20. Madrid: 6th Philosophical Meeting (16 pgs.)

ACT I - CHAPTER 20

MADRID

6TH MEETING:

EPISTEMOLOGY — PART 5

Saturday March 3, 2018

Madrid Spain

The Club Los Caballeros de Madrid, leader of the European Cup, led two to zero at halftime in the Alfonso Bernabeu Stadium.

They tied, but they had to win to stay in the championship. With five minutes left, Alexandre saw a long rebound from a defender reach Jiménez, the midfielder replacing Ronald. Jiménez touched a pass.

“Duval receives the ball in the centre from Jiménez. He’s marked by five. Duval lifts the ball, makes a feint, makes another, leaves them behind, and advances through the middle. There goes the football philosopher! He is going to play for Reynam… but no! He goes on! He leaves another player in his path! He is alone in front of the goal! The goalkeeper comes out to stop him! Strike the ball! Perfect hat! Goal! Goal! Goal! Duval does it again! A perfect hat after a race of precision and cold blood! Long live the philosopher! Long live Alexandre Duval! Today I become a philosopher! Today I celebrate life! Give me a philosophy book! What pride for the Reyes of Barcelona! The players cannot stop celebrating! Wow, what a goal!” Spain’s most famous sports journalist exploded.

Victoria sat in front of the TV at her parents’ house in Cambridge, celebrating the incredible goal with them.

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“I love him, mom, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to him!”

“What can happen, daughter? He is fine. France qualified for the World Cup, and so did we. Everything is perfect,” her mother said.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if the final is France versus England. I would divide myself in two,” Victoria said.

“There are still more than four months. Relax,” her mother added.

“What a goal you scored, Alexandre! I hope the World Cup final is not France versus Spain,” Jiménez said in the locker room.

“Nor I,” Alexandre replied.

Returning to the hotel, Alexandre found Yellow, who gave him a ride in the same car that had saved his life. They reached a tall wrought-iron gate, which opened onto a cobblestone courtyard.

“Where are we?”

“In Los Alerces, San Martín district, Madrid. This palace belongs to a friend of Mr. Walker.”

Behind bushes along the wide driveway, where luxury cars were parked, two armoured vehicles waited. Alexandre saw eight soldiers, armed to the teeth.

Inside, the Spanish-style palace greeted them. In the grand hall, Arturo shouted, “Alexandre! What a goal! It reminded me of my goal of the century in Buenos Aires. Very similar! Did you hear the journalist?”

“No,” Alexandre said.

“I want to learn philosophy, he said!” Arturo screamed, laughing. “It was very funny!”

“He said that? I didn’t hear it.”

“You must listen. Everyone is talking about it. He went completely crazy.”

“Hello, Alexandre,” Ricardo greeted him.

“Hello,” Alexandre replied.

As usual, they prepared a barbecue. Ricardo said Francisca’s father had been shot in Australia but was fine. That day, Ricardo’s credit cards were blocked, and Arturo’s club managers in Dubai forbade him to turn off his phone, even once a month. The Family was behind it all. Alexandre checked his pocket. Boris’s GPS was there.

While they discussed the events, Yellow appeared with glasses and a bottle of champagne. He poured and left.

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“Let’s drink to the philosopher’s goal!” Arturo said, raising his glass. They toasted and celebrated.

Later, they moved to a room with a long table. They arranged the scenery: the tetrahedron, Ronald’s picture, and the ball. Next to them, the butcher’s knife. At the centre, the copper pot, vodka, and glasses.

It was Ricardo’s turn to open Ronald’s letter. He took the knife and opened the envelope.

“DEAR EAGLES:

THIS IS RONALD SPEAKING.

THIS MEETING IT TO OPEN A DEBATE.

TODAY YOU’LL EXPLORE THE POWER OF THE QUESTION ‘WHO AM I?’ IT IS A GREAT TOOL, IF YOU DISCOVER THE ANSWER.

THE QUOTE: WHO SAID: KNOWING YOURSELF IS THE BEGINNING OF ALL WISDOM.

