The Rockaway Beach Papers

Living for Paradise

2008-01-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

On many occasions, in deep sleep, dreams of paradise find audience. One can’t help but wonder on solutions to humanity’s problems divined in dreams. As powerful as our race is, we have failed to turn our world into a veritable Eden. Humanity has failed at a mission that should be as simple today as peeling an orange. The subconscious can pick up on this. It can haunt the sympathetic person.

For now, paradise finds its place only in dreams. Sleep serves as a doorway to happier realities where goodness and beauty prevail for the fortunate. Here, problems require simple common sense solutions. We wonder on human frailty, sickness, perversion, aggression and limitations and find them irrelevant. Birth and death find their purpose. An origin can be sensed from which one’s life sprung. A destiny that must simply overcome the pain of one’s demise finds peaceful enchantment its temper. Nature and spiritual life merge. Everything makes sense! And when all this is revealed we say, “Of course! It’s obvious these truths are so.” But, when we wake, they are forgotten. One only knows the day’s work ahead, while the knowledge of the dream remains only on the tip of one’s tongue.

Hope may find paradise not so hard to find in everyday existence. The trick is to get in touch with it. Becoming sensitive to its presence and allowing it a chance to permeate life and one’s character may serve as its means. Eccentric labels will proclaim its lack of practicality among the conventional. Perhaps eccentrics rest closer to paradise than most.

In a world where pragmatic hard work coupled with deadlines and efficiencies dominate, a Spartan and objectionable scheme compose people’s environment. One sees factories, warehouses, asphalt parking lots, and strip shopping centers. We settle for this where there could be more beauty. But beauty is unaffordable and impractical. We are left with this bland state and even find ourselves use to it. There is comfort in the simple and assert ascetically, “form follows function.” We have little resource for the ornamental embellishments of youthful idealism.

Most people come to accept this condition at some point in their lives. Too many will come to accept the condition all their lives. But for some, the soul revolts. Boredom, depression, and remorse haunt these people as they come to grips with a starving sensuality within. In some cases health takes a nose dive as illness holds frequent parties of discourse upon their bodies. In other cases, careers come to a screeching halt. A dreamer has been sleeping inside and is waking up. Careers won’t only halt. They will change.

With the emergence of the poet in the rebirth of the deprived, a collective memory of a better way can find itself externalized in the material. The artist is driven by their internal sense. Imagine the building of towers of ivory, enchanted forests, bodies of pure light, and being able to fly. What could it take to externalize these things?

Some say science promises these things. Technology is capable of achieving anything given the resources and time. But this tool is neutral in character. Its products are dependent on the probity of its patrons. It can be used to create hell as easily as it can create heaven. A knowledge that is the essence of human heart is required to govern science. It requires philosophical governorship coupled with artistic and spiritual benefaction. But philosophy does not maintain unanimity between its schools. Idealism remains at odds with materialism. Fatalists dispute with the indeterminists. Objectivists find dissolution with the socialists. Not to mention competing religious factions. How should such a potpourri govern our lives?

One may find that the solution does not require the recognition of one school of thought at the expense of the other. In truth, all these schools are incorrect in their assertions. We know they are inadequate because all the constituents hold some measure of correctness yet conflict. Harmonizing the various schools seem at the foundation to human liberation and euphony. Yet it is unlikely that this harmony will be achieved anytime soon.

For the present, recognition and tolerance of disunity seems an essential course in attaining fantasy’s subject. Philosophy remains paramount to return the objective, but its study must be restricted to the relevant. Perhaps epistemology and religion possess less importance in the quest for happiness than is assumed. Truth gained through primary experience, rather than secondary sources, may be all that is requisite. Like a math problem, the answer rests in essentially. Why bog the equation down with things that don’t matter? Experience tested by consensus and history could be the crude determinants of a path leading to a better life. Like calculus, one finds the derivative and the slope of the intersecting line while never achieving the point on the curve. Its proof and validity, though, are readily assured.

Essential Elements

They say that in heaven people have want of nothing. All is provided freely. Fulfillment has no issue. Yet, the constituents of what fulfills compose the essence of living. Without it, there is no life. This purpose is central to the quest for happiness and is an essential aspect of the human predicament. Purpose is the reason people want to live. It is what gets them out of bed in the morning and puts them to task. Dreams and ambition are its composition.

This is also the reason people seek the cooperative. Society helps people achieve their dreams by facilitating the requirements for self actualization. As a family, people achieve ambitions greater than anything they could accomplish alone. While motive rests dependent upon an autonomous soul, its resolution becomes easier with the help of others. Like motives, this social promise also seems an important aspect of the human condition. The promise is what the community provides its members. It is the procurement and distribution of personal resources. It is the assurance of fairness and justice. It is the responsibilities the society has toward its people.

While society has obligations to its citizenry, the individual also has responsibilities as members of the community. This responsibility may best be described as virtue. Virtue is what makes a person good according to society, tradition, and reason. It is a quality of perfection individuals seek to attain so that potential for themselves and others is maximized. Purpose, the responsibilities of society, and virtue are the things most important when beginning an appreciable improvement on the human condition. This utopian aspiration depends on finding the right motive, social system, and conduct to achieve the ideal.

Motivation

The center and source of a person's life is purpose. There would be no life without it because without it there would be no reason to exist. While inherent mandate insists life's continuance for most plants and animals, people often require more than a mere instinct to live.

Different people have different reasons to live. The artist's is to create. The poet's is to express. The athlete's reason is to play. The romantic's is to love. In truth, though, purpose is but one thing for all people. Experience people entertain as desirable is the reason they persist. These experiences are what keep them working, seeking, and breathing. They can be big things like rites of passage, graduation, or marriage. They can be little things like a child's laugh, a spring rain, a good book, or to accomplish a perfect score on a test.

Most will contend that there must be more than desire’s intent to drive people. They may be right. But only the objective of experience is verifiable through reasonable doubt. Most other reasons to exist require a considerable leap of faith. It's more useful in this social study to stay with the shallow yet proven. Otherwise, one might find themselves lost amidst the many possible theories of mystics and philosophers.

Others would suggest that sensual dissertation is inadequate because it doesn’t explain why people like the poor and homeless keep striving to live. They endure despite a desperate situation. They have few experiences to live for. If only motivated by these, would they not prefer to die than live in misery? But people that have nothing actually have three things that can keep them going. Some may work off of instinctive will. Their animal side just keeps pushing them to continue.

Maybe they have future's potential. There may be hope of escape from their non-rewarding life sometime in the future.

Regretfully, many may have anger to keep them going. The way this works is easy to understand. Because of their predicament, they tend to hold some low self esteem or self doubt. If this condition remains unchecked, it can keep a person down through a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, sometimes a fighting side emerges. It is almost as though an aspect of the person seeks to deny and reject the situation. It takes a mind of its own, feeding off of anger, desperate for redemption in proving one's worthiness to a normal life. A system that puts one in this mode of negativity isn't maximizing its potential. Moreover, the person who engages it usually forgets what they started out fighting for. Life's experiences become flawed by the spirit's mad redemption. The initial pursuit is no longer the reason to exist. Redemption becomes the experience.

Activities for Living

The course of experience involves five human activities. The first is called assimilation. Assimilation is the taking in of sensory stimuli. It is the sensual taste, smell, touch, and sound. It is the scent of Star Jasmine in bloom or a spring rain, the sight of the ocean for the first time’ it is a song, or perhaps the touch of a spider crawling up one’s arm. The second is interpretation. Once felt, the stimulus is reacted to on two levels. Unconsciously, the stimuli can generate programmed reflexes or emotions. Consciously, thought composes the interpretation. A texture or color can be recognized and attributed an abstract name. Some ramification may be deduced from the perception. Sometimes, this can produce its own automatic reflex and emotional response. Once the interpretation is made, a third activity may appear called motorization. Motorization is the act of a reflex, emotion, or any engagement in the material world as a result of stimuli and its interpretation. It's interesting to note that the division between interpretation and motorization is blurred on the subconscious level. But on the conscious level, interpretation is the mental while motorization is the physical.

The fourth activity of living is called affinity. Affinities dictate what people wish to experience. They are the desire for companionship, the need to take a long journey, or the desire to be organized. Why these affinities exist is a mystery. Maybe they are learned. Perhaps they are instinctive, a product of genetic evolution. Perhaps they are a soul surmise, messages from that other world of absolute truth. Whatever they may be, they do exist and they drive humanity and fuel active living. They give the experience of life motivation.

Reason

There are many things that will maximize human potential for experiences. The merits of courage suggest people never give into fear. Knowing what to fear is requisite in living. Fear keeps many from maximizing life’s capability. Hatred and bias can also hold individuals back. For example, hatred for other races can destroy the potential for rewarding relationships. Bias impedes logic and hides these potentials. Respect for others and their dreams by everyone insure a consensus and determination that all be assured potential’s rewards. The individual, who appreciates even the most dubious intentions of others, will have their own protected in turn. Protection of variety on all levels of life seems essential and beneficial. Regard for dreams, art, belief, as well as environmental preservation of species and habitat dwell in the realm of what is right and good.

All these things, which maximize human potential, are determined by a simple tool. This tool is called reason. It is reason that sets the ground rules for living. Reason recognizes the human predicament. With it, one composes what being human is. This includes an appraisal of capacities. A determination of human limitations given our natural state of being is made. Reason examines this, recognizes the imperfection of people and their condition, and works with it. Through reason, people see the economy of practicality. Setting priorities and determining technique, it tells us the means to fulfilling as many affinities as possible. It is the fifth and final activity in life’s engagement. Reason shares relevance along with assimilation, interpretation, motorization, and affinity. It, in fact, seeks to govern them all.

Assimilation - the taking in of sensory stimuli

Interpretation - reflex or emotions, thought

Motorization - physical response

Affinity - drives the experience, is the motivation

Reason - guides the experience

The Artist as Affinitarian

In an age of reason, the poet seems occult. There has been a neglect of the artistic experience in the lives of most lay people. Many choose the more practical career at the expense of a promising childhood of artistry. An artist’s life is a harder road. It is a path that, in our society, leads to poverty, branded eccentricity, and the foolish appearance of court jest. This seems desperate as a career and life’s work. Science and math rather than the humanities prove the means to success and survival. But one can learn all the sciences to find that they only grant a portion of paradise. A fulfilling human life must also include the aesthetic.

