In both the religious and contemporary secular worldviews, one can find the same normative-corrective model of the relationship to the human being. These worldviews oppose each other in content, but begin with the same verdict: the human being initially fails to correspond to the truth. Truth and the norm are located outside the person, so they cannot simply remain themselves; they must be transformed and brought into conformity with them.
Within the Christian worldview, the original state of the human being is declared wrong as a consequence of the Fall: Adam and Eve violated the prohibition established by God, after which the human being is born already in a state of separation from God and bears the consequences of that rupture. Their condition is defined from the very beginning as damaged, deficient, or not corresponding to the established norm, and therefore as something that must be overcome, healed, or transformed. The norm is given from outside, by God, dogma, sacred scripture, the church, or its interpreters, while the human path is understood as repentance, correction, and salvation. The person must change themselves and become what they are prescribed to be.
The contemporary secular normative-enlightenment model abandons the language of sin, but retains the same structure. Now the human being is not originally sinful but wrong: their consciousness is declared subjective, their perception limited, and their conceptions full of misconceptions and distortions. According to this model, objective reality exists outside the human being, and what is presented to them as the scientific picture of the world is considered its correct description. The person must therefore study this picture of the world, correct their conceptions, and bring what is internal into conformity with what is external. If they do not recognize the objectivity presented to them, the problem is located within the person themselves: they are declared insufficiently educated, irrational, inadequate, or broken.
Thus the words and authorities change, but the relationship to the human being does not. Sin does not disappear; it is renamed error, and salvation is renamed enlightenment. One model says: “You are sinful from the outset, so you must come to salvation.” The other says: “You are wrong from the outset, so you must come to objective knowledge.” Behind this distinction lies the same logic: the person’s inner world must submit to an external norm, and development is understood as the correction of an initial discrepancy.
In structural terms, this logic looks as follows:
- Truth is established as a norm external to the human being.
- The human being does not initially correspond to it.
- This discrepancy is declared sin, delusion, or a defect.
- Development is understood as the correction of the human being.
- The direction of correction is predetermined: the internal must submit to the external.
How a Discrepancy with the Norm Becomes a Defect
Looking at this structure, we can see that it rests on one central assertion: the initial state of the human being is declared wrong.
To evaluate a person as wrong, the system first establishes the criterion against which the person will be considered. In the church model, the external norm is traced back to God and presented through dogma, the church, and interpretation. In the secular model, the role of the norm is played by a particular picture of the world presented as objective reality itself.
In both cases, the same move is repeated:
It is not we who demand that you change: in one case God demands it, and in the other reality itself does.
In this way, the system conceals its own participation in selecting and interpreting the norm, turning a normative demand into an unconditional necessity.
Afterward, the person is considered primarily in terms of their conformity to the established norm. The focus is not on how they exist, but on their discrepancy with the prescribed condition. Because the criterion itself has already been presented as unconditional truth, the discrepancy is located within the person and begins to appear as their objective deficiency or defect.
A strange inversion results.
What exists here and now is declared false, damaged, or insufficient. And what is declared true exists only as a form, model, project, or phantom: ideal conformity, the correct person, a saved soul, or a fully adequate model of the world.
But the existing state of affairs is precisely what reality is.
Therefore, the discrepancy between a person’s existing state and an external norm presented to them is not an objective defect in the person, but an actual relationship that arises only through comparison with that norm.
The existing state of the human being needs no justification before an external norm.
Development as a Transition, Not a Correction
Recognizing the existing state as real does not abolish development; it changes its foundation. A person can change their internal model in order to act more effectively, achieve their goals, or understand what is happening.
The question is not whether change occurs, but whether the person retains authorship of the decision: can they choose the goal and direction of change, reconsider the criterion for the result, or refuse a proposed change? If this possibility is excluded and everything is predetermined by an external norm, development is understood as correcting a person who is wrong. If, on the other hand, the person participates in determining the goal and direction, independently or in interaction with others and the world, change becomes a transition from one real state to another.
The mere existence of a discrepancy does not prescribe what exactly must change.
These are only some possible directions. They may be pursued separately or combined:
- the person may change their internal model in response to new experience or knowledge;
- external conditions may be transformed to correspond to the person’s goals and needs;
- the person may create or choose an environment in which the particular features of their inner constitution will not be considered defects;
- the internal and the external may enter a process of mutual change;
- the norm itself and the criterion of comparison may be reconsidered;
- the discrepancy may be preserved as a productive tension;
- the person may refuse the norm or model of reality presented to them.
The Truth of the Existing Point
The existing state of the human being is not an error.
The word “truth” is used here not in the sense of correctness, an ideal, moral perfection, or a final form, but in an ontological sense: this state actually exists. The person is exactly as they are now; their inner world is constituted in precisely this way, and this is the relationship that has developed between them and the world around them. A prescribed image of the correct human being cannot negate the reality of this state.
Development can therefore begin not with a verdict:
You are broken. You do not conform. You need to be corrected.
But with the recognition of what exists:
Here is the state of affairs. It is real. Now we can distinguish possible directions of movement.
This starting point does not prescribe exactly what must change and returns authorship of further movement to the person.
The central distinction can be formulated as follows:
A normative system treats the present as an error relative to a phantom of the future. The approach proposed here understands the present as the truth of the existing point, and the future as a space of transformations whose direction is not predetermined.
The painfulness, contradictory character, instability, or undesirability of an existing situation does not turn it into an ontological error.
Reality does not make a mistake by existing as it does. It is a model that can err when it declares reality wrong solely because reality does not coincide with its norm.
