The model for this behavior in general is our knowledge of the needs and abilities of our own body – as it is represented within our feelings. Our knowledge as to how to move in a maximum skilful manner – or, as to satisfy the needs and appetites, heed the restrictions of our capacities etc. – this knowledge may be incomplete yet – even if it is just good enough – this is what i) is analogous to. Nevertheless, with growing experience in dealing with and using our body we will get nearer and nearer to perfection. The way to do that is by trial and error – where the variants (how to move, satisfy, heed) to be tried at all are well-known (concerning their quality) and located between more or less narrow limits (this is what ii) is analogous to). So starting from a quite sufficient state of controlling our bodies, we can still improve by practice and exercise along pre-designed routes – we just KNOW (by feeling, watching) HOW to exercise in order to improve this or that body movement, or in order to use our capacities in an optimum fashion, or heeding our needs and satisfying our appetites by tasting, feeling the amount of success of our attempts, trials (it tastes, feels good, we are able to do what we want). And even if there is something in our environment which we just did not know before, be it a good or a bad influence – we will learn (experience, identify) it by the resulting effects on our feelings – feelings of „being normal“, „better/worse than average or usual“.
(These external conditions – analogon to our body’s needs – can be called „health conditions“, health roughly being defined as feeling normal, having normal needs and capacities, as usual. We can learn to identify conditions in our environment (not known before) which are dangerous to our health – and other ones which are favorable. Again, the basis for that knowledge are all those well-known feelings which help define what we consider as being our „health“ or normal condition in life (with special variants according to age, sex, actual functional states etc.) (internal and external conditions for feeling good and normal hence are which iii) is analogous to).
The principle of PLAN hence can be characterised as being this: Acting according to PLAN rules, we expect rules appropriate in dealing with our bodies as far as we control their states by our feelings, to apply on our purposeful usage of parts of our environment. We do not presuppose that this body-like character applies on the world as a whole – but we are uncertain as to the amount it does apply – such that we think we have to research this amount – alongside the well-known practice by which we control at least certain parts of our environment as if they were parts of our own body (as regular, as being represented by feelings as our body functions..).
Since we are talking here not of bodies as physical organisms but rather as far as their functions are represented by feelings, and can be controlled by simple daily life measures (the success of these measures again being represented by feelings) – we can call that entity which in PLAN is extended from the „felt“ bodies and dealing immediately with it, into the physical environment (which begins in the non-felt parts of our body) our SELF.
Now let us repeat: Acting according to PLAN means:
i‘) treating a basical or original practice (and idea of possible progress starting from that practice) as an analogy to our genuine „self“. This practice is not claimed to have no limits – quite the opposite, it can be even turn out to bemore restricted in some regards than first had been expected – but THAT this practice is more or less near to what at best CAN be expected in that environment.
ii‘) treating FEELINGS as those representing the condition of our self as representing relevant characteristics of our environment – at least regarding it’s quality as being part or non-part of that extended self we think our original practice and idea of progress (and the possible variants of both) to be.
iii‘) treating events, states of being, courses of events, dispositions etc. in the world which are not being „felt“ or feelings themselves but related to events, states, courses an dispositons within our practice (that „extended self“) in some way or other, as if they were relevant health conditions for the extended self we think our practice and idea of progress to be.
With these equations in mind, we can replace the artificial term PLAN by a far more familiar concept: MAGICAL THINKING – or, more precisely, superstitious cognitive strategies of interpretation and processing experiences, and magical techiques (and experiments) as the according practical consequence (including simple superstitious „avoiding“ measures as part of a complete inventory of techniques or regime actually in use in order to exercise magical control of the environment).
A.35 Cognitive strategies of superstition
People thinking in magical categories have a set of concepts in dealing with what they know and what they don’t know yet – at least not for sure: the uncertain – the unknown they know they could know more about – the unknown they actually are having no notion of but know that there could be something to know about):
chances and the certainty of expectations regarding them;
risks and the certainty of expectations regarding them;
and:
what has proven itself until now to be reliably to be applied or expected, on the one hand – or, what could replace a part of the current practice or regular expectations (as a result of new experience), on the other hand.
