Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More


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Miraculous Us

Barnhouse Napa Brews, Napa, California, USA

November 29, 2025



I am indebted to Josh Cohen who contributed material for this conversation.



The most ordinary aspect of human beings is how miraculous it is to be human, so much so that we're taken aback upon discovering our own ordinariness. The most miraculous aspect of human beings is how ordinary it is to be human, so much so that we're taken aback on discovering our own miraculousness. Each human being is both ordinary and miraculous. Yet when taken for granted, neither our ordinariness nor our miraculousness is apparant / obvious. It's a paradox: what makes us ordinary is the miraculousness we all share; what makes us miraculous is we human beings are all ordinary, we're all  the same.

That's one of the things that makes us ordinary: there are so many of us that at first glance, we're really not all that different from one another. Yet one of the things that makes us miraculous is the mere fact that we exist at all, that we can make distinctions, that we can create, that we can have independent thoughts, that we have the capacity for language, that we have the power to transform our lives, indeed that we have the power to forge our own futures.

There's something else that makes us ordinary. It's if we don't manage to survive, we'll die off - just like the many other species of plants and animals who co-exist with us on the planet. There's also something else that makes us miraculous, which is that unlike all the other species of plants and animals which co-exist with us on the planet, we're arguably the only species with the ability to transform our lives and Life itself. A palm tree can not transform its life. It has no language capacity for that. A warthog can't transform its life. It has no language capacity for that. A human being on the other hand, can transform its life. It has the language capacity for that. That is miraculous - whether fully appreciated or not. It's miraculous that we have the capacity for language.

Now with all the above distinguished, it's arguably a lot easier to grok  (as Robert Heinlein may have said) our ordinariness than it is to grok the full extent of our miraculousness. Human beings are ordinary - in the sense that we are a dime a dozen, we each have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, arms and legs etc. But it's our miraculousness that's so much harder to see at first glance, even though it's the quality which differentiates us the most from any other species.

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Miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us miraculous us.

[... work in progress ...]



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