A) ARISTOTLE

B) GALILEO”

They bet as usual and all chose correctly: Aristotle. Then Ricardo continued reading.

“THE JOKE: A PERSON ASKS ANOTHER: WHO ARE YOU? THE OTHER RESPONDS: I’M STILL READING THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS.”

They laughed, but scratched their heads. Alexandre burned the letter. They toasted. Then he asked them to stand.

Smiling, he thought, You don’t even imagine what I am going to do. He bent his knees and slapped his palms on his thighs with full force.

“Imitate me,” he said. He made crazy faces, stuck out his tongue, and started a haka.

“Are you ready to suffer?” he shouted, synchronizing the rhythm of his hands with his body.

“Yes!” they shouted, joining him.

“Are you ready to learn?”

“Yes!”

“Are you ready to climb?”

“Yes!”

“Who are you?”

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“Eagles!”

“I don’t hear!” Alexandre shouted.

“Eagles!” they yelled, faces fierce in haka.

“I don’t hear!”

“Eagles!” they shouted again, tongues out, eyes bulging.

Then Alexandre sat. They followed, smiling, feeling the power.

He turned on the recorder. The air was electric.

“Help me to hang this banner,” Alexandre said. It was the same size as the previous ones. Once hanged in one of the walls it read:

WHO AM I?

“Today we will continue with epistemology,” Alexandre said. He walked to the couch, brought an envelope, and placed a card on the table. “Ronald made it,” he said.

“Who am I?” Arturo read, standing and holding the card. “I am God,” he answered smiling. “He wrote that?” he asked.

“Yes. Jokes aside, what’s the real answer?” Alexandre asked, but they stayed in silence. “The higher the quality of your answer, the higher the quality of the concept ‘I.’ It’s important to know it because is a word you use constantly,” Alexandre added.

“Who am I? This is me,” Arturo said, placing his passport on the table. “This is me,” he added, signing a napkin with ink. “This is me,” he continued, marking his thumbprint on the napkin. Then Arturo began to undress until he was completely naked. “This is me: my body, my DNA, my family, my story,” he said, grabbing the ball.

“Well, your performance was great, and what you said is true, but incomplete,” Alexandre said, watching Arturo dominate the ball naked.

“Why incomplete?” Arturo asked, juggling the ball. “’I’ isn’t a spirit?”

“If you believe you have a soul that reincarnates and that you are born with all the knowledge of your previous lives, the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ will be radically different than if you believe there is no reincarnation and you are born as tabula rasa,” Alexandre said. “The first is Plato’s philosophy; the second, Aristotle’s. You absorb one or the other, or a mix, as a child, without critical thinking.”

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“So, the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ derives from the cultural mold you absorbed as a child, without evaluation?” Arturo asked, finishing dressing. He took the ball again and sat down. “That means your identity is not yours. You don’t belong to yourself. You belong to your culture. But your identity is not chosen, just the product of chance,” Arturo said, alarmed. “Alexandre, perhaps you can perform something to dive deeper into this.”

“Although unprepared,” Alexandre said, smiling mischievously, “let’s put on a show to dive deeper. Help me place these boxes on the table.”

They opened the boxes. Three costumes emerged.

“I’ll be Aristotle,” Alexandre said, taking a Greek blue tunic.

“You, Plato,” he said to Arturo, who took another tunic, orange.

“And you, a Viking,” he said to Ricardo, who donned a horned helmet, round shield, and sword.

“You, Plato, point your finger up. You invented another world. I, Aristotle, point my hand forward. For me, evidence says there is only one world,” Alexandre explained.

They replaced the boxes and put a printed poster on the table: Rafael’s The School of Athens.

“Like the painting, I wear Aristotle’s blue tunic,” Alexandre said. “You, Plato, the orange,” he said to Arturo. “And you are not in the painting,” he said to Ricardo, wielding the helmet and shield.

They stood, studying the painting.