The most important characteristic of superstitiuous dealing with the (un)certain is: COMBINING actual PROVEN knowledge of RISKS on the one hand AND CHANCES on the other hand, of the existing practice (adding them up in one single figure (weighted by the estimated or wellknown degree of reliability and „provenness“), and forming a kind of ratio by them) and COMPARING them with ESTIMATED risks and chances of POSSIBLE VARIANTS of that practice according to realisations emerging from unexpected and surprising hence challenging experiences – which, in turn, can occur in mainly two shapes:
1st, an unexpected chance; following the principles of PLAN, it IS a chance only if questions as to HOW to use the chance practically are of minor importance, and the only remaining question is: Is it worthwhile to change the current practice for to try the new option, and take the possible and possibly yet unknown risks connected with the new chance; or
2nd, an unexpected risk having been materialised for the first time in the shape of a detrimental impact on routine parts of our current practice; that will raise questions as to which strategy to choose corresponding to which explanation of that experience: was it coincidence, a solitary event which is not to be expected to occur again any time? is it the manifestation of an underlying cause or trend the influence of which will be surfacing from now on more and more? Has the havoc occurred because we have not learned enough about our environment (should we speed up the pace of our research efforts in certain regards, on certain (which? ) topics..) ? or, has something been changed in the world – and if so, by which condition (such that it can be reversed or removed)? can we repair the damage, shall we prepare for further damage of this special quality or for that kind of damage in general? shall we change our practice to avoid damage of that kind in the long run, protect our practice, or even adapt to the possibility of detrimental impact of that kind by doing without this part of our previous routine?
Btw, a very special case of a chance is that of an expected damage which is not as bad as had been expected or even fails to occur. The risks being connected with the new perspective in this special case are those being left after the first non-appearance of the detrimental event (it depends on how long it takes you to extinguish the remembrance or rather, your haveing been impressed and scared by the threats that form the content of the origial risk – how often you need to experience the non-appearance, how long you have to wait for (and expect) it to occur again before you decide on its having gone or at least considerably being reduced).
Similarly, a special case of a risk is that of not seizing a chance (it may have been revealed by an unexpected experience, or keep on being present as a permanent temptation); every doubt that could be raised in relation to risks in general can be raised as well in connection with this special risk.
That is why in the world of a PLAN person, chances can look like threats, and risks of any kind can be challenges to ignore them or to not fear them any longer. It is all about whether you are anxious and a coward and a pessimist, or daring, bold, optimistic, and positive.
Now – how to decide those tormenting questions when being a PLAN person confronted with an unexpected course of events? The most general principle in dealing with uncertainty of a person of that kind is: All you need for to make the optimum decision at least provisionally is just known – it is part of your own experience or of that experience that served as a basis for to form the way of life you are practicing more or less like all people around you (at least those familiar to you). The key category to gain access to that implicit knowledge would be: CLASSIFICATION of courses of events in the past and experiences somehow related to those now in question such that you can discover the hidden regularity being common in and/or connecting all those cases – and use it as a practical rule for decision making and provisional strategies in order to deal with the present challenge.
Basically, the task is always the same: A surprising event happens (which simultaneously is of interest for you, makes a difference) – and there are at least two possible risk-chance-combinations (or a certain number of variants inbetween the most extreme alternatives; in more complex situations these series of possible variants between the most extreme ones can be way more than than one or two) which form a challenge for you to decide. Either or each pair of risks and chances (of the entire version of a practice being chosen in either case) is kind of weighted with the according degrees of proven (non)reliability.
Note. This term again, can be analyzed or defined like this:
1st, you have to define a certain PATTERN of events, courses of events, substances, objects, facts, especially the boundaries for possible variations of single items realising the pattern, or the FLUCTUATION;
2nd, you have to decide as to whether the number of observations and/or period of time for observing items showing that pattern is sufficient for to estimate frequency – in other words, you have to estimate the degree of subjective ACQUAINTANCE with the pattern;
3rd, on the basis of the latter, you have to also subjectively estimate the objective FREQUENCY of single items (or groups of variants) realising the pattern, possibly depending on certain conditions which would make them more likely to happen or occur;
1+3 altogether could make up a measure like the overall objective or subjective REGULARITY of the pattern (regular= frequent and precisely to register)
2+3 is CERTAINTY (certain= objectively frequent enough for to ascertain the according frequency in tolerable periods of observation, subjectively having been observed during a more or less large portion of that period)
1+2 is SECURITY (being secure on a pattern – knowing it, knowing its possible variability in shape, time, space, certain conditions, being prepared for the variants and their according frequency)
A further parameter is the appropriateness of our purposes, strengths and resources to the objective (or subjective, as far as it is known) form of regularity of the pattern, which can be called
4th, its objective or subjective MANAGEABILITY; this being combined with (estimated) good acquaintance with the pattern is the PROVEN RELIABILITY as a means for purposes within a possible normal form of life.
