Derived specializations

Now it is the turn of the derived specializations. As can be seen from what I have shown so far, there are fundamental differences between these and the other specializations. Most conspicuously, the prolificacy of their presence; while the fundamental specializations are present in each living CAP, and the secondary specializations are present in variable proportions (which vary from one human individual to the other), the derived specializations are present in widely varying forms. These range from a simple sporadic presence to a domination over other specializations.
Let's exemplify (for the moment, this exemplification refers only to the average person). Every man, no matter what his level of training, has in his nature the fundamental specializations. Security, food, and sex, are searched for and ensured in very different ways, but always according to the aspirations of the human element. The situation is differentiated when we move on to the secondary specializations. If for me independence is something sacred, which can't be bargained for under any circumstances, then for other people that same independence is like virginity: their only concern is how to lose it.

The causes of the appearance of derived specializations could be:
a. the existential anxiety accumulated by the human species, which lost touch with "The Great Whole", the species whose present is more and more dominated by the traumas of the past, and uncertainties of the future.
b. the systematic increase of the feeling of man's insecurity, who passes from a harmonious natural existence (the myth of "hostile nature" is a splendid nonsense) to a traumatizing social existence which could be suggestively defined as "the war of everybody against everybody" (Thomas Hobbes expressed this a long time ago: "Bellum omnia contra omnes").
c. the possibility to express with ideas and concepts, and with the help of language, those fundamental and secondary specializations that make up the skeleton of the derived specialization.
d. the generic curiosity of the human being, who always improved his methods of investigations of the world.
So now for the first time I offer you the possibility to understand what the biological conditioning of man' spiritual manifestation is.

D1 - poetry. The mythic tool of poetic creation is the legendary Pegasus, symbol of ascension and creative power. Poetry is above all, an expression of independence, but at the same time it is also an expression of the aversion towards suffering: the so-called "love" lyrics have it as their mission to externalize - therefore to release the pain caused by love (could you, I wonder, quote me many poems in which love is triumphant and vibrant?). Born, like all the derived specializations, from the fundamental curiosity of man, poetry is the form of investigation of the world which has the greatest inconstancy. In the cultural tradition of humanity, poetry is the privileged land of the manifestation of human poetic states. On a more general level, poetry is the verbal outlet for all of the existential states of the human individual, which is why, in one of my essays in 1999, I called it "diffuse metaphysics".
Still, some of these states seem to appear in privileged positions. I mentioned above curiosity, then the aversion to pain, which flawlessly intertwines with the amorous exaltation caused by human sexual activity. Whether it is about the sublime sonnets of Shakespeare, or the stupid lines of hip-hop music, the motivation is one and the same: the exultation and pain born from love. And last but not least, poetry, with its very lax prosodic and linguistic patterns, is a distinct form with which human independence is expressed.

D2: "tough metaphysics" - religion. Why do we classify it in this way? Because it is exactly with poetry that we can make a first differentiation. If poetry is the realm of quasi-absolute freedom, religion is the favorite realm of interdictions, of controlling human behavior, and of the mutilation of the individual consciousness. All this happens because religion responds to completely different specializations from poetry. The first and the most important is the general need for security. The idea of the existence of a "Big Brother" who watches ceaselessly (whether it is about a domestic ancestor, a tribal totem, or a unique god) is wholly strengthening, especially for a population made up of naive and fearful "children of nature". Furthermore, religion is also inspired by the generic curiosity of the only species from Earth endowed with reason. During his long cultural evolution, man permanently asked himself, at different levels of complexity, questions related to his origins, to his relations with the surrounding world, and to the origin of the world over which he gazes with curious eyes. Religion, especially that of Christianity and its relatives, offers comfortable answers to these questions, based on intuitions and manipulations of reality (inheritance of the old magical practices by which man mimics reality, even before studying it).
Also, religion responds to a very important specialization in the human being: social contact. One could counter that these social contacts usually occur within the same species, namely categories with the same basic specialization. But man is very skilful in creating circumstantial species, and the most important tool for this is religion. History, even recently (see the bloody wars from the ex-Yugoslavia) show us that in this moment of mankind's evolution, we can only really talk about social contact within the same religious denomination. It is truly scary how the differences within this domain can cause real tragedies - nothing in the history of humanity is bloodier and more shameful than the confrontations between different species of denomination.
In exchange, within the same religious species, social contacts have a quite disgusting richness. Those who are of "the same kind" are ready to endure any hardship together, and are even ready to give their lives for "the real faith". Also, in the name of the same "real faith" they are ready to commit without blinking the cruelest crimes...
Hence, without even noticing we reach the other specializations that this complex phenomenon religion serves:
- power (SRF1): from a historical perspective, religious fervor and fanaticism were privileged methods of imposing men's power over others. Similarly, the religious uniformity of a community served the dominating interests of certain individuals who had the illness of power. On the other hand, equal obedience in front of a superior force creates a false sense of equality and equity; a feeling which, even if not true, can serve the desired purpose of achieving social synergy.
- order (S6): a community governed by a single faith, in which people think and behave alike, and also share the same ideals, cannot be anything other than an ordered world, in which social relations are clear and hierarchies are defined over lengthy periods. Such a world is very well defined by the concept of order, and is the exact prototype of order: think of the religious communities of Europe from the early Middle Age, or of today's Islam.
- fear of rejection (SR1): the attachment to religion in a man's soul is strong, not only because of the need for social contacts, but also because of the fear of the rejection that a community would show him, a community with whom he doesn't share the same faith. The fear of excommunication was one of the strongest tools of the Catholic Church in subjugating those who dared to have their own opinions and attitude.
- independence (S4): religion is quite literally manna from heaven for those who wish to escape from independence. For this category of people, the large majority of mankind, the problem of independence, which otherwise causes them a lot of trouble, is resolved by its total eradication.