“You are Plato,” Alexandre said. “You believe in two worlds: the inferior material and the superior immaterial. That is why you point up. You have two ‘I’s. One material, mortal; the other immaterial, eternal. Your real ‘I’ is the superior and eternal. Your fake ‘I’ is inferior and mortal. Your superior ‘I’ should manifest in your mortal brain. When your brain dies, your inferior ‘I’ dies, but your superior ‘I’ goes to somewhere and then reincarnates, carrying accumulated knowledge from one life to the other.”

“So I am immortal,” Arturo said, walking in his orange tunic.

“When you ask ‘Who am I?’ your answer reflects your beliefs, most probably, unexamined,” Alexandre said.

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“I am a Platonist immortal,” Arturo repeated. “I imagine two worlds, but I don’t have the conclusive evidence.”

“You are right. Plato cannot present conclusive evidence of his two worlds,” Alexandre said. “Now pay attention to this because it is important. I am going to say it again. Plato imagines there are two worlds. One superior world, ruled by a benign super powerful entity. Another inferior world, which is the material world, ruled by man. His theory says that you have an immortal superior ‘I’ in that superior world. You exist there as a superior immortal entity. You incarnate in a mortal inferior material biological entity. That is your inferior ‘I’, you as your physical body that lives in the social and material world. In the latter, you are mortal and ignorant; in the former, you are immortal and contain all knowledge. Your inferior ‘I’ is not important; your superior ‘I’ is,” Alexandre continued, pacing the salon in his blue tunic. “Don’t be distracted because this continues,” Alexandre said.

“You can continue all you want, my dear Aristotle,” Arturo said, walking in his orange tunic, imagining walking as Plato would have done.

“Thank you, Plato,” Alexandre replied, continuing the theatrical performance. “Now imagine you are an Aristotelian like me. You are a scientist. Evidence tells you that there is only one world: the material one. But it’s not inferior or superior, because it is the only world that exists. Therefore, you have only one ‘I’ in the material world. Your ‘I’ is not superior or inferior; only what it is. You know you are mortal and you will live only once, and that there is no conclusive evidence of life after death. You know you are born tabula rasa, and need to study to be wise. Your answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is completely different compared to Plato’s answer. Your answer to this question depends on your different views of the world. Do you understand?” Alexandre asked.

“Yes,” Arturo said, speaking as he imagined Plato would speak in his orange tunic.

“Now, imagine you are a Viking,” Alexandre said to Ricardo. “If you die in battle, does your existence end?”

“No! I go to Valhalla! I feast!” Ricardo shouted, striking his sword against his shield.

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The armoured Viking, Plato and Aristotle, in their coloured Greek tunics, walked and talked in costume, taking their theatrical performance very seriously. They continued the debate. They disagreed and sometimes shouted and became aggressive. At one moment, a silence fell.

“Let’s try a provisional conclusion,” Alexandre said. “A Platonist mystic, an Aristotelian scientist, or a Viking, all will answer ‘Who am I?’ very differently. Do you agree?”

“Indeed,” they said, nodding.

“Their answers to the question are different because they believe they are different types of entities that exist in different types of worlds. The world you believe you exist in shapes how you see yourself as an entity. Mortal entities act knowing their lives have an end; immortal entities act as if they were eternal, Alexandre said, adding, “It is cultural assumptions that shape how you see the world, and yourself. Who questions them?”

Continuing their theatrical performance, they explored how culture moulds the psyche. Alexandre encouraged them to draw cultural symbols on white napkins. Each drew one. They sketched the Orthodox cross, Celtic cross, Catholic cross, Nazi cross, and Ankh cross. They drew stars, the hammer and sickle, the yin-yang, the dollar, and the Statue of Liberty, and many others. They drew gods: Vishnu with four arms, Thor with a hammer, Zeus with rays. Thirty-six symbols. Each symbol on the napkins represented cultural premises absorbed in childhood without critical thinking.

“Do you agree the word ‘I’ derives from your cultural paradigm?” Alexandre asked. Both nodded.

Walking around the table, they examined the napkins, seeking the objective answer beyond cultural or mystical beliefs.