That reason seeks supremacy over affinity can prove detrimental to the art of living. It is better that reason’s logic form a partnership with the heart’s affinity. It is not that people should experience more music or read more books. Consumerism by an under developed population of connoisseurs yields only excuses for art. Its content is entirely pleasure requiring little poetic sacrifice. It is as a football enthusiast glues himself to a television, a bag of potato chips, and a pack of beer to watch a game of tactic and human strength. From middle childhood they watch as lean healthy athletes impart an adventure competition prescribes. By middle age they find themselves physically impoverished and half of their lifetime wasted away. How much better it would have been to have spent one’s life playing the sport rather than watching. Like the “couch potato,” would it had not been better to be the artist rather than consumed the art? I say this because pure consumption neglects some aspects of mental enrichment the practice of art can achieve. Beyond the consumption and re-discovery, there is the nature of the artist’s exploration and true objective.

Life is like crossing a stream dotted with stepping stones. For most people, it requires stepping from one stone to the next. The stones are not always stable and it’s possible to loose one’s balance. The cautious carefully step from one stone to the next fearful of wet feet or even worse. If one is sure footed, they can get from one side to the other without getting wet. Intellectuals might approach the goal of reaching the other side differently. Using their mental capacities, they could build a boat or perhaps a bridge to reach their objective. But poets find an entirely new approach to this situation. Artists can appreciate the technology of the intellectual’s bridge or transport. They can also stand upon a stepping stone and dwell upon its means. One can bring out the inherent emotional responses in these perceptions. But beauty composes more than just a simple and practical path to the other side of the waters and journey’s end. There are the torrents, ebbs, and undertows of the river’s current. These too can evoke emotion. The artist captures these ancient apprehensions, fears, and terror. Fascination in the awful curses the poet as he stands on his teetering stepping stone. Then, in enlightened exploration, he jumps into the waters! The artist’s beauty can be found in evil as much as goodness.

Holocaust, incestuous transgression, violent mutilation, and madness belong to darker realms of the mind. This as well as the good and pleasurable captivate. A collective subconscious redeems archetypal responses to all. Whether these are products of natural selection or products of some idealistic world, the artist discovers them. She interprets them. She expresses them. Finding the affect of reality on the human psyche yields the poet’s intangible beauty. Its engagement profits the explorer with agreeable pleasure. Sometimes it can cost the observer in emotional toil. Regardless of the shallow drawbacks that might ensue, a deeper advantage permeates the experience. Intangible beauty, whether grounded in good or evil, is the artist’s objective in exploration, discovery, and creation.

Appreciating aspirations toward intangible beauty lie at the beginning to finding a more enlightened lifestyle for all people. Its attraction seems driven by an undeniable affinity. People should recognize this affinitarian experience as a motivation to exist. They ought to commit to existence and life by living by its suggestions and by exploring all it dictates. Upon internalization, they should compliment the discovery and interpretation through the pleasure of its creative expression. In this, people retain title to poet, artist, and craftsman and they begin to find advantages in all reality.

On Society

2007-11-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

The Social Promise

Beyond motivation, another dynamic of society concerns the character of the collective. The community should supply conditions to maximize the capacity for affinitarian experience. The prevalence of these provisions would serve to measure a social system’s virility. Many philosophers and social thinkers have promoted their own sense of provisions. Plato proposed a cast society ruled by a philosopher king. Skinner suggested one populated by Pavlov dogs. While present-day people might reject these constitutions, one would hope for an exhibition that would appeal to the contemporary. For example, perhaps the goodness or badness of a society can be appraised by its adherence to the following criteria:

A community that never requires or assumes perfection is a good system.
A society should allow its members to act for the sake of the action as well as for the end it might serve.
A community that never forces its members to ask for things they can’t be denied is a good system.
The social system should provide complete freedom of movement for its members.
A good system will provide basic needs through its institutions and will insure they are equally distributed.
A good society responds to the stable as well as changing needs of the community.
Society must also provide a clear definition of the responsibilities and behavior required of its members.
The society should recognize the importance of collective unity and autonomy of its members.

While most would reject one or more of the above assertions, these positions do serve to exemplify the promise a society can make to its constituency. Are contracts like these the things utopias are made of? For at least a few, these standards may hold a place to live one’s aim and achieve happiness.

But utopia, as it is understood today, will never exist. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines it as, “any visionary scheme for the perfect society.” The criterion for utopia, by definition, embodies perfection. But society is a product of people. Everyone knows people are fallible. This suggests utopia is impossible.

Many idealists and creative minds have succumbed to this dead alley. This rationale has destroyed much of the momentum in social design. People still talk on a small scale on how to improve this or that social cause. They contemplate health care, welfare reform, and elect new leaders but they never venture the ambition of redesigning the whole system. This should change.

Really, there are only a few things that might alter this state of affairs. First, people need to recognize that we do not live in the best possible system. Poverty and homelessness prevail upon the streets of our cities. Our infrastructure mandates an irreversible degradation of the environment as pollution spreads, climate changes, and species go extinct. The vast majority of our citizens never come close to achieving their full potential. These shortages precede viable solutions. For example, values grounded in exclusivity can be replaced by ones inclusive. New technology formulates cleaner cities and healthier biosystems. Proactive compassion during apportionment assure more their capacity to maximize life’s opportunities. Questioning basic social assumptions lie at the heart of social change.

People should also create a way to experiment with alternative systems and life styles so that they don’t compromise any existing and accepted ones. A forum should be established to examine and compare each system. It should be a college anyone can enter, serve, and educate themselves through. It would assess the integrity of social designs. It would record successes and failures. It would also insure that each community’s population has the ability to freely decide to which experiment, if any, they would reside in. The school would, in the tradition of life’s purpose, experience, preserve, and protect diversity among viable communities.

A third thing that should be done is that the notion of what utopia is should be re-evaluated. A utopian should never assume they have the perfect social design. But they should always strive for perfection. Utopia is not a perfect society. It is a society that strives for perfection but never assumes it. Social designers should devise internal feedback mechanisms as a first line of defense against imperfection. This might take the form of a communal government. Here, problems would be discussed and democratically resolved. All this would be done with intent toward social viability and the quest for perfection’s revelation.

Government

The character of government made a great leap forward with the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century. This evolution affirmed that people should support an institutional system that insures liberty, equality, and a sense of community. A vote to master a consensus of government should be used. Three branches called congress, executive, and judiciary compose the advantages the law of three can provide. Elections determine representatives in each of these components. They write and enforce the laws of the land in accordance with a constitution. These lawmakers and interpreters must also bear in mind that they should stick to what is essential in government. Thoreau said, “The best government is the least government.” This reduces the majority rule over a suppressed minority. In this, lies a capacity for some potential unanimity in the vote. All democracies should strive to achieve unanimity but without compromising the diversity of its citizenry.

Perfection and Pragmatism

A more perfect society is one that maximizes an individual’s potential for experience and requires as little as possible in return. The less cost for the service means that much more time and resource is spent on living. The trick is deciding what people need, how to get it to them, and make it cost as little as possible.

One essential requisite for living is the acquisition of an education. These are the skills and techniques needed to effectively explore and create. Other resources needed are physical in nature. Materials and energy are needed to mold and design in the fashioning of equipage. These are used for the sake of experience. To engage life, people need food, heat, shelter, and tools as well as the skill to use them. Social infrastructure can provide all of these things.

In addition to these basic needs, there is another thing people desire from the communal. They seek the social for the sake of its experience. People like to talk together, dream together, and create with one another. People don’t always interact just for the sake of some end. Sometimes the interaction is an end in itself. This is the highest motive in seeking company.

The need to interact is a living space need. The living space is the part of the community that exists outside the institution and its machine. It ought to be the primary location of interaction. Within the institution, but outside the machine, there is also intercourse. But the primary function of institutions is service and social maintenance. The interactions within them are largely functional and pragmatic. Relations are intended to serve ends. But even these pragmatic interactions can serve as ends in themselves as well as means to an end. People, who reside in the institution, may seek the utilitarian interchange by their own aesthetic. The interaction is sought for the experience itself.

A good system may be one where the human activity going on is done primarily as an end in itself rather than a means to an end alone. If an activity occurs that serves primarily as a means to an end, something could be wrong with the system. The institutional machine has failed to meet its task or individuals have misplaced their priorities.

It’s simple to rationalize and accept this notion when one considers the need for correctness in action. A few years ago, a couple of scientists proclaimed that they had discovered cold fusion. They were accepted as geniuses. Now we have a new source of energy to take us into the twenty-first century! But, after all the celebration, many scientists tried to duplicate their experiments. They found that cold fusion didn’t work. The science that claimed cold fusion was bad science. The scientists had lacked correctness in their actions. Perhaps all they saw was the end they sought and lost sight of the verifiable. A good scientist does their research for the sake of the correctness in action as well as the end. They love the method of science and know the value of the end is only as good as the integrity of their method.

Seeking to maximize human happiness, correctness suggests the value in seeking action that serves as an end in itself as well as a means to an end. Experience suggests that humans are imperfect. Many times, their activity does not achieve the end sought. If one places all their happiness in the end, they will only be happy when the end is attained. But if they design their lives so happiness is gained through the means as well as the end , they should be happy more often. Even if they fail in achieving their end, there will still be what was gained in getting there.

Discord and the Freedom to Deny

Despite the maximal attempt to achieve happiness in life, the greatest peril to social tranquility remains as conflict. Society should be set-up so that conflict is avoided and, when unavoidable, must not persist for long. Many believe the only source for social growth and transformation is through conflict. Yet, it is possible for a society to evolve without it. In fact, a society can develop intangibly better without it. War is the single most important requisite that seems to lead to technological progress. The developments of radar and rocket technology are owed to World War II. Without it, the mother of invention seems to run at a slower rate. But we must justify the mean that leads us to the quick and productive end. Do we dare take a pragmatic view and condone conflict? The integrity of the mean is best determined by the aim it ultimately serves rather than the side effects it creates.

Seattle 2002

If we assume strife undesirable, how can we get rid of it? Many have sought the solution to this query. Some have attained some measure of its essence. The solution can’t be used half the time or part of the way. In taking it this way, it is ultimately corrupted. To rid humanity of conflict one must wipe the slate clean and reassess the entire manner humanity endeavors to live.

