Old Abrahamic religious mindsets in new IT companies (part 1)

(This is the long version, in which I study more in depth the psychology around this Abrahamic expertise in dealing with a huge amount of information. I compiled also a short version, only about the specific business model of those companies.)

I notice how some particularly successful IT companies grew around business models that look like new modern applications of the gists of one of the three main Abrahamic religions.

Microsoft works with the Christian model of making the difference between the visible hardware and the psychological power of the software, “render unto Caesar things that belong to Caesar and unto God things that belong to God”. Before Satya Nadella took over, they were so enmeshed in the Christian mindset of controlling the narrative and destroying any “false Gods” with that preferred Christian approach to “embrace, extend, extinguish”. The initial embracing phase appears as relinquishing control, but this is only to get you under much tighter vendor lock-in control.

Apple works with the Islamic model of the walled garden of the Land of Islam versus the the rest of the world as the Land of War. They are not so much interested in embracing what is not under their control, they focus on a piece of psychological area where they feel in control of the situation and thus they can keep things simple to create a well-tuned cohesion between “God’s software” and “Caesar’s hardware”.

Google and Facebook work with the rabbinical Jewish model facing the complexity of the world and noticing the relevant information and connections.

Let’s get into more details. The Microsoft business model is based on selling a user-friendly platform (the Windows operating system) that helps the buyer to manage and make use of the IT environment. Additionally, it sells applications that run on this platform. This model is based on the perception that many hardware producers do not find worth the trouble to invest in developing an operating system able to compete with Windows and that many end user buyers will find Windows useful in combination with a hardware product of their choice.

Recently, Microsoft itself develops some hardware products, but it is usually in order to open the mind of the hardware producers to new possibilities. The Microsoft Surface line of hardware pioneers new concepts like 2-in-1 detachable laptops, hybrid tablets etc. They require some serious investment in research (for example, Microsoft has the record for the quietest place on Earth, an anechoic chamber used for testing the devices). Still, in spite of investing so much and breaking new grounds, Microsoft does not engage in full-blast marketing for such pioneering products.

The purpose is not so much to get a hardware market share (which would be the first impulse of the “classical human thinking”), but to spur the development of new types of machines by other hardware companies. Microsoft’s gain will be the fact that their machines will most likely run its software.

The usual human impulse is to not pay much attention to the difference between “God’s software” and “Caesar’s hardware”, even less to much more valuable perspectives you may have when you are not so focused necessarily on controlling the hardware and how much gain you can have by spurring other people to create hardware. The overall Microsoft model looks so similar to the Christian concept of Eucharist (Holy Communion). In the last supper before death, Jesus gave bread and wine to his disciples, telling them that this is his body and his blood. It was a psychological way to make them realize how much they were changed (and conditioned) by his worldview at that time and also that they were autonomous beings in applying this worldview. They can make decisions by themselves, based on the “operating system” received from him.

At that time, the disciples were already changed by Jesus with the “embrace, extend, extinguish” approach. He was embracing other people’s psychological “software”, he was extending it with unexpected perspectives those people did not know how to integrate with their own thinking processes. This was creating internal interoperability problems leading to the phase in which their own beliefs were extinguished and they had to rely on the belief in Jesus’ coherence. Only Jesus knew how the overall coherence made sense.

It was not so much about imposing directly a specific operating system on other people, but a surreptitious change in the standards with some proprietary extensions that those people did not know how to work with. It is something like in Minem zakonlı hatınım of the Tatar singer Danir Sabirov, with the woman initially low key, in this period of time she is extending the man’s software with features he does not know how to work personally with. When he obviously ends up thinking from the extended perspective, she is retreating her ongoing psychological support for those features to make him realize how much he is changed. Nothing works right for him, as by himself he does not know how to operate with his own software, now extended beyond his expertise. A new masculinity that knows how to work with that software appears for him in the shape of the woman’s father.

Further on, there is a variety of directions this situation can go. Women worldwide tend to use the basics of this approach, based on the long-term feminine experience of making the difference between the psychological power of “God’s software” and the direct assertion of power with “Caesar’s hardware”. Among some Asian populations, this is much more ingrained in the specific cultures and men like Jesus can get some idea about how to use that experience. In the specific case of Danir Sabirov, it is not so much about the woman seeking clearly a vendor lock-in state, but that the man has to realize a deeper psychology as personified by the woman’s father. That father is not so much portrayed as an inaccessible mystery, there is no specific vibe that the psychological extension are “proprietary”, it is up to Danir what to do about that. There is some female personal investment in the development of such an abyssal masculinity in the real men from her life, which turns also into some guarantee of a more responsible masculinity.