D3 - artistic creation. Maybe some of you now have the feeling that blasphemy has taken place: isn't artistic creation the sacred domain of the infallible, of the super-sensitive, of the pure experiences sublimated in substance, sounds, gestures, smells, and tastes?
Of course art is a human specialization in which all these can be rediscovered. But these words of mainly artistic origin do nothing other than describe this CAP in such varied ways, and without grasping the real reasons of existence.
And the reason for the existence of art is provided by those fundamental and secondary specializations which determine its presence in the life of humanity. Let's take them one by one:
- curiosity (S2) Artistic creation responds to the same needs of knowing and understanding the surrounding world, as all the other derived specializations. The only difference is that while poetry operates with pure words and verbal images, religion with dogmas, philosophy with ideas and concepts, and science with sizes and laws, art operates with strictly individualized combinations of the substances, sounds, colors, and smells, being therefore a derived specialization with a sensory expression.
- sex (S1) Undoubtedly, sex is a fundamental specialization involving a great expenditure of energy. Man is the only terrestrial creature in which sexual energy doesn't flow exclusively towards the act of reproduction; in fact, in the case of man, a great deal of this energy is redistributed to various secondary specializations (social contacts, power, curiosity, prestige, independence, honor...). Poetry and artistic creation are still privileged valves for the expression and awareness of sexual energy, especially in the case of sensitive, melancholic, and depressive personality types. The myth of Pygmalion is illustrative of the force with which sex is present in artistic creation.
- independence (S4) Artistic creation is an extremely relevant expression of human independence, art being a privileged example of this from the oldest times. Even if we can talk about artistic patterns and trends, or about schools and manners, even if the Alexandrines, the sonnets, or Boileau's "Ars poetica" can be considered part of creation's canon, the specific forms of expression remain strictly individual. We will never be able to confuse Manet with Renoir, Michelangelo with Rodin, or Vivaldi with Beethoven, and during so many centuries dominated by the leveler of puritan bigotry, art was the only form of freedom for the human spirit.
Thus we reached that derived specialization which we placed on the top of the pyramid, D4 - intellectual creation, as it is situated both on a philogenetic line (being the last to arrive), and in the order of the importance that I attribute to it. Before declaring my love for this derived specialization, I will remain a scientist, and I will survey those specializations of the human CAP which determine the intellectual creation.
Curiosity (S2). This specialization is predominant and I could even define intellectual creation as that derived specialization which is principally generated by human curiosity. We saw before that every living CAP has a certain amount of curiosity concerning the surrounding environment. Among the pre-human CAP it seems that cats excel in this respect - but the level which curiosity reached in man exceeds by far the performance of the fickle felines.
The explanation for this is that in the case of man, curiosity is not reduced to knowledge by senses and learning. Helped by his internal operating and memory capacities (the brain's performance being permanently extended), as well as by his external memory (the ability to put down his experiences and feelings, and to transmit them culturally), man developed specific ways, methods, and means in order to practice his specialization of curiosity coherently and systematically.
Institutionalized curiosity is called philosophy or science. From the point of view of these specializations the two of them are practically identical, the difference lying only in the rigor of the discourse (in order to utilize a previously used terminology, we can call philosophy a "diffuse metaphysics" and science a "tough metaphysics"). Actually, if we want to keep the intellectual nature of the two domains we could call them "elevated metaphysics" and "complex metaphysics".
Of course there are also other human activities that are subordinated to the same curiosity specialization. The best example that comes to mind is criticism (literary, art, theatre, etc.), the intellectual and verbal delirium of those who, not being able to create something, create their own specialization out of the analysis of other's endeavors.
- independence (S4). We could say that there is something that unites poets, artists, philosophers, and scientists. And that something is, as I already clarified, independence. All these specializations are fundamentally opposed to religion, the main characteristic of which is the surrender of independence.
Excepting the incidental intervention of religion or politics in the intellectual creation, this distinguished itself as a realm of independence. We didn't have the opportunity to analyze politics so far, a strongly specialized human activity which regroups features of the fight for power, social contacts, social prestige, order, and the spirit of citizenship. Preoccupation with power is extremely common, a fact which causes politicians to obstinately involve their uneducated and rapacious natures in all domains of social and individual human existence. Such a measure was always repudiated by creators, who are such independent and even disobedient creatures. They were never afraid of social rejection, although personalities like Giordano Bruno or Johannes Kepler experienced it very much. They didn't fight with all their means for social prestige either, although Seneca and Schopenhauer enjoyed it fully. Similarly, the search for order for them was only an accessory, and the proof of that is the resounding failure of the social order founded on Karl Marx's ideas. Even honor became a second priority, as Immanuel Kant declared trenchantly: "There were two realities that led my entire life: the starry sky above me, and the moral law in me".
From a sophiological point of view, we can define independence as the existence of a human CAP which is subdued to as small a number as possible of generic specializations. All the great creators in the history of mankind obeyed these rules, ignoring or rejecting many of the specializations specific to the historical epoch in which they lived. Misunderstood, blasphemed against, or even worse persecuted and annihilated (it is enough to use as an example the fate of Baltasar Gracian, the sublime Spanish thinker who died in 1658 imprisoned and tortured, by none other than his Jesuit colleagues). They followed unshakably their destiny and purpose, showing the path on which the descendents of the detractors and their killers would tread.
After these touching asides, let's not imagine that intellectual creation is just an ode sung to human curiosity and independence. Only here can we really get in touch with the rising complexity of this CAP, unequalled on Earth, and maybe in the whole Universe. In specific combinations, and in finely added quantities, all these specializations enter the structure of that activity which caps human grandeur: intellectual creation.
We also have to say a couple of words concerning the major qualities of the human soul, which can't be included among specializations for understandable reasons: courage. Highly praised by the crowds of the inert public, and much desired by all those who spent their lives chasing women, courage is nothing other than the specific attitude of a human CAP after he understood what the fundamental specialization of his life is. For Giordano Bruno, it was the assertion of advanced ideas in astronomy, for Magellan it was the discovery of new lands, and for Scott it was conquering and knowing the South Pole. Please note that I mentioned only a couple of the majestic representants of our species, who proved to have an irrepressible courage, and who could even sacrifice their lives for their guiding star. Only this can be called real courage. As for the rest, all those cocky attitudes can simply be considered as recklessness. Real courage exists only in the form suggested by Fridtjof Nansen in his motto for living: "You didn't succeed? Keep going. You succeeded? Keep going."

