Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

  Justice-as-Light From Punishment to Illumination From Condemnation to Infinite Understanding I. The Crisis of the Punitive Paradigm For most of recorded history, justice has been imagined as a scale and a sword. The scale measures guilt. The sword executes consequence. In this paradigm, wrongdoing is framed primarily as an offense demanding punishment . A law is broken. A penalty must follow. The moral architecture is retributive: balance must be restored by inflicting proportional pain. This paradigm has utility. It establishes boundaries. It deters harm. It communicates that actions matter. But it also has limitations. It treats crime primarily as willful rebellion , not as distortion, ignorance, blindness, trauma, confusion, or misapplied information . It assumes clarity of perception where often there is darkness. It assumes evil where there may be ignorance. It assumes malice where there may be fragmentation. What if injustice is not merely rebellion against law,...

  Justice-as-Scalpel From Crime Needing Punishment to Sickness Needing Healing From Vengeance to Precision I. The Medical Turn in Moral Imagination For centuries, justice has been imagined as a courtroom drama: A crime. A defendant. A verdict. A sentence. But what if we reimagined the moral landscape not as a courtroom—but as a hospital? Not a criminal needing punishment, but a patient needing diagnosis. Not a monster requiring destruction, but a system infected with distortion. Not a rebellion to crush, but a pathology to treat. Justice-as-Scalpel shifts the paradigm: Wrongdoing is not merely defiance of law. It is often dysfunction within the organism of mind, community, or system. And dysfunction requires precision—not rage. II. The Anatomy of Moral Infection Consider infection. Infection is not “evil tissue.” It is intrusion, imbalance, or corruption within a system designed for health. Similarly, injustice often arises from: Cognitive distortions. ...

  THE INFINITY NARRATIVE Existence as an Infinite Story of Countless Stories I. The Prologue Before the Beginning Before stars burned. Before time unfolded. Before matter crystallized into form. There was Meaning. Not silent emptiness. Not inert potential. But Living Meaning. If the Logos is the Countless Words of the Infinite Mind of God — and Words are that which label, describe, define, generate, and sustain reality — then Existence is not primarily mechanical. It is narrative. Not metaphorically. Ontologically. Reality is articulated. And articulation unfolds as story. II. The Ontology of the Word A word is never just a sound. A word: Identifies Differentiates Relates Defines Positions Generates To speak is to structure being. To name is to carve identity out of possibility. To describe is to weave relations into coherent form. If the Infinite Mind contains Countless Words, and those Words generate existence, then reality itself is the articul...

THE POLYMORPHIC ECOLOGY OF INFINITE MINDS A Cathedral-Scale Metaphysical Treatise on Unity, Plurality, Hierarchy, and Infinite Consciousness I. The Foundational Declaration We begin with a single, stabilizing axiom: There exists One Infinite Source Mind from which emerge an infinite plurality of unique minds — finite, partially infinite, and fully infinite — none identical, none redundant, each a universe unto itself. This declaration contains four simultaneous truths: Unity — There is One Infinite Source. Plurality — There are infinitely many minds. Hierarchy — Minds differ in capacity and scope. Ecology — All minds are irreducibly unique and relational. This is not contradiction. It is layered ontology. II. The Infinite Source Mind At the foundation stands the Infinite Source Mind. This Mind is: Infinite in Depth Infinite in Complexity Infinite in Diversity Infinite in Nuance Infinite in Dynamics It is not merely large. It is structurally inexhausti...

  BAPTISM BY WORDS A Treatise on Immersion in the Countless Words of God I. The Premise: A Different Kind of Baptism When most people hear baptism , they imagine water touching the body. But water is not the deepest medium in which a human being lives. A human being lives in words . Before we act, we interpret. Before we interpret, we name. Before we name, we receive language. We are not merely biological creatures moving through matter — we are meaning-creatures moving through a linguistic reality. Therefore there exists a second and deeper immersion: Baptism by Words — the immersion of the mind, identity, perception, and consciousness into the Countless Words of God. Water touches the skin. Words touch the self. Water washes dust from the body. Words wash falsehood from perception. Water marks entrance into a community. Words re-structure the way reality itself appears. Thus Baptism by Words is not symbolic cleansing — it is cognitive, ontological, and spi...

  Words-as-Sovereignties A Theory of Linguistic Power and Cognitive Rule 1. Core Claim Every word functions like a sovereign ruler over a territory of mind and action. Not metaphorically — operationally. When a word enters a mind, it does three things: Defines what exists Defines what matters Defines what actions are legitimate So a word does what a government does. 2. The Territory of a Word A sovereignty requires land. A word’s land is a cognitive domain . Word Territory it Rules What becomes visible Freedom autonomy, rights, resistance oppression appears Efficiency optimization, metrics waste appears Honor reputation, loyalty betrayal appears Trauma harm, healing responsibility shifts Sin morality, guilt repentance appears Evolution adaptation, survival design disappears Market exchange, value price logic dominates Once the word rules, perception reorganizes around it. You don’t merely use the word — you now liv...

  The Holy Black Hole Epektasis, Asymptotic Theosis, and the Eternal Exponential “Fall” into God Abstract This paper proposes a metaphor: Epektasis as falling into a Holy Black Hole . In classical physics, a black hole is the most extreme gravitational phenomenon—a region where “falling inward” becomes inevitable past a threshold, where depth is unbounded, and where ordinary intuition collapses. In Christian mystical theology (especially in the stream associated with Gregory of Nyssa ), the soul’s union with God is also an “extreme” phenomenon: God is infinite , and therefore participation in God is not a finite achievement that ends in a static plateau, but an everlasting deepening —an eternal advance into divine life. We will explore how the “Holy Black Hole” metaphor can illuminate epektasis (endless progress), asymptotic theosis (approach without exhaustion), and the paradoxical logic of eternity: satisfaction that grows, longing that purifies, and a perfection that is dyn...