The Jewish case, as it appeared early on in the Jewish history, is that of the man facing directly the mental abyss supposed by the interoperability issues when relating to such a masculinity, but not as a limitation specifically because of “proprietary” extensions. Later on, Jesus’ approach was from the female perspective, but operated by a man. He was doing himself the “embrace, extend, extinguish” process. The same as a woman, he was not interested in how such a masculinity can work. It was the sideline psychological approach of a man expecting the same as a woman for the masculinity to just work. The same as a man, he had an overall control of the situation.

Jesus’ specific approach has the features of those women who are insecure and use also the “fear, uncertainty, doubt” approach to keep the man psychologically locked-in and dependent on the woman. In this case, the expertise in dealing with the complexity of real life is not focused in facing it directly (which would require some responsibility and effort), but only for a simple, limited use to determine some proprietary changes in the man’s narrow-minded mental static software and make him dependent on someone else’s expertise.

When the man ends up in vendor lock-in state, the same expertise is further used to give him glimpses about how abyssal are psychological perceptions beyond the classical masculine thinking as control of the situation. The vendor lock-in subtext is that “you are deeply enmeshed in that abyssal psychology with my ongoing support and without me you can’t handle anything by yourself, focus on me as the source of coherence if you don’t want to face those abysses by yourself”. Such woman is not interested in seeing what is with those psychological abysses, she is just using some expertise about them to get the classical human narrow-minded thinking process in a vendor lock-in state.

Jesus too was not the kind of person interested in dealing with those abysses, he was more into easy idealism and he was feeding his disciples with “fear, uncertainty, doubt” perceptions to not step beyond what he had extended in their minds. “Beware of false prophets” and in general the entire vibe around him is imbibed with a fear of what is beyond his own expertise. Plus the victimhood these women tend to use.

He was also sharing with those insecure women the fear of using directly the “hardware”, as that opens too much complexity for the way they see the world. A fear of hardware coupled with boundless claims about how to deal best with it. His views were about how you can do anything with love, how love can create an ideal software and hardware integration, without much interest in practicalities around how could this happen.

He was able to do this by simplifying drastically his relation to the complexity of life when giving up any practical “hardware” aspirations in real life. In his ministry years, he did nothing practical in terms of social organization, he stayed clear of all the complexity unleashed by involvement in practical administration that the politicians are so aware of. He was just exhorting a seamless ideal “software” and “hardware” integration that is to come. The other people were too caught in real life “hardware” issues to sense how Jesus was operating.

The basic perception of the difference between “God’s software” and “Caesar’s hardware” is very natural and valuable in itself. It likely appeared in contexts of female disempowerment experiences accumulated generation after generation. It is about realizing how the “reality” of a man is in fact just an ecosystem of meaning in one’s mind amid a huge multidimensional complexity. The Hungarian story The Horse Egg can be a good example of seeing from this perspective the fallacies the men end up stuck into exactly because of their power to organize real life, while the Hungarian story The Mayor’s Clever Daughter can be a good example of this perspective in itself, in which the “reality” of a man appears for a woman as just a psychological construct. The man is mentally blocked in his “reality” made of words like jug or mill stone, his daughter sees them as just software structures in a likely poor quality ecosystem of meaning, thus with plenty of room to bring all kinds of unexpected angles (more about this in part 4 of Perceiving complexity).

The specific course of the latter story is only about direct self-defense against external threats, as something that men can understand easier. However, this perspective that shows all kinds of unexpected angles can be used by women on an ongoing basis in relations with men. And, if there is interest in building a background organization and the man does not pay much attention to what is going on, he can end up like in Minem zakonlı hatınım of Danir Sabirov. If the woman is insecure, she may cast the software expansions specifically as proprietary in order to control the man.