They realized that all different cultural paradigms were divided into two groups: Platonists and Aristotelians. So, they separated the napkins into these two groups.

“‘Who am I?’ I am the product of an unexamined cultural paradigm,” Alexandre said. “Arturo, can you check the word ‘I’ in the dictionary?” he asked.

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They waited, Alexandre checking if Boris’s GPS keychain was in his pocket. He smiled, knowing it was there.

Then Arturo read from his phone. “‘I’ in Latin is ego. Ego has many definitions… Ego: self-image, the mental construct of ‘me’.”

“Thank you, but we don’t want our book to be a mix of definitions from the dictionary or cultural symbols,” Alexandre said, pointing to the symbols written on the napkins. “We want to find the objective definition, the real definition, the scientific definition discovered and tested by ourselves. We are not believers, we are thinkers. So let’s think deeper.”

“Let me try,” Ricardo said.

“Go ahead.”

“If you are a rational animal, reason makes you human,” Ricardo argued. “Being rational means thinking. Thinking is choosing between options. But to have options, you need to differentiate one option from another. Your decision to differentiate options is your decision to focus your mind. It is a free, non-compulsory decision. In other words, your decision to differentiate options implies your decision to do it or not, and that is not mandatory. Therefore, the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is: I am a volitive human being.”

“Volitive?” Arturo asked.

“Volitive because you are not obliged to focus your mind. It is your voluntary decision,” Ricardo answered and continued. “The objective answer to this question is: my decision to focus my mind or not. If I decide to focus, I have options, I can choose, I am free. If I don’t, there are no options, no choosing, no freedom.”

“To focus your mind is to differentiate options. The same happens with the lens of a professional camera. You need to focus the lens to differentiate the things in the image,” Alexandre said.

“Correct. But you also need to differentiate the ‘I’ as an entity from the ‘I’ as its actions. That is causality. ‘I’ as an entity exists first and acts according to its rational nature, necessarily, which is your free will. You can will or not will to focus your mind. Nobody is interested in making you do it or will oblige you,” Ricardo said. “But the consequences of doing it or not are absolute and irreversible, and you are the only responsible,” he added.

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“Agree,” Alexandre intervened. “You are a physical entity: a body and brain. You are a rational animal. Your brain and your body make the unit ‘I’ as the biological entity. The entity who thinks is your neocortex, the rational part of your brain. It is the only part with the faculty to organize sensory data and form concepts. Again, your own ‘I’ as an entity is your neocortex, capable of organizing sensory data and producing knowledge using concepts. Your own ‘I’ as the action of the entity is your conceptual knowledge produced with your neocortex, the part of your brain that can process sensory data and convert it into useful conceptual information to have options, judge, think, and survive.”

“So, focusing is possible because you, as a neocortex entity, have the potential to focus and form concepts?” Arturo asked.

“Yes, but having that potential does not guarantee you are going to do it. It is voluntary, remember?” Alexandre said.

“But in any case, it is clear the entity must exist first to act. Actions cannot exist without an entity acting. Your neocortex is the entity that must exist first so you can have the opportunity to focus your mind. To focus is when your neocortex decides to differentiate options, to judge, think, and decide. This includes comparing and measuring,” Ricardo said.

“You need to decide to act as an Aristotelian or a Platonist,” Alexandre said. “If you decide to act as an Aristotelian, you know you are a rational animal. You want to find truth using the scientific method. But because you think using concepts, you want to differentiate valid concepts from invalid ones. You know only valid concepts allow you to find objective answers to all questions, including the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’.”

“We have said many things here. Can you try a short definition that sums all? Something easy to remember that you can write and read later? The answer to this question is not easy,” Arturo said.

“I will try to make a summary. You try yours. It will not be the last word. The beauty of these meetings is that we are happy to disagree, because the disagreements allow us to discover new things,” Alexandre said, adjusting his blue tunic. He walked and paused, his hand on his chin, looking up. Then he continued walking, his hand on his chin, looking down. Ricardo and Arturo were sitting, writing, scratching their heads.