Conflict is a disagreement of interests or ideas. It usually insists an angry emotional response. It arises because one or both parties are asking what the other won’t provide. An industrialist, who decides to strip mine an open space, is asking the environmentalists something they don’t want to give up. The environmentalists, in turn, are asking the industrialist not to attempt the essential acquisition of raw materials which he can’t deny. Conflict ensues.

The trick to avoiding conflict is easy enough to assert. Simply lead a life where one’s actions don’t ask for more than what one is willing to be denied. Moreover, never ask for more than what others feel free to deny. The test of a society’s goodness is revealed by how well it allows its population to approach this curative.

Obviously, there are things in this world people can not be denied. They can’t be denied the means to existence. The obtainment of food, shelter, energy, and the knowledge to use them can’t be threatened if one is to live in a world without conflict. They must be guaranteed. If a society’s institutions can secure these basic needs, there is no need for one to ask the other for the undeniable.

This wouldn’t be as hard to do as people might think. Fads, fashions, and entertainment change with the season. But basic human needs never change. They are perfect causes for humanity’s institutions. Bureaucracies are, after all, conservative by nature. They cling to the past, are slow, and don’t like to change. They would be bad at distributing the newest pop single but not basic necessities.

The “Planet Eaters”

Imagine that in the future the world is populated by only one people. This society is an agrarian forest community. Forests became the only habitat for humanity because it was a climax habitat and it was decreed that grasslands, oceans, and desserts too brittle to occupy. They were set aside as preserves that may only be temporarily occupied. Essential industrial complexes and cities are relegated to glacial Antarctica and living space is amidst the forest gardens of South America.

To build the industrial complexes of Antarctica, the entire continent had to be mined and developed. A new technical process called “strip-mining” assures any useful material is collected and processed throughout a target area. This method, while efficient, destroys most natural geologic features and macerates any biological substrate. Ecosystems never recover from it. It is Antarctica’s lack of biological inventory that made it the best place to use this technique.

This continent sees great transformation and is exhausted of its resources. By the time this happens, the inhabitants learn to recycle and do so at 100% capacity in assurance of their terrestrial way of life. Eventually, humans discover they no longer need the Antarctic industrial complex. It is abandoned for the advantages of a forest garden lifestyle. Earth has become a veritable paradise and stays this way for a hundred years.

There comes a time when an interest arises among the citizenry to attempt exploration of neighboring Mars. But no one knows how to acquire the resources to build the great spaceship that would be necessary to take those interested in going. Through the ranks, rises an industrialist who suggests the materials could be acquired by strip-mining the forests. The cause of exploration is worthy to many. Scientific exploration is always a good motive. But many of the forest dwellers want the forests preserved. Conflict immediately ensues between the environmental “conservatives” and the industrialist and his followers.

There are a few things the community can do to preserve the peace. First, they could try to use innovation. They could try to come up with a new mining technique that wouldn’t destroy the forest. Second, they could try to seek a compromise. Some of the inhabited forest could be given up for the raw materials. If both these approaches do not work, the only solution that remains is a split. Since the industrialist and his followers are the agent of change, they must consider leaving the community and seek another place to find the raw materials. The system should provide them with the freedom to do this. For this to work, the good system needs to reserve the resources for other possible human lifestyles that may develop. By this reservation, freedom of thought and movement prevail. There should be a place for every group and their collective dreams.

CONTINGENCY TO HANDLE THE INDUSTRIALIST ABERRATION

Innovation
Compromise
Split (Departure from the norm)

Let us say, in the contingency, that a split had to be prescribed. The industrialists had to leave the forest. They choose another uninhabited forest on the other side of the planet to strip-mine. They build their spaceship and go to Mars. The trip takes a year and in that time they see many wonderful things. Then, they return to their land of the strip mined forest.

What they return to is a land incapable of supporting life. The industrial complex they built has destroyed any capacity to support them or any other form of life. Necessity dictates they leave their strip mined forest. But, where do they go? Should they be allowed to take another forest? Will they strip mine that one as well? Perhaps the environmental conservatives possess the only forest left. Are the environmentalists, who have diligently preserved their allotment, obligated to compromise part of their forest at this point?

It is in situations like these that the importance of the historian becomes apparent. History would suggest that the industrialists made their bed. Now, they’ll have to sleep in it. The only way they may return to the conservationist’s forest is by giving up their way of life. To give their cause any more resources would be inequitable toward the environmentalist’s practice and way of life. The question remains. Will the industrialists with their rocketry and high tech military agree?

Now, let’s imagine the story ends differently. What if the industrialists, instead of returning to their strip mined forest, decided to stay away. The purpose of the industrialists is to explore. They decide to continue their quest instead of returning from Mars. Upon exploration of Mars, the industrialists realize they can strip mine the entire planet to make new and better space ships. They level the planet and destroy all its natural features. Why not? No one else lives on the planet. They build many ships. Expanding their range, the explorers strip planets from solar system to system. Eventually, they build machines capable of consuming entire planets. In one instant these devices convert the entire globe into materials and machines of discovery. The industrialists become Planet Eaters.

While the Planet Eaters were the first to come across these worlds, many would question their right to consume them. This is because equity should be held timeless to many. Resources should not only be distributed equally between all people for any given time. They should be distributed equally between all people of all times. Most would contest that many of the Planet Eater’s consumed worlds should be preserved for future generations. But who would be around to enforce and regulate this?

Equity and Consumption

Something is wrong in both scenarios above. In the world of the industrialists and environmentalists, all basic needs are met. No one need ask for anything they can’t be denied. Equity is maintained. Conflict is approached with attempts at innovation and compromise. Eventually freedom of movement must be resorted to in order to retain the peace. Yet, in both scenarios, the ultimate result is undesirable.

What went wrong was the way the industrialists used their resources. Resources are material, energy, and knowledge. There are essentially two types of resources. There are those resources that are renewable or recyclable. There are also those that are non-renewable. Actually, everything works in cycles so everything becomes recycled. But sometimes the cycle takes a very long time. Perhaps its alternation exceeds the life expectancy of the human race. In this case, it is considered non-renewable.

The trick with resources is simple. Never consume more than what can be recycled. Once this amount is determined, it is made available to everyone equally. Those things considered non-renewable are consumed over a longer period of time. A resource whose cycle is essentially infinite should be pro-rated and exhausted when the interests of humanity end. The resource should be distributed evenly among all people of all time. This requires that the population be anticipated as well as the amount of available resources projected. Hard and imperfect, this is what must be done to avoid the industrialist’s scenarios.

Contingency for Conflict

A contingency for conflict may not be needed by following this expansion on equity’s determination. It will be needed, however, in conflicts where specifics are at stake. I’m writing these words while sitting on a rock beside the Platte River. The location and scene are quite unique. There is no other space like it for miles. What if someone else came along who also wanted to sit on this rock? Seeing that there is only enough room for one person, a contingency for conflict may need to arise. The contingency for the rock might go as follows:

First, we might seek a compromise like time share. One day, I can sit on the rock. The next day, the other person can. In this we alternate days to sit upon the rock.

If compromise is unacceptable, maybe innovation is the remedy for this conflict. Perhaps we can use sophisticated technique to dredge the river for another rock. If one is found, we could place it beside the other. Now, there are two rocks!

If this won’t work, the only thing remaining is to deny my good friend access to the rock. I was simply here first! This doesn’t always work. What if my friend is bigger than me? Some communities may decide to use another solution called Mutually Assured Denial. Because the rock is unique and one of a kind, the community may decide to deny both myself and my friend access to the rock. The best historical example of MAD being used was during the cold war. If one of the conflicting parties decided to have a nuclear war, everyone would loose. The only problem with MAD is the lose of potential to denied specific resources.

A contingency for conflict will be needed for dealing with resources of a specific nature. But, when dealing with resources in general, distributed equitably, and everyone accepts the goodness of the distribution, there is no need for a contingency.

Free Market and Tests of Character

Up to this point, we have addressed the way an ideal society should deal with basic needs, general resources, and specific resources. Many of these needs and resources and their assimilation rarely change. Institutions are best for providing them because like them, bureaucracies infrequently change. But many things that people want are not so easy to predict. Fads and fashions change. What sets the color and atmosphere one day may change the next. This is an essential part of life’s discovery. It isn’t bad. But, the resources needed to feed this dynamic side of life aren’t best provided by institutions. While governments might try to provide them, they will ultimately fail.

There are only two ways that I know of for the dynamic resources to be distributed. The first is through trade and barter. Free economy works like an invisible hand. It drives industry to provide resources and change when they become obsolete. People may someday out grow the need for an economic system. This is because the means of the economic system can’t always be appealing enough to serve as ends in themselves. People don’t like dealing with money all the time. Many don’t like their jobs. Yet, the system forces them to accept their state.

The second way to handle dynamic resources and needs also assures that the means can serve as ends. This is preferable. This aesthetic dynamic only works because virtues like love, self discipline, and work are ends in themselves.

It all starts with love. A person sees his community in need of a service. The dynamic nature of the service’s provision may require some ingenuity and creativity on the part of the altruist. The work serves as a challenge and serves as an expression of one’s integrity and character. How grand to resolve the challenge! This may not be so much for what others think of one’s self discipline as much as for one’s own self esteem. A person is not complete until they meet challenges like these and succeed. Everyone likes a good puzzle.

The question might arise; who would do all the nasty work if everyone only does work that pleases them? Who would clean the toilets? A person who would clean toilets is one that values self discipline and responsibility. An innovative person may decide the best course of action is to create a self-cleaning bathroom.

The Good Society

In conclusion, the good society never assumes or requires perfection. It lets the means to living serve as ends in themselves as well as serve ends. It also approaches conflict as an enemy. A good community never requires a member to ask for things they can’t be denied. It does this by insuring basic resources and equity in their distribution. Should it fail to meet this responsibility, it holds a contingency for conflict. An exemplary system also resolves need for dynamic resources and services through the creative actualization of virtue. With regard to all these matters, it defines its qualities, character, and contingencies of justice completely so that no surprises arise. In this way, the potential for conflict is reduced. If a community member doesn’t like the system, they can always peacefully challenge it or leave it before serious conflict develops.