However, further on, some nuances need to be pointed out. The woman’s task is considerably eased by not being herself in a position of power when working with such an ecosystem of meaning. Her mind is free from thinking how to sustain and move forward that ecosystem of “reality” in contact with the unpredictability of real life. She is on the sideline noticing all kinds of possibilities to expand the context’s software with unexpected angles. To the extent the expansions are cast too much as proprietary, to that extent the situation is getting too narrow-minded, the woman basically takes over the man’s narrow-minded control of the situation. Something like this was the preferred approach of Jesus.

I should add that the use of the word “insecure” is not as a blanket accusation against such situation, the insecurity in itself is a rather normal and unavoidable situation when facing the complexity of the world by both men and women. The problem is when the psychological expertise in dealing with the complexity of real life and with a huge amount of information is used to get easy peace of mind by controlling the “software” of the other people, instead of facing the fluid unknown and see how to respond to the situation.

Another nuance is that Jesus’ masculine propensity for control of the situation as clarity of the mind turned the psychological extensions much more directly proprietary. Much of it may have happened in an inadvertent manner, it looks more as a result of a quest for classical masculine nuances of a linear clarity of the mind and a programmatic approach to those boundless claims about how love can make a seamless software and hardware integration. However, this inadvertence coupled with a lack of relevant expertise in how to work with this psychology, also turned him into being “owned” psychologically by the others changed by him. It was weakening considerably his psychological clout.

After his death, it was even clearer for those people how they were changed by him in a proprietary way only he made some sense of, but in the same time they were discovering that they have lots of leverage in how to work with his operating system that they became so much more aware of after his death. Much of the psychological role of the Last Supper may have grown retroactively when they found themselves mentally up in the air after his death. They had to take themselves charge of the new operating system and its applications implemented by Jesus in their mind.

It looks like his death ushered an easy way to work with his “embrace, extend, extinguish” idealistic worldview, turning his memory into a joke, a psychological playground everyone can play with as the concept of the “resurrected Jesus”. In a sense, he was the victim of his own idealism, both in relation to the authorities and in relation to his own disciples. And my impression is that it stems from him assuming that specific approach with boundless claims about how love can solve anything, but venturing into a classical masculine programmatic control of the situation, which weakens considerably the personal investment and psychological clout of that approach.

In the original feminine approach, even as narrow-minded and controlling as it can be because of tackling badly feelings of insecurity, there is always a mental abyss that conditions the other people affected. If you also introduce a quest for a linear clarity of the mind and some programmatic approach, the consistency of the unexpected coherence to sustain that mental abyss weakens.

The balance between being changed by Jesus and the discovery of the leverage around his proprietary extensions after his death objectivized Jesus strongly, pulverizing his personality from when he was alive and turning him into the idealistic fluid good-vibe mental legacy after his death. On the one hand, this turned the real Jesus into a joke, on the other hand, it was offering to lazy-minded people worldwide an easy way to feel good about themselves without facing the complexity of the real life. Let’s die and resurrect into Jesus and we will all feel good about ourselves without facing hard questions about our psyches. See this collage created by Reza Aslan for the infinitely malleable imagery of Jesus among people.

I wonder what would have made the real Jesus of this inadvertent development, whether having the linear reaction to destroy it like attacking the traders in the Temple of Jerusalem for not taking properly in consideration the mental abyss present there or, when sensing how people lean on him for worshiping their own egos, to realize himself the more profound aspects he was glossing over with his boundless claims around an ideal software and hardware integration. And also sense where he was too smothering when seeing how people kind of enjoy his death, as it opens the way to use themselves his psychological framework. Something like attacking the traders in the Temple is just a linear connection with that mental abyss, as an “ownership of truth”. There are much more profound aspects. Or maybe would he have been swooned by being turned into “the son of God” as the embodiment of that idealistic good-feeling seamless integration of software and hardware?

The practical development after his death was not the more usual spiritual leadership in which the followers find themselves mentally controlled even after the death of this insecure type of charismatic leader. His disciples sensed an unexpected breach in his psychological clout after his death. They kind of felt great after his death, they discovered a great fluid agency in their own lives, beyond his psychological clout. They continued with the new operating system implemented by Jesus in their minds, but they discovered an increased freedom of agency of their own, while continuing to stay under the relieving umbrella of revering Jesus as such a great guy. In time, this slid into an interpretation that Jesus had to die for this to happen and that he (conveniently for them) sacrificed himself for them.