I would also like to add a small story in order to illustrate the way in which people, absolutely instinctively, can sense the truth in my preceding statements. Its title could be "the lesson of the old cowboy". I watched an easy little American comedy, in which a group of neuropathic citizens undertake a trip to the mountains led by a group of experienced cowboys. One of them, played by Billy Crystal, gets lost. The chief of the cowboys, played by Jack Palance, goes to look for him. When he finds him he sets up a campfire and makes a coffee. Then he says:
"You city people are so crazy, only because you don't know what's important in life".
"No kidding....and what is important in life?"
"This", says the old cowboy raising a finger.
"You mean your finger?"
"Not my finger you idiot! But that thing, that unique thing which you consider important in your life!"
And the same for you, my jaded reader. Find out what is important for you in life. In other words find out what the most important specialization for you is - or however you want to call it, what is your purpose, destiny, inclination, or calling. And you will see that courage comes by itself.
Let's try now to answer a question which has surely been bothering you for a while.
Why did I use a pyramid to illustrate the sophiological vision of human nature?
Firstly, in order to provide a correct representation of the phylogeny of the human specializations. I placed at the basis of the pyramid the fundamental specializations, the three basic pillars of human existence from which all the other specializations draw their essence. The vertical progression suggests the successive appearance of the different specializations, which I tried to place also according to their chronological order.

Secondly, to suggest the weight that the different specializations have in the existence of the human CAP. Of course I am considering the generic man, the common place of human being, the existence of whom is dominated by, and directly originates from the fundamental and secondary specializations. The common man has as specializations the following:
- food (F1)
- sex (R1)
- aversion to pain (S1)
- domination of others (SRF1)
- social contacts (SRF2)
- family life (SRF3)
- fear of rejection (SR1)
- physical activity (S3)
- vengeance (S5)
and vague, very vague traces of the other specializations (pre-eminently expressions of the religious spirit - D2, which, as we saw, is very strongly connected to the specialization of security).
If we were to define the pyramid of the common man, we could find out that it is flattened or - excepting D2 - completely without a peak, just like a Maya pyramid.