Virtue

2007-11-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

Once one decides what makes a society good, it comes time to consider the individual. There is responsibilities society and its institutions should satisfy. There are also obligations that individuals should engage as members of the community. They are actions and conducts that allow the system to serve its purpose and maximize people’s potential to live. The enlightened strive to live by this higher conduct due to a devotion that rests in mind and spirit. People want to be good because their reason dictates they should. Their spirit dictates decency by affinitarian dictate. It simply feels good. For whichever dominates in the drive toward uprightness, without it, society would be incapable of functioning well. The first components of this higher conduct are the virtues. These virtues are self discipline, responsibility, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, faith, work, friendship, and compassion.

To be self disciplined is to let reason govern one’s actions. How it works is by using reason to set one’s priorities. It can be a decision to stop eating sweets in order to prevent cavities. The priority is healthy teeth over sweets. Once one establishes the priority, then, comes the hard part. The person must start controlling passions and impulses through practice. The desire for candy and cakes must be overcome.

Responsibility is to own one’s own actions and to be held accountable for them. Many try to blame others for mistakes they make. When this is not possible, they oftentimes deter attention from themselves by pointing out the faults in others. They seek these faults in an attempt to pull themselves up at the expense of other’s integrity. To be responsible is not to succumb to these reductions. It is to face one’s own mistakes and weaknesses.

Plato suggested that courage, like most virtues; work because we have the capacity to reason. He believed that valiancy is knowing what to fear as dictated by reason. Many times, when approached by an unreasonable fear, it is through self determination that we find the courage to confront it. Yet, there may be more to the courageous than mere intelligence. True bravery is to overcome justifiable fear by a stronger more compassionate will. Exposing oneself to risk, absent of self interest, one endeavors to be of service to others. This is the courage of heroes in legend.

Perseverance, like Plato’s courage, only works when used in conjunction with reason. It is the capacity to continue trying to succeed at an endeavor until it is completed. But, if reason dictates the quest irrelevant, the perseverance may not yield fulfillment. The deed becomes foolish.

Honesty is to adhere to the truth. It is to express oneself accurately to oneself as well as others. When living in a society where the means of exchange is an aesthetic and altruistic dynamic, honesty is very important. It is important to define truthfully one’s own faults, weaknesses, goals, feelings, and beliefs. This way, people can do a better job of helping one achieve their dreams.

Loyalty is caring for other persons, groups, beliefs, or institutions regardless of the inconvenience. It generates trust as its product.

Faith is a firm belief in goodness and its inevitable capacity to overcome evil. It is a commitment to goodness that prevents people from going morally adrift. Decency is practiced and supported even at the risk to one’s own life. It is an acceptance that there is an underlying “goodness” to the universe. This notion is supported by a consistency of forms and systems that exist within people as well as the rest of nature. As products of nature, people reflect its character in their interests. It is not that the world is good. It is considered good only by human attribution. Nature simply is.

Work is an activity one engages to achieve an end. Some types of work can serve as an expression of one’s own character or integrity. A volunteer, who works to save lives, does so for an end that serves as an expression of their character.

But the product work serves doesn’t have to be the only end. The means by which the end is accomplished can be an end in itself. This is achieved through the choice of technique one employs to accomplish the work. The worker can design their own course of action. To find solutions to each obstacle in the means becomes an expression of integrity and strength. In this, both the activity and the products of work can serve as expressions of character.

But work can move beyond the expression of ego. It has the capacity to become an end in itself on a truer level. By this, productivity is assured due to an inherent need to be productive. The means become ends in and of themselves where the love and challenge of technique is practiced and an inherent need to accomplish something relevant prevail.

Compassion is to come to the aid of others in distress perhaps because one sees a bit of the self in the other. But it even rests inherent when given no regard by reason.

Friendship is the acquaintance and affection for others. It yields levels of benevolence that serve as the best pattern for all relationships. It usually arises out of mutual interests. Friends may see a bit of themselves in the other. The relationship requires honesty, especially about oneself, the ability to hold enough respect and affection for the other to take their criticism with their praise, loyalty, and love.

It is clear that if all members of a community wish to be friends, they should aspire to practice these virtues. If individuals practice these virtues so shall the community as a whole. The community shall then find alliance with other communities of the same noble standing.

The Precepts

The golden rule asserts individuals do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. This suggests a person who practices virtue would want to live in a community where its members also practice virtue. The rule might also be restated that one must not do unto others as one wishes not done unto themselves. One is dealing with precepts rather than virtues in this sense. While virtues are activities one should engage, precepts are conduct one should not. The precepts are: not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, not to be unchaste, and not to take intoxicants.

One should never commit murder. Cherish and nurture life instead. Support and protect the lives of others in the community. Include the interests of children, the sick, and the elderly.

Do not steal. Respect the private space and property of others for this is their dream space. Its aggregate leads to the meditations and reflections that can augment the community as a whole.

Do not lie. Be honest with yourself and those in your community. It is important to determine an accurate account of one’s ambitions, beliefs, gifts, and overall condition. This is very important if trade is engaged on an altruistic level. If people wish to give one a gift, they have no idea what that person truly wants if that person has not been honest about their appetites. Truthful expression insures that resources are not wasted on developments that never matter.

Do not commit adultery. There are obvious biological motives to restrict ones sexual habits. The spread of sexually transmitted diseases can be increased without a conservative predilection. There is also the prospect of reduced genetic variability in small communities when some members are not allowed to contribute to the future gene pool. There is also the risk of paternal disenfranchisement. Fathers are essential in developing psychologically healthy children.

Finally, the last precept insists one should not take recreational drugs. These impair good judgment, lead to poverty, and even psychological and physical malice.

A racial memory of a mythical golden age suggests a past when people were more extraordinary beings. Eden, Camelot, and Atlantis suggest an enlightened prehistory which was lost to human weakness. They remind us of what can be destroyed when we turn on goodness and virtuosity. These legends also promise what could come to pass if we return to correctness. It is important not to under estimate one’s affect on the environment. One’s environment is often a reflection of one’s character. A community is an expression of its people. This implies that the world is what one makes of it. Individual philosophy can make the difference between whether heaven or hell should prevail on Earth.

An obvious dependence on personal behavior should be considered when wishing to bring back myth’s golden age. The practice of virtue by individuals can lead to its conveyance to the entire community.

Reason, Foresight, and Altruism

In people there is selfishness, competition, fear, jealousy, and propensities toward violence which can drive people to act viciously in their world. These characteristics are sometimes justified in the name of technological progress. After all, we owe World War II for advances in radar technology, rocket science, and nuclear physics. But this rational may serve humanities undoing in a world where small groups wield atomic and biological weapons of genocidal proportions. People are also capable of reason, foresight, a capacity for love, and a passion for beauty that are undeniably the tools and motives to their survival. It is clear that the former inherent dispositions should be displaced by these. To do this, one must understand what these noble characteristics are and secure the promise they allow one to aspire to.

Reason is the mental practice of interpreting the nature of reality. To know it is to know science, mathematics, history, and philosophy. It begins by generating concepts true by definition. It finishes by producing the most likely theories on the nature of the human predicament. Time tests their credibility. But even with the greatest tests of time, theories are tentative and soi-disant. Reason never proves anything. It only disproves.

Foresight is another human capability that can contribute to humanities survival. This is the ability to make a reasonable guess as to the outcome of events by placing reality’s interpretation into account. By developing an understanding of the most likely truths, one can determine one’s best course of action in life. Reason combined with foresight allows one to make choices that should secure desirable objectives.

While reason and foresight serve as the means behind the wise person’s actions, beauty and love serve as their motive. The splendor of love and all other things comparable in beauty feed the soul. In this, people move beyond existence to live. Reason and foresight can decide the way things will be. But the soul insists that one must not ask what the essence of nature is but of what it ought to be. Should it be a world driven by greed, hatred, and fear or should it be based on reason, foresight, beauty, and love? The affinity of soul would choose the loveliness of the later as primary. The darker motives would find audience only in the poet’s sense of aesthetic. In a roundabout way, they too would find their course to the soul but only in the context of intangible beauty. Beginning and maintaining this suggests the brighter constitutions make up the foundation of good life. They lie essential to humanity’s future success.

Love, the Reptilian Brain, and Selfish Genes

If altruism does exist, where did it come from? How was it evolved to? To answer this, one has to go back to a time when love may not have existed, a time when reptiles, rather than mammals, ruled the earth.

Life arose on earth three and a half billion years ago. For the first three billion years, the conservation of replicating molecules would reign supreme over the activities of life. Some scientists dub these replicating molecules as “selfish genes” because of their self conserving predisposition. These primitive molecules started interacting with others to compose cellular structure. Multi-cellular organisms arose no less than seven-hundred million years ago. An explosion of life occurred shortly thereafter. By five-hundred billion years ago, life had managed to colonize land. The development of complex nervous systems and brains were soon to follow.

The brain has evolved and grown like a city, where, as the city expands, the inner city remains intact and continues to operate within the confines of the elder intent. The new city or suburbs lie outside the inner city and employ a more neoteric plan. Six hundred million years ago, our ancestors had brains that were limited to controlling automatic systems like heartbeat and breathing. The name of this inner brain is the neural chassis. The neural chassis still operates in the human brain today. It still controls essentially the same activities it has always directed. But much more exists in the human brain than merely this system. About the age of the reptiles a new part of the brain evolved outside the neural chassis. This part is called the reptilian complex or R-complex. The behavior and function of this brain region is much more advanced than the neural chassis. It is from this part of the brain that selfish motivation arises. Selfishness, before the R-complex evolved, had presence only in the mimicry of the “selfish” gene. It is suggested, that the selfish gene’s agenda reaches extra genetic potential in the reptilian brain. The extra genetic potential for selfishness is suggested to be reflected in the lives of dinosaurs. But selfish motivation wasn’t enough. A new creature appeared on the circuit. Nature found out that sometimes it was advantageous for “selfish” genes to cooperate. To raise young required an organism to be sensitive to the needs of others. To live and hunt in packs required collaboration. With this, a new layer of the brain evolved over the other two. Mammals came into being. The layer outside the R-complex is called the limbic system. This is the home of higher brain functions like altruism. Birds and mammals have well developed limbic systems.

It’s important to note that genes don’t think. They haven’t rationalized that altruism will contribute to their conservation. “Selfish” genes don’t allow altruism to be cooperative. That would imply reason. It is simply by happenstance that altruism serves the gene. While altruism exists because of the gene, it does not exist by the gene’s dictate beyond the automatic biochemistry of the design.