It looks like Jesus was much more idealistic than usually (albeit with an insecure manipulative tinge), appearing really caught himself in the good feeling of those boundless claims. As a result, after his death, the people have a psychological playing ground, which makes them much more able to do things by themselves in this co-dependent relation and thus be much more dynamic. They are bathing in a feel-good idealistic simplifying worldview, while still able to deal with real life from the points of view of their own egos. This enabled the tremendous success of Christianity. The legacy of a more typical charismatic leader keeps the people too stale with his narrow-minded insecure psychological control of the situation.

The specific Christian development is still not something healthy, as it is so superficial, people are wasting their lives in a poor quality psychological bubble, while there is so much to do if you have a life to live. Plus the endless destruction inflicted on other people and on their own psychology in order to keep viable the fiction of “truth” of their bubble.

Christianity as it is would not have been possible as long as Jesus was alive, the heart beating in his chest was in the way of the possibility for the emergence of Christianity. The way this worldview evolved early on is about a vendor lock-in state of mind, in which you specifically need to just believe in Jesus’ mysterious way of making sense of the world and be dependent on him (while in practice, at an informal level, you discover that you have some serious leverage in controlling his image around a self-serving ego). It has also some specific classical masculine psychology as control of the situation, in which you need to feel in control of the narrative (a masculine kind of insecurity).

It grew into the awareness that people have an operating system in their minds (beyond the classical masculine focus on the “hardware”), that you can get the people into vendor lock-in with “embrace, extend, extinguish” and then keep them firmly in this state with “fear, uncertainty, doubt”. Add to this the classical masculine worldview as control of the narrative, that the truth is based on your own control of the situation, and you get an ideology making people believe that they have some extended, deeper truth about the world, who cannot admit they are wrong in any aspects and who are bent on conveniently manipulating narratives and converting anyone else to their beliefs, lest they want to face the mental abysses beyond Jesus’ expertise. If other people have other worldviews, this would force the Christians to face those mental abysses. When there is only one “truth”, things are so easy for someone aware of the complexity of real life and of the mental abysses it supposes.

The Christians are more into “truth” as power than a genuine quest into the unknown. It is the idea that “I have a truth that is mine and I need to defend it no matter what” and any competing narrative needs to disappear. Microsoft appears to have used so effectively this mindset, which turned into a phenomenal growth like that of Christianity in the past, erasing any “false idols and prophets” in the way. Probably Bill Gates sensed in the basics of the emerging IT environment a new area of psychology facing the complexity of real life similar to that the Christianity was dealing with and he was so effective there by applying the Christian worldview.

Around the topic of Christianity, I find valuable the subsequent post-Christian developments of scientific quest, civil society, modern democracy that appeared when the people had enough of the misery and destruction caused by that narrow-minded ego-centered idealism. There is still a problem in the way the post-Christian developments appeared as a reaction to the Christian excesses and they rejected the concept of a mental abyss caused by a huge multi-thread diachronic amount of information. It was in the idea that “What’s with all this Christian convenient leaning on a supposed ideal software and hardware integration that is to come, which permits all kinds of selfish people feel like speaking in the name of the seamless future and own its mysterious ‘truth’? Look at the misery caused by the ownership of that future ‘truth’, in time it turned its concept into a joke. And, consequently, look at how I am trampling upon its supposedly incomprehensible mystery and how my mind has opened about what I can do in the present and how I can have a linear quest of knowledge into the incomprehensible unknown. I am no longer the fool of all that future ownership bullshit.”

There is still a problem with the linear concept of the post-Christian scientific quest, it is too much as an anti-Christian reaction. It has this concept of an unknown beyond one’s bubble, but with a feeling that the bubble can simply expand in all directions. It has the concept of change and discovery of new unexpected angles in seeing things, but it is not so aware of the multi-dimensional diachronic complexity. It is too unaware about how self-centered is such quest, something like Yahoo’s “openness” to the huge unknown. In a sense, it continues the Christian feeling that such complexity can still be controlled with the classical human sense of ego.

It should take in consideration a psychology like in Habeit Ya Leil of the Lebanese singer Nawal El Zoghbi. The egocentric Christian control around such a mental abyss turned it into a joke, but that does not mean that such a diachronic complex perspective is not relevant. Now the complex, diachronically multidimensional IT environment willy-nilly has to take it in consideration and the Abrahamic psychological approaches appear to have a resurgence in this field.