With these data as a basis, you will always find a way to make a provisional decision (open to further experience): Either you chose the present state and prolong it, possibly with more or less of a change towards that direction which is suggested by the surprising new experience – or you change the practice and accept all (estimated) possible consequences (above all: risky ones), possibly with more or less cutting back on the most extreme version of the new way to proceed as long as it has not proven itself as being reliable (which never can be the case since it is a surprise and must contain at least ONE new element that was not to predict or derive by the rules and laws in use until this moment).
Starting from an original state and set of „normal expectations“ (particularly referring to an ordinarily operating practice), you will pass an infinite chain of surprising turns – to the better or worse – each of which will be a challenge for your principles of organising your practice as a whole (including making progress, trying, testing, doing research, repairing damages etc) and make it fit to the environment you are living in (or to the chain of environments you are passing through).
In the long run (which means: far more than a lifetime or one or two generations; which, in turn, requires passing on relevant experience of the older to the younger ones) anything that proves itself to be reliable will show a certain trend, or, to put it in terms of an evolution concept, some expectations (in fact, they are no more than provisional hypothetical expetectations) concerning chances and risks are more likely to be selected (and, once having been selected, to stay and not to be dismissed again) because they are superior as to their (small) liability to be challenged by surprises: Exactly these expectations are characteristic for one form or other of a religious faith. Once a person or group has arrived at this way of learning and planning, they never will leave this form – as everybody else would do if they were stimulated by appropriate educational efforts to go the same way
Unfortunately, the adherents of any religious faith will not educate and instruct anybody in that way, to the consequence, that the historical path leading from superstition to religion has to be passed again and again; the fact that there have been others who already had arrived at the end will be of no effect, or at best the very fact that there are religious believers which can be a model for others will alleviate the passage and transition for others and make it smoother for them to pass.
The reason why applying superstitious principles of learning (dealing with the unknown, gaining knowledge) in the long run will lead to irreversibly build up a religious way to think and refer to the world, will be the topic of the next section.
A.36 Emergence of religion / Entstehung von Religion (1)
Any explanation of a possible transition from superstition to religious belief has to start with a description of the relevant characteristics of either position such that it can be said which element of superstition will disappear and/or be replaced by which element of religion. So far, I have determined the folllowing three most important elements of superstition (as a learning strategy):
a. The content of risks and chances is the same – possible alternative choices (or experiments) are characterized by their according risks and chances (this fact eventually is reduced to the question: In which cases will the risk of missing to spend the appropriate amount of time, attention, effort be minimal?)
b. Being a superstitious PLAN person, for to only consider to possibly try an alternative practice you will always need an adequate stimulus. Without that, you would proceed within the limits of the present practice and its path of progress.
c. The possible experiments or trials are either determined by an imminent or actual gap or failure in a current practice – the experiment is aiming at bridging the gap, and needs construction of possible technical procedures that might replace the failing routine operation – or, a new way to proceed (including a possible new risk or danger) is offered by opportunity – the question, then, will be: Whether to react (and if so, to which extent) to that challenge, or to ignore it. (You will never ever see any PLAN person design experiments unless they have an incentive or opportunity, and an illustrative pattern or rule already well-known to them (at least it must look like that) which they can use as a model or starting point for to apply it on the given good or bad opportunity. They never ever think about what could be the case or be done within the limits of what would make sense at all. Pure thought or even research without immediate practical incentive or need, hereby exhausting the space of possibilities or experiences by anticipating them in their imagination or in the shape of facts to be discovered and observed by actual research, would be the last thing to do for PLAN persons. In fact, they would deem that to be absolute nonsense.)