Altruism, like selfishness, is a program. It’s a child program when compared to the older selfish program. In this child program lays the feel good associated with being altruistic. This program was not rationalized. It simply came into being. It exists only in the context that it is unselfish. Pure altruism is the nature of the program. The program knows of no selfish gene. Selfish motivation played itself out. A new program was needed for the gene to continue. Altruism was born. While we can rationalize this evolution as selfishly motivated, neither the program nor the gene can. Only reason and the R-complex see the selfishness. That’s like asking an agrarian if they think city life is backward. Reason can justify altruism only in terms of self preservation.

The merits, importance, and even reality of altruism is often debated. Some go so far as to assert that everything is selfishly motivated. This is a religion of selfishness. For a gene to be selfish, it would have to have an R-complex. It does not. In fact, it is just as easy to imagine a gene altruistic as it is to imagine it selfish. Perhaps a gene is acting selfishly in order to be altruistic. It would be like denying a street bum a handout so he is forced to get a job and better his as well as everyone else’s lives. But, to believe the gene altruistic is just as unrealistic as to call it selfish. Altruism and selfishness are simply not the stuff genes are made of. To assert life as fundamentally selfish or altruistic is an irrational religious assertion.

Evolutionary history serves as proof to the merits of altruism. In the age of dinosaurs, the reptile had an R-complex and a primitive limbic system. At the same time, there were smaller, weak, rodent like creatures who had a more developed limbic system as well as the R-complex. Sixty-five million years ago, an adversity occurred that caused mass extinction. Most of the reptiles went extinct. The child rearing rodents took over the world. The case can be put to rest. Altruism not only exists, it is essential to humanity’s survival. People should engage it and should never deny it.

Selfish Altruism

Altruistic behavior is never truly altruistic when selfishly motivated. Like other virtues, altruism is best engaged for the sake of itself rather than for the sake of the end it serves. To concentrate on the end would concede selfish cooperation. To allow oneself to go with the flow of the altruistic program, for the sake of the engagement, allows one to come closer to experiencing true altruism. Even the feel good associated with the program can be interpreted as self motivated. Pure altruism is only realized when it becomes habit and is not employed for the sake of its technique, the feel good it provides, or the end it serves. It is just done.

As with all virtues, reason comes into play. It defines what constitutes the virtuous act. It sets the means by which the act is accomplished. It also sets limits upon the act.

Reason defines an altruistic act by perceiving a part of the self in another. A person is compassionate to a bum because they know how they would like to be treated if placed in that position. Reason does this because relating others to the self is the best way to interpret others. After all, it knows the self better than anyone. Reason dictates do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. This would apply whether cooperative or altruistic. Many of the benevolent feelings in friendship develop the same way. Friendship arises out of mutual interests and aims. This makes it much easier to see the self in a friend. Altruism develops very strongly in friendships, oftentimes, overriding family.

Reason sometimes sets limits on altruism by assessing the ability of the actualizer to do the job. If the altruistic act should endanger the life of the actualizer, the practice of future altruistic acts or altruism higher in priority, reason will try to discontinue the activity.

Tenable Spirituality

2007-10-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

In addition to sound ethics, exceptional behavior also composes a healthy spirituality. Altruism, objectivity, and humility compose the foundation of a good spiritual life. Their practice, through a process that is reasonable as well as poetic, yields a degree of egocentric transcendence. This in turn, leads to a state of spiritual revelation.

Altruism is the first component of availing spirituality. Altruism is the practice of putting another ahead of oneself. Its credentials rest in acts of compassion and friendship. As a behavior that people seem naturally predisposed to exhibit, it’s not a difficult behavior to master. The ways in which it is played out are limitless. Its practice can serve as the objective in action. This is to be benevolent for the sake of benevolence.

Collectively, good will can spread throughout a community. In a positive environment, one good deed, however small, can send civic-minded ripples throughout a community. It is like a seedling that is nourished and grows with each act of love by the community members. Eventually, the tiny sapling becomes a big tree! Altruism can be promoted by a series of activities that become actualized out of a love of one’s community.

One way to achieve an altruistic disposition is to practice virtue. To promote an unselfish society is to practice the precepts. An ethical standard tends to summarize virtue and precepts and all other capacities for altruistic affirmation. The standard is called “the golden rule.”

The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

Another way to promote altruism in a community is to relieve social barriers. Racism and sexism are an affront to compassion.

Altruism may also be aspired by the practice of offering. There are many ways to provide or to offer something to another. There is the physical offering which is to provide service by one’s labor. The highest form of this would be the self sacrifice of one’s life. A spiritual offering is to provide compassion and tenderness to others. The offering of eyes is to transport a warm glance bestowing comfort or tranquility. This is difficult in a typically large city. Often, eye contact can be interpreted as an invitation to a more intense charitable dialog. Be prepared to be asked for more. There is also the countenance offering. One can provide countenance with a smile. Oral offering is to provide kind warm words to others. Seat offering is to secure another a chair or place. Finally, there is the offering of shelter to another. This is especially important if a warm bath is included in the deal.

Physical offering - provide service by one’s labor, the highest form being the self sacrifice of one’s life
Spiritual offering - offer a compassionate heart to others (compassion, tenderness)
Offering of eyes - offer a warm glance
Countenance offering - provide a sense of approval and support with a smile
Oral offering - provide kind, warm words to others
Seat offering
Shelter offering

What one offers another is largely determined by one’s accurate interpretation of their needs. It’s much easier to realize the needs of others by appealing to their state in life. This can be done through fasting. Fasting reminds one of human frailty. It can put one in another’s shoes. To know homelessness, go without a home. To find the starving, go without food.

Another step in realizing a healthy spiritual being is to find objectivity. Objectivity is an open mindedness about everything. In it, one realizes absolution is impossible in interpreting anything. Ideas other than those true by definition are subject to reasonable doubt. Human perception and interpretation are imperfect. All beliefs must be held tentative.

The good and evil in life are also subject to this. One’s interpretation of evil is oftentimes essential to the perpetuation of a greater good. The polarity of yin and yang, good and evil, active and passive, positive and negative, light and dark, summer and winter, male and female are each dependent on the other. Each lead to the other and are defined by the other. Both and their interaction serve a higher calling.

The third ingredient to the recipe of a healthy spiritual life is humility. This involves seeing oneself as a part of a greater whole. It is supported by three practices.

The first is the practice of objectivity. This is to realize that truth can be interpreted in many ways. A poet sees a sunset differently than a meteorologist. It ultimately suggests that personal preconceptions of reality may be false. One must become open to the possibilities.

Another practice is visualization. This is the process of becoming familiar with the imaginings that come when one shuts off the external world. This process exercises subconscious emergence and improves visualization skills. It may also improve a person’s creative and problem solving ability.

Visualization can be enhanced through the third practice called mind expansion. Mind expansion is a way to develop the minds imaginative vocabulary. It is said to intensify the depth of everyday experience in that it creates a dialog between the sensual and the soul without the intermediary of the ego self. The process goes as follows.

Process:

Relax and empty your mind
Pick up an everyday object and look at it (key, coin, ect.)
Notice surface texture, ridges, bumps, things that normally aren’t noticed in everyday use.
Don’t analyze the object. Just take in the experience.
Discontinue after thirty seconds. Go back to daily routine.
Repeat the exercise with another object later.

This activity is repeated throughout the day at various time intervals.

The practice of altruism, objectivity, and humility lead to a dynamic yielding spiritual enlightenment. This “cooking” of the recipe is both poetic and reasonable and produce a degree of egocentric transcendence.

The first aspect of this dynamic is poetic anthropomorphism. This is seeing a part of oneself in another. To see a part of oneself in another person can lead to friendship and compassion. It is easy to see some of oneself in another person. But to see it in an animal, plant, rock, or even planet is agreeable. This poetic capacity allows one to feel benevolence toward these things as one would for a friend.

Reasonable doubt also has its role to play in the dynamic. This is the process of asking the big questions about living. It assures the importance of science and history suggesting the relevance of the natural world. The questions it often raises include those like:

How should I act to maximize human potential? This inquiry leads to a social philosophy and the establishment of a system of ethics.

What is my place in nature? This leads to natural philosophy. The causality principle usually prevails.

Why is there an ego? What purpose does it serve? This is a big issue in today’s New Age groups. Ego is the reptilian self awareness. It is exercised in selfishness. One might argue selfishness the essential upon which everything progresses in the fairest way possible. Competition yields growth. Apportionment of production’s benefits is assured through the selfish interests of each member of the group. To guarantee their own allotment, individuals will keep others from taking more than their warranted share. In truth, self-preserving checks and balances are only needed when foresight is lacking. Discipline can be asserted in a system guided by environmental consciousness and purposeful intent. Selfishness would not be needed for entities to regulate one another.

What is the most likely scenario of death? Trepidation and fear permeate one’s character when one imagines falling away from life. First, there is pain in sickness. Then, there is nothing for the rest of eternity. There is little to suspect more of dying than this. Yet, there are those who reject this conclusion. It is agreed that, when left to objective meditation, there is a portion of oneself that is aware of all the rest of the parts. Self awareness knows the body, emotions, and thoughts. Surely, this part composes the human soul. Furthermore, the substantiality for which it is felt suggests it immortal. It is likely that the soul is causation without substance itself. Reincarnation suggests that it is like the flame of a candle. They believe that when the body runs down from old age and dies, the flame is transferred to a new candle. It is also possible that it dies with the physical self without another body to light itself to. The soul surviving death is likely an illusion. There is little that supports the notion of life after death, of a heaven, or of gods. The soul dies with the body. There is little proof otherwise.

Mystics refer to extinction as Nirvana. This state is the dissolution of the finite self and is considered the highest destiny of the human spirit. Like the wind, Nirvana can not be shown. Perhaps it is the bliss and peace of Raja Yoga. While everyone good and bad, spiritual or not may eventually concede to it, how one approaches it may be relevant.

One may become more comfortable with self extinction when the ego becomes disarmed in everyday affairs. Mortality becomes less an issue when one approaches it in a state of egocentric transcendence. This is the third person meditation. It is the denial of self interest as a primary source of motivation to feelings of love for the greater whole. It uses visualization developed through mind expansion. It involves visualizing the material self within its environment. This gives a person a more holistic perspective to the workings of reality. The person becomes environmentally conscious and less egocentric. Self-centered values become trivial and give way to awareness of community and love. The underlying goodness and justice towards the greater good takes hold and finds power.