The modern concept of science supposes a confidence that knowledge can simply be expanded in any direction, that you just have to “find out” and fill in some unknown that is already there. It appears that the diachronic complexity of the IT environment challenged too much this notion of linear expansion and it determined the resurgence of some psychological outlooks that appear inspired from specific Abrahamic religions. What makes them successful in this environment is that they take in consideration a non-linear diachronic complexity and that they do not aspire to develop an ecosystem of knowledge as control of the situation over everything. The specific ways in limiting the coverage of their structure of knowledge make them cope better in such environment.

Microsoft found a successful approach in a Christian-like limitation to software and in other Christian nuances like the “embrace, extend, extinguish” approach. Apple, on the other hand, appears so Muslim in its approach. Its take on the complexity of the IT environment is that of a walled garden within which you can keep things simple with some manageable diachronic complexity. The inner view of that garden is like in O’zbegim of the Uzbek singer Kaniza. The video starts with the news of another atrocity of the Islamic State in Syria, the adult women take notice of what is going on beyond the psychological walled garden they developed to unfold their lives. Then the small girls bring a positive perception about how valuable and high-cultured is the life within this closed-off environment and the adult women too immerse in this vibe.

A male perspective of the world outside this closed-off space, in Yuh Yuh of the Turkish band Cemali, with that initial panoramic view of the messed-up outside world and the small girl and the adult woman with torches showing them the light according to the culture these men grew up in. The lyrics are about sustaining in your mind an area where a moral code of conduct works even though the rest of the world is haywire (and, as you can see from these lyrics, they are not about abandoning the rest of the world, they care about what is going on there). This is a masculinity that is much more aware about the complexity of what is going on in the world beyond the usual classical masculine perceptions.

It looks like this mindset is of feminine origin. It is something related to the feminine perception of the complexity of the world and to the lack of ideas about how to process all that huge amount of information to make relevant decisions and still stay mentally authentic. The woman from The Mayor’s Clever Daughter was noticing unexpected angles in the existing masculine organization. With the same fluid psychology, if real life is faced beyond the existing masculine organization, it appears as a huge complexity.

This feminine psychological concept of a walled garden may have common roots with the masculine bubble of knowledge. Only that the classical man is under impression that such a bubble is the “reality”, he is even clueless that it is just a bubble, just an ecosystem of meaning amid a huge complexity. For a woman, the man’s “reality” appears as a flimsy, poor quality ecosystem of meaning amid a huge diachronic complexity. These two perspectives are essential in the human psychology, they are in continuous contact, only that the latter was rather unnoticed historically.

If the woman is not focused on the man’s bubble and she is paying direct attention to the unknown beyond, the latter appears as such a huge complexity. If the diachronicity of that complexity puts pressure on the ecosystem of meaning, it can determine reactions to close-off and appreciate the culture already accumulated, as in O’zbegim.

The role of such a closed-off space is not entirely as in the classical masculine sense of control of the situation. The woman does not want to lose contact with the fluid psychology made possible by awareness of what is beyond the bubble. If there is pressure from the diachronic complexity towards the organization of the bubble, the reason for closing-off is rather to keep that complexity in some manageable scope, many times by continuing its fluidity with a psychological innocence. The awareness of and connection with the psychology of the diachronic complexity beyond the bubble always remains there, the feminine psychology would feel a sense of suffocation without it.

Regarding this specific feminine innocence as the small girls in O’zbegim or the girl from Yuh Yuh, to give some more idea about what is going on, see something like Apa of the Kazakh singer Ruslan Satenov, about a girl wanting to step into adulthood while her younger sister is so determined to keep her innocent. The lyrics are those of a popular Central Asian song about how the mother is reluctant to let the daughter marry, like in this version of the Kyrgyz singers Muradil and Kalmira. But here it is not so much about the real mother, it is more about the inner psychology of the teenager and an inner innocent side of herself, reluctant to let her step outside of that walled garden.

Those laser beams at night are more about her inner blockages and at the end it is rather the mother who keeps the younger sister away to let the girl step into adulthood. It is a man’s perception of what is going on with the woman in such moments and in Apa 2 we can see that the situation continues around similar coordinates even after that. The singer portrays more clearly the mother and the younger sister as two inner characters of the woman. Now the “younger sister” character is doing the opposite when she has to relate directly to the man, it is disrupting him to open his mind to all kind of unexpected perspectives beyond the rather linear classical masculine thinking.