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Suddenly, Alexandre sat down at the table with them. He took a paper and a pencil and wrote something. He erased part of it. He wrote again.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “Shall I read it?”

“Read it please. I still cannot make a summary,” Ricardo said.

“Me either,” Arturo replied.

“Here it goes. You ask: Who am I? I am a mortal rational animal that will live once in the unique material world, and can differentiate options to judge, think, decide, survive, be free, and be happy,” Alexandre read very slowly.

The Viking and Plato stood and walked, trying to memorize it. Alexandre read it many times. When they were writing it, Alexandre said,
“Perhaps you can make a better one, but this covers all we talked about: the entity acting; the act of focusing your mind, which is to differentiate options; and all that to survive and be happy. We are not done with this, but it is a start. To dive deeper, you need to think these things in slow-motion mode. The next topic to discover is the meaning of the concept value. But before doing that, I suggest a break.”

“Yes please. This was exhausting. We need to rest to acclimatize. Let’s go outside and play a little,” Arturo said with the ball in his hands.

They went outside and played at passing the ball without letting it fall, using their feet, heads, and shoulders, as is done on the beaches of Brazil.

When they returned, Alexandre asked them to replace the banner with another that read:

VALUE LIFE AND DEATH

To explain the concept, Alexandre brought in three parachutes. They wore harnesses and dropped their parachutes on the floor. They laughed as the fabric followed them around the room.

“After jumping, even though we could die, aren’t we alive?” Alexandre asked.

“Obvious. What’s new with that?” Arturo asked.

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“That you understand the value of your life when you accept that it ends. An immortal robot cannot have values. Only mortal humans can. But to understand life, you need to extract the value of death,” Alexandre said, watching the canopy. “That line from The Iliad: ‘The gods envy us because we’re mortal.’ I thought it was just poetry. After jumping alone in my parachute, I know it is literal. You don’t appreciate your life because you don’t give your death the proper value.”

“How so?” Arturo asked, holding the ball.

“When you give death the proper value, it changes everything. You stop wasting attention on evasions. Every moment becomes final. Every breath, every glance feels like the last.”

“You mean your perception of the value of your own death sharpens your perception of the value of your own life?” Arturo asked.

“Exactly. It makes the value of your life stronger. Your values exist because you are a mortal human being with a limited time life. When you stop pretending you have infinite time, you start to see. Colours are stronger, sounds clearer, even silence has weight. You become present because there is nowhere else to go,” Alexandre said.

He took a sip of water and continued.

“For most people, death is the enemy. It is not. When you give death the proper value, it is not dark. It is power. Knowing you will die and respecting it makes your life and values shine. Every moment becomes unique and sacred, unrepeatable, a diamond. If we were immortal, nothing would matter. Courage would be impossible.”

“So your awareness of death makes your life heroic?” Ricardo asked.

“Yes. Gods, if they existed, would never know the sacred pressure of the finite. They would drift through eternity with nothing to strive for. We feel the edge of the end. Each present is unique. Each act is particular and exclusive. That is what makes being human sacred,” Alexandre said, moving the canopy of his parachute with his right hand.

“Accepting death is not despair, but reverence?” Arturo asked.

“Right. It is the moment awareness wakes and realizes this second, this heartbeat, is the only real one in the universe. I lived it after jumping alone in my parachute. You appreciate life in contrast to death.”

They continued walking, parachute canopies following them. Alexandre handed them sizers and four letter-size white sheets.

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“Cut the letters of LIFE, one per page,” he said, touching Boris’s GPS keychain in his pocket. That habit made him feel secure. Then he gave them Scotch tape to stick the letters on a big white wall. From across the room, the letters were almost invisible.

“Can you read the word life on the wall?” Alexandre asked.

“No,” Arturo said.

“Why?”

“There is no contrast. The colour of the wall and the letters is both white.”

Alexandre walked to the wall and draped a black cloth over it. He pasted the letters again and walked to the other side where Arturo and Ricardo waited.

“Can you read the word now?”

“Absolutely yes,” both answered, smiling. The white letters were clearly visible, because of the contrast with the black background.