The third person meditation has been called “self remembering.” Its attainment is achieved through a methodology.

The way through knowledge involves the study of conventional religious thought. One learns through sages and scripture of essential being. An intensive reflection occurs where the hypothesis of a third self (soul) is confirmed.

This is done by:

Language usage: If I say, “I’m walking through the woods,” who’s talking?!
Physics: pretty chancy because scientific thought is never absolute
Metaphor: In this confirmation, one imagines being an actor on the stage of life. The eastern metaphor of the chariot driver applies verily here.

Once one recognizes the third person, one has only to shift one’s self identification to that abiding part. One is no longer only arms, torso, head, and legs but, in essence, is soul. Thinking from the soul’s perspective is achieved.

The way through love: One moves on to acknowledge love of the greater whole through love itself. First, one poetically anthropomorphically sees the greater whole. Human qualities are attributed to the whole. Environmental idealists refer to the biosphere as “Gaia.” Native Americans regard the entire earth as “Mother Earth.” Like a friend one loves it for the sake of love alone. Mystics suggest, in meditation, one chant and repeat the name one calls the whole.

Egocentric Transcendence

Once one acknowledges love of the greater whole, the next step to the third person methodology occurs. This is the denial of ego. This denial can be accomplished by two means.

The first way is through work. This method is intended to starve the finite ego by denying it the consequences of work’s action. By denying reward through one’s industriousness, the ego goes hungry and becomes weaker. If one does this, other incentives for hard work can be realized. Individuals can work out of love and no longer need to employ it for its personal rewards. The work is done for the sake of the greater whole.

Another way the ego can be denied is through psychophysical exercises. Raja yoga, which suggests a hierarchy of systems (body consciousness, individual consciousness, and infinite eternal being), can reduce the ego. This form of meditation goes as follows:

Raja yoga:

Practice five abstentions: from injury, lying, stealing, sensuality, and greed
Practice five observances: cleanliness, contentment, self control, studiousness, and contemplation of the divine
Find a posture that lies between discomfort and the opposite pole of relaxation - the lotus position: yogi sits with legs crossed so that each foot rests sole up on its opposing thigh.
The spine is erect with allowance for its natural curvature. Hands are placed palms up on lap one on top of the other with thumbs touching lightly. Eyes are closed or allowed to gaze unfocused-focused on the ground.
Control breathing
Close the doors of perception and concentrate on the terrain within at the expense of the sensual. Attention is placed squarely on the mind to the exclusion of the material.
Let the mind wonder to pick one object to which concentrate on to the exclusion of all other mental forms.
Bring the conscious into unity with the separate object. The two are merged to the extent that self awareness disappears.
Make the object formless leaving nothing.

By acknowledging love for the greater world coupled with a shift to the abiding part, the ego finds its accurate and appropriate place. The ego’s world is not abrogated entirely. It still retains its role in the scheme of the primary and secondary selves. But it finds itself often taking a back seat when transcendence finds precedence. While the ego continues to serve its important role, its relevance is understood within the context of the greater good.

Product - the enlightened person

This liberation from the egocentric produces some wonderful traits in the enlightened person.

The enlightened person tends to feel love and compassion for all living things.

Fear of death is gone for this person. Death becomes an essential need of the greater whole and is even regarded as one of the highest acts of love. One dies to make room for the next generation. Feelings of love for the greater good overpower fear of death.

The liberated tends to be happier. Old worries no longer apply and become out obsolete.

The individual reappraise values from the egocentric perspective.

The enlightened seem to exhibit greater intellect. They become aware of a larger theme in life’s play.

The transcendent also acquire a capacity to overcome guilt.

To overcome guilt - steps to resolve guilt:

Acknowledge the mistake
Take responsibility for it
Commit to never repeat it in the name of love or perhaps goodness

Because the liberated has greater vision, they tend to be communally equalitarian. Equality makes sense.

By egocentric transcendence, spiritual needs are served in an enlightened combination of altruism, objectivity, and humility. Through these ingredients, a dynamic acknowledges soul and the greater world to which it belongs. It shifts self identity to the soul and finds love for the greater whole. In turn, the owner of that soul finds peace, happiness, and understanding that put a leash on the insatiate the untamed ego’s world assures.

To Summarize

2007-10-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Objective

In living, there is an assortment of motives that keep people going. Some would suggest instinct is all that’s needed to keep them breathing and wanting. But the soul needs more of the ideal than the real. The human spirit can make no sense of mere existence. Why exist if one can not live? The human spirit insists upon living over existence. Texture and color, the feelings, and dreams of the world are truly what motivate. Without them, one might as well be lost to history.

To find the rules for living, it helps to understand it as an art composed of activities. The art of living can, in fact, be broken down into five behaviors. First, there is assimilation. This is the taking in of sensory stimuli. Second, there is the interpretation of those stimuli. Then, there is the physical response. This may take the form of reflex or it might come back as instinctual. Response might also be rational and the physical motorization becomes purposeful. Another element is affinity. It’s hard to say where this originates. Are affinities “messages from the other side” or are they instinctive tendencies genetically hardwired into people? It’s not important. But affinities exist. They set possibilities of experience. The last element is reason. Reason considers the human predicament and decides what is realistic. While affinities drive the system, reason sets the rules.

Affinities are the essence of human motivation. Explorations of experience’s frontiers keep people breathing. It is up to individuals to lead an aesthetic life. This is one that fulfills their full human potential. One does this by exploring all things natural and created as dictated by affinities. Upon exploration, they celebrate the seen and felt through the pleasure of its creative interpretation and expression. One must remember, however, that because perception and interpretation are imperfect, life’s parameters must be held tentative.

Society

The idea that human interpretation is imperfect is important when considering the human community. The goodness of a society can be measured by its adherence to a few qualities. The most important is that human imperfection must be acknowledged.

A good society should never require or assume perfection. A community should never insist that its population fulfill its idea of the optimum lifestyle. Neither should authority and judges assume that the law for which they struggle is absolute. Society must retain an adaptive capacity for ever-changing human needs.

Society should also retain an anti-pragmatic disposition. Its design should allow an individual’s action to serve as a means to an end as well as an end in itself. While few can do this all the time, how closely this is achieved can be an effective measure of a society’s success. Insisting that the value of the means determines the true value of the end also promises action that is correct. Correctness and the pride associated with its doing can be a strong source of motivation. Yet, because humans are imperfect, one’s “correct” actions don’t always produce the desired result. This is why the process itself must serve as an end on its own. Regardless of the outcome the process can yield happiness. If individuals are granted an anti-pragmatic environment they will tend to be happier people.

It’s also important for a community to recognize the importance of both collective unity as well as autonomy. The collectivization of human activity is very important. Through specialization, artists and engineers can achieve a higher degree of sophistication. But it’s also important to respect the rights and ambitions of the individual. Those who seek personal ambition should also be accommodated. The individual capacity for productivity and creativity holds as much value and importance as the responsibilities that person has toward the community as a whole. To compromise one for the other leads to disaster.

The goodness of a society can also be measured by its capacity to avoid conflict. External and internal conflict can be reduced through the use of a few practices.

First, never should a person have to ask for that which they can’t be denied. The good society can be measured by how well it provides essential needs to its people. If people never have to want for necessities then they will never have to seek recourse on the basis of a threat to life. People should also never have to feel that they can not deny the requests of others. If social infrastructure meets human needs, then never shall anyone be asked for things they don’t feel free to deny.

There are qualities that can be applied to a necessities mandate. Basic needs should be distributed equally among all the citizenry. Future generations must also be included in this distribution. Renewable as well as non-renewable resources must be secured for future as well as current generations.

Institutions are the best candidate for the job of resource distribution. They are conservative by nature and basic human needs rarely change. It’s important to realize that sometimes needs do change. Feedback mechanisms within the institutional design can allow for adaptation to these changes. A dynamic capacity should be built in.

This feedback construct could be economic. With the free market system, competition drives merchants to fulfill changes. But, an ideal could be attended should affinitarian driven institutionalisms make these adaptations. They would be motivated toward modification altruistically and as an expression of one’s integrity.

Another practice that can reduce conflict is to hold a contingency for resolution. Often, dissolution over specific resources can be solved by a contingency of three deterrents. The first is compromise. A compromise can be made over a resource in question. Perhaps this takes the form of time share, where schedules are produced that allows one then the other to use the resource. The second deterrent is innovation. Perhaps a construction can be developed to fulfill the needs of all conflicting parties. If compromise and innovation fail in resolution, the third and final deterrent may be required. Denial is to withhold the resource in question from one or all parties. In disallowing all but one of the parties the resource, a first come first serve criteria rules. A more profound and absolute resolution can be found with mutually assured denial. (MAD) With this type, all parties are denied the resource until the conflict is resolved.

It is important to secure freedom of movement for everyone. Those who wish to leave a community should be able to. The success of a community can then be accurately assessed by the character of its constituency. This is also an effective way to resolve conflict. Resources for deviant emigration must be retained for all members of the community.

It is also important to provide a clear definition of what’s required of individuals as members of the community. Many come into conflict because guidelines have not been provided. What these requirements might be is up to the laws and rules set down by that specific group. It would benefit from a detailed contingency for handling conflict. This way, when judgment is served, there are few surprises.

Individual

It would be hard to anticipate what would be required of individuals who play parts in complex groups. Requisites would be particular to each community. But there are a few that would probably apply to all. One could, in turn, conclude that these are a few qualities that make a good person no matter where you go.

First, a good person uses reason to assess the human predicament and to act in a way that is most likely correct. Reason is a funny thing. It never tells one the truth of the matter. What’s false or untrue is all it reveals. Through a process of elimination of untruths, a concept that is most likely accurate can be achieved. This can allow one to define what constitutes virtuous acts. It helps one to define the means to act given one’s circumstance. What does one do to achieve a desired end? Reasonable doubt sets limits given priorities. It’s impossible to do everything in life. Life’s span can only be filled with the best of one’s opportunities.

Another thing good people can do is realize altruism. This is instinctive love. It is the kind that is played out without any regard for self interest. It is realized when one races into a burning building to save a house cat. It is done for the sake of its doing.

A good person also employs virtue and practices the precepts. This is done for and by reason, altruism, and affinity.