If they are developing a commonality as a couple, it is important for the woman to make him sense the fluid way she perceives the complexity of the world. There is an initial walled garden of the classical masculinity creating knowledge as control of the situation. Exactly because of this reliance on the self-confidence of the control of the situation, the classical man lacks awareness of the complexity of the world beyond his bubble of knowledge. The classical femininity is so aware of the complexity of the real life beyond this bubble, realizing that the classical type of human knowledge is just a walled garden preserving some internal coherence amid a much more complex world.

When the classical women think by themselves, they see the classical human knowledge in these terms of the walled garden amid a heavily complex world. When they rely on the man to do stuff, they think in terms of expanding the “software” that makes “Caesar’s hardware” work. It is not necessarily in proprietary vendor lock-in insecure terms. Many women do not like that themselves, as the situation of the couple turns too narrow-minded and stifling, you don’t really feel like living a meaningful life. It is not necessarily in terms of “God’s software” either. These specific terms can be something like in the aforementioned Minem zakonlı hatınım of Danir Sabirov, in which the woman’s father is partly developed, partly imagined by her as a masculinity that can make sense of all that complexity a woman is so aware of (with some help of her ongoing support to expand his “software”).

As for that psychological walled garden, in general, the reliance on it depends on the pressure of the complexity of the real life. The pressure can be faced as such, as in the previous musical examples. Men from cultures that have ingrained such feminine perspectives can grow up too with such a mindset, as exemplified in the previous Yuh Yuh, maybe even more clear in this version of Yuh Yuh by the Turkish singer Koray Avcı, showing how a man finds too much of a mess the complexity of social interactions beyond a psychological walled garden. This may not necessarily be about a woman’s insecure feeding of the man’s mind with “fear, uncertainty, doubt” beyond the classical masculine knowledge as control of the situation, in order to control him. It can just be genuine feminine perception of the complexity of the situation beyond the rather linear classical masculine simplistic perceptions and with an interest in facing the situation as it is.

But there can be also unleashing of perceptions beyond the walled garden specifically to make the man feel insecure. This can turn into some “fear, uncertainty, doubt” nuances in what the woman makes the man see in the complexity beyond his bubble of knowledge (in a way to make him feel incapable of facing that, in order to keep him within that walled garden). The difference between manipulative “fear, uncertainty, doubt” and genuinely facing the unknown is the interest in facing the situation as it is. There is legitimate fear, uncertainty and doubt about what is beyond a classical masculine coherence as a bubble of knowledge as control of the situation. After all, the classical human sense of morality and mental coherence is valid only within a bubble of knowledge as control of the situation. I largely see as legitimate the views from the previous two interpretations of Yuh Yuh regarding what is beyond such bubble, as it is about a genuine gaze into what is beyond.

The situation becomes manipulative when the woman shows the man what is beyond in order to make him dependent. It can be with a nuance that he is incapable of facing that, to keep him in the walled garden. It can also be as a presentation of the abyss beyond in terms of something that destroys his sense of knowledge of the world and with the underlying subtext that he has to take measures as “a real man” to rally around the flag of his control of the situation. This new control of the situation is in some new terms of awareness of the mental abyss beyond, that the man does not really know how to relate with, thus left to the woman to mediate with (and thus the controlling “real man” with a great image about himself becomes dependent on the woman). In this case, the focus continues to be on that classical human type of knowledge and the fear, uncertainty and doubt is only in terms of pesky challenge to that knowledge. The man does not really realize the undercurrent changes.

When you face the situation as it is, the fear, uncertainty and doubt turn into legitimate acknowledgement of the complexity of the world beyond classical human bubbles of knowledge as control of the situation (which is the basic Jewish worldview, as the original Abrahamic one). In the two previous interpretations of Yuh Yuh (part of the broader Asian array of cultural relations with such aspects) there is a sense of the men really taking in consideration what is beyond, being concerned about the overall situation and seeking ways to do something about it (and, if they have some success in such direction, most likely this would suppose serious rearrangements of their sense of self with a much more profound understanding of the situation).

→ Old Abrahamic religious mindsets in new IT companies (part 2)