Now let us compare that to the equivalent elements of a religious way of life (and learning strategy):
a‘. What has to be feared and what has to be hoped, is strictly separated in religious thinking; in other words, the content of the risks to be reckoned with is quite different from that of the chances true believers would take as a hypothetical basis of their experiments. More precisely, as to the risks, they would expect everything and anything possible – as to the chance, however, the same: they would take as being granted and assured the most optimum in every regard they can imagine – at least as long as it is not proven yet to be wrong – because it is no more than a hypothetical optimum – a faith.
b‘. Religious people know very well that the distance to what they hope is almost infinite – with a huge vast space of unknown facts inbetween. So they have every reason in the world to set out for discoveries, trials, and research. The only remaining question is: How much efforts and resources should be used on which endeavour?
c‘. The answer is given by a set of principles which are valid in combination with any optimum hypothesis (or religious faith) whatsoever. They are a kind of corresponding rules on the opposite side of the spreading list of possible levels of adventurousness and optimism – this lowest level of these could be called the minimum sub-optimum ever – or, what we have to presume at best and at minimum for even be able to do or just even try anything at all.
These principles refer to:
– KNOWLEDGE issues: e.g. „Suppose that everything well-known will go on as before until the opposite is proven; but IF there are surprising things occurring and events happening, THEN do not cast doubt without sufficient proof on what has been tried and tested until now – don’t replace it by a makeshift seemingly „better“ realisation and/or classification, interpretation of the same facts but look for gaps inbetween the present knowledge and for possible conditions on the basis of which the present rules are solely true.“;
– PLANNING issues: e.g. „Adapting to possibly threatening dangers must never lead to jeopardizing the underlying reproduction of your material life = don’t commit suicide out of fear of death! Equally: Security of that reproduction must never be preferred at the expense of progress= stagnation is too high a prize for any level of actual stability“ ),
– finally issues as to deal with ONE’S OWN STRENGTHS AND NEEDS: e.g.
„Take your feelings as the definite and relevant measure of your body’s well- or ill-being= don’t trust more into external indicators of longevity and body fitness or capability rather than into your feelings in the long run! Look for material conditions for your throughout being able to lead a good and gratifying life (according to your feelings) as the most relevant criterion for to define health!“ ).
Note 1: Reference to a given traditional way of life and material re-production is a common characteristic of PLAN mode and REL mode of thinking (which separates both of them from their modern counterpart). According to the three sets of minimum-sub-optimum principles just mentioned, this given way of reproduction offers a sufficient inventory of starting points for research and experiments (trials and tests in order to improve the actual practice of production and life). Nevertheless, this grouping into three categories or classes of issues (as it is necessarily done under a religious optimum hypothesis) is a huge step forward beyond the chaotic planning of trials and experiments on the basis of superstitious evidence on the nature of things and events connected with each other in quite absurd ways. In fact, by using these these groups of principles on exactly those topical fields where they actually do apply, and nowhere else, the superstitious applying the three groups of principles on all three fields without making any difference, is being overcome, and the confusion and treating as one and the same of the three fields, i.e. (the stengths and needs domain= ) core-self (felt body or self), (planning domain= ) actual practice (conceived as a huge experiment) and (knwoledge domain= ) dealing with the reserves of knowledge and what still remains unknown, is being replaced by a rational and appropriate different application of principles only on that domain out of the three which it belongs to.
(For a detailed description of the application of at least the first of the three groups of rules on all three domains, cp. section A.34 on Magical thinking. Superstition in detail as it is being presented in A.35 can be seen as the extension of rules determining the dealing with the remaining unknown on all three fields. The theoretical treating to come of compensating needs, hope, drug use etc will demonstrate these phenomena as being the result of an unrestricted application of the group of planning rules (for dealing with building an actual practice as a rational experiment on of how to bring about reproduction in a given environment) on the other fields.)
Note 2: The actual source of disturbances and irritation within a religious practice is the optimum hypothesis or faith itself. The calmness of following a maximum cautious and minimum optimistic (within the frame of the optimum hypothesis) path of progress and dealing with risks is a huge advantage on the previous restless activities and anxieties of superstition; nevertheless, this fine calm and unwavering moving forward under the firm and assured hope to do the right (as long as the contrary has not been proven yet) comes immediately to an end when doubt is rising as to the question whether or not the optimum actually IS the best of anything you could think of – or, the question, whether it still is in concordance with the world as the believers experience it in the course of their daily lives.