They understood that they could use their own death as a tool of contrast to appreciate the value of their lives. Without it, that value could not be perceived with the same clarity. Alexandre had felt it while parachuting. Understanding life’s value required a personal decision to use death as a contrast tool. The effect was higher self-awareness of your own life and values.

They concluded that the men are alive in body, but not all in mind, somehow half asleep.

They went outside to play with the ball again. They joked and continued debating. Arturo was impressed by the power of using death as a tool of contrast, instead of avoiding it from fear. He decided he needed to jump alone.

When they returned inside. Alexandre asked to replace the banner with a new one:

PSYCHOEPISTEMOLOGY

“There is another aspect to answering ‘Who am I?’” Alexandre said.

“What aspect?” Arturo asked.

“The relation between conscious and subconscious. Your answer includes your subconscious.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Yes. Harry Binswanger explains it. Do you know him?”

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“No.”

“He wrote How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation. He compares the conscious mind to a CEO, the subconscious to staff. Staff handles most work, habits, emotions, automatic responses, but follows the CEO’s lead.”

“So if the CEO sleeps at the desk, the staff runs the place?”

“Exactly. That is personality: routines and unexamined conclusions. People think they choose, but they run old code.”

“Old code? Software code?”

“Yes. Conscious mind is the programmer; subconscious is software. Wrong code produces wrong answers, including to ‘Who am I?’ The software just runs your instructions.”

“Wait! Wrong code means false premises, wrong software, doomed outcomes!” Arturo exclaimed.

“Yes. With false premises, you will be misled from reality, just like those who carried out the attack at the Manchester stadium and killed 80 innocent civilians.”

“Or the assassins of Ronald,” Arturo added, looking at his picture.

“You always write code, consciously or not. Clean code, as Uncle Bob says, needs deliberate thinking. Without it, your software misleads you, running fantasies instead of reality.”

“Uncle Bob is Robert C. Martin, author of Clean Code?” Arturo asked.

“Yes. Clean code is readable, maintainable, simple, and expressive.”

“Wrong code, wrong software; wrong conscious, wrong subconscious?”

“Exactly. Summarize, Arturo.”

“You ask, ‘Who am I?’ You are the programmer. You write your code. Each concept is a line of code. Wrong code outputs rubbish concepts.”

“Good summary!” Alexandre said. “Binswanger says thinking, psychoepistemologically, means asking questions. Psychoepistemology studies conscious-subconscious relations through epistemology. Each question triggers the subconscious to provide stored answers.”

“And those answers come from the code?” Arturo asked.

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“Yes. The good news is that you can differentiate the valid from the invalid. You do not accept the first answer your subconscious gives,” Alexandre said.

“How do you prove the validity of your code?”

“By asking four questions: Is it true? Is it important? Is it relevant? Is it good? Each question filters the noise and keeps the programmer awake,” Alexandre said. Their faces lit up as they debated the power of these four questions.

Suddenly, Ricardo raised his hand. “Can I make my own summary? he asked.

“Please,” Alexandre encouraged.

“What I understood is this: Your conscious thinking is you, the programmer of your mind’s software. Your subconscious is also you, but as the software running automatically. As an adult, you can review your code. How? By asking questions. You ask, ‘Who am I?’ and your subconscious provides answers. You do not accept them blindly. You filter them: Is it true? Important? Relevant? Good? The answer becomes: I am the one who asks, and keeps asking, until your code aligns with reality,” Ricardo explained.

“That is excellent. Now, please help me to change the banner again,” Alexandre said. Once hanged it read:

THE “I” AS EN ENTITY

“I just wanted to say something about it,” Ricardo said. “It relates to causality, but differently. Do you remember the law of causality?”

“Yes. Entities act. Actions cannot exist alone. Water wets; fire burns,” Arturo answered.

“Correct. So the answer to ‘Who am I?’ ties to your identity, as an entity. Understand?” Ricardo continued.

“Yes,” Arturo said.