Spiritual Life

There are three aspects to the human mind. The first is reflex. With this, one assimilates stimuli and reacts instinctively without reason. The second is the cognitive self. It assimilates stimuli, interprets it through reason, and reacts to it through motorization. The third is soul. This is the part of oneself that can be imagined to step out and away from the other two. It looks back and can observe activities of instinct and reason within the context of one’s life. Its existence can be assured through the depth and substantiality it is felt.

To lead an enlightened spiritual life, one should attain the third person perspective. Combining acts of objectivity and humility can accomplish this. Objectivity is realizing that preconceptions are not absolute. This includes assumptions regarding good and evil. Their polarity and interdependency prescribe transcendence that conceives evil as essentially leading to the good. This is contradictory to perceiving the evil as entirely indecorous. Being open-minded also helps one to consider the perspective humility asserts. Humility involves seeing oneself as part of the greater whole. Through reason and visualization one can accurately imagine stepping out of oneself and viewing themselves in their environment. This is the third person looking back at the first and second persons. It sees them in the context of a more substantial and relevant world.

Shifting to the abiding part is the first step in spiritual realization. This must be accompanied by the practice of altruism. Instinctive love is to be able to put another ahead of oneself. Pure altruism makes no appeal to compensation or self reward. Its credentials rest in acts of compassion and friendship. Unlike pure love, with these, a part of the self is seen in the other. One knows how they would like to be treated imagining themselves in the other’s circumstance. It is easy to see some of oneself in another person. But to see it in an animal, plant, rock, or even planet is poetic. Poetic anthropomorphism, the extension of feelings of love to the surrounding environment, can be an important tool to spiritual actualization. The practice of self based love can give way to the pure type over time. True love is found and it feeds the soul. Without it, even the most beautiful things become gilded and lost to meaninglessness.

Objectivity, humility, and love combine to yield egocentric transcendence. A shift to the abiding part coupled with feelings of love for the whole lead to a denial of self interest as a primary source of motivation. Self-centered values become trivial and yield to a sense of community. Fear of death becomes subject and is neutralized. Commitment to the greater good allows one to arrest guilt caused by prior personal flaws. One becomes environmentally conscious and less egocentric.

It is easy to understand the true purpose of selfishness especially from the soul’s perspective. In biological systems, independent parts often lack the capacity of self-regulation. Species will quickly over stress their environment when left unchecked. Overpopulation combined with a finite food supply may lead to the eventual destruction of the species. Nature relies on other entities or species to maintain a balance between the parts. This has led some to surmise that genes are selfish. This is not true. But selfishness has served the objective of checks and balances in human communities. People who are inclined to take more than their fair share are quickly held in check by the selfish interests of others. Egocentric transcendence, with its acute regard for the condition of the environment, denies the need for external control. The enlightened become self regulating. They are inclined to take only their fair share so that the system maintains its integrity and is not impoverished. Only in dealings with the unenlightened, does self interest serve a purpose. The sage must execute a role of self interest, much like an actor on stage, if control is to be asserted over the deprived.

It is important not to let egocentric transcendence destroy the ego’s world entirely. There are those who believe that the complete denial of ego is the key to heaven on Earth. This presumption is incorrect. The first and second selves exist as part of the abiding part’s reality. The ego’s world is just as relevant as the soul’s. One must realize the importance of both if one is to live completely. Priorities must be set so that both aspects and the relationship between them are preserved. To sacrifice one for the other prescribes failure. In successful spiritual liberation, Plato’s idealistic reality comes into sharper focus without compromise to Aristotle’s epistemology. Reconciliation must take place between ego and the greater whole if happiness is to be attained.

Resolutions for a Better World

2007-10-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Recognize the affinitarian experience as a motivation to exist. Do not be content with just existing. Commit to existence and life by living. Protect and lead an aesthetic life that fulfills one’s full human potential. Do this by exploring all things natural and created as dictated by one’s affinities. Upon exploration, celebrate the seen and felt through the pleasure of its creative interpretation and expression.

Strive for absolution yet never assume or require it. Human beings are imperfect. Perception, interpretation, expression, and actualization are subject to error. While people may strive for perfection they should never believe they have attained it. Practice objective conceptualization. Realize that all preconceptions are tentative and soidisant. Also conserve the objectivity of independent thought in others. Provide no advice, criticism, nor open judgment for those that do not ask for it. One only forces ones views on others if transgression of the precepts is threatened.

Design life so that the means are ends as well as means to an end. The true value of the end is dependent on the soundness of the means by which it is attained. If method serves as a good expression of one’s character and in this way, is a source of happiness, the true goodness of it’s product will not be compromised.

Realize the importance of both autonomy and collective unity. Upon looking inward, one sees a self that is unique, and whole. But looking outward one sees dependency on the community and environment to which one belongs. It is important to be able to find a way to accommodate these two human qualities. Priorities must be set so that both aspects and the tension between them are preserved. To sacrifice one for the other evokes disaster.

Cherish and nurture life. Support and protect the lives of others in the community. Include the interests of children, the sick, and the elderly.

Reduce conflict. The attendance of peace and harmony is a measure of the goodness of a community. The social design should be endowed with qualities to retard strife. Necessities must be met so that never should a person have to ask for something they can’t be denied. Resources must be shared equally by the present as well as future generations. Feedback must insure that resource distribution responds to changing needs of people. The community must provide a clear definition of what’s required of its members. It should also hold a contingency over arguments over specific resources: innovation, compromise, and denial. Freedom of movement must be maintained. Aberrant individuals who require too much of the prevailing belief system, must have the freedom to leave.

Practice the precepts: not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, not to be unchaste, and not to take intoxicants. These precepts are fundamental to human morality. Under no circumstance should this resolution be ignored. Furthermore, priority for this resolution should not be exchanged for any other. Transgression of these precepts should lead to judgment and punishment by one’s peers.

Support an institutional system that insures liberty, equality, and a sense of community. Use a vote to master a consensus of government. Three branches called congress, executive, and judiciary compose the advantages the law of three can provide. Elections determine representatives in each of these components. They write and enforce the laws of the land in accordance with a constitution. Those who enter government and debate open themselves and their ideas to analysis and criticism by peers. These lawmakers and interpreters must also bear in mind that they should stick to what is essential in government. Thoreau said, “The best government is the least government.” This reduces the majority rule over a suppressed minority. In this lies a capacity for some potential unanimity in the vote. It is this condition that all democracies should strive to achieve but without compromising the diversity of its citizenry.

Use reasonable doubt to assess the human predicament. Know science, mathematics, history, and philosophy. Cognitive systems generate concepts such as “green” and “centimeter” that are attributed to things and are true by definition. Using them, theories may be produced describing the workings of the world around. While definitions remain absolute, theories are tentative. Reason never proves anything. It only disproves. By developing a vocabulary true by definition and an understanding of the most likely truths, one can determine one’s best course of action in life.

Realize altruism. This is instinctive love. It is the kind that is practiced for the sake of itself often without reason. It makes no appeal to compensation or self reward. It is hard wired into the human psyche. Love is likely a product of evolution but on the spiritual level it is something more. Is it not food for the soul? Its practice is at the heart of spiritual health.

Practice virtue for and by reason, altruism, and affinity. The virtues are self discipline, responsibility, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, faith, work, compassion, and friendship.

Reason finds advantages in their practice especially in close communities. Improved self appearance and self preservation are their returns. Even the love, that promotes their practice, can be rationalized. Compassion and feelings of friendship toward others are suggested to occur because one sees a bit of themselves in the other. But reason and its child, rational love, only justify the existence of baser altruism. Basic love deems the practice of virtue essential to its fulfillment. Affinity finds reason and loves preoccupation with virtue and finds it intangibly beautiful.

Be honest with yourself and those in your community. Seek truth. It is important to determine an accurate account of one’s ambitions, beliefs, gifts, and overall condition. Summarize ones findings and express them in art, literature, and rites of passage. Their accuracy insures that resources are not wasted on developments that never matter.

Combine love, objectivity, and humility to find egocentric transcendence, virtue, the ability to overcome guilt, the ability to overcome fear of death, and to find selfish nature’s place. In human spirituality, one recognizes the abiding part. This is the human soul few can deny when left to objective reflection. Pure love seems an essential element as a force behind the intentions of the abiding part. The inadequacy of the material self takes siege through these revelations. Commitment to pure love allows one to overcome regret and loss of even mortal proportions.

Bring the subconscious in touch with the conscious through visualization. Idealistic meditations on mental forms grounded in materialism develop a dialog between the subconscious and conscious. The vocabulary of transient form can be increased through mind expansion exercises. These techniques improve creative potential through imagination.

Know the principles of creative design. Form follows function and function follows form in a hierarchy of rational and creative systems. A design that must be measured is not worth building. Mystical and inherent relations could be accommodated. Use the balance of ambiguity and continuance as a motive of attention. Keep things essential to the objective of the form.

Seek shelter, communication, energy, food production, industry, and transportation through creative design. Liberating people from the toils of repetitive labor should lie at the heart of social infrastructure. Automation satisfies this objective. This is the inventor’s legacy. Beauty should also manifest design’s creation. This is the artists legacy.

Make design conservative in producing aberrations against the biosystem’s entropy threshold. Civilization’s infrastructure tends to destabilize natural systems. This may lead to irreversible changes and modifications in nature that are detrimental to that very civilization. For this reason, it’s important to reduce destabilizing influences wherever possible.

Seek a collective purpose in design that compensates for its aberrant affect on the biosphere. Aspects of the design should be made to stabilize the living environment. They should improve the biosphere’s avoidance and resilience to adversity. Examples might include a global defense to counter catastrophic geological and astrophysical phenomena. Expansion of the biosphere through terraforming increase life’s chances of continuance as well as capacity for variance. Negative feedback potential may greatly be reduced through selection when conservative human aberrations are compensated for by these advantages.

Extend life for future generations by the collective purpose and use experience endowed with objective conceptualization. Death’s purpose is to limit the power of people. As parasites, mortality restricts the destructive capacity of individuals upon the environment. Should humankind prove too much for the system to bear, nature may have the option of destroying humanity altogether. But if people prove advantageous to the biosphere, their interests of immortality may be extended through feedback loops. A second reason for death lies in the nature of the “older and wiser” of a community. As they become older, people tend to become conservative. They tend to be less open to new ideas. But new ideas need to be explored rather than prematurely dismissed. Death insures the development of new ideas in new generations. Only in maintaining an objective outlook can one deny death this purpose. Individuals must remain open minded.