So, there is a permanent re-interpretation and re-examination and re-thinking going on as to the content of the faith (the actual optimum hypothesis) – an obsessive preoccupation with that content which, mostly, either suffers from being abundant to such an extent that you cannot get an overall perspective, or from being so poor that it is barely possible to provide a basis for how to apply it such that questions of relevance in religious life can be settled by its help (without much interpretation) and doubt as to the correctness of the optimum of faith can be reduced again.
This ongoing „experimental“ attempts of (re)interpretation and adaptation (of the faith) can be seen as equivalent to the analogous attempts of PLAN people to win practical rules from already existing evidence by clever classification – their version of mental experiments. (In either case, the experimental approach is not immediately aiming at real things and facts but our possible concepts and classification of facts, or possible re-interpretation of present revelations or ideas of the supernatural etc considering our experience in life.)
Note 3. Any content of religious faith often enough is located in the centre of inconsistent demands, or derived from pristine but obscure revelations the sense of which offers more or less space for deviating and questionable interpretation. This not only requires the never-ending work of theology – it also makes teaching the content of faith and making it apply to the lives of the believers an continual effort. In other words: The content of faith in most cases is nothing particularly vivid or concrete. This gap usually is again and again being bridged by forms of religious ritual, ceremony and prayer by which the believers assure for themselves that their reasons to believe still are sufficient to bear their rationally reduced and cautious way of life (a paragon of civilisation compared to the chaos within the tumultous barbaric PLAN form of life which so often is in danger to totally get out of order as soon as anything unexpected happens).
A.37 Emergence of religion / Entstehung von Religion (2)
Now I am going to demonstrate that and how religion might have been the outcome of a long lasting application of the learning strategies of superstition as defined in the previous sections.
The overall process of that possible transition must take on the appearance of a sort of evolutionary development – by no means it is an intentional endeavour, a purposefully designed experiment which only led to failure and falsification of an underlying fictitious (optimum- ) hypothesis.
Superstitious learning as has been said proceeds by comparing at least two possible versions (and maybe some more or less additional ones inbetween) of a future continuation of the present practice and path of progress either of which is characterized by its peculiar blend of risks and chances, evaluated in addition by the according effects on the manageability of the practice and its further progress, this again being kind of weighted by the according degree of our (estimated) being acquainted and familiar with it. In a word, the proven reliability of both versions of a possible variant for the given practice is being compared.
The decisive point in this comparison is in that these totally different qualities of possible influences on the outcome of the eventual decision are transformed in quantitative factors with a common measure: more or less favorable; in this regard, any decision (how to proceed startinig from a given deciding situaton of the type: keep up the present routine, or react to the surprise) can be compared to any other. This is the very core of superstitious thinking. It must be possible to show that – by just applying that core stragies of the superstitious way of gaining knowledge – the specifically religious elements already present in superstitious hypotheses and expectations, are more likely to be chosen in the long run, and after having been chosen, are more likely to stay and not to be replaced by other (or only religious) alternatives. Or brief: in the long run, they have an advantage in competing with the specific superstitious options. But why?
The first element of religious thinking is the awareness of the possibility of whatever evil at whatever time.
This element of a specifically religious hypothesis can be seen as the result of a refutation or falsification of the specific hypothesis (just more or less implicit) of superstition: that risks are only to be heeded in connection with a given chance – they are the possible costs to be taken into account when seizing the chance. Which would imply that you can escape and avoid every such risk in the long run by just doing without using the according chance – i.e. by either continuing the present practice, or by reducing it to a sufficient extent – according to superstitious thinking, there MUST be such a reduced and/or varied version of a former practice that is able to avoid a given new risk.
No step in the development of religious thinking, then, is more effective than this one: Realising that risks are not dependent on what you are doing (e.g. in order to protect yourself – there is no definitive protection), and, even more scaring, not dependent on what you are NOT doing in order to avoid a danger (you will not escape being in danger to which extent ever you may reduce and lower the level of your practice).
The consequence is the specific calmness of a religious person which maybe is the most distingushing trait at all of a religious mentality – which in the sequence of possible mentalities is the first version of a basically EXPERIMENTAL attitude towards the world (there are still two others to come, I think).