“But the programmer analogy focuses on action, not the entity. You are the programmer, a human with a brain. Your brain is you as an entity. Asking questions rewires it, reconnecting neurons physically,” Ricardo said.

“Can you show that in a performance?” Arturo asked.

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“Let me think,” Ricardo said, pacing the table. “I’ve got it! Alexandre, call Yellow. I need four meters of rope, thick as a pencil,” he said. “Arturo, help me get eight glasses.”

They moved quickly. Ricardo instructed, “Take the napkins with symbols off the table.”

“What about the glasses?” Arturo asked.

“Make two groups of four. Space them out. In each group, place a glass at each cardinal point. Is Alexandre back?”

“Here I am,” Alexandre said, holding a red silk rope, thick as a finger.

“Perfect. Cut the rope into eight equal pieces.”

Alexandre cut the ropes with the butcher’s knife. The tetrahedron and Ronald’s picture seemed intrigued. He placed four pieces per group, each 50 centimetres long.

“The glasses represent neurons of your Neocortex,” Ricardo explained.

“Hey, I have more than four!” Alexandre joked.

“I know,” Ricardo said, smiling.

“Your real Neocortex has 16 billion neurons,” Arturo read from his phone. “Each neuron has 1,000 to 10,000 synaptic connections. Wow!”

“That’s about 100 trillion synapses,” Ricardo added. “Now, each of you stand in front of one of the two groups of glasses,” he said.

Alexandre stood in front of his group: four glasses, each 50 centimetres apart at the cardinal points. Two metres away, Arturo stood in front of his.

“Connect the glasses with the ropes however you think best. One minute. Go!” Ricardo said.

Alexandre connected the North glass to the South glass, laying the red rope straight on the table with its ends touching the glasses. Then he connected North to East, North to West, and West to East. Arturo mirrored the connections from the South.

“Time!” Ricardo said, smiling. “This shows how you wire your brain. You made different connection designs with the same number of glasses. Each design represents a way to wire an imaginary neocortex of four neurons. With four, you can create more than eight wiring designs. Imagine 16 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections. Can you picture the possibilities? Here is my conclusion. You ask ‘Who am I?’ The answer is your unique wiring design of your neocortex.”

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“So your identity is defined by the neuronal wiring of your neocortex?” Arturo asked.

“Yes. Your brain is plastic. You can rewire it, disconnect, reconnect, create new paths. If you don’t wire it voluntarily, culture will do it without your consent. As a child, that was understandable. The wiring depends on education from your parents and teachers. Now, as adults, it is your responsibility. Different wiring, different brains, different powers, different lives, different destinies. Writing your champion constitution is how you start rewiring consciously, transforming your mind into your most powerful tool.”

“Indeed, this is very true,” Alexandre said. “But there’s another answer to the ‘Who am I?’ question,” he added.

“What’s that?” Arturo asked with the ball in his hands.

“What you want to become, the human you choose to be, is part of the answer. The champion constitution sets practical life goals and defines the kind of person you aim to be. The best version of yourself, a moral example, the champion of yourself. That decision is part of the answer to ‘Who am I?’”

After debate, they agreed. They reflected on the benefits of writing their champion constitutions.

Ricardo added that Francisca had read Alexandre’s meeting summaries and contributed brilliant ideas. She suggested the metaphor of a king swan to represent a rational mind that rewires itself, a person who thinks independently. The crowned swan symbolizes the self as programmer, the champion of itself.

He placed her drawing on the table: a white swan with a golden crown, encircled by a purple ring. They all stood in silence.

Francisca had adapted Aesop’s fable: a swan born on a goose farm believed it was a goose. Growing up, it became a swan, laid golden eggs, defended itself when the farmer tried to open its belly for the gold, escaped, and kept its gold — a symbol of true self-esteem.

Exhausted but satisfied, they toasted the tetrahedron and Ronald’s picture. Alexandre stopped the recorder. The book was advancing. They were rewiring their minds, becoming champions of themselves. Yet Alexandre knew there was still much work ahead. I am exhausted. This is really like climbing Mount Everest, he thought, smiling and imagining the view from the summit.

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