But we have to take into consideration an important fact: the pyramid I was describing above is the generic pyramid of the human species.
In fact, there are as many human pyramids as human beings. Every human being has a pyramid of his own, as a personalized image of the fundamental, secondary, and derived specializations. This is actually the most productive way to describe a human creature: to visualize his individual pyramid. It is considered that human beings have a great uniformity in their genetic baggage, which is not hard to conceive, as the deciphering of the human genome proved that this is by no means richer than that of a mouse, and it is far poorer than that of a lily of the valley. The completion of the human being is mainly a cultural process, the influence of the cultural environment being the last decisive element when it comes to the choice of which genetic feature can develop, and which is going to be repressed...
Hence, it can be noticed that all the great explorers of the planet and discoverers of new lands come from maritime nations, living at the edges of the planetary ocean, where there was a cultural opening for voyages and discoveries.
When defining the individual pyramid, we have to take into account all these elements. And we will find out within the borders of the sophiological view of specializations, the great disparities that exist among human beings. Coming back to the origin of the explorers, and making abstraction of the cultural conditioning of their existence, we have to mark that all of them were deeply affected by one of the very important specializations of any living CAP: curiosity (S2), namely the need to explore the environment, to extend the horizon, and to accumulate new knowledge. When this tendency didn't point towards the sea, it pointed towards the tropical jungle, towards the stars, towards the depths of the human psyche, or towards science in general.

The thirst for knowledge and active exploration are very familiar to me, as I am myself one of these explorers. No matter how prosaic it might sound, the scientific theory that I put forward now is born of the overwhelming action of specialization S2...
If I had to talk about my own pyramid, I would be forced to admit that it resembles more a... rectangle developed on the vertical! The fundamental functions are present of course. My pictures can show that I never pass over a good meal. I have a family: a wife, a daughter (who already has her own family). I have sufficient social contacts amongst my extended family, with my friends, with my business partners, with my students... and with the readers. I am a university teacher, and at the same time the owner of a middling firm with a good reputation, elements that provide me with a good social prestige and satisfy my spirit of citizenship. In addition, independence is one of the fundamental features of my character. I am totally independent in my scientific approach, and I chose my journey through society, in spite of some difficulties in the beginning, in the same spirit, with the purpose of being my own master and the sole proprietor of my ideas.
But... the specialization of saving is present only to the extent that I ensure my whole family an affluent lifestyle. The acquisition of property is not a purpose in itself, and it is enough to have money simply for daily needs (mostly intellectual) and for the provision of a content retirement. Order is important for me, only to the extent that disturbing the stability of this complex super-individual CAP that is human society can influence my intellectual self-fulfillment: still, as Archimedes once did, I would protect my circles...
I am also a sportsman, so am sufficiently preoccupied with physical activity. I frequently attend a Tai Chi club, and I drive a powerful car which reaches 100km/h in 5.4 seconds. My rectangular pyramid (this was a licentiousness) completely lacks some specializations that are very frequent in common men. The fear of rejection (SR1) is totally non-existent for me, especially in this moment of my existence, when my targets are very clear, and I don't need the approval or support of my entourage in order to keep going. I also don't know what vengeance (S5) is, although in high school I played the role of none other than Mateo Falcone in the dramatization of Proper Merimee's story...another specialization that is completely absent from my pyramid is religion (D2), as I don' t need the help of the idea of divinity in order to feel safe, or to find an explanation for the purposes and meanderings of existence.
However, on the contrary, intellectual creation (D4) is extremely well represented. As the wonderful philosopher and poet Lucian Blaga put it, "My play and my love is wisdom". Intellectual creation, as the corollary of curiosity and independence, is the supreme encrowning of my existence, and it is the leading specialization that leaves its mark on all the rest, dominating them, but living with them in harmony at the same time.
It is possible for this relative balance of my existence to make more difficult my entrance to the elite club of notable creators, consisting of those people who left everything behind for the mermaid call of distance, or of creation. The pyramid of these people practically has a downward peak, as they neglect reproduction, food, and even their own security, not to mention social contacts or social prestige, in order to completely dedicate themselves to the activity that is most beloved to them. Even more, it seems that some of them guide themselves according to the principle that your life has no reason if you don't dedicate it to an activity for which you would be ready even to sacrifice your life. Do you want examples? Giordano Bruno is a very good one. Also a good example is John Scott, the polar explorer, who sacrificed his life after he took second place in the competition to conquer the South Pole. You ask who the winner was? Roald Amundsen, who laid down his life in the North Pole, where he went to look for Nobile the Italian pilot....
Of course I hope that I won't have to sacrifice my life in order to convince you of the value of my ideas. My specialization is to come to you with newer and newer ideas, thereby helping you to discover your own pyramid. Namely, to make you understand that the most important thing in life is not the finger of an old cowboy...