Practice good health by bringing the body to its own entropy threshold. One’s physical condition is improved with a balance of exercise and rest. Yoga, meditation, and relaxation exercises can serve this objective. It is also important to watch one’s diet and avoid assimilating environmental pollutants. Maintain a healthy social life by avoiding isolation. Secure a soundness of mind by taking responsibility for one’s health, reducing stress, and retaining an objective outlook upon life.

Returning to the Garden

2007-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Lamenting the fall from grace

In the story of the fall, Adam and Eve are forced out of the Garden of Eden because they eat of the tree of knowledge. One can’t help but concede that the event describes the invention of agriculture. It is the rejection of a nomadic hunter’s lifestyle for a more sedentary and civilized one. The fruit of knowledge is but the product of likely a woman who discovered that the seeds and roots she gathered could be planted and grown anew. This discovery would weigh heavily on the hearts of men. Agriculture would lead to specialization. Once everyone hunted, now, some are farmers, others carpenters, artisans, soldiers, and kings. Cities would rise. Eventually industry would grow to dwarf its parent agriculture.

There is a profound sense that humanity has come far from its humble beginnings. Yet, as we dwell in the towers and citadels of Eve’s blunder, one undeniably feels a sense of loss. One wonders why it is that we should engage living so much out of the reach of nature’s embrace. Humanity has become unnatural and seems out of step with the order of things as they ought to be. Like a child who looses its mother, one feels a desperate need to return to the source, to return to the garden of innocence.

Fallacy - it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be - the weak civilized man

To concede that humanity should return to the garden may be premature to say the least. In contrast to our romantic sensibilities, the noble savage knew great hardship. Anyone who has been camping knows this first hand. There are things like poison ivy, hot days and cold nights, chiggers, ticks, and mosquitoes, and in the wilder places, man-eating beasts. These things tend to dislodge any “lets get back to nature” notions of modern idealists. Faced with these and possibly starvation, the civilized quickly retreat to their cities of unnatural comfort. We seem to lack the ability to live as nature intended even when we might aspire to do so. It is in sharp pretension that the realistic wish to return to nature.

Desire to reconcile nature and humanity

Yet, the desire to return persists. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the fact that people are a product of nature. It is likely that there is an inherent affinity for those things that are natural. It is a predisposition hard-wired into our psyche on a genetic level. Edward O. Wilson called it biophilia.

The desire to reconcile humanity and nature may also be promoted by a fundamental need to attach a sense of purpose to one’s life. As one recognizes oneself a product of nature there is the suspicion that, if one finds a place in the natural scheme, a tangible sense of meaning could arise in one’s life. This spiritual lift would be based on science rather than traditional faith. This would reinforce its credibility and transparency.

The human purpose

In honest disposition, there can be no purpose prescribed humankind other than that we ordain ourselves. The calling we achieve comes from within rather than about. To believe more than this, in divine providence and resolute faith, is likely a lie to one’s own spirit. While we should never dismiss such notions, their proof and validity remain elusive.

It is possible to conceive the act of living as art whose search and style achieve a poet’s means. In this, the means become ends in themselves and the aesthetic defeats the fractured efforts of common existence. Furthermore, Aristotle wrote of aesthetics and believed that art imitates things as they ought to be and completes what nature fails to finish. That the human act might succeed where biology fails rests solely on the extragenetic potential of the mind.

Human culture, itself, requires compromises from nature that tend to destabilize her and set her out of balance. To compensate for the aberrant dynamics that humanity insists, a strategy could be developed to help shore up the system. This could lead to feedback potential that might serve human interests. It could also give people a sense of purpose as indigenous elements of nature.

The purpose of humankind:

So that nature can come to know itself

To protect the biosystem

To expand the biosystem

So that nature can come to know itself: The Evolution of Consciousness

At the time these words were written, scientists believe the universe began fifteen billion years ago with a large explosion called “the Big Bang.” Uniformity of cosmic microwave background radiation suggests an even distribution of matter throughout the universe about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. The universe remained smooth and featureless for millions of years afterwards. There was no light for no stars existed at this time. It wasn’t until 100 million years after the Big Bang that hydrogen gas began to cool enough to settle into disks, forming the centers of protogalaxies. The denser regions of gas within these galaxies contracted into star-forming clumps. Stars would begin to shine. For the first time, since the Big Bang, there was light. These stars were hundreds of times more massive than our sun. Ultraviolet radiation, from them, ionized surrounding neutral hydrogen gas. Yet, they had short lives. After only a few million years, these immense fusion factories ended as supernova, or, if more massive, ended as black holes. Gravitational attraction pulled the protogalaxies toward one another. Collisions between these would catalyze the formation of more stars. Likewise, black holes possibly merged with one another to form super massive black holes at the centers of the protogalaxies. Cosmic evolution had begun.

About 4.5 billion years ago, the shockwave from a nearby supernova compressed and likely seeded, with heavier elements, the hydrogen cloud that would become our solar system. At first, solid particles formed where the cloud was densest. Gravity would force these toward one another. As particles began to be drawn to the center, the hydrogen cloud began to spin faster and faster. This acceleration flattened it into a disk. Most particles drifted to the cloud’s center to form the future sun. The rest coalesced into clumps of mater called planetesimals. These, in turn, would accrete into one another to form larger clumps which later would become the planets. After about a million years, the sun collapsed under its own gravity. Its center would become so hot that nuclear fusion would begin, and the first sunshine would light the still growing planets.

At first, the Earth was nothing more than a cold mass of rubble. But about 3.8 billion years ago, the decay of radioactive elements, impacts from incoming planetisimals, and the pressure of gravity began to heat up the Earth’s interior. Pressure and temperatures reached a point, about 400 to 800 Km below the surface, where iron in the rock began to melt. A spectacular event, called the Iron Catastrophe, had begun. As liquid iron began to fall through the lighter rock, displacing it upward, more heat became generated. This increase in temperature broadened and continuously expanded the zone of melting. Eventually, as this zone neared the planet’s surface, volcanism began venting lava and gases onto the surface. Finally, the original crust of the planet would melt into liquid rock. The Earth was like a ball of lava and organized itself into layers. Heavy elements, like nickel sank to the core and, with iron, solidified under enormous pressure there. Silicates and lighter elements rose to the surface. Convection currents began to cool the earth. A new crust began to form. Water vapor and other gases, previously locked up in the Earths interior, erupted from the surface to form the planets primitive oceans and atmosphere.

The primitive atmosphere of earth had no free oxygen. It was mostly composed of water vapor, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Without an ozone layer, ultraviolet radiation blasted the planet. Rainfall washed sediment minerals into the planet’s oceans while lightning and ultraviolet radiation accelerated the making and breaking of chemical bonds. The result was the formation of amino acids, the stuff of life. Amino acids, on a hot dry surface, like cooling rock, form cell-like spheres when splashed by water. If rain washed these spheres into a tidal pool they would be protected from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Here, even more complex molecules could form. Eventually one would arise with the ability to make copies of itself. Life and its taskmaster, natural selection, began certainly no later than 3.5 billion years ago.

The early living cells are believed to have fed by absorbing organic matter. Then, some began to generate there own food through photosynthesis. Colonies of blue-green algae called stomatolites populated the oceans tide pools by about 3 billion years ago. Oxygen, a by-product of photosynthesis, began building up in the Earth’s substrate. Life began, in effect, to change the character of its planet. By 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen would max out the carrying capacity of the substrate and begin building up in the planet’s atmosphere. Sometime between 2.2 billion and 700 million years ago, multicellular life would evolve. The symbiotic mergence would catalyze a proliferation of life. By 400 million years ago, plants and animals would colonize the land. From 350 to 300 million years ago amphibians and insects ruled the land. This gave way to the age of reptiles at 240 million years ago. The great dinosaurs and the infamous R-complex would rule over the land for almost 200 million years. Then, the KT impact, 65 million years ago, would usher in the age of mammals.

History of the Universe

15 billion years ago - formation of the universe
4.6 billion years ago - supernova
4.5 billion years ago - formation of solar system and Earth
3.8 billion years ago – Iron catastrophe
3.5 billion first cyanobacteria: photosynthetic and methanogens; Earth’s atmosphere: CO2, NH4; most complex organism: stromatolites
2.5 billion years ago - proliferation of cyanobacteria, rise of aerobic photosynthesis, early ice-age
2.2 billion years ago - oxygen begins to accumulate in atmosphere
700 to 800 million years ago - another early ice-age (Snowball Earth) occurred possibly before complex organisms existed, only lasted a couple of million years
700 million years ago - steep decline in stromatolite diversity
530 million years ago - Cambrian explosion - proliferation of marine animals
435 million - ozone layer formed, plants colonize land (Silurian period)
400 million years ago - another early ice-age, animals colonize the land
365 million - amphibians and insects thrive
300 to 270 million years ago - another ice age
250 million years ago - landmasses one, Permian extinction
240 - 63 million years Mesozoic Era - age of reptiles
63 million to present Cenozoic Era - age of mammals
2.5 million years ago - ice age returns - There have been eighteen separate ice advances and retreats. Interglacial warm periods have occurred approximately every 100,000 years

Homo sapiens would arise as early as 500,000 years ago in Southern Africa. They would share the stage of humanity with other species of their genus up to about 40,000 years ago. With their evolution came the natural capacity for abstract thought. All animals, from spiders to zebras, hold some capacity for self-awareness. Undoubtedly, consciousness rests in self-awareness. But human self-awareness combined with the capacity for abstract thought may prove the highest form of consciousness on the planet.

Nature’s history is a story of life continuously reinventing itself. Like the evolution of cooperative eukaryotic systems, the limbic nervous system of amphibians, the ego centered R-complex of the reptiles, and the compassionate mammalian complex, human consciousness my serve as nature’s next evolutionary leap.

Through humanity, nature gains the capacity to see and know itself, to become conscious not just on an organism level but on an abstract planetary level. It can imagine its own potential. Adaptation can be achieved not solely through random mutation but through human actualization. Through our race, nature can appreciate its own beauty and the splendor of the universe within which it lives. It might even develop a disposition for reason and love. By this, a collective consciousness might arise. This happens, not through metaphysics, but through civilization. Human language and communication systems like the internet give nature a chance at attaining collective self-actualization. What people could achieve should they discover this purpose could be extraordinary. Imagine a world united by the human propensity for friendship and love, beauty and goodness... Imagine paradise.

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