This attitude, however, could lead into the most extreme form of pessimism – there should nothing be left to do anything for to avoid possible havoc in the future?
In fact, this is only one side of the movement leading towards religion – on a superstitious basis, you would expect a person who is overwhelmed by such expectations to end in extreme despair and devastating sorrow and suffering. Superstitious lives can end in catastrophe (as they in fact do often enough) as well as in exuberance whereas a religious way of life is immune and not susceptible from both. The reason for this is the other part of the development that leads to religious mentalities:
By this development, you step by step will eliminate typically superstitious expectations regarding possible chances and keep back solely a certain type of chance which bears in itself the guarantee that it cannot be affected by the typically superstitious ways of „falsification“ by frustration, and at the same time is offering the utmost comfortable version of an optimum that superstitious people could dream of: Something that (if it is true) would guarantee that you cannot miss anything – that it is assured that you will achieve this optimum and cannot fail to do so – the only questions are: when, and by which way?
The condition that this idea of an optimum must be content of an according hypothesis will be met by two developments which just have been mentioned, the first: Every possible alternative content of minor excellence which might irritate the vote for the supreme optimum of all must have been removed and ruled out by frustration, and second, the only way left to proceed considering the ubiquity of risks and dangers, is the minimum-suboptimum strategies of planning and acting. It is by virtue of these additional qualities that an actual idea of an insurpassable optimum is reaching the level of a religious belief.
The question still open then is: Which peculiarity of such a belief would protect it from ever being dismsissed on typically superstitious motives? Why is its advantage on all minor superstitious competitors insurmountable?
For that, it would mainly have to fulfil two requirements:
1st, it at least in the long run it has to comprise any and every other possible chance and must not exclude any, and
2nd it must be out of reach of any procedure by which superstitious thinking usually discards or leaves a provisionally adopted optimum in favour of another one.
This selection process (to again choose a term with an „evolutionary“ touch) can only be passed by a very special kind of candidates – religious optimum hypotheses; they are the only ones to meet the requirements, through two central peculiarities of theirs:
a. They would beat any combination of a superstitious sub-optimum plus its having been proven to be reliable (or tried and tested) by the overhwhelming impression that the splendor and greatness of a really religious i.e. maximum absolute supreme optimum imaginable would make – in every regard of a possible competition with an only relative and kind of regional superstitious optimum.
b. If it is built in a really religious way, it never ever can fail, and will pass any and every test of its reliability because this is the big advantage of religious belief on all mere superstition; which would imply that it would survive and resist any havoc or catastrophe whatsoever, and be compatible with any combination of risks be they known or unknown.
The price to be paid for this barely believable advantage is not be seen over a very long period when religion is the leading mentality of elites (which was the case in european as well as asian antiquity and medieval age). It just has been mentioned in sections before, i.e. that religious belief not only never is making a difference in times of danger but makes a difference in NO case whatsoever. It is an entity which has the FORM of an optimum hypothesis but with a CONTENT that is conceptual nonsense such that the only content that effectively remains will be: „there could be ANY supreme optimum, and hypothetically and as basis for the experiment our lives consist in, we will take its being true for granted until the contrary has been proven“; but not knowing which content could be compatible with such a form and function as an optimum hypothesis must have in order to appropriately serve its purpose, would raise the question as to whether there can be such a hypothesis and content at all; and such a doubt would destroy the positive effects of living by such a hypothesis „as long as it has not been proved wrong“.
However, it takes hundreds or even thousands of years until the relevant shortcomings of religious optimum hypotheses become visible, and the consequences are drawn.. Even then, this usually only will result in simply dispensing with religious belief instead of understanding what its deficit was.
(This transition had been described in previous sections as modernisation or the enlightenment process).
The specific advantage of religious ideas, and at the same time, their fundamental failure, is their special way to make use of concepts referring to persons and their qualities. This will be subject to a section of its own.
My aim, however, within this section has not been reached yet. For to prove that that transition is necessary, and necessarily will be caused sooner or later by that very advantage of selection, I have to show some more theses to be true, or rather that the following objection can be overcome..
It might be admitted that religious ideas and expectations by their natural superiority always can be ADDED to a superstitious system of belief and expectations. Nevertheless, this would not imply that at any time their is immediate competition between superstitious and religious content such that the advantage of the latter might prevail in that immediate comparison. In fact, superstitious and religious forms of belief can coexist in one and the same system of belief. Therefore, competition must occur in a more indirect way (as it was happening in evolution with different species): Superstitious expectations are likely to fail and susceptible to being eliminated by some qualities of theirs which are the necessary outcome of their „making“.
I am going to look more in detail into a. that specific weakness of superstition, and the specific reason for b. the relative superiority of religious belief.
A37A What makes superstition fail
The basic form of superstitious thinking is a formula with three terms: S–>A(S)–>E (S: situation, A: action (dealing with elements of the situation); E: expectation as to the results of the action – including side effects).
The most basic attitude to one’s own practice and the environment of a superstitious or PLAN person is: All situations we will be confronted with are just variations within a well-known pattern; every course of expectations and its emotional outcome will run within well-known limits (provided you do not fail to carry out the according action).
Actually, the series of S following each other and the series of the according expectations E (in terms of normal feelings, or feelings of surprise: fear, joy, astonishment) do not form a line but rather a circle on a given level of progress; this circle by its own strength is spiralling onto higher levels of productivity and available resources of time and capacities to act.
RISKS then will take on the appearance of an unexpected course of events and the according feelings which occur despite of the fact that everything had been done as usual. The first task of a superstitious person then would be to identify the condition which could have caused the detrimental event or course of events, the characteristic question being: Which element of the environment has changed, was missing or had been added?
CHANCES, accordingly, occur as surprisingly new situations with an obvious incentive to use them for to improve the present practice. The how-to-do-questions, in this case, are secondary (there must be objective hints as to how to proceed in order to really BE a chance) compared to the question: if it is worthwhile to try what the chance seems to offer. In other words, you know about what you would have to do for to test and try this offer. Whereas in cases of detrimental events, from a superstitious perspective you would have to look for possible ways to proceed in order to react to the dangerous challenge or to replace a failing procedure or method – and to deem the according efforts that have to be invested as being such that they can afforded without changing the overall way of life and work as it has been used until this moment.
To sum up, chance is rather a surprise as to the expected continuation of objective circumstances (to be used or relied upon or taken care of etc in order to maintain one’s practice), risk a surprise as to the expected continuation of the assignment of subjective strengths and powers on tasks such that you get what you need by just doing – working in and with the circumstances you live in – what you are able to.)
As a superstitious or PLAN-person, you will ask, facing a surprising challenge: how to adapt my strengths and powers in seizing the chance (and such that it will do in the long run, without overtaxing me); and: how to repair or prevent any damage of that kind, in case of a new risk – such that my strengtths etc. will suffice again, and recover on the same level or on a stable though lowered level of productivity and disposable resources.
It is very demanding for a situation to fulfil the requirements for to be an obvious chance. Therefore, risks will be by far more frequent than chances; as a consequence, the resulting overall strategy of PLAN-persons is first and above all oriented towards prevention, avoidance, in summary, defensive aims.
Let me come back to the formula S–>A(s)–>E.
PLAN-persons start searching unconspicuous though extraordinary facts which happened more or less time before an evil and detrimental course of events. In addition, they look for precedents – by gathering examples and classifying them as being the same in some relevant regard.
Now, look at the formula: There are several ways of categorizing a possible pattern which you could try to serach the realisation of:
It could be E in itself – just standing in a certain connection, e.g. to other E-cases before.. or it is happening at a certain time, be it part of a cycle, or in a irregular series but having been announced by a certain sort of an omen. This might be true for the isolated E – it has been determined by the influences just mentioned not depending on which S or A had preceded them.
Of course, however, any combination of E and either of S or A or both of them, could be a possible starting point for your search for precedents. And any model for possible patterns applies as well: Cycle, special time (and/or space), condition/disposition (omen or cause).
Any combination (series, or at least: pair) of present case and its precedent(s) in one of these regards, could be an explanation; and, since the most relevant part of the negative surprise is its effect on our feeling, our being impressed by the surprise (our being scared, shocked, shattered, shaken, filled with consternation etc) – it is even possible to use different models of explanation such that their effects on E are piled and summed up.
You will not have the least clue as to the category of event or thing or state of affairs you are looking for – anything and everything could be relevant, i.e. liable and suspect. Often enough, this approach will yield an abundance of possible tests. Sure you will order possible experiments according to the amount of efforts and resources and the simplicity and availability of the means to be used. Following the learning strategy of PLAN, you will stop the series of possible experiments immediately after the first sufficient effect has been reached, and you will make this your actual standard procedure. What to do, however, if this procedure has failed?
PLAN’s learning strategy operates using a „felt“ statistics – how often had the new procedure just worked well before? The more it did (and the more it had demonstrated its being economical, simple, equally available in different conditions), the more PLAN persons face a dilemma or possible ramification of their strategy: Either, they fall back on the original series of possible experiments and continue by carrying out the next experiment in the series which is yet untested; or, they will modify or rather suit the actual practice in using ad hoc hypotheses on what might have flawed the outcome in the case or cases if an original operative procedure fails or at least unexpectedly yields non-optimum results. Of course, this going on by varying an original method for to save its applicability in different conditions, is a possible option once a first failure occurs – provided there is still some core efficiency and feasibility left of the original method that had failed.
In fact, this strategy more or less concentrates on „falsification“ – which is to expect, considering the fact that it is a test strategy for hypotheses (in a sense).
So you start your experiment with varying; after time and resources scheduled for that have expired, you will shift to attempts of replacing the original practice by technical alternatives, and, again, if these attempts fail to get to a gratifying result (in terms of time, efforts, resources), you resign to a lower level of (re)production – not, however, without trying to find some explanation as to possible detrimental and unfavorable influences which began to interfere with what had worked so long a time before. The nature of these possible negative causes in turn would suggest some possible countermeasure which could be tried and tested the same manner as the variants of the original procedure and the possible devices to replace it. Eventually, you will give up any attempt but not without having identified and remembered possible omina which might have announced the evil such that you could have stopped, removed, protected or taken actions whatsoever in order to prevent the consequences if you had been warned in time before. (By this step, you would have reached the level of superstition according to the common definition.)
The last and obviously desperate level of this procedure would be to gain evidence from experience with unexpected chances: Any rule or law that can be derived from precedents of that kind might serve for to design experimental arrangements in order to enhance chances in other cases as well – above all in cases where you would have to give up your way of life in a painful manner – cases of failure of all the other measure that just had been mentioned – such that that experimental technique of enhancing your chances in general ist your last resort in trying to uphold a level and way of life; the rules and techniques for an increase of luck in general as soon as they are specified for to apply to special cases and needs, immediately take on the classical look of magical practice. The series of steps leading up to that last level, however, does not involve any new element in reasoning and planning your experiments – the logic remains the same starting from simple trying to vary, modify, replace a failing practice over typical superstitious techniques of observing, heeding omina of either general evil or in special cases, and/or possibly eliminating factors favourable to it, up to magical trying to enhance your luck in cases of misfortune. Which logic?
First of all, it is (as just has been demonstrated) the „heuristic“ logic by which you would explore the qualities and limits of your capacities and powers by feelings (of success, exhaustion, being strong or weak etc) – which, again, is based on an immediate acquaintance with what the relevant dimensions and sub-divisions of the entities to be explored (i.e. capacities and powers) are: PLAN-persons extend that mode of exploration and kind of immediate acquaintance with the relevant dimensions and subdivisions (those which are relevant for gaining knowledge about them) on the entirety of the actual practice including the parts of the environment which are of practical relevance for that practice (they may be already known or not).
At a first glance, you would assume that there must be some technical effect in varying a special procedure which did its job until that moment, but you should be aware of the fact that PLAN-people lack particular insight into the causes either of the successfully performed effect or those of its failure: Doing the relevant actions just IS the cause of the effect to be achieved next – acting not being followed by what had been expected to be its outcome and realised purpose, simply is an anomaly in a PLAN-person’s idea of a world that makes sense. So, for to restore the purposefulness of the original action, you would vary parts of the action, including possible environmental ingredients that visibly had changed before the failure such that that might have interfered with the procedure. However, as a PLAN practitioner you are far from having knowledge on positive causal LAWS such that you could explain the flawing effect of the interfering event – as you are far from testing hypotheses on such laws. The only experiment you possibly will try is to remove the possible evildoer (if you can) and see if the procedure will work again.